Welcome to another week of Tuesday Thingers! We always love to hear from regular participants as well as new people.
Hi everyone! Another off-topic (to Library Thing) week for us this week. I've recently become aware of a new program through Amazon (played with it over the past month or so) called the Amazon Vine. It is "Amazon Vine™. The Exclusive Club of Influential Amazon Voices." I've enjoyed it and thought I would pass the information along in case a few of you hadn't heard of it yet.
Basically, Amazon allows some people to sign up for the program who have posted reviews on their site. Based on your interests and your reviews, they will offer you items to review, completely free of charge! All you have to do is review 75% of the items sent to you (I've done 3 books and 1 electronic/home item so far) before they will let you order more items from the Vine Newsletter.
One day, I logged in and simply had an invitation on my home page to check out the new program, and it gave me the option of signing up.
Questions: Have you had an opportunity to check out the new Amazon Vine program? Have you signed up? Is this program something that interests you? How do you feel about the reviews posted on Amazon in general (not counting the ones that have made the news)?
I never heard of Amazon Vine before. Since I didn't receive an invitation, I can't check it out. But, if I did get one, I'd join. It sounds like something I'd enjoy. I don't put many of my reviews on Amazon, but I guess I could and then I'd get an invitation. I just might do that.
I'm lukewarm about Amazon reviews. I do read them to see if any of the reviewers agreed with me about my thoughts on some books, but I find the reviews to be hit or miss. It seems like people either love a book and those reviews talk about the book as if it's the greatest novel ever written. Or people hate a book and call it "trash". I don't like reading things like that because is a book "trash" just because you didn't like it? Someone's trash could be someone else's gold.
I also find that authors sometimes ask people to post reviews, so you don't know if you are reading a truly biased review or not. It doesn't always happen, but it can. Basically, like all reviews, you have to keep an open mind and make your own choices.
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No invites to the Amazon Vine party here either. I would love to join it, if I knew a way to get an invite!
ReplyDeleteI don't use it either!
ReplyDeleteI'm not a huge fan of Amazon reviews...and not sure I would hold ones by Vine members in higher regard.
ReplyDeleteNot that they asked me...lol
I received an invite 3-4 months ago, and do participate.
ReplyDeleteI love receiving the books, and reading and reviewing them, but I am not thrilled with the fact that anyone can rate a review. It seems rather subjective, yet the do use them to track the number of overall positive reviews you have.
I do like Amazon reviews; I've had good luck with them. Oh sure, there are those that just gush, but for a lot of books, I can get quite a bit of info by reading the reviews.
ReplyDeleteI've done several reviews of books I really like. But I still didn't hear about the vine thing until I read it here!