Book Reviews
IR Staff •
Sep 13, 2012 
We’ve been around for a couple of years reviewing indie (aka self-published) books and have seen the gamut of sinners and saints.
And then there’s the utterly clueless.
In this, our first installment of IndieReader’s new (dare we call it gossip?) column, we will call out several men (why is it always men?) behaving badly concerning the latest hot topic, the hinky book review.
Clueless guy number one says that the purpose of all one-star reviews is to publicly trash books.
Hell no! The purpose of any review is to rate a book according to one person’s opinion. Seriously, didn’t you learn all about this stuff in grade school?
Clueless guy number two is defending a writer who wrote sock puppet reviews—meaning he created false identities—and then used those id’s to write one-star reviews for his competitors, making him look good and the others look bad. It slips my mind whether or not he also used those aliases to write good reviews for himself, but hey, as if the first thing wasn’t bad enough!
This is wrong on so many levels. It doesn’t fall under free speech. It doesn’t fall under expressing your opinion. It doesn’t even fall under I’m-sorry-I’m-an-idiot-was-that-a-bad-thing-to-do? A writer/blogger who is another saint to us (and has not fallen) writes about authors being the CEO of their own business (as opposed to authors acting like certain political parties, which for the purposes of the piece shall not be named). If one business trashes another business on purpose—with the intention of causing harm to their sales through misinformation—that is wrong (we’re not lawyers, but they might even have a legal case there).
Clueless guy number three claims another author who paid for reviews on his book (no idea how many) is a ‘nice guy’ and shouldn’t be condemned.
Hey, we’re not for condemning per se, but here’s something else this ‘nice’ guy’ did. He wrote and sold an eBook ‘supposedly’ telling everyone how he sold a gazillion books on Amazon. He probably sold another gazillion of his ‘how to’ guide. Guess what little tidbit of information he neglected to include? Yep, that he PAID for reviews. Kind of important information to leave out don’t you think? Oh, and he wouldn’t put links in his book to other books because no one offered to PAY him to do it. Now again, we’re not agreeing on the condemning part, but we no longer have any respect for this ‘nice guy’ and his ‘success’. We, apparently, had this news before anyone else did, which is a good reason to check back here for news…often!
Same clueless guy as above says something about another author that’s been “tarred and feathered” and he also claims this author should be let off the hook because he too is a ‘nice guy’.
We think this author also did sock puppet reviews to—in an amusing way—to defend himself against the one-star reviews on Amazon. Which seems at least harmless, but still not very smart.
Clueless guy has come back to say that he wrote ad nauseum about these three authors who have been tarred and feathered only to say that he really doesn’t care and points out what he would/wouldn’t do. And encourages all authors to get back to writing.
To which we say, Amen.
Contributed by Bio Tachi
***********************************************************
Got some dish you’d like to share? Send it to us at dish@indiereader.com. We’ll keep it hush hush.
There are a lot of slanted things going on out there. Amazon is the great beast, one that I’m friendly with, and sometimes I like to imagine their online bookstore as a massive, pardon the brand image, Barnes & Noble. But I actually picture it as big as an airport, huge, with massive wings for every genre imaginable.
Imagine a reader finds a book, pre-wired world. He/she looks at the cover. They read the flap. If they’re circumspect, they may even open the book to read the “critical praise”.
What’s missing?
In the “old days”, there were no criticisms. Personally, I like the criticism idea. It brings balance to my own buying decision. But in Amazon’s (and others) wild west system of consumer reviews, people can torpedo a book with unjustified bad reviews for any number of reasons.
Hey, sometimes it’s deserved. I can think of two hot examples, one indie, one traditional (the trad book is being marketed ad nauseum as I type this) that started out with a mysterious bevy of gushing five-star reviews.
I don’t have the solution. Perhaps Amazon would be better suited by using their reviewer ranking system a little more judiciously. Maybe the highest ranked reviewers reviews have more weight? Such as, the highest ranked reviewers reviews (say that three times
) float to the top of the heap?
I dunno, I’m spit-balling. Either way, I think the general idea of giving buyers contrast is excellent. But, in its current form I think its rife with corruption. Most authors who’ve had any success, unfortunately, attract trolls who do their best to suppress their books.
And if their books are good, then that’s a damn shame.