Junto Boys

AMAZON.COM – Meet Number 973

I must not be reading enough books these days. My Amazon reviewer ranking has slipped in the past few years from 608 to currently 973. I've been in the top 1000 almost continuously from the beginning of the rankings, but I have never understood how the system works. It has something to do with how many reviews you post and how many positive feedbacks you get. Some people review everything including movies and electronics. I only review books.

I decided in 1999 that I would review every book I read completely so as to keep an online journal of my history. It was before the ranking system began. It’s nice to read over some of the older stuff and remember what I was thinking at the time. When the ranking system began I was immediately in the 900s, then almost immediately I was kicked out for about 6 months. They devised a new rankings soon after and I began climbing the charts, getting into the low 600s. I tried to convince all my friends to write reviews too.. Steve Saunders and Brother John joined me. When I found Newt Gingrich reviewing books he was ranked around 1600, now he is ranked 349.

I started to realize that my political books were better reviewed than my fiction books. Hardly anyone seemed to care what I thought about John Updike, but over 20 people liked my review of Bill O’Reilly’s book. My biggest hit the David Schippers book on Clinton’s impeachment. It was selected as a spotlight review and I got 50 positives, most in a two-week period. Usually anything dealing with public policy was worth 10 positive points. But I could scarcely scrape out 3 for a detective novel.

I have wondered if that means my understanding of politics is better than my understanding of English Literature, or if Amazon puts me into the political spotlight more often because of past performance.

I find other people’s reviews are more helpful than anything when trying to purchase a book. In an age of PR and spin it is nice to see what a regular person has to say about something. I really love Amazon, and you could say that Amazon was really the beginning of this blog.