Within hours of its publication, Hillary Clinton’s memoirs had received over one thousand reviews on the Amazon site.
Much like the presidential campaign itself the reviews were either 5-star rave reviews or 1-star damning criticisms.
A spokesman at the publishing company Simon & Schuster, Jonathan Karp, commented:
“It seems highly unlikely that approximately 1,500 people read Hillary Clinton’s book overnight and came to the stark conclusion that it is either brilliant or awful.”
Self-professed digital news nerds Quartz said that out of the over-15,00 reviews, “only 338 were from users with verified purchases of the book” and that “average rating for reviews from unverified purchases was a 2.3, while the average from a real purchase of the book was 4.9”.
It could be that someone went out to buy her book as soon as it was released and rushed home to review it that very night but that seems unlikely.
ReviewMeta analyses reviews from multiple Amazon sites, and helps customers take a deeper look into products sold by the company. By pasting the product URL into the Site Report search bar we can find out if each review is credible.
ReviewMeta uses 15 data points, including the number of verified purchases, and the number of customers who have never had a verified purchase despite reviewing the product. It is important to take note of only verified purchases in order to see if it is a credible review.
Political books are bound to be pretty polarising but this memoir has been met with such a ferocious backlash- and it has really shown in online reviews. While the average from a verified purchase of the book was 4.9, the average rating for reviews from unverified purchases was a shockingly low 2.3.
Clinton’s What Happened had had a 3.2-star rating on Amazon sites at first, however, after adjusting for ReviewMeta’s data, it should have actually been a 4.9. Now that Amazon has removed the unverified reviews, the average has risen to 4.3 stars.
The owner of ReviewMeta, Tommy Noonan, said: “If that was happening by random chance it would be one in a trillion chance you’d see a discrepancy like that; actually much less likely than that, from a data-science perspective. It’s obvious that people who didn’t buy the book are rating the book much lower.”
Buy Hilary Clinton’s What Happened here, and review it for yourself!
Since the unverified reviews have been deleted, that the book is still receiving varied reviews but this time from people who have actually bought the memoir. Comments range from “Disappointing and frustrating” and “Long winded and self-indulgent” to “A Hillary Clinton without fears” and “Honest, direct, fascinating”.
Hopefully those who would like to review the book, positively or negatively, will borrow it from the library or buy it first, and actually read it before reviewing it, as many others have done.
It does seem a little odd to review something you have not read, but it is unsurprising that a book like this would have sparked such a passionate force in internet reviews.
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