And yet still more reliable than Best Buy's in-house electronic reviews. I cannot be the only person who thinks this.
Amazon has had so many problems with that book review system. Publishers and authors have been caught spamming negative reviews for competitors, or positive reviews for themselves. I can't say I've ever paid much attention to it. I care what the public has to say about how a lawnmower works, and the collective numeric value of that, not what their opinion is about a set of ideas in a work of nonfiction. Why would I draw my own opinion from herd think?
Not that it makes sense, but I just realized I don't care with fictional books, either. That's inconsistent. After all, I do tend to take note of IMDb and RT/MC for movies (although the latter's scores are pretty much a matter of pure business now, and are no longer useful). Yet I don't care for books. I don't care about music reviews, either, but I sift resources like MC, Pitchfork, Billboard, Spotify trending, and others when I'm trying to narrow down a listening discovery of new groups. Don't even do that for books with reviews.
I adored their service that tracked which books were most popular in given circles, but they got rid of that. You used to be able to see what the bestselling books were at the various universities like Harvard or Stanford were, or by location (ex. New York City). Some of the major corporations were even included (ex. what Google employees were reading). I miss that. Otherwise, I usually take note of the major award winners like the Pulitzer or National Book Award, but ultimately the nonfiction books I end up opening tend to come from the WSJ editorial review section. Those editorial writers are really good at selling a book.
