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Comment by nawgz | Hacker News Reader

Show HN has a major problem with that these days. The comments that are just like "perfect timing! I have never seen a resource for this and I'm just learning it now" are really facile, no one actually interacts with people selling you things like this, and it's contrasted starkly with the one comment giving feedback on the page which is that it has no content at all unless you buy it.

I find it very hard to believe the ratio of happy purchasers already seeing value vs. questioners about what this really is being 5:1 or more. Sad to see.

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> no one actually interacts with people selling you things like this

There's a whole successful social network (Goodreads) built on people's desire to talk about books, frequently in the form of effusive praise. I think being able to trace the product to a single individual (e.g. a book's author) helps make it particularly appealing to leave that sort of feedback: we know it feels great to hear that someone values a thing you've created, and we like the idea of giving that pleasure to the creators of things we like.

I had the impression Goodreads was a link-farming book/warez site. Is it something real or apparent competing-with-the-Jones', Chef de Claque toxic positivity, whether human or bot?

I and many people I’ve met irl through book clubs etc use it; I find reading my friends’ reviews interesting and I’ve gotten good recommendations through it.

If you’re just looking at the top reviews for a book it’s more questionable; they tend toward the extremes: enraptured encomiums about how beautiful and important and bold the book is, or insult-laden rants where the book is a whipping post for the reviewer to show off what a biting sense of humor they have.

> frequently in the form of effusive praise

I somehow doubt it's in the form of 5:1 ratio of effusive praise to questioning/criticism outside of the true top books there, and then to see this on a random ad where the OP swears he's not contacted anyone about the Show HN and yet all his "happy" "lurking" "customers" pop up with really sweet words within an hour is comical

I understand people are nice sometimes, but it's clearly not organic here.

> it's clearly not organic here.

And yet it's 100% organic here. I was few times on the HN frontpage with my blog (that links my book) so I was hoping some of my readers actually hang out here. I postponed Show HN a few months to get a few hundreds customers first. But that's it.

You don't have to believe me, but it's the truth.

I’d be far likelier to believe you if it wasn’t so obvious and you didn’t protest so much.

If someone is calling me a cheater and a liar, I will at least say they are wrong.

I specifically waited with SHOW HN until I had some customers and good feedback hoping some of them hang out on HN as well.

I swear nothing was solicited. I just posted it myself and waited. No Twitter, no mailing lists, nada.

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