Do you think it's an important part of book promotion and marketing to get endorsements from well-known and accomplished people? Do you think that the system of how authors get endorsements guarantees an authentic endorsement of a book?
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I agree that an endorsement can help. It makes a difference for me when I am buying a book IF the endorsement makes sense. A big name in a related field can influence my decision but it needs to be a logical fit. A celebrity name may get me to notice, but not necessarily buy.
I got a personal note from Ray Bradbury, praising my dark fantasy holiday novel The Christmas Clock. I've had a few endorsements like that on a book (A Walk in Ancient Rome) not yet published, also. For The Christmas Clock, it has not helped at all so far. Sales are flat to none. Some bookstore buyers told me Christmas books are notoriously hard to sell, even in Xmas season.
I am sure that, in a broader context of smartly done packaging and marketing, which I have not really done for this title, it would make a difference to have a big name on the cover.
Consider what this means for a big name, like [Big Name Author] (I erased the real name), who endorsed a book that my wife read and then threw against the wall after reading it, and got her money back. It was pretty clear BNA had probably not read the book. It's free advertising for big name authors. Just think about it. If your book is put into 5,000 bookstores, drug stores, etc that means BNA's name is out there in thousands of venues for thousands of people to see. Bully for BNA. A lot of people have gotten wise to this, and don't necessarily lay much stock in it, but I can't help but think it must have a subliminal effect.
May I add a fine distinction here? FWIW, I like to distinguish between a critique (which is judgmental in a balanced way, we hope) versus an endorsement, which is by definition an entirely positive statement of praise, without pointing out honestly any of the commentator's plus and minus reactions. Blurbs are always endorsements (or they won't appear on the cover of a book). Critiques appear in newspapers or other media. Either one falls under the adage "Any publicity is better than no publicity at all."
Sometimes a sharp critique by some partisan will cause readers of different sentiment to actually look more closely at a book.
I firmly believe that visible endorsements from celebrities or respected experts is very helpful, and could be another way to show up in search engines. I doubt reader give any thought to how the endorsements were obtained.
Endorsements still work to a certain extent but not like they used to because a lot of books have these endorsements.
Insofar as an "authentic endorsement", people in the industry know that most of the endorsements by famous authors and other celebrities of a particular book are actually written by the author or the publicist of the book being endorsed. These endorsements are offered to the famous authors and other celebrities and many of the authors and celebrities will put their names on the endorsement just to give themselves more publicity. I knew this for years and Brendon Burchard confirmed this in his Experts Academy and Partnership seminars. Brendon indicated this was not necessarily coming out of integrity but that is the way it is done even by a lot of famous authors.