3000 Helpful Review Votes at Amazon.com

This morning my Amazon.com reviews "helpful votes" count hit 3,000. This means my reviews were considered "helpful" 3,000 times. (Conversely, 299 people thought they were not helpful. Sorry!) Thank you to everyone who answered yes to the question "Was this review helpful to you?"

I reported hitting the 1,500 mark in December 2003. Since then I reviewed 62 more books, but my reviewer rank has dropped from 336 to 390. On the positive side, my average number of helpful votes per review has risen from 12 (or 1,500 / 125 ) to 16 (3,000 / 187).

Competition is tough when many high ranking "reviewers" post several times per day, showing they only glanced at a book's contents and read the back cover. The person I have in mind when writing this, however, has received 13,236 votes for 2260 reviews. His vote-to-review ratio is less than 6, indicating his reviews are, on average, not that helpful. Justice, perhaps?

I've only just started reading and reviewing regularly again. Right now I'm enjoying Running IPv6, which is excellent. I'd like to thank all of the publishers who send books for review. I never sell them on eBay, nor do I receive money from publishers or Amazon.com to write reviews. I'm in it for learning and sharing word of good technical books.

Comments

Joel Esler said…
Damn, I want to get free books too. I'll review them suckers ;)
4:51 PM
Anonymous said…
Thanks for doing the reviews Richard! These are SUPER SUPER useful!!!
8:49 PM
Anonymous said…
Richard,

I haven't specifically sought out your reviews. I know you've said in the past that you try not to read bad books, but do you ever post reviews indicating that a book is bad? A coworker and I were recently discussing how "bad" reviews are rated as unhelpful much more often than "good" reviews despite the fact that you can often learn a lot about a book's weaknesses by reading a well-written "bad" review.
10:01 PM
Anonymous said…
Thanks for the reviews and all you do. I've been following your blog since I took your SANS IDS class in San Antonio. Your generosity to the security community shown through the blog, book reviews, articles and your books have helped my career. I'm sure many others have benefited.

ps. Bought the Farmer & Venema "Forensic Discovery" book last night based largely on your review.
10:16 PM
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