Friday, June 5, 2009

An Amazon Mystery

Does anyone have an explanation why the outrageous Grady Harp keeps on rising in Amazon rankings -currently he's risen to # 3 Old Style and to # 22 New Style - whereas the website's star Ungeheurer, Harriet Klausner, continues her decline - though still # 1 Old Style, she's descended to # 579 New. The question of the reason for these frankly baffling rankings has been raised on the Amazon comment threads, but to my knowledge nobody has yet attempted an answer.

Since phoney voting on his reviews by Harp and/or his minions has been largely blocked under the new system, and since Harriet continues to post many more "reviews" of contemporary stuff that might sell than does the Maestro, "reviews" which are generally not accorded an avalanche of neggies, why does he go up and she go down so markedly? The principal difference between the two these days seems to be that Harp emends his reviews after commentators point out his barbarisms, and only then does he vote not helpful on the comment. Harriet, on the other hand, makes no changes, no matter how ludicrously inaccurate or non-grammatical her reviews so often are. She just votes a quick not helpful on any comment pointing out her errors. Could it be that Amazon is rewarding Harp's "scrupulousness" but punishing Klausner's sangfroid? As always, inquiring minds want to know.

1 comment:

Malleus said...

Legitimate and interesting observations. As to your theory, um, no, I doubt it. Nothing Amazon did so far makes such an action of their part likely. You're grasping at ethical straws here :-) (but don't we all wish the situation were better than it is?).