I Love Reading Amazon Reviews

Everytime I run across a new book (or new to ME), I run to Amazon to see how cheap I can buy it. The reviews are always interesting - often mostly positive, with one or two 1 or 2 star reviews. Take a look at Joel Bauer's How to Persuade People Who Don't Want to be Persuaded, for example.

It shows 11 five-star reviews, and 1 each for one, two and three stars. The lesser reviews tend to say Joel's ideas are old hat, or too narrow for wide usage. The positive reviews are all glowing and complimentary, in some cases, overly so: "So, In a nutshell if you interact with people for a living, you can?t live without this book.(sic)" by Kerwin.

This can be seen in almost any book buying page, though some books carry a little more controversy, such as The Secret, which has generated over 1700 reviews - including 865 five-star and 378 one star reviews.

Without debating the merits of either book here, I do want to point out the value of perspective. Who do I believe? One-star reviews often tend to be accusatory, short, and occasionally aggressive or mean. Five-star reviews can be a simple white-wash of the contents.

In choosing what I read or listen to in the business and self-help genre's, I ask myself one thing - do I know all I need to know on this subject yet? Even if I only get one idea, its probably worth the price of the book. Even if Mr. Know-it-all has already seen these ideas, and says they are elementary in his review, if I haven't heard them, they can still help ME. We can't all be exposed to all the ideas in the world - and not learning them because someone says we should already have learned them is ridiculous.

And then, once you've read the book - post your own opinion!