Book reviews outsourced to India
By Pupul Sinha

Let me admit, I do allow book reviews to influence me when I plan a book-buy, especially when I buy online. So when I read this British newspaper Daily Mail article on how writers are angry over clearly planted book reviews on Amazon, it was quite a let down for me. I was led on by “planted” book reviews? Sniff… sniff. Now I learn that Indians do such reviews for $10 - 15 a book

The Daily Mail expose goes like this. Author Rosie Alison’s ‘The Very Thought of You’, a story of an eight-year-old evacuee sent to a Yorkshire estate during the Second World War, and published by small independent press Alma Books, had been long listed for the prestigious Orange prize this year. The book was listed on online portal Amazon, and by the time the Daily Mail had printed the story, the Amazon site had had a whopping 119 reviews with most of them throwing up skewed and some clearly negative opinions. Sixteen people had rated it with just one star in a five start rating system, and this happened over a very short period. The author now smelt a rat and hired cyber investigators to check whether the reviews were real or planted “by her rival publishers”. This is not a singular case; other writer have been peeved over the unfavourable reviews on Amazon before, says Daily Mail and lays down other names ands instances.

That brought me to check on book-reviews on Amazon and I was astounded to find that many online book stores actually allow book-reviews by people who have a buyer’s account. It works like this, you make one purchase from the site and you are given an account and a password, and you can post any number of book-reviews on the site using this. Amazon actually has a team of ‘rated reviewers’ too, just see how the reviewers themselves are ‘rated’. So it doesn’t even make it necessary that you should have bought this book, let alone read this book, to write a review, favourable or otherwise.

So far, so good. It seems that there are actually PR agencies that do book-reviews by the bulk. But when I found that the web-content brigade was having a party on this and reviews were being outsourced, it was even more of a shock. Then I met Pramila (name changed at her request), an Indian writer who does book reviews by the dozen, and makes an income out of it.

Pramila found the ‘assignment” on Craigslist, like any other writing job on the outsourced work-line. She answered the job ad of a guy from the U.S., who wanted reviewers, and jumped on the wagon. She now gets paid varying amounts from $ 10-15 per review, and gets a PDF/e-book version of the book she reviews as well. I asked Pramila, if she had ever reviewed a book without reading it. She vehemently denies having ever done so. Has she posted bad reviews about any book, as an assignment? Pramila shakes her head again, indicating another No.

And Pramila has several “colleagues” in India and other Asian countries, working for the same US based agency.

As for the Rosie Alison case, I checked on Amazon, and now the book has just 5 reviews, and it’s a balanced case with two 5-stars, two 4-stars and one 3 star rating. Quite antiseptically safe…and will some one tell me what happened to the complaint?

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