What do you make of this?

A LinkedIn group member recently posted a comment saying that she’d been severely reprimanded by a friend for writing a three-star Amazon book review. This friend wasn’t the author but an “internet marketer” who felt it was unwise to award this book anything less than five stars. Her rationale being that since the reviewer was soon to publish a book in the same genre she might tick off potential marketing allies.

My heart sank. What are we coming to when marketing trumps honest critique? But that’s exactly what appears to be happening in my industry: book publishing. It’s all too common these days, especially among first-time authors whose platforms consist of Facebook friends, Twitter followers, and perhaps an extensive email list, to spam everyone with requests for glowing reviews. Regardless of whether their work deserves the accolade or not.

This isn’t just happening online. I recently received a self-published book whose first six pages were crammed full of testimonials – almost 30 of them. Sadly, it wasn’t a page-turner, unlike Daniel Pink’s A Whole New Mind, which manages with just eight inside examples of praise, or the award-winning Blue Ocean Strategy, which has 11 internationally diverse review excerpts on its back cover.

A quick look at the spread of customer ratings for many books bought online through Amazon and the like should give the statistically literate pause for thought. With an unbiased sample you would expect a normal distribution – a few one stars, slightly more five stars if the book is particularly good, but in the main the bulk of reviews should fall within the three to four star range. How are we to identify truly exceptional books when so many mediocre ones boast 100% five-star reviews?

And what are we to think of the “Amazon exclusive” (and glowing) review of Seth Godin’s Linchpin by cult cartoonist Hugh MacLeod? As one reader/reviewer points out, MacLeod’s perspective can hardly be considered objective since he’s the book’s illustrator. A fact that MacLeod, Godin, and Amazon did not see fit to make known.

When I first started writing books 25 years ago, testimonials were pretty much only written by professional reviewers. Those featured in prestigious newspapers and magazines, such as the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Fortune, Fast Company, and Business Week, usually ended up excerpted on the back covers.

Even then, however, “you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours” behavior was common, with the same author names (Brian Tracy; Mark Victor Hansen; etc.) appearing again and again on back covers. Did these busy, famous people really read that many books?

Maybe – maybe not.

Some authors, according to one industry insider, consider writing back-cover testimonials to be free advertising – a way to keep their names (and books, which are invariably mentioned too) in the public eye.

Many will agree because their publisher’s PR not only asked them to, they also offered to write the blurb. Rather like a former boss or client agreeing to write a testimonial as long as they don’t have to go to the trouble of actually doing anything.

Mostly, the thinking goes, if you want someone to be kind about your book it helps to say something nice about theirs. Because testimonials help sell books, especially if readers see the names of people they know and like – and trust.

And therein lies the issue. As Edelman’s annual Trust Barometer surveys show, trust in our institutions – media, government, business — has been going down the toilet for some time now. In 2005 Edelman reported that trust had shifted from authorities to peers.  A year later a more credible spokesperson was “someone just like me.”

In Groundswell, (praised by 11 “real readers”), authors Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff report the top three “trust sources of information about products or services” are 1) Recommendations from family and friends; 2) Emails from people you know; and 3) Ratings or reviews by consumers.

If we’re giving five stars to a product or service simply because a good friend asks us to, how long before we can no longer trust today’s consumer reviews?

And, yes, I’ve succumbed to such behavior and written five-star reviews of books (well, two in total) that I thought average at best because the authors requested them. I’ve just gone into Amazon and deleted them; would you be willing to do the same?

Interestingly enough, Edelman’s 2011 Trust Barometer reports that “people like us” have less credibility now than was the case a couple of years ago. Seems we’re beginning to put greater faith in experts again, maybe because at least we can largely trust their objectivity.

Wielding the power to share our views with the world should come bundled with a certain amount of responsibility. Fearing to publish an authentic critique because it might affect your own, future book promotion is, as I told the lady on LinkedIn, a particularly cynical way of doing marketing. Which doesn’t help any of us in the long run.

When every book on Amazon boasts five stars and every self-published work contains multiple pages of praise from friends of the author, I guess we’re back to trusting people who have no vested interest in the outcome. Or our own judgment. Which, come to think of it, beats the duplicity of testimonial sluts hands down.