Helpful does not mean preferable

I was just checking my Amazon profile and I noticed some people voting my reviews as unhelpful, although they give a completely honest impression of the books as I found them.  Now, the only reason that should be voted unhelpful is surely that it doesn’t meet with the opinion of another reader.

Do you like being given injections of mutated virii by your doctor?  No.  Do you think it’s unhelpful that you were given those injections?  No.  So why are you still confused about helpful versus agreeable?

If you like something on facebook, you click like.  If you don’t like it, you either ignore or make a comment, but you don’t consider it unhelpful.

So why is a book review different?  Is it because Amazon doesn’t have a like button on reviews?  Are you the publisher and think someone not really enjoying the book might damage your profit margins?  The point of voting something helpful or not is to help other people decide whether a review is relevant and might help, there’s that word again, help, others decide whether they might or might not enjoy the product.

 I see some reviews that I would rate as unhelpful.  A review is not a synopsis and nor is it a critique.  Keep those types of ‘reviews’ for you literary circles please.  A review is for the personal, general perspective; a critique is an analysis.  Where does Amazon say ‘Create your own critique’?  A review should tell me whether something is good and help me make an informed decision about buying.  It shouldn’t save me reading the book at all by telling me in brief what the story is anyway.

Amazon has a minimum word count for a review, otherwise it might be better to write ‘liked it’ or ‘didn’t like it’ and leave it at that.  But people are annoying and want to know why.  So I say why and if they don’t agree with what I say, they tell me I’m unhelpful.  The next time my doctor tells me something I don’t want to hear, I might tell him he’s being unhelpful, just to keep with the times.

The other reviews I find unhelpful are for consumables where anyone with an ounce of sense would not have managed to blow them up, smash them or in some other way destroy them within five minutes of ownership.  Please, if you thought the product was indestructible, you probably shouldn’t be allowed to play with anything connected to any source of electrical power anyway.  Tell me what the good points and bad points are in comparison to other products or even to a first time buyer, but don’t tell me that you dropped it once and it was never the same again.  That’s why companies offer you warranties for their product, not for your action with said product.

Go ahead.  Comment and tell me I’m being unhelpful because you didn’t want to hear that I disagree.  I might add a note to my reviews from now on explaining the difference between what is helpful and what is preferable.