Sara Nelson in the New York Observer:

By my count, the reviews and the ranking system on Amazon.com count for about 95 percent of writers’ hopes, anxieties and dreams.

Which is why last month’s glitch on the Canadian version of the site—which for a week revealed the reviewers’ real names—sent a shudder down the collective spine of the writing community. Even if few were as publicly honest as the author John Rechy, who cheerfully admitted to The New York Times that he had praised his own book on the site, many had their own dirty little secrets.

I, for one, was suddenly panicked that the world would know that several (though, I must say, far from most) of the positive reviews of my book, So Many Books, So Little Time, were written by people I know.