So the reviewing system on Amazon has supposedly been fixed — the cowardly can still file anonymous reviews, but morons with a grudge can’t file multiple reviews anymore, and grudge holders have also been somewhat filtered by the fact that now you have to buy a book to be able to review anything at all.

But is the star system still something that can be manipulated by that strange breed of person who seeks to wreck a book they take issue with? Or, for that matter, can it be manipulated the other way by the authors or publishers of a book? That’s the questions raised by Russell Smith in this Globe & Mail commentary. As he notes, the star ratings on Amazon are “the first thing you see, really, when you look up a book that you are thinking of buying” and so have become “actually far more influential than the reviews written by professionals in newspapers.

Nonetheless, says Smith, “The amateur reviews are for the most part so idiotic, so ideologically driven or otherwise missing the point, that to receive a low star-rating from them –- particularly if one has had excellent reviews from professionals –- has started to become offensive and maddening.”

So, he observes, the result is that authors now feel even more beholden to manipulate those ratings. “In fact, marketing consultants suggest that authors launch concerted campaigns to raise their star-ratings on book sites,” so that “the authors with the greatest resources available to mount such a campaign –- such as the ability to hire a PR firm to do it — will be the ones with the most glowing reviews.”