Eleanor Roosevelt said that no one can make you feel bad, except yourself. I live by that rule. Particularly when it comes to reviews. And double-particularly when it comes to online reviews.

A recent Cornell University study found that 85 percent of amazon.com’s “top reviewers” had received free gifts from vendors. And 78 percent had reviewed the products. The “top reviewers” often strayed far from their expertise, if they even have one, boosting their productivity with reviews of minor domestic items so that they would maintain their “top reviewer” status and continue to receive free stuff.

It’s a corrupt system. Well, I live in the Middle East and I’ve become accustomed to corruption. So why have I had to bring Mrs. Roosevelt into the equation?

Because the corruption touches me personally, as it does every writer. Take the Amazon Vine program, which is mentioned in the Cornell study. As I understand it, Vine allows “top reviewers” to choose from a list of books, which they then receive free from the publisher on the understanding that they’ll write a review.

The publisher wants to participate because the number of reviews (as well as the quality of the reviews) seems to be part of amazon.com’s secret ranking system.

The problem appears to me to be that there’s a big difference between electing to pay for a book you want to read and clicking on a list of books you can receive free – and there’s likely to be just as big a difference in the kind of review you write.

Read the rest of this post on my blog The Man of Twists and Turns.