In my limited experience, I've found that it's more about the number of reviews and the quality of reviews than the positive/negative character of reviews.
Quantity rather than quality, eh? I think you're right--the more attention the book is getting, the more likely it is to be something people remember when they hit the store. When I was working at B&N, we used to talk about putting books, particularly new ones that we had lots of copies of, face out in several locations in the store, because it takes about three times seeing something before a customer actually notices it. It's reasonable that the same is true of reviews. I can't say how many times I've checked out a book to someone at the library and known something about the book--but couldn't remember what. There were probably reviews involved, but only enough that I recalled the book, not enough for me to remember anything informative. My default reaction is, then, that it must be good if I'm recalling it but not remembering anything specific.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2007-05-08 03:52 pm (UTC)Quantity rather than quality, eh? I think you're right--the more attention the book is getting, the more likely it is to be something people remember when they hit the store. When I was working at B&N, we used to talk about putting books, particularly new ones that we had lots of copies of, face out in several locations in the store, because it takes about three times seeing something before a customer actually notices it. It's reasonable that the same is true of reviews. I can't say how many times I've checked out a book to someone at the library and known something about the book--but couldn't remember what. There were probably reviews involved, but only enough that I recalled the book, not enough for me to remember anything informative. My default reaction is, then, that it must be good if I'm recalling it but not remembering anything specific.