Seeing stars

As the text below says, this is the second time the writer is contacting me asking me to do him the favor of posting an Amazon review of his book. Notice, he never asks me to read it, and he certainly doesn't offer to send me a copy to make sure I have access to it in order to read it and review it. On the contrary, he says, the favor he requires would take a mere 30 seconds. Now, I'm a fast reader, but not that fast. It would take me at least an hour to read even a very short book, and I believe I have no business reviewing a book I have not read.

Lest you think that I'm misrepresenting the request, I've copied the email in full. In light of this unwitting disclosure, one should add more than the usual number of grains of salt in assessing how accurate the starred reviews are. It's also interesting to see how the author plays into all the persuasive tactics to get someone to feel good about bestowing a favor while in effect playing into a lie.

I could really do with your help Recently I emailed about my attempt to get some reviews for The End of Certainty, on Amazon. The response was incredible and I now have 48 reviews. I really was humbled by the response and can't thank you enough. I do however have one last request. If you weren't able to give me a quick review last time, just pressing the 5 star button would be enough, then please please help out now and do it. Amazon has a rule that it starts promoting books that get at least 50 reviews. As a result I'm tantalizingly close to getting on their list. Just a few more reviews is all I need. Below is the email I sent before, to help jog your memory on all this. The End of Certainty has been doing quite nicely since I published it, and many of the people who've read it have said extremely nice things about it. Over 25,000 people have copies. The success of it has amazed me. However I have a problem and I could really do with your help. It seems the Millennials are all fantastically good at the social media world and as a result they like and review lots of materials. However my audience is people like you. You're older than your average millennial, and as a result don't feel so obliged to get involved in the whole scoring and reviewing stuff. I understand, because frankly, I think the same way. However it's causing me a problem, which I hope you can help me with. To get the Amazon AI  to notice the book, and therefore get it to a wider audience I need to get over 100 reviews. These don't need to be in depth reviews, something as simple as, it was interesting, or simply giving it a star rating is enough. You'd be doing me a huge favor by getting involved. I just need 30 seconds of your time. Because of the odd way Amazon works, US reviews show up in the UK Amazon store, but NOT the other way around. As a result putting the review, or giving it a star rating on the US Amazon Store would make a huge difference to me. Thanks again for your support, it really does help. Please click here to go to the correct page on Amazon