Fixing Amazon with 6th Grade Math

I've read a number of posts over the last month or so where people complain about how pretty much everything on Amazon has a 4 or 5 star rating despite how good a book actually is. A lot of people are giving up on the rating system, and actually wading through all the reviews to find out if a book is good or not. Without an effective means for people to sort out what books are good, the reading public will abandon mid-listers and especially those Indy/Self-pub writers for whatever the New York Times or Oprah recommends.

But I say I still have faith in crowd sourcing...even if people are far too generous with their ratings. And I say lets bring some simple 6th grade math to the rescue.

First, we need to understand that the problem is people who give a 5 star rating to pretty much everything they read and only give a 4 star if they hated it...you know, don't want to hurt the author's feelings. I don't suggest trying to change the people who are giving the review; however, what I do suggest though is that we start to weight the reviews from each reviewer based on their history.

This is what I'm talking about: Say Mary Sue rates literally everything she reads 5 stars because she is in awe of anybody who puts pen to paper. Right now, she would tend to skew books up towards 5 stars, when in reality, 5 stars is essentially "average" for her. What I propose Amazon should do is take that info and weight Mary Sue's ratings so that when she gives say my book (whenever I get one published) a 5 star rating, Amazon actually computes it as a 3 star review.

The same thing would go for Dick Cheney when he is on Amazon giving everybody a 1 star review, then goes and reviews my book (Again giving it 1 star even though it may have reached in and touched him where his heart may have been.) Amazon treats that review as a 3 star as well.

Now if Joe Smith is running around giving 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 star reviews pretty evenly, well then when he gives my book a 5 (or 1) star rating, it actually registers as that.

This is not a new idea either. Hotornot.com has used this same basic idea for the last probably 10 years. And when you go there (yes, admit it, you visit that site from time to time) you'll notice that there is a pretty good range of ratings that everybody falls under, and never will you see somebody with a 9.0 or above rating that makes  you want to gag. Amazon on the other hand generally has a range of 4 stars to 5 stars with plenty of 5 star (average) train wreck books that would give you a migraine just trying to get past the first chapter.

Amazon, it's time you broke out your 6th grade math books and apply some of those principles of weighted averages to your ratings system.

What do you think? Is the ratings skew on Amazon a problem? Why or why not? What do you think can be done?

Be a Rockstar!

You're a writer, so you're probably not wearing leather pants up on a stage in front of thousands of adoring crowds as the pyrotechnics blast off, filling the arena with the haze only spent benzine fuel could create while you do your work. (I you are, well that's awesome and I want to be you.) No. You're probably sitting in your office, living room, library, or coffee shop pecking away at your keyboard...alone. So how do you become a rockstar, and why?


Rockstars are generally really good at their craft. (And yes, this can be anything...not just music anymore. A Rockstar is somebody that is really good at what they do, and they have the personality that makes it fun to be witness to their genius. They are flamboyant and even a little arrogant. They make difficult things look easy and smile when they are done like they know you're amazed.


A rockstar is a surgeon who performs delicate brain surgery while whistling "Yankee Doodle" and when they are done, they say 'it was nothing.' 


A rockstar is an athlete who makes the opposition look like fools, and when they win, their celebration is elaborate and planned, because they knew they would win.


A rockstar is a writer who spins tales of intrigue that memorize their audience while they goof off in the media (or social media) but yet they never say anything dumb...they're just fun.


What you don't see though is the surgeon spending long hours in the library or skills lab, the athlete pushing their body to the limit, or the writer sitting at they keyboard typing out lines and lines of text even when they don't want to.


A rockstar is brilliant and arrogant in the public eye, but privately, they are mad perfectionists making sure their skills are the best in the world, and they won't settle for less. They work harder than anybody else, but they don't let the world see.


Why do you want to be a rockstar and not just a 'brilliant writer?' People love rockstars and their personalities, and they sell a lot of their work. And wouldn't that be nice if you were able to sell tons of copies of your book and actually quit your dayjob? A brilliant writer might write great books, but just like a brilliant musician, if nobody reads/listens to them, does it really matter?


If a brilliant book gets published in the middle of the forest, but nobody is around to read it, is the book really brilliant?


So how do you do this? How do you become a rockstar? YOU WORK YOUR ASS OFF IN PERFECTING YOUR CRAFT. You type at your keyboard until your fingers are arthritic and then you take some Alieve and keep going. You read voraciously in and out of your genre. Fiction and Non-fiction and you become the best damn writer you can be. And once you do that, you keep doing it day in and day out.


But you must also take some time out of your day to polish your rockstar image. Get on Twitter, Google+, Facebook, or your blog and smirk at the world as if you barely work at all. Poke fun of the latest Franzen novel and even belittle some of your own work by brushing off praise. Even pretend like you don't need or want it. Or perhaps you go Muhammad Ali and and proclaim yourself the greatest writer of all time...even if you don't know it yet.


"I am the greatest, I said that even before I knew I was." Muhammad Ali


Once you are oozing with confidence because you're convinced yourself that you truly are a bad-ass , and you mix that with the hard work you have put into your craft...you just might become a rockstar and the greatest writer of all time.


(This was a very fun post to write, and plus, it gave me an excuse to put up a picture of Judas Priest)

Game Theroy for Writers part II. “No you go first, I insist.”

With this post I hope to give you another tool for you to demonstrate how intelligent your characters are. As writers, sometimes we are faced with having to write in a genius when we ourselves are not that smart. So how do we create an illusion of genius without having to devise the world’s greatest battle plan or business strategy? I think one tool could again be game theory.

In games, as in life, there are some things that you just naturally don’t want to go first in. One very good example would be rock, paper, scissors. If your opponent throws rock, well you’d be pretty stupid to not throw paper.

But then there are other games where going first has a distinct advantage. A great example of that would be a wild west shootout. If you get to shoot before the other person, then you stand a decent chance (assuming you’re not a horrible shot) of winning.

So now the question is how do we know when to go first (more specifically our game theory savvy genius of a character) and when to defer when the situation is not so obvious.

The answer is lies in the usefulness of information, and the chance of ending the game on the first move. I know this seems very basic, but please stick with me on this. Yes I know rock paper scissors and duels are done simultaneously, but that’s what makes these such clear examples.

So let us delve down into this idea. In the rock paper scissors example, there is a HUGE advantage of going last because 1) You gain the knowledge that allows you to make a winning move and 2) The other person can’t win unless you make a move. So that is pretty simple. Lets look at the shootout game. In that there is a HUGE advantage in going first because 1) You already know the other person is going to shoot at you, so you already know all the the information and 2) You can win without the other person having to make a move.

Now lets do something a little less obvious. Say there are two companies, A and B. They both have a new gadget, (say an mp3 player) that they think will revolutionize the industry. Now they both know that the other is going to release one of these and that there could be some bugs or features people don’t like. So introducing the second model would have the advantage of being better technically. But if you introduce first you can gain a reputation and market share that would dominate your competitors. So what do you do?

Obviously the answer to that is complicated and we would need a lot more information to solve this analytically. But thankfully we don’t have to because we are writers and we can make whatever we want happen. If your main character is the CEO of company A, you can have him choose either strategy, and you can decide if he succeeds or fails. What makes game theory useful is that you can SHOW the CEO thinking and coming up with their strategy in an intelligent manner yourself. Have them wrestle with this idea.

The same goes for a general in a battle. Sure you can make them appear smart by having them win the battle with whatever strategy you choose. But what I think would show their intelligence more would to have them go over these two variables and try to decide what to do.

Smart characters should be shown thinking to get the effect across, same as strong characters should be shown picking up boulders. If you want to demonstrate how physically strong your character is, you show them picking the boulder; you don’t just say the boulder was moved. Same goes with smart characters. You don’t have the smart general just win the battle by surprising the enemy. You show them weighing in these factors and deciding that perhaps we know enough about the enemy where we don’t have to wait first to see what formation they arrange themselves in.

Hope this helps.

Game Theory for Writers: Part I. Go Ahead and Burn That Bridge!

I had hoped to get this out much earlier, but later is better than never.

I also am going to have to do this in a couple different series since there is SOOOOOO much I could write about and don’t want to overwhelm all at once.

Now first, why do we care about game theory (GT) in writing? Well for one it helps you get a good grasp on what people would do in various situations. For second it will allow you to identify strategies that a smart character would use to win some sort of game (by game I could mean a game of checkers, or the “game” of taking over the world. Basically game just means a situation where there is some sort of competition). So hopefully you will be able to craft out a well thought-out plot that has your evil villain choosing the wrong strategy and going down in defeat because your hero was smart and picked the right one.

If that convinced you, now we need to get you grounded in GT. Basically all you do is write down the different choices the different players could make and the outcomes of those choices. So a real simple model game would be odd/even. This would be where player 1 (Bob) holds either 1 or 2 fingers behind his back. Then player 2 (Meg) tries to guess the number. Real simple.

Now lets say that when Bob chooses a 1 and Meg chooses a 1, then Meg gets $2 and Bob gets $1. If Bob chooses 1 and Meg chooses 2, then Meg gets nothing, and Bob gets $1. Now if Bob chooses 2 and Meg chooses 1, then again Meg gets nothing and Bob gets $1. Now if they both choose 2, then Meg gets $2 and Bob gets nothing. This is shown by the following chart.

Meg/Bob	Bob (holds 1)	Bob (holds 2)
Meg (guesses 1)	2/1	0/1
Meg (guesses 2)	0/1	2/0

So you can easily see that Bob should always choose 1, since his payoff is always going be be as good or better than if he chooses 2, and Meg, knowing this should also choose 1 every time. And since neither player can do better than this, both choosing 1 is called a Nash Equilibrium. Yes that same John Nash from A Beautiful Mind.

What does this particular game tell us about writing? Not much frankly, but that is notation that you need to know before we get onto the good stuff.

So the first thing I want to show you is why a smart character will eliminate one of their options in certain situations in order to gain an advantage. Yes that’s right, you can gain an advantage if you eliminate an option. So a businessman can gain an advantage over a competitor if he shuts down a factory, or a warrior if they burn their ships. Lets see how.

Lets take a business case. Say Sony and Microsoft are both existing in the business world. Microsoft happily making software, and Sony happily making TVs. Then one day both of them get the idea to make a gaming system, but then the market research folks come in and spoil the day. They conclude that if both companies enter the market, the competition for market share will be a drain on the company and they will both make $0 in profits. If both companies give up plans to make a gaming system, they will both go back to making $2 billion in profits. But if one company retreats, while the other company goes forward; the company making the gaming system will see profits of $5 billion, and the other will suffer from embarrassment and their customers won’t want their products. They will only make $1 billion in profits.

Here is the chart:

Sony/Microsoft	Microsoft (retreat)	Microsoft (go ahead)
Sony (retreat)	2/2	1/5
Sony (go ahead)	5/1	0/0

After many intense negations, neither company is willing to let the other be the only one with a gaming system, so obviously the best solution is for both of them to retreat. But then Bill Gates out of nowhere guts his software business and declares that from this day forward, Microsoft will focus only on their gaming system. They have essentially removed the option for them to retreat, and only the second column remains. Sony now has to choose between $1 billion in profits, or $0. Unless they want to sacrifice their company too, they will retreat and Microsoft will win.

So a warrior then who burns the bridges behind them and forces themselves to fight will gain this advantage. Same with somebody playing chicken who removes their steering wheel. Same with hostage negotiations when you have a policy where you can’t negotiate. The list goes on.

The one caveat with this is that the other player must know this. If not there could be disastrous results.

Now go out there and show off how smart you can make a character look by having them eliminate the safe option and take victory!

The Difference Between Relatable and Real in Writing

Note: I’m trying something new here. I’m writing in a quasi-socratic method style. Hopefully it works, and if not…let me know.

As writers we are torn between trying to write something that brings the average reader in, while also writing something that will catch their attention and command it through the entirety of the story. Not to mention we are competing with TV, cell phones, Twitter (you can follow me as Michael_A_Tate BTW), and all other distractions with a medium that takes time, effort, and concentration. As authors we are in a tough position.

So how do we create a story that the reader can relate to but does not bore them? Simple. We take something extra-ordinary and pair it with something the reader is familiar with. For example, a hostage situation is a pretty extra-ordinary situation, and an office building is a pretty common setting. Here the reader takes the setting that you lay out and merges it with their own personal setting. Then you throw in the fireworks of a hostage situation and you have a decent story.

So there we go, we’ve got our formula right? Mmmm not quite. An example would be getting a new pet while living on an alien planet. We’ve got something extra-ordinary and relatable right? As you can imagine, this situation is not quite as appealing as the previous example. We’ve got to change our approach just a little.

Perhaps we can make the claim that setting must be relatable and the plot must be the thing that is extra-ordinary?

But by now I’m sure you’re shouting at me about how successful something like Star Wars is. Hmmm, I must have been wrong then. So let me revise. You need to have an extra-ordinary situation along with something that the reader can relate to. Does the hostage story have that? Check. Does the pet story have that? No. Does Star Wars have that? Lets see.

In Star Wars the setting is not relatable for most people. What about the plot? No. Most people are not going to be able to relate to being part of a rebel alliance aimed at destroying an empire. So perhaps we should look at character. Luke is a teenager with strict guardians. He longs for adventure and feels confident in his abilities before he’s ready. Now what kind of people generally love Star Wars? Teenagers like Luke…or something like that. I’ll give Star Wars a check.

How has our formula evolved? We realize that we need something relatable, be it characters or setting. (I’ll put my preference on characters) and we need an exciting plot.

So why is this again? Why doesn’t a story that deals with the slings and arrows of everyday life make it big (if at all)? It’s because the reader does not want to re-live what just happened to them that day. They don’t want to read 10 pages on how a character filed some papers at work, how the drive home was slow because of construction, and how long it took them to do the dishes because the dishwasher broke. I probably even bored you right there with those couple sentences so you can see what I’m talking about.

If you put those types of things in your plot (even if you have an really good one) then your plot becomes boring. So keep an eye out for those things.

I think we’ve concluded that relatable is good in a story, since it gives the reader a tie to their world; but writing something that is real and honest to everyday life is boring and makes the plot suffer.

The difference:

relatable = good for the story
real = not so good for the plot