Tag Archives: review

On Unfair Reviews

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They destroy morale and businesses.

These days, many companies have created online rating/review services for a wide variety of things. There’s Google and Yahoo! of course, for just about any business or product that can appear in search results. There’s Yelp for local businesses and there’s Urban Spoon for restaurants. Angie’s List, which I’ve never visited, even advertises on NPR. Hell, back when I was writing Quicken books, even Intuit tried to get into the act — although I’m not sure how that went, considering how completely saturated the review market is.

There are also product ratings systems on many online services. All the online booksellers — Amazon, Barnes & Noble, etc. — have them. There are rating systems for computer applications built into services such as CNET Downloads and Mac Update. Even Apple has online ratings for the products it sells, from hardware and software in its Apple stores to iTunes content, to iOS apps, to iBooks.

Frankly, these days you can’t shop for a product, company, or service online without being bombarded with people’s opinions of said product, company, or service.

And therein lies the rub.

What Are Opinions?

Reviews are a matter of opinion. And, on the surface there is — or should be — nothing wrong with opinion. After all, everyone is entitled to an opinion.

In a perfect world, a person would research a product, company, or service to determine whether or not it should meet his needs. If he decides that it does and gives it a try, he becomes entitled to form his own opinion on that product, company, or service. His opinion should be based on how well the product, company, or service met his needs, based on his expectations, which should be drawn from his research. It should also be based on his actual experience with the product, company, or service.

Sadly, only a small fraction of reviewers these days seem to understand this simple fact: you are not qualified to form and share an opinion of a product you know nothing about, or one that failed to meet unreasonable expectations.

An Example

Suppose you like cherry pie. You do a bit of research and determine that nearby ABC Pie company sells pies. You go to its website. You learn that they have won awards for their pies at the county fair for the past ten years. You learn that they appeared on a morning talk show where they talked about their pie-making techniques — and they even have a video clip on their Web site for you to watch. You learn that they have all natural ingredients and that all of their fruit pies are made exclusively with fresh, US-grown fruit. You drive over to their pie shop and are amazed to see a line coming out the door of people who have come to buy pie. You wait fifteen minutes on line. You get to the counter and ask for a cherry pie, to go.

The woman at the counter is friendly, but tells you there is no cherry pie. She’s apologetic when she reminds you that it’s February and they are unable to get fresh cherries until June. She reminds you that all of their fruit pies are made with fresh fruit. She tries to interest you in some other pies, but you want cherry. She apologizes again and says she hopes you’ll be back in the summer. After making sure there’s nothing else she can help you with, she moves on to help the next customer.

You’re upset. You feel that you wasted your time going to a pie store to get a pie you think they should have had. After all, you assumed that a pie shop would have cherry pie.

Are you qualified to get on Yelp and bash ABC Pie Company for disappointing you? For making you wait on a long line? For having terrible pie?

Of course not. You had unreasonable expectations — based on your own research! — and you never actually tried their product.

Besides, if cherry pie was the only thing you’d buy, why not call ahead to make sure they have it before taking the time to visit?

To get on Yelp and fire off a one-star rating and a review that bashes ABC Pie Company for the long line and lack of cherry pie would be unfair. To further tarnish the company’s reputation by insinuating that their pies weren’t good or that the woman at the counter was rude would be tragically unfair.

Yet people do this all the time on Yelp and other review services. And it hurts businesses.

And that brings me to the motivation of today’s post.

I am a Victim

One of the things I learned early on a writer was to not read reviews of my books. The reason: although many of them were fair — positive and negative — there were always a handful of unfair reviews that would get my blood boiling.

The earliest of these was back when I wrote my first Quicken book in the late 1990s. The Amazon reviewer gave it 1 star and said that it didn’t include anything more than what you’d find in the manual. This was blatantly untrue. The book included several lengthy sections with advice on finding mortgages, reducing debt, shopping for insurance, and calculating loans. I wrote this original material at the request of my editor, who wanted the book to provide information to help readers get their finances in order. I drew upon my accounting experiences as a small business owner, as well as what I learned in college business courses. I created photo-copyable worksheets, each of which appeared in the book. None of this content was in the product manual. It was clear that the reviewer had never read the book — and possibly never even opened it. Yet, for some reason I couldn’t discover, he had taken it upon himself to bash the book and publish outright lies about it.

Talk about unfair!

I appealed to my publisher and they went to Amazon with the facts. The review was eventually removed.

It was then that I decided to avoid reading reviews of my books.

iBooks Author IconBut sometimes reviews get in your face. Yesterday, I checked the listing for my iBooks Author book in the iBookstore. I don’t even know why I did. And I was shocked to see a one-star review where the reviewer had taken the time to do some book bashing. His complaint: the book wasn’t written with iBooks Author. He claimed that it was impossible to write the book without using the software to write THAT book. (Almost as if he didn’t think I’d ever used the software at all.) I guess he never considered that the book provides instructions for creating another book with iBooks Author. Or maybe that’s not good enough for him.

It’s almost as if he’s suggesting that when I write a book about Excel, I should write it in Excel. Or when I write a book about Photoshop, I should write it in Photoshop. (A picture book, I guess.)

I should mention here that nowhere in the book’s description does it say that it was written with iBooks Author. Obviously, he had unreasonable expectations. (Kind of like assuming there’s cherry pie when there’s no reason to believe there should be.)

So he bashed the book. Even said “don’t waste your money.” As if the content didn’t count for anything because it wasn’t written in iBooks Author.

(Don’t waste your money on this Toyota because it wasn’t built in a Mercedes factory.)

Why would someone do such a thing?

Is he stupid? Does he simply not understand what a review is supposed to be? A summary of how a product met reasonable expectations?

Or just inconsiderate? Does he have a mean streak that makes him want to hurt people by making unfair comments in public?

Or have it in for me? Is there something about me personally that he doesn’t like? Something that makes him want to hurt me?

Does he understand the impact of his actions? My book had steady sales for four days in a row, but after his “review” appeared, sales dropped off. While I don’t know for sure if his “review” caused the drop, what am I supposed to think?

And what am I supposed to do?

I should mention here that the only other review (with words in addition to stars) was a five-star review that had glowing praise for the book. (And no, it wasn’t written by me or any close friend.)

Obviously, I’m going to try to get Apple to pass judgement on the review. I think I have a case, but I don’t really think Apple will do a thing. As I mentioned at the start of this post, things like this happen all the time. Apple would need a full-time staff just to handle complaints about unfair reviews.

I’ll just have to live with it and hope potential buyers can see just how unfair it is.

And if you think book reviews have been the only source of angst for me, think again. This telemarketer’s “review” was so over the top, I had no trouble getting it removed.

Fight Unfair Reviews

As a business owner and author, all I can do is present my case for the other business owners and authors out there. Many of us work hard and seriously do our best to make customers and readers happy — or at least satisfied.

If you have a legitimate gripe about a product, company, or service, by all means, share it. If a product, company, or service did not meet your reasonable expectations, tell the world.

Throughout the years, I’ve gotten feedback about my work from people who have read and commented on my work. Not all of it was good. In every case possible, I took the negative points — the fair ones, anyway — to heart and used them to improve my work in the future. I’ve added new content to later editions of the same work, I’ve changed the way I present certain material. I want my work to be the best it can. I want my readers to be happy with my work. Legitimate, fair reviewers can help me — and others — be the best we can be.

But unfair reviews don’t help anyone.

See an unfair review online? Mark it unhelpful or report it (if possible). Weed out those unfair reviews so the fair ones get the attention they deserve.

Small business owners are depending on it.

The State of Macworld Expo

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The end of an era? Looks that way to me.

When Apple announced, two years ago, that it would no longer attend Macworld Expo, lots of people said the announcement was Macworld Expo’s death knell. Like some other people, I thought that opinion was a both harsh and premature.

I don’t think that anymore.

On Friday, I did a presentation as a member of the Macworld Expo Conference faculty for the first time in at least eight years. I used to speak at Macworld Expo all the time, having at least one session in San Francisco and Boston (and later, New York) and even Toronto from about 1993 through 2002 or so. Back in the early 2000s, IDG took over the show and the conference management changed. They also went off in a new direction that stressed the creative aspects of working with the Mac. I was always more of a productivity person, so I didn’t fit in.

I still went to the show once in a while, but not very often. I came a few years ago, mostly to meet with one of my publishers. But that was it.

Looking back at it, I realize that I was deep in the Mac world at Apple’s first peak in popularity. The shows — especially in San Francisco — were huge. The very biggest shows took up both exhibit halls of Moscone Conference Center. All the big vendors were there — Apple, Microsoft, Adobe, Macromedia, Claris (later FileMaker), Quark — the list goes on and on. The show floor was buzzing all day long. The noise was deafening and there was a pure adrenaline rush on first entering the exhibit hall. And the products introduced! Even my husband talks about innovations like the Video Toaster (which, ironically, I believe ran on an Amiga). I remember all of Apple’s big hardware and software releases and the software demos that were both educational and entertaining. And how could I forget the Boston show where Mac OS 8 went on sale and my first Mac OS Visual QuickStart Guide sold out?

Afterwards, the parties would start. They were amazing affairs — the Exploratorium is a good example; the party sponsors rented the entire facility, leaving us to wander around and play with the exhibits. There was headliner entertainment, too: one year was Chris Isaac at one party and Jefferson Airplane at another. There were cruises and bungee jumps at Boston Harbor. There were full food, open bar parties at the top of the Fairmont in San Francisco. As one of the B+ list speakers/authors (in those days, anyway), I’d party hop with my peers. I remember one year bouncing from one party to the next with Bob Levitus, who always managed to get into all the parties, whether he had tickets or not.

Things change. Apple took a serious downturn. Things looked bad. Then Steve Jobs came back. The original iMac breathed new life into the company. More products followed. I remember seeing hundreds of buses all over San Francisco skinned with images of five colors of iMacs. But despite Apple’s subsequent successes, Macworld Expo was never quite the same. The show began to shrink.

What I saw on the show floor this year was a shock. The show was tiny — by old standards — occupying about half of one floor at the relatively new Moscone West building. At least 80% of the items on display could be classified as accessories — mostly protective or decorative covers — for the iPad and iPhone. There were very few Macintosh items.

Macworld Expo had become iAccessoryworld Expo.

Although most of the folks I spoke to about their thoughts on this matter seemed to agree with me — some more strongly than others — the members of the Macintosh press that I met there were surprisingly upbeat about it. One of them even commented that Microsoft’s support for the show is a good sign. Support for the show? They didn’t even have a booth! Having a party for a chosen few and being one of the sponsors on another party isn’t the kind of support I’d be upbeat about.

If I had travelled to San Francisco for the sole purpose of seeing the show floor — as I know many people did in the past — I would have been sorely disappointed. Disappointed enough to demand my money back. What I wouldn’t be able to get back was the travel time and expense and the three hours of my life spent trying to understand how so many accessory developers could think there was a market for yet another version of an iPad case. Or skin. Or screen protector.

The real value in Macworld Expo was the conference sessions — now more than ever. The conference management assembled a collection of experts — some old timers like me, some younger and newer to Mac OS (and iOS, of course) — and offered a variety of interesting tracks and sessions for Mac, iPhone, and iPad users.

My session about building your iPad for business was relatively well attended — the room was about half full. I received a handful of follow-up questions and a polite round of applause at the conclusion of my talk. Several of the attendees came up to the front of the room to thank me or offer complements. It was like the old days, but on a much smaller scale.

After all, Friday’s room could have held only about 100 people when, in the past, I did sessions that packed a room that seated more than 300.

And the meeting room area at Macworld Expo used to be busier than a high school hallway between classes each time a session let out. Now only a few dozen people meandered about, shuffling from room to room.

At least these people got something worthwhile for their money.

I know these are harsh words and, as a member of the Mac community with a long Macworld Expo history, it’s hard for me to type them. The conference faculty was treated quite well, with generously filled swag bags, a comfortable place to rest between sessions, and both breakfast and lunch every day. The session rooms were relatively well equipped. It’s hard to share negative opinions about Macworld Expo when IDG staff responsible for the conference part of the show treated me well. But if this blog post precludes me from ever speaking again at a Macworld Expo, so be it. I don’t sugar coat anything and I’m certainly not going to sugar coat this.

While I realize that the old days are long gone, I think that if IDG can’t do better than what I experienced this past week in San Francisco, they should throw in the towel on Macworld Expo and concentrate on better ways to share valuable information with Mac OS and iOS users.

Ebook Review: The Pillars of the Earth

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Ebook FAIL.

Since this week’s blog theme seems to be FAIL, I figure I’d finish off the run of FAIL posts with the most epic failure of all: Penguin’s “ebook,” Pillars of the Earth. This attempt at ebook publishing is so full of FAIL that I almost don’t know where to begin.

When is an Ebook not an Ebook?

Home ScreenWhen it’s an app.

That’s the first problem. Announced almost the same day as Apple’s announcement that iBooks would support multimedia elements, I made the assumption that this new, “amplified” edition of Ken Follett’s novel would be an example of iBooks’ new capabilities.

I was wrong.

Not only is this a standalone iPad app, but it requires a whopping 1.54 GB of storage space on an iPad. “Updates” — and there has been one so far — are equally huge. In fact, Apple warns you:

Do not attempt to download this product wirelessly. Download in the App Store on your computer and transfer to your iPad by synching your apps.

The product itself is poorly designed, consisting of:

  • An ebook reader module. There’s nothing special about this at all. While it mimics the iBooks’ curling page flip, its implementation is sluggish and buggy; more than once, the page flip happened so slowly that it was impossible to turn the page. (It just wouldn’t move enough to “flip” over.) I had to quit the app and restart it to continue reading. The table of contents is broken down to the chapter level which wouldn’t be so bad if the chapters weren’t 50+ pages long. As a result, if you wanted to go back to a previous part of the book, it took forever to go to the page you wanted and then return to where you’d left off. Ebook settings do not include font size; you have to pinch to change that and more than once, it reset itself.
  • Character TreeA “Character Tree.” This feature is supposed to help you understand the relationship between characters. I found it nearly impossible to navigate and parts of it seemed to be locked out. It was more of a source of frustration than information. I still can’t figure out why some characters have flashing halos.
  • About the Author material. This includes text and video information about Ken Follett, author of mostly spy thrillers. This book is not spy thriller.
  • About TV Series material. This is the extras stuff that’ll likely turn up on the DVD. Starz marketing material, through and through. I figured I’d go through it when I was done with the book, but after the disappointment of being locked out of content, I figured it would be better to avoid additional frustration.
  • Links. I guess if they’ve got us, they may as well shoot marketing material at us with both barrels.

The settings screen is a joke. While it might have been a good place to put font settings, instead it offers just two options: Page Flip Sounds and Use Night Theme.

Annoying DialogI think the ultimate indicator that this is a poorly designed app is the dialog that appears every single time you open the app. Illustrated here, it includes a Don’t Show button. I tapped it every single time, but the damn dialog continued to appear.

Typos, Missing Breaks

The ebook text had its own problems:

  • There were typos. Real typos. I stopped counting after seven.
  • There was no indication of scene changes. For example, you’d be reading a scene where two characters are talking or doing something. Next line, another character who isn’t in the scene is talking or doing something. Huh? While the printed book may have used additional space to indicate a scene change, the ebook version doesn’t bother with such niceties. I guess they think the reader needs to be jarred to his senses once in a while.

Apparently, copyediting is not part of the ebook production process at Penguin.

The Movie Clips

Embedded in the book’s text are icons that, when clicked, may or may not display a movie clip from the Starz dramatization of the book. There were four problems with this feature.

  • Movie ClipThe clip usually did not match the text. The screenplay is apparently not a faithful adaptation, so dialog, characters, and scenes are different. Watching these clips while reading the book is like reading a book and watching a movie roughly based on it at the same time. Not a very rewarding experience.
  • The clips are teasers. There’s not enough content to make them valuable. They’re merely a tool to get you to watch or buy the Starz series.
  • The clip would not reliably play full screen width. You had to coax it to fill the screen by tapping a button in the upper right corner.
  • Unable to PlayThe clip would not display until it had aired on Starz! This zapped me early on. After reading a passage that described the cathedral under construction, I was pleased to see a video icon, hoping to be able to visualize the rather complex description. Instead, a dialog box (see image) told me that “speed-readers” had to wait until that clip aired more than a week later! My surprise quickly turned to anger when I realized I’d been sold a marketing tool for Starz.

The Book

Ken Follett writes spy thrillers. I’ve read a few of them. They’re good. Ken Follett should keep writing them and stop writing medieval historical fiction.

At first, the book was a pleasure to read. It introduced me to medieval times with an air of authenticity — other than dialog, of course — that was enjoyable to me. The dialog was not authentic at all and I think that’s okay. I don’t think I could have struggled through medieval dialects, spelling, and grammar.

But the book got very long very quickly. I’m a fast reader and can normally knock off a novel in two or three days, reading in the evening before bed. This one took more than a week. It seemed to go on and on and on. The story got boring. Even when it was supposed to be exciting it got boring.

About halfway through, I realized that I wasn’t enjoying the book anymore. I’d passed the point of being able to watch video content — nothing was available to me — so all I could do was read. And what I read was disturbing.

Spoilers Ahead!

The book had several antagonists. One was a violent man named William who couldn’t seem to have sex with a woman unless beating her was part of the act. He raped one of the protagonists while her brother was forced to watch and then had his groom rape her, too. He basically went through the book, beating, raping, and killing. There was no stopping him. He literally got away with murder again and again.

It made me sick.

Another antagonist was a bishop who would forgive William for his sins. No matter how bad they were. He was evil in his own way and also seemed to get away with his acts over and over.

These two antagonists, and a few other minor ones who wound through the plot, had their way with just about anything. It was heartbreaking to read their latest dastardly deeds, page after page. After a while, I wondered why I was reading. There was no enjoyment in the plot, no real reward for the reader who needs to see good triumph over evil. It was simply a long, drawn out punishment for the good guys.

We’re not talking about a short book here. The mass market paperback — the version you’d buy in an airport bookstore, for example — is 983 pages. That’s a hell of a lot of evil to wade through.

Oh, every once in a while, the protagonists would win a small victory. They defended their town against William and his raiders, “only” losing 70 or so people in the process. Hooray. That was after William had burned their town to the ground on the previous raid, killing innocent men, women, and children, including one of the protagonists, and causing the financial ruin of the woman he’d raped while her brother watched. Talk about insult to injury, huh?

Throughout the whole book, I kept waiting for William to get his just desserts. He finally did, on the last pages of the book. Somehow he and the rest of the cast had managed to live — during medieval times, when Wikipedia reports average life expectancy to be only 30 years — to their 50s, 60s, and beyond. It was then that William was finally hanged. An astute reader will realize that the bad guy has lived a long and comfortable life, directly responsible for the rape, maiming, and murder of hundreds of people, and it is only in his old age that he’s finally punished. We’re supposed to be satisfied with that?

The interaction between the characters was unrealistic and contrived most of the time. I’d read a scene and wonder why they did (or didn’t do) what they did (or didn’t do). It doesn’t seem to make sense sometimes. It’s as if the author’s only purpose is to set them up for something in the future — something unpleasant. And there are only so many times you can get into a character’s head and read the same thoughts before you stop caring about what’s in there.

And sex? Not only is it prevalent throughout the book, but it’s often quite graphic, with various private parts being stroked, grabbed, fondled, squeezed, sucked — you get the idea. I don’t know how it got past the Apple censors with this rating:

Rated 12+ for the following:
• Infrequent/Mild Sexual Content or Nudity
• Infrequent/Mild Realistic Violence

Mild? I don’t think so. The graphic descriptions of the rapes with their violence against women were disturbing enough to warrant a more protective rating than that.

And I don’t think I’ve read the words fuck and cunt so many times in a book in a long time — if ever. If this were a movie with that language, it would be rated R — that’s 17 and older, Apple.

But the most tasteless bit of narrative? One of the protagonists having sex with a stranger within hours of his wife dying while giving birth to their child. And we’re supposed to like these characters?

Finally, the book was supposed to be about the building of a medieval cathedral. In reality, it was a book about the brutality of the ruling class, the corruption of the Catholic church, and the rough life of peasants during medieval times.

Spoilers Done.

A Learning Experience

I thought this “ebook” would be a publishing breakthrough. That’s how it was heralded on USAToday and other news outlets.

After seeing the excellent Wired app — which I need to review here, too — I had very high expectations for ebook publishing. I thought that publishers finally “got it.” I didn’t expect them to take advantage of readers by selling them advertising material for a partner organization. I didn’t expect to be locked out of content I’d paid for. I didn’t expect an ebook to take up so much precious space on my iPad.

I’m not the only one disappointed by this mess. The iTunes store shows only 29 ratings averaging only 2 out of 5 stars. I wonder how many other buyers have demanded their money back, too.

My refund comes this week.