what to do?
Posted by stevemosby on August 26th, 2012
It’s not an unreasonable question.
The past few weeks have seen a lot of posts, here and elsewhere, around the behaviour of Stephen Leather, all of which have touched at least peripherally on the subject of the ethics of marketing techniques, especially given the constantly changing digital environment. These techniques (some, but not all, of which can be attributed to Leather; all of which can be attributed to various authors across the board) include:
1. Using sock puppet accounts to talk up one’s own book;
2. Giving positive reviews to one’s own book under a sock puppet account;
3. Giving negative reviews to a “competing” author’s book under a sock puppet account;
4. Spreading lies about “competing” authors online;
5. Bullying and harrassing other authors;
6. Shilling – ie talking up the book of a friend without disclosing a personal interest;
7. Astroturfing – ie the overall cumulative effect of the above. Artificial buzz.
8. Attacking reviewers for negative but honest reviews, and/or encouraging their readers to do so.
To which, we can also add this: paying (substantial amounts of money) for reviews. The successful ebook writer John Locke is named in that article. To quote:
“Mr. Locke is unwilling to say that paying for reviews made a big difference. “Reviews are the smallest piece of being successful,” he said.”
Well, that may be true. But ordering 300 reviews will have set him back $6000. At the 0.99 he charges, for which he would receive around 0.30, those reviews would need to have generated him 20,000 book sales just to break even. That is not an insignificant number. You assume it was worth it, but prospective self-publishers may wish to consider their disposable income first – and also have a good, long look at themselves in the mirror.
And I’m sure there are countless other activities as well.
Why does any of this matter? Well, a lot of this behaviour is technically illegal (a vendor pretending to be a consumer, etc), but all of it is dodgy and what I, at least, would consider to be unethical behaviour for an author to be involved in or encouraging. The online review system (along with other online feedback systems) is imperfect, but it exists, and people use it. If they didn’t, it wouldn’t be worth authors gaming it in these underhand ways, often at great expense. So these are acts of deception that betray both the reader and other writers. They are acts of selfishness. They are attempts to grab as much of the “open ground” of self-publishing for themselves as possible, by whatever means possible.
It’s possible you don’t care. Well, if so, move on. But if you feel strongly about these issues, what can you do? Here are some quick, initial thoughts. They’re mostly obvious. Please feel free to add other ideas in the comments.
1. Readers
The oddest thing about the Leather business is that, really, I’ve just been reacting to stuff and posting on topics that have arisen. I never had any endgame in mind; I wasn’t trying to achieve anything. When Leather accuses me of being jealous (sic) of his sales, or wanting to harm them, that’s absolutely not the case. I couldn’t give two fucks if he sells a million books in the next day, or none ever again. It has no impact on me. More to the point, a lot of writers over the years have been vile individuals; the books stand alone, their merits independent (for the most part) from the character of the writers.
That said, numerous people have contacted me, either publicly or privately, to say they won’t be buying Leather’s books again. That’s fine. Voting with your feet is a time-honoured tradition. One obvious way you can react to an author behaving in ways you disapprove of is to not support them anymore. That aside, you could also let them know what you think, or engage them in conversation around issues that concern you. And do you know what? The forums and channels these writers are hijacking to promote themselves, however imperfect they are, they belong to you. They are meant for you. Your voice matters more than theirs, so you should use it. And at the absolute least, you can be aware enough of these authors to treat future “buzz” around their books with whatever scepticism you conclude it deserves.
2. Organisations
There have been a few suggestions that organisations such as the CWA could introduce a charter of some kind – listing behaviour they expect their members to refrain from, and so on. I have some sympathy with this as a symbolic gesture, but I don’t think it would make much difference for a number of reasons. I doubt someone like Stephen Leather or John Locke cares very much about being a member. I also doubt – with the greatest respect for the organisations in question – that the reading public would pay much attention either. It wouldn’t be awful for it to happen anyway though.
3. Publishers
It’s far more likely that wayward authors would take notice of publishers condemning these activities, but there are numerous problems with this as well. For one thing, obviously a proportion of this activity is by authors who are self-published, so it wouldn’t matter. For another, I expect most publishers would condemn this sort of behaviour anyway. Because, in my experience, most people who work in publishing are nice and decent and working in publishing in the first place because they love books.
The issue here is that publishing is a business, but the people who work in it are individuals. Those individuals have their opinions, but it’s often difficult politically to voice them. I think it’s a truism that most editors will have writers they like and want to publish but, for various reasons, it can’t happen, while also having authors they dislike intensely but are stuck with. But at the end of the day, it’s a business – it has to be, and it should be. That’s not to say they should turn a blind eye.
4. Writers
It’s much the same as readers, I think, with some additional caveats. Obviously, regardless of your profile, you can use whatever social media platforms you have to express your opinion. You can refuse to blurb or share a platform with people who engage in this kind of behaviour. You can put forward your point of view; you can let readers know what’s going on. If you think someone’s attacking you, say so.
So. That’s just some initial thoughts and ideas. Feel free to chip in below the line with others…
August 26th, 2012 at 8:30 pm
How about people complaining to Amazon, Goodreads etc that their review system allows such things to happen. Amazon in particular could introduce something to mean only people who’ve bought that item could review it… Or more overtly show reviewer information – how many reviews written, % usefulness rating – against each review.
It’s a whole load if shoddy behaviour though – I really don’t understand writers who view other writers as competitors to be crushed. Are they really that insecure?
August 26th, 2012 at 8:30 pm
As a reader and as a complete book lover, I have been disgusted by what I have learned over the past few days/weeks in relation to certain practises by certain authors (and I mean Mr Leather in particular). I will do whatever I can and keep spreading the word in relation to all the points made by Steve Mosby here and others elsewhere.
August 26th, 2012 at 8:35 pm
There is something else that readers can do. We can become more active about our reading and start leaving more reviews ourselves. Unlikely to make much of a difference on an individual level, but I probably read about 80 or so books a year, and if I was to review each one, that would be 80 more honest and reliable reviews out there. Therefore, that’s what I intend to do from now on, because honest writers deserve honest and credible feedback. Reclaim the internet, people!
August 26th, 2012 at 8:41 pm
Sophie…brilliant and simple point. I will be doing this as a matter of course from now on.
August 26th, 2012 at 8:45 pm
As a reader, I feel cheated by all the above. It seems books are being sold to me using fraudulent means.
As a writer who is editing a novel to be self-published I would never use such methods to promote it. I am going down the S/p route via kindle because I have spent ages writing it and want it out there for people to read rather than to make a fortune. If it sells well, great ( and I want Robert Carlyle in the title roll lol) but If it doesn’t it doesn’t.
August 26th, 2012 at 8:46 pm
James, Amazon have introduced a tag which displays if an item was bought from them, shown at the top of the review. It’s unfair to ban reviews from people who buy elsewhere. That unless you whole heartedly support Amazon your opinion doesn’t count somehow? People get books from all sources including libraries and gifts. Yes, I receive books from publishers to review but I only give my own opinion. Amazon would lose a whole bunch of honest blogger reviews of they banned reviews from people who didn’t buy from them.
August 26th, 2012 at 8:46 pm
I think telling these people who engage in such behaviour directly that it’s not on, is arguably the best way of tackling it.
More voices in opposition is key. Then they are made aware, publicly, that there people against what they are doing.
August 26th, 2012 at 8:50 pm
Great post, Steve. Particularly the bit about the forums belonging to the readers. The fact is Amazon (in particular) seems to have little interest in maintaining a properly organised community of reviewers, because that’s expensive and time-consuming (believe me, I’ve been there). Goodreads might be a better bet in the long term because it does have some network effects, but even that is prone to wilfully aggressive reviews or baleful plot spoilers. I’m afraid I’m a bit of a fatalist about all this stuff. The people who are most damaged by it – the authors and the readers – have no real leverage over the platforms involved, and the organisations running those platforms are not going to prioritise expensive fixes. The best we can hope to do is talk, politely and sanely, about those doing bad things. As you and Jeremy Duns are doing.
One thing I think Amazon and Goodreads and the like COULD do is allow a verified author space on the book page, where the author can make a statement, respond to reviews, warn about plot spoilers. Think that would be a powerful tool, but it would involve a verification process – and that would be an expensive thing to implement. Which means it probably wouldn’t ever happen. But it should.
August 26th, 2012 at 9:03 pm
I think that it’s one thing for readers to decide they don’t want to give their money to an author who behaves in whatever way they object to, but that in itself won’t have a lot of impact, unless the author’s told that too. Sadly, I’m not sure that’ll make much difference either.
You’ve run through some really considered, thoughtful arguments on all of this in your last few posts so I apologise if this sounds glib, but I had thought that for writers it’s really not that hard a judgment to make. Promote your work, and when doing it ask yourself if you are being either a bore or being a dick. If you think you are, stop and do something different to promote your work.
But…that requires a certain kind of self-awareness. If an author’s not at all embarrassed by something like paying for adverts becoming public (if that were me I would want to dig a hole, climb in, and pray for the end of the world) then they won’t care if a subset of other writers point and laugh, and a subset of readers change their buying habits, as long as others keep buying.
I do feel strongly about this, I think the kinds of things you have been talking about are underhand, duplicitous, and cringe-inducing, the writer’s equivalent of oily sales reps worst tricks. But I am also pessimistic as to whether anything will make a blind bit of difference to the worst examples of it. Where I am optimistic though, is that keeping up the conversation may make some new writers think twice about thinking that it’s OK, and that alone is worth the time and the effort.
August 26th, 2012 at 9:33 pm
Nicely put. While this does appear to be an unsavoury part of this brave new world, it probably is a trickle-down from the tactics of major publishers before the advent of the Internet, es. cash for reviews. As James says, I also don’t get writers who view other scribes as competitors to be crushed.
August 26th, 2012 at 9:37 pm
Once upon a time not so very long ago Amazon allowed you to post reviews of products that weren’t even out yet (long before the vine program). That changed when Kevin J Anderson and Brian Herbert basically had to go to war along with Bantam in the US – on the DAY that the first of the Dune prequels was announced more than 70 one star reviews appeared on Amazon by people who hadn’t and couldn’t have read the book – because Kevin and Brian were still in the process of writing it! These reviews said thinks like ‘not only does Brian Herbert hate his father he wants to tear off the head of his literary corpse and shit down its neck…’ and various lovely things like this.
It resulted in a review of behaviour with Amazon (who have always set their position in the market as the customer’s best friend) so that a. books couldn’t be reviewed before they were released b. book reviews could only be tied one review to one account (there’s still a glaring hole here as you can, I believe, have infinite accounts tied to one credit card, all you need is one verified purchase on that account to allow you to review – so expect a guy with a marketing budget of 5,000 US on his visa card to be able to price his book as 99c, buy 5,000 copies, review 5,000 times AND get back 30c per copy so it only costs him 3,500 US for the privilege.) It just takes time and a dishonest mind to work out ways around systems – just like athletes trying to work out how to stay one step ahead of the band substances list, these guys just need to learn how to cheat better… when Nandrolone is banned, they find the next unknown performance enhancer…
The whole situation at the moment makes me quite depressed as an author – not least because my livelihood depends upon it, and I’ve no wish to play the cheat game.
August 26th, 2012 at 9:59 pm
This may be a bit left of field/ off the mark, but I am not sure I think anyone has the ‘right’, reader or writer, to write whatever they like on a public forum about a published book if it is vitriolic and nasty. One never knows what the agenda of that supposed reader is (I’m talking the nasty 1 star type reviews that make the mind boggle and make me wonder why someone would bother writing with such venom.) But then it’s out there for everyone to see, and might well affect other sales/ readers etc. It reminds me of the trolls…
Ok, so now shoot me down in flames & tell me anyone can write anything…!
August 26th, 2012 at 10:21 pm
Just to say – thanks for the comments everyone. Loads of good observations and ideas. I’ll reply properly tomorrow.
August 26th, 2012 at 10:27 pm
Okay, there are a number of authors (and presumably agents, editors and such) who are too circumspect to post on this matter publicly.
Is it possible to ask these reluctant souls to sign a petition of somekind? We could, for example, as Amazon to determine if it’s reviews are genuine and move forward from there if not. Or approach the CWA and formally ask them to develop a policy as has been suggested elsewhere today.
I can’t help but think that, if there is a silent majority agreement about this, there must be a way to use it to handle this behind the scenes.
Because I don’t think we should be carrying on like this in public. (which is no slight on Steve or Jeremy, you use the tool avaliable to you. But it’s getting increasingly ugly.)
August 26th, 2012 at 11:14 pm
This situation just makes me sad. I JUST self-published a book. I would hate to be lumped in with this lot who review their own books. While getting someone to review books on sites like Amazon is difficult, cheating is not morally worth the trouble to me. After following what this lot has done to you and your friends, I already feel defeated and I just got started. You have outlined some good ideas; some of the people who have replied have done so as well. I hope for everone’s sake that this matter is resolve soon.
August 27th, 2012 at 1:18 am
Nothing will change. I think Dunn is in the throws of a break down. Recording phone calls, twisting peoples words and thinking fiction is real (so of the ‘racist’ accusations) is not the behavior of a well man. No wonder his books are shit.
Anyone who thinks bullying has taken place needs to grow up a bit. Even the purpurted ‘victim’ has stated he hasn’t felt bullied. Which if you check any .HR policy on bullying at work, is what it all hinges on. You cent tell an adult they’ve been bullied because you think they have (as it fits th agenda), it’s down to them to decide.
The guys actively seeking to harm Leather are making themselves look right tits. Wrapping their jealously up in ‘social justice’ and ‘doing the right thing’ is no more than the self deceptive, nasty cover up difference between envy and jealously. Just ask yourself, when has anyone admitted being jealous and not meant envious? Jealousy carries a nasty undertone of bitterness and causes the people with it to a) not know they are jealous and b) try to bring some kind of harm to the person they think they aren’t jealous of.
Which is exactly what is going on here.
Besides any of that while you’re all moaning ike school girls you’re not writing fiction. rl’s
August 27th, 2012 at 1:48 am
Your accusations would carry a lot more weight if there was even a pretence at objectivity. There isn’t. Your whole diatribe was just mean spirited.
Paul Panter:
Have you actually read any of Jeremy Duns work? Because I haven’t seen anyone attack Stephen Leather’s work. I’ve seen them take issue with his attitude, but not the man’s fiction.
I find it interesting, too, that you seem to think the only issue here is whether or not Mr. Roach felt bullied by Mr. Leather’s manipulations. It’s not. It’s entirely reasonable to look at what Jeremy Duns has uncovered and be concerned about the nature of his revelations.
Concerns which your snidey, belligerent message hardly alleviate.
August 27th, 2012 at 2:03 am
Paul – As Steve’s said, no-one is refuting Leather’s sales-record, merely discussing self-admitted tactics and the consequences thereof on other individuals and the business as a whole.
It seems quite simple.
If you don’t want to have your dodgy self-promotional tactics discussed by peers and customers, don’t boast about using them when talking in front of a live audience at a prestigious event; if you don’t want to be accused of overt racism online, don’t post overtly racist posts… and if you’re going to accuse someone of anything, it’s good to have proof (almost every claim against Leather seems to have had examples/proof offered, every claim against Steve’s behaviour seems to be lacking in ANY evidence to back it up, sometimes blatantly)
Bottom line: Depth of ‘Character’ isn’t just something found IN a book.
August 27th, 2012 at 8:04 am
Paul Panter –
If you return to look at these comments, can you give a straight Yes/No answer to these questions:
1. Do you think it is okay for an author to use fake accounts to give themselves good reviews?
2. Do you think it is okay for an author to use fake accounts to give ‘competing’ authors bad reviews?
3. If an authors does do the above & is found out, shouldn’t s/he be called out on it?
Forget all that has gone before; these questions are about author behaviour in general, not any specific individual. Now, how do you answer?
August 27th, 2012 at 9:06 am
James, answer to all of them; who cares? People are going to do what they’re going to do. Regardless of if you , me mor anyone else likes it.
Of course people will find out and comment if people are up to that sort if thing. It just seems to have descended into utter madness which is clearly based on jealously (for anyone on the outside looking in).
August 27th, 2012 at 9:16 am
Sophie and Anne – I would like to be able to give your comments a big virtual hug. I appreciate it’s very time-consuming to leave reviews on that scale, but using the system the way it’s meant to be used is certainly one way to begin to nullify the effect of those misusing it. Thanks very much for commenting and saying that.
Regarding Amazon, I wouldn’t hold my breath for any lead to come from them. And unfortunately, regarding the verified purchase issue, Steven is right. Locke, for example, apparently insisted that the reviews he bought came from verified purchases to add credibility. There is an arms-race aspect to all this, of course; people will always look for ways to game the system. I’m fairly fatalistic about the whole thing too, in that I don’t think anything widespread and immediate is going to happen, but there are small things we can do.
Paul – This post is about certain marketing techniques and what can be done to counter them. If you want to defend those techniques, you may do so. If you wish to defend Stephen Leather specifically, you can go here: http://www.theleftroom.co.uk/?p=1724 If you don’t have anything constructive to say on topic then you can take my advice from the post and move on.
August 27th, 2012 at 9:19 am
Also, the next person to confuse jealousy with envy might get deleted on general principles.
August 27th, 2012 at 9:48 am
The last post Steve is the perfect example of my first post on jealously/envy.
Constructive doesn’t only come under the banner of agreement, does it?
Delete away, it doesn’t surprise me that you’d want to do that. Seeing someone point out our traits is rarely a comfortable experience.
August 27th, 2012 at 10:12 am
Paul – it was a lighthearted comment. I’m just fed up with people confusing the two terms. You are jealous of things that are yours. You are envious of things others have. It would be impossible for me to be jealous of anyone’s sales. It would be possible for me to be envious, but I assure you I’m not. It wouldn’t make any difference to the arguments and issues even if I was.
August 27th, 2012 at 10:36 am
“Wrapping their jealously up in ‘social justice’ and ‘doing the right thing’ is no more than the self deceptive, nasty cover up difference between envy and jealously.”
“The last post Steve is the perfect example of my first post on jealously/envy.”
Paul, could you do yourself the favour of reading those sentences very carefully? And – please forgive me – I find your comment about a breakdown rather curious.
August 27th, 2012 at 11:04 am
Paul – “James, answer to all of them; who cares?”
Well if you are that apathetic, why are you so annoyed by the people who do care then?
And for the record, I am pretty much “on the outside looking in” – I’ve exchanged maybe a six or seven tweets with Steve before this, but he’s hardly someone I’d just accept what he said without evidence; I don’t know Jeremy Dunns at all. I’ve seen some posts from Stephen Leather on various forums, but never interacted with him to the best of my knowledge. So I am on the outside looking in, and it looks pretty bad from where I’m standing.
August 27th, 2012 at 11:05 am
[...] the twitter/blogosphere rounds right now, you can read about one here and a bit more about that one here and about a totally different one [...]
August 27th, 2012 at 12:51 pm
Steve, we have very different understandings of the word jealousy. Mine, however, comes from the dictionary and actual meaning, you seem to have made up your own.
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/jealous
August 27th, 2012 at 1:19 pm
Okay, as a sporadic fiction book reader (a more regular one since getting a Kindle recently) and someone who often intends to review books, hotels, products etc, but who rarely gets around to it, I am actually really shocked by these revelations. Why? Well to be honest, I do set some store by what I read in reviews, especially the more articulate ones that go into detail, which can help me decide whether or not said book, hotel, product is right for me and it really can influence my buying choices.
Surely the end result of the uncovering of these practices, will be that the magic formula of trust in reviews will be broken, and so they will no longer hold any credibility or carry any weight, and therefore will cease to perform the desired ‘trick’ in increasing sales volume. For me, will I think twice before setting any store by reviews that I read from now? Definitely, especially where there are large numbers of reviews and most of them 5*, as I imagine it would only be worth doing in volume.
And where does this practice begin and end? Can I trust any review… should I take Trip Adviser with a pinch of salt from now on, or the numerous restaurant review sites out there…?
For those that think it doesn’t matter, well maybe in the grand scheme of it, it doesn’t… but surely reviews are only powerful marketing tools for as long as people have any kind of faith in them.
August 27th, 2012 at 1:23 pm
Paul – or see here, for example: http://www.diffen.com/difference/Envy_vs_Jealousy Or here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Envy#Comparison_with_jealousy etc
This is the last comment on that subject. Feel free to comment on the issues in the post. Speculating about my motives, however you wish to describe them, is irrelevant and off-topic and will get deleted. Thanks!
August 27th, 2012 at 1:37 pm
Paul:
“I, the Lord thy God, am a jealous God” (Exodus 20:5). Do you honestly think that means God is envious?
August 27th, 2012 at 1:43 pm
Valerie – I agree totally. It certainly isn’t the biggest issue in the whole world, but it does matter. The upshot of this behaviour is to remove faith in a channel for readers that would otherwise benefit from using it. It’s parasitical behaviour that will ultimately undermine the use of reviews, forums, etc for legitimate users.
August 27th, 2012 at 1:46 pm
First of two related posts:
I’ve had discussions with a couple of mega bestselling authors over the last couple of weeks, and in private, there is no shortage of condemnation of the dubious behaviours some writers exhibit. Problem is, the bigger the author, the less likely they’ll stick their head above the parapet. What we really need is a way for authors and publishing professionals to speak out with one united voice.
With that in mind, I’d like to suggest something:
Compose an open letter outlining those activities we find objectionable, stating that we won’t partake in them, and condemning those who do. The letter should not target any specific individual. The letter should initially be posted online and authors and publishing professionals then invited to attach their names to it. After a set time has passed, and the letter hopefully has a long list of signatories, it can be sent to The Bookseller, organisations like The CWA, newspapers with literary sections like The Observer and The Times, and arts programmes such as Front Row.
Would this achieve anything? That’s doubtful, I suppose, but at least it would mean people could speak out without drawing fire.
August 27th, 2012 at 1:56 pm
Second of two related posts:
I think this issue now needs to be depersonalised. I believe it’s bigger than any one author, even if they sell as many books as Stephen Leather. The more the accusers focus on him, the more he can claim to be victimised.
Steve, you said: “If you think someone’s attacking you, say so.”
I have said so in the past, but I’ve never named the attacker. I’ve given this a lot of thought in recent weeks. On the one hand, I feel disingenuous by complaining about someone using sockpuppet accounts to target me, but not going as far as naming the culprit. I particularly feel it’s unfair to the other authors he’s targeted.
But…
1. This sockpuppeting author has a new book out soon, and I have no wish to give him free publicity. He’s fairly obscure, doesn’t sell a lot, and I don’t much feel like letting him leech off my profile, as modest as that may be.
2. The problem with naming and shaming is that there’s probably not much shame involved. This author has been called out before elsewhere, but doesn’t seem deterred. Likewise with Mr Leather, if someone has such low ethical standards, they’ll just regard being named as bonus publicity. In the case of my attacker, he has a criminal background and has no problem using that to lend him some notoriety, so I don’t think being called out on fake reviews is going to bother him much.
August 27th, 2012 at 1:59 pm
Steve, excellent constructive post. Paul, Steve Roach has indeed changed his mind about Leather and is now friends with him, but that doesn’t change that Leather bullied him, or that Roach thought he had. Steve Roach wrote the following in an Amazon thread in November 2011:
‘I had a genuine beef with SL, hence the posts I made, all of which were justifiable in my angry state… this thread is just keeping SL’s name in the first page of the threads, so he’s STILL getting the only thing he was ever after – publicity. He’s an attention vampire and he’s playing everybody like his little biyatches. I can’t stand the man but you have to give him credit for his manipulation skills… I quit Goodreads because of something he said to me, and he’s just kept it coming ever since…’
He goes on to say that Leather ‘deleted reviews of books that you figured out were unavailable, but left 1 star ratings of books that you yourself have said you would never read and I don’t believe you have read.
You also called me a cockroach on your blog.
You also ignored numerous attempts to end the spat.
You also ignored my apology.
You also neglected to balance out my comment on your blog by selectively publishing only the one post, where I called you a tw*t. Which you also authorised for publication.
And now there are TWO threads on the front page with your name on them.
Brilliant work, Mr Leather.
And, to cap it off, anytime I post on this forum I have a half dozen instant ‘no’ votes and your fans rush to your defence, even when you have behaved despicably.
You are a mastermind. You must be. Quite how you have the time, whilst saving flood victims and sopping kittens, I don’t know, but when the next James Bond film comes out I wouldn’t be at all surprised if you are in it. The world always needs an evil genius and you’re the man.’
I think it’s clear that bestselling author Stephen Leather bullied his much less known critic Steve Roach online, for over a year, in various ways, and that Steve Roach was extremely upset and angry about it.
Moving on… I don’t really know what can be done in general. On this specific situation, I think it would be great if the CWA issued a statement condemning Leather’s practices – he did admit to them in public at Harrogate, where the CWA were present, and he’s a member of the organization, too, I think: he was shortlisted for a Steel Dagger in 2002. I think Hodder should already have made a statement. I think I’m right that part of their staff were in the room during the panel in question, and by ignoring this they condone it.
I also don’t really see why Stephen Leather and John Locke aren’t simply be prosecuted for fraud. As you say, it’s illegal for a vendor to pose as a consumer under British and American law, and I’m sure small traders are taken to court and fined for doing this sort of thing every day of the week. Leather and Locke have both admitted doing it publicly, one at Harrogate and one in the New York Times. I’m sure the resulting fine would be peanuts to both of them, but I can’t see why it shouldn’t happen simply because they’re successful authors, and I think it could do a power of good. It would humiliate them, make their publishers think a little (Locke has just signed with a print publisher), and it would also alert readers. It would also send a message to other writers, you can’t break the law without suffering the consequences simply because you’ve sold a lot of books. Just a thought.
I had hoped a resourceful journalist would do an in-depth investigation into this and ask tough questions of Amazon, Hodder, Leather, Matt Lynn and others while they were doing so. I think that would have had an impact, but it appears it’s too tricky. Nevertheless, I can think of a few authors who, if they put a couple of paragraphs on their website condemnind what Leather and Locke have done in strong terms, would automatically trigger a great deal of media attention on this issue.
Just my thoughts at the moment, anyway.
August 27th, 2012 at 2:30 pm
To add an intelligent and thoughtful (vaguely) dissenting voice into the mix on the subject of paying for reviews, Brian Lindenmuth’s thoughts on the nuances here are, as usual, worthwhile reading: http://dosomedamage.blogspot.co.uk/2012/08/reviewola.html
August 27th, 2012 at 3:16 pm
Which isn’t to say I agree with the points. To my mind, there is an enormous difference between, say, paying for promotion (such as front table displays in bookshops) and paying for reviews, even if part of the effect of those reviews is to place an ebook on the digital equivalent to a front table display. The latter has two advantages, and visibility is only one of them. The other advantage is a falsified positivity, or an apparent word of mouth, which also helps the book.
Thanks for the additional comments. Stuart – mulling those ideas over.
August 27th, 2012 at 3:17 pm
Paying for or otherwise soliciting good reviews of one’s own work is cheating the prospective reader/purchaser but paying or otherwise soliciting bad reviews of the work of other writers in order to enhance sales of one’s own by contrast, is immoral by any ethical code. Amazon seems to be a toothless force – and indeed,not to have any concern about this matter at all. By contrast, ebay has very stict rules and they will pursue, bar and even prosecute, any buyer or seller caught out behaving in this way or otherwise trying to enhance their own items at the expense of other buyers/sellers. It’s a great pity that a firm that has been a force for good in selling so many millions of books across the world should have such a defective moral compass. There is such a thing as responsibility to one’s customers.
August 27th, 2012 at 3:31 pm
Although I agree that it would be largely symbolic, I would like to see the CWA, and similar organisations, introduce a code of practice for its members on these kinds of issues. If nothing else, it would at least define a set of ethical standards which would make it harder for the likes of Leather and Locke to claim that this is just ‘hard headed’ business practice which the rest of us are just too genteel to adopt. And the CWA membership does of course include a number of publishers, agents and other industry figures as well as writers so it would enable those individuals to demonstrate their commitment to the relevant ethical standards without feeling too exposed.
August 27th, 2012 at 3:41 pm
The only way to know if a book is worth the money is to read it first. Then that is something publishers are scared of and fight against. What if you could read the first 3 chapters yourself? Would you need reviews?
Anyone who trusts online reviews in the first place has to be naive and a new media illiterate. Most of this is a knee jerk future shock reaction to a world where information is becoming boundless and will only become more so. Of course much information is nonsense but that was forever the case, just take a look at politics or tabloids. What about fake testimonials an age old technique.
It is not unique to the internet. The only real difference when applied to internet is scale.
The answer is for people to wise up a little and publishers to relax a little.
The real enemy is unwarranted trust, gullibility and lack of critical thinking in society in general. People believe election promises that turn into their very opposite.
Dodgy book reviews is only a symptom. Not the disease. Critical thinking skills and self evaluation are the solution in an information abundant world.
August 27th, 2012 at 3:51 pm
As both reader and writer, I agree. The fora available to us do, indeed, belong to us. As a prospective assisted self-publisher, this whole business turns my stomach. I’m looking at the current slate of players taking turns doing dirty deals behind the backstop while I sit there in the dugout watching the game get gamed worse than it ever was on the schoolyard. Disgusting.
It’s not only unethical and, in some cases at least, illegal, it runs counter to every reason I can think of for writing in the first place. I have something I believe in, something I want to share with the world, something I value. And then I’m going to cheapen, debase, defile, defame it under the auspices of marketing? Hell F no.
August 27th, 2012 at 3:53 pm
The Society of Authors is the principal professional writers’ body in the UK and well placed to come up with some kind of code of good practice about authors and marketing. I’m sure this will be discussed in The Author at some stage. I don’t think the CWA is quite so well placed since it represents only a sub-section of the writing community. Andrew Taylor is a leading light in the Soc of A and has taken an interest in this story. I’m sure he will be interested.
Steve hits the nail on the head very squarely above: this is an issue of ethics. The public should be able to trust that ‘reviews’ are honestly provided and not part of a covert marketing operation. If the financial services industry used tactics like this people would be in court, not counting their riches from ill-gotten gains.
August 27th, 2012 at 4:00 pm
Its funny that nobody mentions the obvious antidote to this is not relying on reviews at all which are easily manipulated.
Surely, the contents of the book itself is the best indicator of whether it suits the customer?
Unfortunately, most publishers seem to hate the customers so do the best to avoid the situation where they could come to an opinion on their own without relying on third parties that can be engineered or corrupted for money.
Luckily not all authors and publishers are so stubborn. Coelho is an example of an author that gets it. Tor books, a publisher that gets it.
http://paulocoelhoblog.com/2008/02/03/pirate-coelho/
If you want incorruptible reviews, you need to embrace the fans right to make up their own mind.
August 27th, 2012 at 4:02 pm
[Removed for not being able to read simple instructions, and derogatory comments about mental illness. Do one, Paul. You have nothing to add here.]
August 27th, 2012 at 4:08 pm
John – I really don’t think the issue is “too much trust”. I think the issue is people taking advantage of other people’s trust, often under a false or anonymous identity.
Just because technology makes lying easier doesn’t make it suddenly more truthful. And a baseless lie doesn’t suddenly become “information” just because it’s on the internet.
I don’t really buy your argument that this is all question of new technology, sorry. To my mind it’s very simple: people are lying to make money and that’s wrong. Blaming the people who believe the lies rather than those telling porkies is not a point of view I can get behind I’m afraid.
August 27th, 2012 at 4:13 pm
John – to add to what James said, I think you’re oversimplifying. If reviews didn’t help, authors wouldn’t use them to game the system. Look at what Locke spent. Its also not true that publishers don’t provide sample material, although the amount can certainly vary.
“Unfortunately, most publishers seem to hate the customers…” – not true at all in my experience. You might need to expand on that idea.
August 27th, 2012 at 4:14 pm
It’s possible Paul might comment again. If he does, please ignore him, and I’ll deal with it when I see it. That goes for any obvious trolling. Let’s have a productive conversation. Which isn’t to say sensible dissenting views aren’t also welcome.
August 27th, 2012 at 4:18 pm
James – Did you read my second comment with the obvious solution. The one that sensible authors and publishers use like Coelho (let people read the book before buying)?
People do have future shock if they think it is practical to police reviews to be only trustworthy. The only customer review I trust is my own after I have read it. Get real, some things don’t scale, you cannot police every lie amongst billions of people. People need to be more suspicious. That is a question of media literacy.
Why don’t people get equally upset about broken election promises then and get rid of parties that do the reverse if everything said should be true? Why aren’t they thrown out of office already?
August 27th, 2012 at 4:23 pm
Another simple solution to this is for amazon to put up a warning next to reviews saying they make be fake and to take all reviews with a pinch of salt, use critical thinking, and remind them that the only real way to know for sure is to read the book yourself. That would help promote media literacy. It is also honest.
August 27th, 2012 at 4:29 pm
John – people do get upset about broken election promises, but that is not the subject of this post. It seems like you’re deploying a version of the “this shit is widespread, so forget about it” argument, which I’m not happy with. Again, if you don’t care, move on.
Your point about critical thinking is fine, although the idea that Amazon would display such a notice is, as I’m sure you’re aware, pretty silly. If people shouldn’t take notice of reviews, is your ultimate position that they should just be done away with altogether? That is not an untenable position to take, but it’s an extreme one.
August 27th, 2012 at 4:41 pm
Yes do away with reviews altogether is a good solution. If the system doesn’t work then just dump it.
The last books I bought were by Coelho because he actually pirates his own books (despite objections from his publisher), so I could make up your own mind without relying on dubious reviews. I then decided I like his stuff and went to the bookshop to buy some.
It amazes me how naive people are about how PR and marketing works. How illiterate people are in a future shocked world of abundant information.
Sorry about the politics example, it was just that, not an attempt to derail.
August 27th, 2012 at 4:44 pm
John – no my reply was in response to your first comment.
But… I still disagree. My main concern when reading a book is the *time* I invest in it, not the money. I don’t want to always have to read a book, or even a sample of it, for free just to see if it’s any good. (I certain wish I’d never wasted time reading Coelho, but I digress…)
I don’t think it’s a question of policing every lie; it’s about creating the right kind of on-line cultures and communities so that people don’t lie. I don’t want to personalise this discussion again, but statements like Leather’s give readers and other authors the idea that such practices are okay because *everyone* does them. Whereas what Steve Mosby and others are saying (at least as it seems to me) is no, not everyone does do these things, and they aren’t okay. The more authors who stand up and say similar things the better I think, because it contradicts the false idea that everyone does these things, so it’s fair game for a new author to do so too.
You’re comments about Amazon making more effort to highlight such things is fair enough though, although given they benefit from the sale of sock-puppet reviewed books as much as anyone, I doubt they’ll act without external pressure.
August 27th, 2012 at 4:51 pm
John – no apology necessary; it’s just such a wide-ranging discussion that I don’t want it to get derailed.
August 27th, 2012 at 5:16 pm
James –
Good luck with creating an online culture where people don’t lie. As far as I can tell that has never happened in offline culture for the entire history of the human race. Its a fact people do, and will. When money is involved even more so. They call that PR and apparently its legal. Its why we have insane stuff like BP being called the ‘sustainability’ partner for the Olympics without getting locked up for fraud. Its just nonsense.
Maybe I’m unusual but I haven’t trusted online reviews for 10 years+ and always thought they must be massively infiltrated. There are huge PR outfits just astro-turfing all day every day.
Good luck with your campaign but it is an impractical battle where profit is the bottom line and not art. You already correctly point out amazon has a conflict of interest. But so do publishers, and authors, or at least many of them.
August 27th, 2012 at 5:28 pm
Neil Gaiman is another author that has grown a sensible attitude to ways of increasing sales without relying on paying for fake reviews.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Qkyt1wXNlI
August 27th, 2012 at 5:28 pm
Personally – much agreement with Michael @39 and AJ @41. There is also support on twitter for Stuart’s idea of an open letter people can get behind. Any additional thoughts on that one?
August 27th, 2012 at 5:30 pm
John – both Coelho and Gaiman, along with a handful of others, have certain other advantages.
August 27th, 2012 at 5:31 pm
John – you’re right people will always lie & cheat – that’s not really my point (I don’t want to spend my entire life tilting at windmills). My point is that, despite all the fluff to the contrary, I don’t believe that at this present moment a majority of writers are writing false reviews and sock-puppeting. Some are; most aren’t. And surely it’s worth keeping things that way?
And I think it’s fair enough for those writers who don’t do such things to say so, and to challenge those who say everyone does it.
Liars will always be with us, but if challenged and exposed I’d hope they can be kept to a minimum and that they don’t cause a *total* erosion of trust in book reviews and publishing and authors in general.
August 27th, 2012 at 5:38 pm
Interesting article and comments! I have a few random thoughts to add to mix:
1) if there’s going to be an ethical clean-up of online reviewing, great, but it should be applied not only to authors who ‘sock puppet’ (apologies for verb crime), but also to publishing company employees, friends who review friends’ books favourably when asked to, to beef up the 5* review count… I found out this morning that it’s common practice for authors, when they receive compliments about their books, to say ‘Ooh, you wouldn’t mind putting that on Amazon, would you?’ Now, these reviews aren’t fake exactly, but…call me naive, but I find it slightly shocking that authors routinely ask readers for 5* reviews that the reader hasn’t thought spontaneously to provide. To me, that’s a violation of the author-reader boundary. I have it on good authority (i.e. someone I trust, who probably knows, told me!) that every major publishing company routinely provides fake ace reviews for their books. Given all this, is there any real chance of a *proper* clean-up – a world in which the only reviews of books online are unasked for by the author and not written by the author, authors’ friends and relatives or publisher, or would it be more sensible to take every online opinion that we don’t know is from a trusted source with a massive sack of salt? I know it’s annoying when you’re fighting for something worthwhile and people say, as I am, ‘Yes, but it’s not achievable so there’s no point’, but…is there any point? If the sock-puppeting stops but everyone still asks their Aunty Mary for a 5* review…what then? How can that be stopped?
2) Publishers have been lying in order to sell books for ever. ‘The most exciting debut you’ll read this year’ – no, it isn’t. ‘The most original new voice since…’ – er, no, totally hackneyed, actually. An important part of making the case for marketing-with-integrity online should and must be (IMHO) explaining why it’s okay for publishers to lie in their print (and online) marketing about a book, but not okay for author to claim she is marketing too, in exactly the same way, when she pretends to be Sue Smith instead of Jane Jones and and praises Jane Jones’ book. To be clear: I’m not saying sock puppetry isn’t wrong – merely that ethical consistency is an important consideration. How can we persuade new authors that sock puppetry is wrong when everyone knows that even at the supposedly moral end of the spectrum, there are authors asking all their seventeen aunties and uncles to post 5* reviews and congratulating themselves for being more moral than outright sock puppeteers? This is also relevant insofar as it relates to moral context. I know lots of highly principled veggies who believe meat is murder, but who nevertheless are married to meat-eaters whom they clearly do not condemn as they would if their spouses went out and murdered an innocent kid on the street. Why not, when they believe meat is murder? I assume it’s because they take into account moral context of society as a whole – in which meat eating is so common and not perceived as murder. Sorry for long analogy, but what I’m trying to say is that online reviewing is SUCH a corrupt sphere anyway that perhaps a lot of people adopt an everyone’s-doing-it-so-I-will-too-and-I’ll-do-it-better approach. No, I’m not saying it’s okay – what I’m saying is that, to go back to my publisher’s strap-line analogy – would it even occur to a publisher these days that it’s wrong, and a lie, to say ‘the best debut for years’ about a book that clearly isn’t, when 30 other publishers are all doing same thing? Yes, in an ideal world we’d all do the right thing independently of context, but when context is that corruption and lack of integrity is actually the dominant mode, on a medium like the internet that positively seems to encourage it, are individuals as culpable? Again, to clarify: I’m not saying online fake reviews are in any way okay – merely that if I can imagine that if I had sock-puppets (I don’t!) and was asked to abandon them, I might say, fine, as long as everyone else stops lying/asking for favours/ringing Aunty Mary too! Consistency therefore must be a key part of any attempt to solve this problem.
3) Shilling – I’ve never heard this term before. I’d be interested to know if this is something I do. I praise Tana French’s books to the skies because I think she’s the best crime writer of her generation. She happens to be a mate of mine, which I don’t generally mention when I praise her on Twitter, cos no space to do so. You’ll have to take my word for this, but my friendship with her came after I loved her books, and in no way influences my opinion of her books. Equally, I have lots of friends whose books I like less, and my friendship with those people (though I value it highly) would never persuade me to try to create buzz for their books if I didn’t think the books deserved it.
4) Claire Seeber’s point above is a very good one. I’ve often seen reviews online – probably genuine – that are illiterate and just plain stupid – so I agree with Claire that one of the huge downsides of the internet is that some fool can come along and write ‘Wuvvering Hights is shite cos Heethcliff horrid to kittens’ and that is a 1* review by a fool tarnishing the record of a great masterpiece. That doesn’t seem quite right either.
August 27th, 2012 at 6:07 pm
Sophie – You make some very good arguments.
I think there’s an important distinction between what we expect from publishers’ marketing, and online reviews that we assume to be from ordinary readers. When the cover blurb for a book claims it’s the best thing since the invention of paper, I think all of us know we are being sold to, just as we do in the three minutes between segments of Coronation Street. We know Carlsberg probably ISN’T the best lager in the world. We know this particular novel probably ISN’T the debut of the decade.
When it comes to the likes of Amazon reviews, however, we expect them to be what they claim to be: honest opinions of people who have read the book/seen the movie/used the product. When such venues are abused by dishonest users, the whole system becomes tainted.
I agree there is a pretty wide grey area in all this. For example, I have no issue with authors seeking honest reviews. On the Contacts page of my website, I say this:
“If you really, really liked one of my books, then I’d love to hear about it. But I’d also really appreciate it if you posted a review to Amazon, or any of the other book community websites. That way, you can let others know what they’re missing.”
If someone enjoyed one of my books, then yes, I’d like them to share that opinion with others. Would I pay for reviews? No. Would I ask friends and relatives to post reviews? No. I think there’s a clear line between encouraging honest reviews from genuine readers and manufacturing fake reviews. Here’s some info in the interests of full disclosure:
In the lead up to my debut’s publication in the UK, my publisher sent out lots of advance copies to ordinary readers on their mailing list. A few weeks later, I emailed some of the list to ask if they would consider posting a review online, whether that be Amazon, a personal blog, whatever. I specified that it didn’t matter if the review was good, bad or indifferent, it just had to be honest. In return, I would send them a signed bookmark and print of the book’s cover art as a thank you. The result was around a dozen Amazon reviews by the time the book was published, most of them very good, but not all of them.
That made sense in 2009. I probably wouldn’t do it in 2012. I don’t think I did anything dishonest. I simply encouraged people to share their honest opinion. But because the whole area of online reviews has grown murkier in the three years since, it’s unlikely I’d do it in the future.
On another note, I don’t think this issue is entirely about reviews. It’s wider than that, and requires us to think about how we behave as professionals.
August 27th, 2012 at 6:21 pm
Dear John Baker, I completely agree with your first comment: anyone who sets any store by online reviews is deeply naive and gullible, and the only solution is for people to doubt each and every online review, start reading book and…see if they like it. And inability to use own initiative judgement is growing problem – everyone relies on ‘we had a system in place’ rather than their own critical faculties.
August 27th, 2012 at 6:24 pm
I am a review blogger who also uploads my reviews to Amazon at the suggestion of a friend. I’ve just been having a conversation with several people on Twitter about this issue.
As an Amazon contributor with almost 200 reviews on there, I have noticed at times suspicious voting activity on my reviews, a sudden slew of negative votes claiming my review is unhelpful, once there were 10 on one review seemingly overnight.
I commented that as Sophie Hannah suggests in her first point above that I was of the opinion that junior employees of certain publishers might be asked to leave a) reviews b) positive or negative votes on other reviews. I’m really glad Sophie has suggested this too because I was shot down with “my publisher wouldn’t do that” – the question is how do you know?? Hoe likely are they to tell you if they are?? Some employees might even do it off their own bat without being asked eager to see the book/author they’ve worked hard with succeed. I know that authors might give a positive vote to a positive review and in some ways see no harm in that, it’s a bit like a thank you “Yay! Someone liked my book”, its only one vote after all, but what is a bit worrying is what I have suspected during 8 months of posting, targeted campaigns to discredit or support a certain reviewers stance.
This is quite alarming, and seems like a marketing strategy. In addition, it is unfair to honest reviewers. Amazon employs a reviewer ranking system you will slide up and down the ranks according to your negative/positive ratio, the higher in the rankings you go, you get certain, small perks. So if you suddenly get hit by a lot of negatives, your ranking drops.It’s really unfair that honest reviewers are being penalised by dubious practices. And after reading this and my experience as an Amazon reviewer, I sincerely believe this is going on.
August 27th, 2012 at 6:34 pm
I entirely agree with Sophie on the subject of shilling. When you work as a critic and have been around for a while a lot of the people whose books are submitted for review will be known to you. You can’t possibly include a personal note within every review to say whether you’re an acquaintance, friend, enemy, etc. Like Sophie, I would never write a good review of a novel I did not rate, however much I might like the author, just as I would never write a bad review of a novel by someone I disliked or felt had done me down. Reviews must be honest.
August 27th, 2012 at 6:49 pm
Stuart, thanks for your response. Yes, there’s a huge difference between inviting readers, via your website, to review your book online and asking parents/friends/readers who write to you directly to do it. Main difference is that you’re not asking them personally and individually, so you’re not putting them in a difficult situation where they would have to say, ‘No, sorry, too busy’ or ‘Don’t want to’, or ‘Back off’. However, being brutally honest, I must admit that whenever I see an author on Twitter tweeting, ‘Anyone who fancies reviewing my book on Amazon, that’d be great’ – I cringe and wince because it has a look of desperation about it, and seems somehow undignified. But that’s a taste thing and nothing to do with morality.
There is only one thing you said that I disagree with, which is:
‘When it comes to the likes of Amazon reviews, however, we expect them to be what they claim to be: honest opinions of people who have read the book/seen the movie/used the product. When such venues are abused by dishonest users, the whole system becomes tainted.’
Now, it could be just me, but I have never expected this. I expect good Amazon reviews to be at least 50% from friends/publishers/publishers’ neighbours & book group members, and at least 50% of negative Amazon reviews to be from ill-wishers. I expect at least 50% of reviews to be something other than unbiased responses to the book. I totally assume the whole system IS tainted, and set absolutely no store by it whatsoever. This is backed up by having had, many times, the experience of reading a dreadful, semi-literate book and then looking it up on Amazon to find that, lo and behold, it has ten five-star reviews. I think this issue is key – if you trust the system, sock-puppetry would seem to threaten it massively. If you start from the Dr-House-esque premise of ‘Everybody lies and hides, especially on Amazon’, it’s less shocking. I don’t believe for a minute that most authors sock-puppet or buy reviews – but I do believe (and for me this is just as sinister!) that perhaps the majority of authors ‘encourage’ positive reviews on Amazon, and so contrive for there to be an appearance of critical mass where there otherwise would be nothing. I’m just not sure that’s okay, though I’m sure I’m in the minority over this, since on Twitter this morning most people were saying they asked anyone who commented favourably on their book to transfer their favourable comments to Amazon. I don’t know – it’s probably mad and too all-or-nothing, but if there’s going to be a clean-up, I’d be in favour of this policy: authors, authors’ acquaintances and publishers do absolutely nothing to bring about the appearance of online reviews. Any reviews that turn up online do so entirely spontaneously. Until that’s the norm, I feel uncomfortable with the bottom of the iceberg vilifying its tip, if you know what I mean! Or with those who don’t bother about bottom of iceberg vilifying tip!
August 27th, 2012 at 6:52 pm
Sophie – yes, there are naive & trusting people in the world. Are we supposed to just let bastards take advantage of such people without even mentioning it? I’m sorry, but I find the whole ‘blame the victim’ angle pretty off.
And besides, even if everyone did treat all reviews as biased or bought, false reviews would still have an effect – they improve average ranking & they push things up charts. They becomes more visible and hence make other books less visible. It doesn’t matter how good your critical judgement is, you can only apply it to what you see.
August 27th, 2012 at 6:53 pm
Sophie – Do you think your view of Amazon reviews is skewed slightly, from actually being in the business yourself? You’re more aware of the ‘bad’ side of publishing, therefore are unlikely to take reviews at face value. Whereas a casual reader buying from Amazon, is more likely to put more stock in the reviews posted there maybe?
August 27th, 2012 at 7:04 pm
Sophie / N.J. – just to clarify, by shilling I don’t mean reviewing a friend’s book favourably, which is bound to happen if you’re a writer who’s also a reviewer. What matters is an interest not being declared. What I mean by shilling is someone reviewing a book positively with the expectation of a return: for example, giving someone a 5 star review with the expectation that they will return the favour by giving you one too. You’re not getting a direct financial reward (ie, you’re not the author in disguise) but you’re getting some benefit that’s obscured from the person reading the review.
August 27th, 2012 at 7:06 pm
I’ve never taken Amazon reviews seriously (how can you? a third of them give one star– which is a stupid way of assessing quality— because this book is called something else in another country and therefore the author is attempting to rip you off personally.) and haven’t bought anything based on an Amazon rec.
I tend to buy books –and always have– based either on the fact that it’s by an author I follow or the book in question looks interesting. That’s basically the criteria.
August 27th, 2012 at 7:07 pm
Luca – yes, undoubtedly my view is skewed by being involved in industry – and by my being generally a suspicious untrusting type! Most readers are more trusting and less cynical than me, I’m sure!
James – no, I’m not blaming any victims. In my ideal world, authors would do precisely nothing to solicit reviews apart from write books. My point was simply that problem is huge and, IMO, involves a lot of what most people would regard as fine, i.e. asking readers ‘Would you mind reviewing my book on Amazon?’. So – my point is, how to tackle whole, immense problem? I don’t know the answer!
August 27th, 2012 at 7:08 pm
Sorry, James – more answer! So, since I can’t solve problem, I opt to solve it totally insofar as it relates to me: I simply never trust online review and assume anyone could be anyone online.
August 27th, 2012 at 7:22 pm
“My main concern when reading a book is the *time* I invest in it, not the money. I don’t want to always have to read a book, or even a sample of it, for free just to see if it’s any good.”
This. With so many other things I could be doing, it’s a big commitment for me to start on a book. And there are so many other books I might have chosen. For me, the real value of a review posted to Amazon is the ease with which I can see how a reviewer’s taste corresponds to my own. If I see that a reviewer hates books that I love (or vice versa), I’m not likely to care what they recommend. Whether inflated or not, the aggregate rating of a title on Amazon is usually irrelevant to my decision to purchase.
August 27th, 2012 at 7:22 pm
My thoughts on Amazon reviews are if they didn’t matter, or people didn’t look at/take them seriously etc. there wouldn’t be people buying or asking for them.
They must count towards something, otherwise why would anyone pay out money for them?
I’m pretty certain, if you took two books in similar genres, with similar storylines etc. and one had 10 good (honest reader) reviews, whilst the other had over 100 (bought without browsers knowledge) good reviews, given the choice, most casual browsers would opt for the one with more reviews.
So, buying those 100 reviews has worked for that person. More sales, equals higher ranking. Higher ranking, equals more visibility. Means more people see those books and, as we know, reaching the top 100 paid for charts on kindle can then equal self-perpetuating sales.
Amazon also have charts for the highest rated and reviewed books in any genre. Would those charts exist if people weren’t paying attention to them?
August 27th, 2012 at 7:23 pm
Sophie – fair enough.
I do think there’s gradations of unethical behaviour re. reviews though:
Asking someone you know liked your book to consider reviewing it is iffy but at lower end of the scale.
Whereas the other end has to be leaving one-star reviews of ‘competing’ authors via a sock puppet account pretending to be a real reader. No grey area & totally undefendable.
(For the record I don’t do either!)
August 27th, 2012 at 7:29 pm
I don’t believe that I (or anyone) said that Amazon Reviews didn’t matter. I said that they don’t matter to me. But then, I’m as cynical/pessimistic about people as it’s possible to be.
Perhaps it’s time we stopped investing so much worth in them? as has been said upthread: these are our forums, our areas for discussion.
We decide how useful/valuable they get to be.
August 27th, 2012 at 7:39 pm
@Roz (62) – I’ll definitely be amending the post before too long to add “authors/publishers/readers piling on reviewers” as behaviour I’d see as unethical in the extreme. There’s not much I can say about publishers behaving like that, except to say I’m sure mine haven’t on my behalf (look at my Amazon reviews!). If I thought my publisher, friends or fans were harassing a reviewer, I’d be pretty pissed off.
August 27th, 2012 at 7:44 pm
It’s the visibility aspect that matters, as James, Luca and others have said. I think most readers know to take glowing reviews with a pinch of salt, just as we can all usually tell when a viciously negative review has been written out of spite. But if, as I understand it, Amazon’s system “rewards” highly-rated books by bringing them to the attention of yet more readers, then it hardly matters whether those readers believe every word of the reviews. The key advantage is the extra marketing, the extra visibility, that’s gone to these books, while being denied to other titles with fewer, albeit genuine reviews. You have a system that offers unscrupulous authors a strong motive to commit fraud, so it seems to me that pressure should be put on Amazon and other retailers to look at this issue. At the same time, I think a code of conduct would be an excellent idea, because frankly I doubt whether Amazon, for one, care about the integrity of the reviewing system any more than they care about the content of their self-published titles (see Jake Drake).
On the subject of encouraging reviews from enthusiastic readers, I think that’s a tricky one. Sophie Bane (comment 3) really lifted my spirits, but when I get nice emails or comments on Facebook, I still can’t bring myself to ask those readers to consider putting a review on Amazon, for all the reasons Sophie Hannah has given. So perhaps that code of conduct, which could be displayed by authors, agents and publishers on their websites, could include a general call to readers to help make the system fairer and more reliable: if you love an author’s work, don’t wait until they produce a dud before you post a review!
August 27th, 2012 at 8:07 pm
I don’t generally trust Amazon reviews, but plenty do – that’s why Leather and Locke do this. Locke paid 6,000 dollars for 300 reviews, and he may well have used other services than the one mentioned in the NYT article. I think if you look at Leather’s books on Amazon it’s clear how it works. Here’s one: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Alphabet-Asian-erotic-short-ebook/dp/B0085BEJMG/ref=pd_sim_kinc_5
There’s a combination of factors at work selling the book. I t looks like a professional cover. It’s just 98p. The author is well-known. It’s erotica. Now if all that floated your boat for an impulse buy on the Kindle you just got as a birthday present, you might be put off if there were no reviews or there was an average rating of 2 or 3 stars. That would give most people the impression that, even at that price, it was a bit of a dud and a waste of time. Instead, it has eight five-star reviews. Now, even before Leather’s admission I would look at these pretty sceptically and suspect some are fake. But it’s not that most people are fools. Most people don’t think that far ahead. Most people presume it’s a bestselling Kindle book because people liked it. At that price, they don’t even read through each review. Locke talks about this in the NYT piece: you need momentum. In Locke’s case it was also much subtler than Leather’s sledgehammer approach: hundreds of reviews, written by people paid to take some care over them, operating from verfified Amazon accounts marking the reviews as from someone who purchased them.
I think it’s a bit dodgy to ask friends and family to review your books on Amazon, too. But this is a world away from that, surely. And I don’t think we can stop the mass of readers from trusting reviews in general. They might be a little wary, but I doubt most people suspect this sort of stuff.
As pointed out, it’s also just one issue here, with private Facebook groups of authors trading reviews, authors paying to manipulate Wikipedia, and so on. But clearly this sort of behaviour is now rampant online. I guess we can all throw up our hands and say it’s inevitable and there have always been conmen, but I also think there are actions that can be taken. I like Stuart’s idea of an open letter, and have suggested a few other options as well.
August 27th, 2012 at 8:25 pm
James -
Its not about blaming the victim. Its about being realistic. I am saying the system is poor design that plays to abusing the gullible. Like many systems we design, we should change the system if it produces bad results, instead of forever hacking at the symptoms.
I do appreciate that this is upsetting for people. I just don’t find it really surprising.
Same happens with ‘viral videos’ in case you didn’t know. Most viral videos these days are actually PR hyped, not like in the early days of the web.
Just the promo budget for the trailer for Prometheus cost £3,000,000 to get the hit count to enough to make it count as ‘viral’ within days and be on front page of youtube. You hire a ‘seeding companies’ that spam a million blogs, create fake viewers etc etc. Give them enough money and you have a viral hit. Then everyone thinks they should see it at the cinema because millions saw the trailer.
This is the way commercial interests are gradually taking over the web. By throwing money to create fake social proof. I don’t like it either. Its a big problem.
Unfortunately, then smaller people, think they need to go fake to compete at all. Sad.
August 27th, 2012 at 9:05 pm
V interesting post and discussion. I am a reader, enthusiast and occasional blog reviewer. Up to now I don’t post reviews on amazon at all, and only post star rating on good reads, but will now consider posting v brief reviews on amazon as well. I have tended to shy away from online reviews, as I don’t have the time or energy to do a full review on all the books I read, but sounds like I need to do my bit to “reclaim the internet”. As a reader I have very little interest in amazon book ratings, I am far more interested in certain trusted bloggers’ opinion and CWA/Edgar shortlists. Some of the books I am interested in are too off the beaten track to have any amazon reviews!
August 27th, 2012 at 9:12 pm
‘Like many systems we design, we should change the system if it produces bad results, instead of forever hacking at the symptoms.’
I think, John, that most of us are discussing how to change the system.
August 27th, 2012 at 9:37 pm
John – maybe “blame” was too strong a word, for which I apologise. But there has been a theme in some people’s comments that it is the readers actions/attitudes that should change, and not those of the scammers.
I just don’t see how some of the examples given can be explained away as “symptoms” of a busted system – they were actions taken deliberately by individuals for monetary gain, in the full knowledge they were dishonest. Therefore I see no problem in pointing a finger at them & calling them dishonest (obviously this isn’t incompatible with also recognising the system is flawed & trying to find ways to better it). Even if such finger pointing doesn’t stop a single one of these people, it may go some small way to contradicting the poisoness claim that “everyone does it”. The idea of domeone’s above, the open letter signed by authors all saying “I don’t do this”, would hopefully have a similar detoxifying effect.
I’m sure you’re right that many of these types of practices started in businesses with bigger PR budgets than publishing; I wasn’t aware if the specific Prometheus example but it makes sense.
August 27th, 2012 at 10:35 pm
An angry and excellent response to the news about John Locke: http://newwaveauthors.com/Blog.aspx?PostID=101&Title=If-Opinions-Are-Like-Assholes–John-Locke%27s-Got-300-of-Them
August 27th, 2012 at 10:41 pm
[Removed for more digs at mental health. Seriously, Paul - you're not welcome here. Deal with it]
August 27th, 2012 at 10:42 pm
You are right to call people out and they are obvious scum bags but the amazon review system is simply flawed.
I recommend “Liars and Outliers” which includes good discussion on which ways reputation systems become prone to being gamed when they scale if you want to think out a strategy that might work better. It is a security book, but very simple language, not for a technical audience. Its about systems and gaming them, what kind of stuff works and what doesn’t.
http://www.schneier.com/book-lo.html
The reality is some types of system scale and others don’t. Unfortunately, a review system when there is little effort involved for the ‘reviewer’ can never work at large scale because the small effort and cost required to fake makes it vulnerable to attack.
Amazon don’t want to admit their review system is actually a form of security theatre (security that only looks like it is but doesn’t work).
Don’t assume that Amazon could moderate the reviews either as that would become prone to scamming much like copyright trolling companies have become a big problem attacking material for dubious secondary purposes that have nothing to do with the material itself. The number of fake and mistaken take downs is growing exponentially.
If I was you, I would write an open letter on why their review system should be shut down as it can never be fit for purpose.
August 27th, 2012 at 11:11 pm
Quick note – Paul’s gone for now. In the unlikely event he shows up again, I’d ask everyone just to ignore him, and then I’ll delete him when I notice. It seems like a good discussion going on, and I don’t want someone like him to spoil it.
August 28th, 2012 at 6:42 am
Thanks for that link John – on first glance at the reviews that book seems to hit the nail on the head: how do you maintain the trust any society or group needs to function now technology has made it so easy & risk-free to be untrustworthy? (That is, if i beleive those reviews..!) I’m going to download the sample & see if it’s my kind of thing.
UK link for others interested: http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/B006ORT3KG/ref=mp_s_a_2?pi=50×75&qid=1346132228&sr=8-2
Cheers
August 28th, 2012 at 7:56 am
There are so many superb points here that I couldn’t possibly improve upon them. Suffice to say that I am a reader, I don’t write novels but I do write Amazon reviews. I know a few writers and consider some of them friends, but still I have powerful ethics. I couldn’t bring myself to write a glowing review I didn’t believe in 100%. Just in case I have reviewed books by anyone reading this and they were wondering.
August 28th, 2012 at 12:02 pm
James – I have read the book as part of researching a film I am making on security/surveillance/privacy/censorship issues. It is a great primer of security/trust, game theory and unreasonable expectations. Very clearly written for the non technical.
It is not so much that technology makes it easy to cheat, its the way you design a system, and unreasonable expectations of what it can realistically achieve. A lot of systems which give the apparent image of trust, don’t actually work in practice, they are just theatre that sells an image of trust. For instance, adding security guards to a shop often increases shoplifting, even though you might expect the opposite.
As far as I can tell, the amazon review system is one that could never work on scale without being astroturfed to death. There is just too much money thrown at PR these days. However, it would work in a smaller scale say a village where reviewers are likely bump into each other occasionally, so it would police itself. It would also be impractical for amazon to police it as false accusations create another problem.
So much of the web now is illusory trust systems captured by PR money. My rule of thumb is if you are somewhere trying to sell you something, at least 30-40% is going to be astroturfed, maybe more.
Online reputation systems can work at scale, but only when the effort required for each entry is great. Amazon wouldn’t do this for reviews because then no one would bother writing reviews. Therefore they are stuck in terms of fixing it, so it is a just nonsense system that should be dumped. It just creates false trust for the gullible.
August 28th, 2012 at 12:09 pm
On the issue of whether it’s immoral or unethical for new authors to ask friends, family or acquaintances to write reviews, I think it’s important to remember that for most new authors, their first ever readers will be their friends, family and acquaintances. We all know how important reviews are, especially when you are just beginning and even more so if you don’t have any sort of professional marketing behind you because you are either self-published or your publisher has not prioritised you. So I see absolutely nothing wrong with asking my first readers, who will be friends, to leave reviews if they wish to. I also see nothing wrong with asking my readers on, say, Twitter, who are more likely to be people I don’t know (my brain would explode if I had to maintain 4,663 friends), to leave a review if they want to. Many people who aren’t in publishing don’t realise how much power an Amazon review has, even if it’s a mediocre one, and there’s nothing wrong with letting people know that honest reviews are valued.
However, there are ways and means. It would be unethical to pressure someone into leaving a review, intimate that the review had to be 5*, or ask someone to leave a review who hadn’t read the book or had read it under duress. That’s not on, but it’s also not something that can possibly be as widespread or have as much of an impact as buying reviews does, simply because most people just don’t have enough family and friends to get 300 biased reviews.
But if we threw out all reviews from friends, family and acquaintances, pretty much all new authors would be stripped of all their earliest reviews and they’d be left to rot in a reviewless catch-22: no reviews = no visibility = no reviews.
So we need a bit of balance and not to get into a witch hunt against any reviewer ever who might possibly have ever had some sort of relationship with the author. What matter is that people who leave reviews are honest and that authors who ask for reviews stress that they be both voluntary and genuine.
August 28th, 2012 at 12:30 pm
“But if we threw out all reviews from friends, family and acquaintances, pretty much all new authors would be stripped of all their earliest reviews and they’d be left to rot in a reviewless catch-22: no reviews = no visibility = no reviews.”
I would gently point out that some of us started out that way. It was a long process. I didn’t risk writing full-time until eleven years after my first professional publication (nine after my first book publication) and it took me a further five years to be able to earn a living as a writer (having sold three novels since I gave up the day job, and a lot of shorter work). If my wife hadn’t been teaching we would never have been able to survive financially. May I suggest that the new methods of publishing have given rise to unreasonable expectations of precipitate success?
August 28th, 2012 at 12:32 pm
Suw – yes, I would agree with every word of that.
August 28th, 2012 at 1:21 pm
People can take about the ethics of what people should and shouldn’t do with reviews as much as you want.
It will never fix the vulnerability of a flawed design that amazon has (illusory trust). It will still be gamed.
The ethics that people really need to apply pressure to (which is the bigger picture and applies to more than just amazon, it is a huge problem in general), is should companies promote systems that are actually illusory trust systems as if they could ever function correctly? They benefit most from this illusion after all.
August 28th, 2012 at 1:44 pm
I agree 100% with John’s comments (comment no. 88) – every word of it.
August 28th, 2012 at 1:46 pm
And I agree with John’s comment no. 92 100% as well!
August 28th, 2012 at 1:57 pm
Ramsey, just because something was a certain way, that doesn’t mean it has to stay that way.
For what it’s worth, I think that self-publishing encourages people to publish before their books, and indeed they themselves are ready and have said precisely that on Forbes. A few people took exception because they felt I was in some way attempting to interfere with their attempts to make money, which shows you just how deluded people can get. And I agree that many people, goaded by certain loud-mouthed jerks, have an unrealistic expectation of how their career will unfold.
But that doesn’t mean that we ought to be trying to replicate how things were. Languishing in obscurity sucked as much back then as it does now. Given the opportunity and tools to grow a genuine community of readers, there’s no reason why an author shouldn’t do their best to put obscurity behind them. That’s not the issue here. The problem is people behaving in unethical ways in order to ‘win at all costs’, to steal a phrase from the current Lance Armstrong doping story.
August 28th, 2012 at 2:33 pm
Yes, John – thank you for your comments. They’re informative and much appreciated.
Suw – I don’t really have much of a problem with friends reviewing, or asking them to (although I would feel awkward doing that personally). Where the waters get slightly more muddy is when the reviewer is going to receive some tangible benefit from the review that is not being disclosed. In the case of authors using sock puppets, that’s obvious enough. The shilling I’m thinking of is where you have authors who review each other – a review for a review, at its most basic level. Back scratching. That would bring the review into question for me, in a way that a friend’s review would not. But is that a gut reaction rather than a sensible one? Hmmm.
August 28th, 2012 at 3:43 pm
Steve, I think it’s really interesting that you say you don’t have a problem with friends being asked to review, though you’d feel awkward doing it personally. I’m willing to bet that the reason you’d feel awkward doing it personally is that you feel it to be, well, if not wrong then at least not the kind of behaviour you wish to engage in. It feels like overstepping a mark, doesn’t it? Because it is. If you ask someone – anyone – to review your book on an internet forum, you’re putting them in a position where they might feel churlish saying no, and so they incur a chore thanks to you. The fact that many authors willingly overstep this mark means that those authors (like you, Steve) with respectful and appropriate boundaries might suffer in comparison with more cheeky authors when it comes to number of online reviews. This hardly seems fair – which is why I agree with John (btw, who is the mysterious John who’s right about everything?) that whole system is doomed to remain corrupt. I’m NOT saying this doesn’t matter or I don’t care; I think I’m saying that I almost find the open ‘Hey, I invent sock-puppets as a marketing strategy’ approach less worrying (because less self-deceptive – just a very libertarian law-ignoring business model!) than the ‘I’ve asked my ten best friends to review the book online, but they’re all genuine reviews, honest – my ten best mates really loved the book!’ THAT I find seriously self-deceiving and scary. Again, to be clear: I’m not saying sockpuppeting or buying reviews is right, merely that I wonder if it’s possible to corrupt an already-totally-worthless system.
August 28th, 2012 at 3:56 pm
Sophie – basically, I’d feel it was bad manners to impose on a friend by asking. You put them in a difficult position. So it’s more a personal objection. I don’t think a blanket statement like Stuart mentions above – “if you feel like leaving a review, it might help” – is problematic. I wouldn’t do it, but I feel awkward asking my friends for a lift in the car. Plus, it wouldn’t work.
The issue is whether the review is compromised. Is it honest? Is it impartial? I think “I’m friends with the author” is a meaningful caveat, but far less so than “the author is giving me money to write this” or “I am the author”. Like Suw says, reviews have to come from someone, but I think it’s different when we’re talking about an undisclosed financial incentive for the review.
August 28th, 2012 at 7:35 pm
Suw has written a piece here – http://www.forbes.com/sites/suwcharmananderson/2012/08/28/fake-reviews-amazons-rotten-core/ – and it is very good. I’m not just saying that because it contains some me.
August 28th, 2012 at 9:35 pm
I think back-scratching reviews are really veering into unethical territory because there’s an expectation of a good review there: I’ll write a nice one for you if you write a nice one for me. And that’s not on. However a general Tweet or email saying ‘Hey, if you liked it, please feel free to leave a review’ is something completely different because it doesn’t set up a trade and it doesn’t create an expectation. Equally, asking a friend to read and review sets up an expectation, mentioning to a friend who’s read a book already that if they fancied leaving a review then that’d be helpful does not.
And I think therein lies the issue: there’s a whole chunk of ‘it’s not what you do it’s how you do it’ that plays into the nuances of these situations. Some things are flat out wrong, some things are clearly not wrong, and some things become wrong if they are done the wrong way.
But I seriously question the idea that friend reviews are more damaging and corrupting than sockpuppetry. Firstly, if we’re talking genuine friend reviews written honestly then I don’t see them as a problem at all. If they are coerced, then the act of coercion is a problem and the review is flawed. But what we have to look at in terms of damage to the wider reviewing system is scale. Someone buying 300 reviews or engaging in widespread sockpuppetry with several (dozens? who knows?!) fake accounts and a network of pliable fans is far worse because it scales. Ultimately, getting your friends to write a nice review just doesn’t scale because most people just don’t have 300 friends, let alone 300 friends willing to write a review for you. Buying fake reviews scales so long as you have money and if you think you’re going to make that money back and see it as an investment rather than a risk, well, that’s a whole different ballgame.
As for saying that the system is already too corrupt, well, the NYT piece had an estimate that one third of all consumer reviews are fake, which is a scary number. But given the influence that reviews have on Amazon’s ranking algorithms we just can’t chuck in the towel and give up. We have to make a fuss, because this is people’s livings that are being toyed with by the cheaters, the griefers and the trolls. Not just self-publishers, but traditionally published writers too, it affects all of us the same. People whose books have been griefed will find their sales suffering and there’s basically nothing they can do. Meanwhile, the frauds get a massive bump in sales for a modest investment in fake reviews.
This is not something I think we should sit back and watch, no matter how cynical we might feel about the whole thing.
August 28th, 2012 at 9:35 pm
Thanks for posting the link, Steve!
August 28th, 2012 at 10:04 pm
Responding to Suw’s excellent comments… from a consumer’s point of view, I don’t want to sit back and watch the demise of user reviews either. I still find them useful, even taking into account the sharp practices that I now know are carried out by some. I don’t want to go back to the days before they were so readily available, and I don’t see any easy-to-access alternative to them at the present time.
I’m perfectly capable of reading each review and judging it by its own merit. I long suspected that some of the 1* that appear at the tail end of a lot of positive reviews were a bit of skulduggery to undermine the product, without ever imagining that they might actually be bought and paid for by a competitor. However, I still believe that a a well written, comprehensive review can still be a useful tool in finding out more about something before you buy it, but that you just have to weigh them all up as a whole, rather than just taking them all at face value.
I’m hardly taken aback by the ‘revelation’ that friends and family occasionally chip in to comment. I always suspected this, but agree with Suw that the scale of this is unlikely to be too enormous, and in all likelihood, most of these reflect the review writer’s opinion to some degree, even if it is likely to be rather biased.
And even the mutual back-scratching by authors… well if done on a large scale, it could be a bit worrying, but I agree again with Suw that it pales in comparison (in my opinion of course) compared to the damage done by sock puppetry and buying and selling of reviews in large numbers.
I’m still convinced that many reviews are genuine… and that you can usually tell just by reading them. And I have made a personal commitment to do my bit in future, by following through with reviews myself from now on, for what it’s worth.
August 29th, 2012 at 10:45 pm
Not only am I a reviewer and blogger but I am also a reader. I have to say that I agree with a lot of the comments that have been stated already. Putting my reviewer hat on I am bloody annoyed with what is currently going on. There are some of us that take our reviewing seriously. I do it because I love the genre and I do not expect or wish to be paid for it. I would be horrified if someone offered me money to write a review. I also think that it is wrong as I feel that the onus would then be on you to write a positive review whether or not the book is good. I want to be able to write a review whether good or bad without the feeling that someone is looking over my shoulder to make sure that I am writing a positive review.
It has taken me a long time to build up my reputation and I don’t want it tarnished by the few people who are currently giving reviewers a bad name. Those authors that involve themselves in sock puppetry are dishonest and are not being fair on their fellow authors who do not involve themselves in this despicable behaviour. Furthermore, may be they should not be writing at all if they are unwilling to allow their work to stand on its own merits. As to those authors that encourage their “fans” to post 1* reviews about other authors books that is just as bad and it is not acceptable. They should not be encouraging such bad behaviour.
Rather sadly, I am not sure that this is going to change. It is not worth Amazon’s while to do so. An open letter from The Society of Authors is a start, but it is also about author ethics. I can count on one hand the number of reviews I have posted to Amazon. I don’t as a matter of course. If a review of mine has gone on to Amazon then it has been posted on to the website where I generally do my reviews first.
Trying to find a solution is going to be difficult but surely the status quo can not continue.
August 30th, 2012 at 8:06 pm
Can I ask why it is deemed not to be in Amazon’s interest to address the issue (as mentioned by Ayo and others in this blog)? I guess what I’m asking is what is meant by that assertion. Is it not in their interests because it’s not a worthwhile exercise for them (ie the cost in time/resources)… or that they in some way have an actual vested interest in the business of paying for reviews… or for any other reason?
It would be good to get some kind of clarity regarding that issue.
August 31st, 2012 at 3:12 pm
Valerie – Amazon could not careless. It is not a worthwhile exercise for them. As far as they are concerned they are there to provide a service and that is to sell books etc. IMHO they do not care about ethics. As long as it does not affect what they sell then they are not going to do much about it. They are too big a company to be bothered with what they undoubtedly see is a trivial matter. They see it as people being entitled to voice their own opinion/ creativity without be censured. Very sad indeed. But what do you expect from such a company?
September 3rd, 2012 at 1:20 pm
I’m finding this whole issue of ‘sock puppetry’ fascinating on so many levels (I’m also interested in how much traction its getting in the press today, now that Jeremy Duns has ‘outed’ RJ Ellory).
The reason for my fascination is that I’m a long standing reviewer on Amazon and have managed, somehow, to get into the ‘top 100 reviewers’ on that website (mostly due to a well received review of The Times for the Kindle). As a regular visitor to the Amazon reader reviews I’ve always wondered how much gaming of the system there was, either by publishers or authors looking to ‘big-up’ or denigrate particular works. I’ve always known that it went on, with too many examples of debut novels suddenly getting dozens of five star reviews from people who have never reviewed before or since for it to be coincidental. I just wasn’t sure how extensive it was. Thanks for providing revealing a bit more of the extent of this practise and the sorts of people who will perpetrate it.
I’d also like to make a couple of points. Apologies if they’ve been made before and for going on a bit. The first is regarding the comments that Amazon (and other on-line stores) don’t care about reviews. Believe me when I say that they do; otherwise why would they run the Amazon Vine Programme.
For those not aware of Vine, it is a programme run by Amazon that seeks to increase the number of reader/user reviews on the site. Members of the Programme are invited to join (you can’t apply). Once you’re a member you receive two e-mails per month from Amazon. On those e-mails are listed products that you can select to review. The products are then sent to you, entirely free of charge. There is no overall limit to the number or products you can request, but you have to have submitted reviews to Amazon for a certain proportion of previously received products before asking for new ones.
The programme is run, separately, in both the UK and US. Reviews posted under its auspices are highlighted in green on the site. As a long standing member of the programme I have reviewed 83 products to-date, most of which are books but also include some electronics and software. Many of the books I receive via Vine are pre-publication marketing copies issued by publishers to drum up interest in a new novel and/or author (so publishers are trying to game the system too). I’ve never had a review rejected by the programme; even very negative ones.
If Amazon weren’t interested in reviews they wouldn’t bother running this sort of programme. Considering that everything is sent via first class mail or courier free of charge it costs them money to administer. Of course their interest is, understandably, to try and drive sales, so unless the ‘sock puppet’ issue begins to do that they’re unlikely to intervene.
My second point is also Amazon-centric, but relates to positive and negative review ratings. As I’m sure everyone knows, it is possible on Amazon to rate a review as helpful or unhelpful. To my mind, gaming of this system is as bad as sock puppet reviews, is far easier to achieve and can have as much of an impact on how books are viewed by potential buyers.
Amazon’s system highlights reviews based on how well received they are by visitor to the site. Whether the reviews are positive or negative, the ones that visitors found most ‘helpful’ get highlighted at the bottom of a product page, whilst reviews not rated as helpful or not rated at all tend to get bumped to a sidebar.
It takes only one click to ‘rate’ a review. Admittedly you have to be logged into Amazon to do it, so you can only rate a review once, but for anyone running sock puppets or a network of helpers it wouldn’t be too difficult to rate a review multiple times and it would be quicker to do that than submit your own review(s). Its also a great way to big-up either a positive or a negative review (depending on whether you want to support or denigrate a book) or suppress a review you don’t agree with.
This has happened to me a couple of times, with negative reviews I have written suddenly receiving, usually within a very short time frame, dozens of
negative ratings. The result is my review gets pushed down into the depths of the review listings. Simultaneously more positive reviews get dozens of ‘helpful’ ratings, boosting them into the highlighted reviews section and making the book in question look better.
Now personally I couldn’t care less if my review is buried way down the list. Hell, most of my reviews never get rated at all or only once or twice. However, I do resent people deliberately manipulating the system this way to try and suppress opinion, since it goes against the purpose of open forums and reader reviews.
September 3rd, 2012 at 1:57 pm
I found this article which covers the same points quite well, even though obviously from the US.
http://mikecooperbooks.com/2012/04/why-amazon-reviews-are-not-helpful/