Social network vs critics

The Guardian: reports on a Harvard business school study that compares Amazon book reviews to critics and finds that evaluation is similar, though the reviews are swift to find new authors.

 "Amazon reviewers were more likely to give a favourable review to a debut author, which the Harvard academics said suggested that "one drawback of expert reviews is that they may be slower to learn about new and unknown books".
Professional critics were more positive about prizewinning authors, and "more favourable to authors who have garnered other attention in the press (as measured by number of media mentions outside of the review)"."

'via Blog this'