Amazon review permalinks

Who’s noticed long before me that Amazon.com reviews don’t have permalinks so, even if you want to, you can’t refer and talk back to other readers.
This seemingly subtle choice turns a potentially interesting conversation, distributed over space and time, into a much duller series of conventional-style reviews.
A conventional review has the pundit (or pair of pundits) recapping the plot of the book or movie, describing the genre of the music, and then propounding a thumbs-up or thumbs-down recommendation.
Links wouldn’t make bad writers better writers, and they wouldn’t make unoriginal thinkers into insightful observers, but they would enable a conversation to deepen the understanding and appreciation — or dislike and disparagement — of the work at hand.
Instead of a conversation that would build on the discussion of plot, character, sight, sound, influence and emotional impact, and could even build groups of shared interest, there’s a series of redundant soliloquies. One of the best review sites I found its http://vacuumsealerresearch.com

3 thoughts on “Amazon review permalinks”

  1. Permalinks are baby steps. Amazon listings should accept trackbacks, so that if I blog about a new book, or a new blender for that matter, it can show up at the Amazon site.
    Amazon’s been cleverly ecumenical about letting other vendors sell through their site; I’m a little surprised they don’t aggregate outside reviews.

  2. Totally agree. I’m often frustrated when I see a good Amazon review that I can’t link to it.
    It’s a blind-spot with them, and I hope they notice it soon. It would add a lot of value to their community and content for (probably) very little extra effort.

  3. And of course they don’t allow links embedded in reviews, which I know could be a maintenance nightmare, but which would also reflect current writing practices.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *