Amazon, Change Your Dumb Book Review Policy

Michael Lewis has written an acclaimed best-seller about the financial industry, but you wouldn't know it from the customer reviews on Amazon.com. Lewis' The Big Short is getting savaged there with low ratings—by people who haven't even read it. Why? They're Kindle fans angry it isn't being made available as an e-book until the paperback comes out. It's yet another example why Amazon must change its policy, writes Paul Carr.

The reviewers are punishing Lewis for a decision made by his publisher. This is "bullshit of the lowest order," and things like this happen a lot with the Amazon reviews, writes Carr at TechCrunch. The problem is easy to fix: Allow only people who have actually bought the book to publish reviews. This makes them what they should be: assessments of the work in question rather than a soapbox for "assorted haters with an axe to grind."
(More Michael Lewis stories.)