unethical authors and fake reviews > Likes and Comments

Check this out guys and tell me what you think.

zonalert.wordpress.com/.../the-fiverr......
just to follow on from above article https://zonalert.wordpress.com/tag/me... I think it's so sad that authors have stooped to harassment and fraud to attempt to get their books out to the public. It's like they're only writing for the money, they've taken the soul out of the craft.

Another one guys , https://zonalert.wordpress.com/tag/hu...

I know Melissa Foster and have to say she is the most ethical person I know. Her awards are genuine, as are her sales. To top it off, she spends a great deal of her time helping other authors to succeed—not by teaching them to buy reviews, but by providing real information about marketing. As for the others, JA Konrath and Amanda Hocking? C'mon. I think this blogger is crazy jealous about the successes of those far more successful than (s)he is. Also, anonymity does not serve him/her well. This is someone skulking in the shadows while slandering others.

I don't know about these specific authors (have no time to research it properly), but I do know that there is considerable fraud in ratings and rankings. There are books that were propelled to the best-seller lists by the author going out with sock puppet accounts and buying copies. This pollutes the pool for everybody, folks. It's like counterfeiting money. Once the ratings, taggings and rankings are debased enough, they're worthless.

Oh, yes! Melissa won five Readers' Favorite Awards this year. These don't happen if the writing's deficient.

This kind of topic attracts a lot of trolls who like to slander SP authors, painting them all with the same brush, so before they jump in, I'll voice my opinion. I think buying, selling, or trading reviews is unethical. I don't do it, and it was a long time before I got any reviews at all for my books, but when I did they were pretty decent reviews (most of them), and honest. I'm not sure how an author can get long-term success by putting out an inferior product and then paying people to rave about it. It seems that readers would find out eventually, and start posting their own reviews, which can and should be pretty scathing.

Short-term cheating to boost ego and maybe gather up a few dollars will hurt both ego and income in the long run. At least I keep telling myself that. But I still see bad books that I panned long ago outselling the good ones with honest reviews. I think that with the latter you have to build a following, and I'm not sure most people are patient enough for that.

I agree with Brenda, Now I'm not saying that Melissa or any other authors mentioned in the articles did fake their reviews. But I'm saddened by the fact that authors out there feel the need to represent their books in a fraudulent manner.Also, like Brenda said, the ratings become meaningless if the authors demean both them selves and their books by being fraudulent. Buying reviews defeats the whole point of a rating system both for the author and the reader. On one hand, the author is getting short changed because they're not receiving honest and constructive criticism,the reader also doesn't get a balanced view of the book. Basically, if an author buys fake reviews everybody loses.

Ken wrote: "This kind of topic attracts a lot of trolls who like to slander SP authors, painting them all with the same brush, so before they jump in, I'll voice my opinion. I think buying, selling, or tradin..."

Well said.

Anybody know how to get gr to stop emailing me when ever somebody comments on this thread? I just want it on notifications.

RE: Hugh Howey - I've heard Wool is quite good actually. That's per word of mouth, not reviews or rankings. The way he apparently chopped up his novel at one point is perhaps atypical, but a reasonable selling strategy to try. I'm not going to do as the article suggests and google "hugh howey fraud" because that seems mostly like a way to get a whole lot of biased information. A little casual research reveals he's a bit of an Amazon shill, but oh well.

I guess I don't see the point in worrying about it. I personally pay little attention to reviews/rankings and rely on word of mouth/blogs I'm familiar with to get the latest on various books. If a book is not good, word will get out about that no matter what Amazon reviews or whatever say. This blogger's posts seem a little mean spirited, like Hugh personally was out to get him or her. I donno.

Robin wrote: "Anybody know how to get gr to stop emailing me when ever somebody comments on this thread? I just want it on notifications."

Robin, there is a link to edit your e-mail preferences at the bottom of the notification e-mails.

It's my understanding from reading the blog and other articles that it's a bunch of people who've investigated both Foster and Howey.

Samantha wrote: "Robin wrote: "Anybody know how to get gr to stop emailing me when ever somebody comments on this thread? I just want it on notifications."

Robin, there is a link to edit your e-mail preferences at..."

Cheers.

While I didn't read the article in depth - I know for a FACT that GR and amazon have a horrible fake review issue.

It's pretty atrocious and they are well aware of it.

It's not just Self published authors - tradpub is doing it, too - but SPAs seem to do it a bit more (or are more easy to catch).

There used to be a member at GR who consistently located and reported Fake Fivver reviews/reviewers to both GR and Amazon. Amazon refused to do anything about it. GR did a few things about it. But - since reviews sells books - that member was eventually banned from GR for publicly reporting fake reviews.

MrsJoseph wrote: "While I didn't read the article in depth - I know for a FACT that GR and amazon have a horrible fake review issue.

It's pretty atrocious and they are well aware of it.

It's not just Self publishe..."

Really GR banned them for locating and reporting FAKE REVIEWS! Unbelievable, the power of the customer and consumerism is once again demonstrated.

Robin wrote: "Really GR banned them for locating and reporting FAKE REVIEWS! Unbelievable, the power of the customer and consumerism is once again demonstrated. "

Well, they never said that was the reason...but I was her friend and know she was not violating TOS. Except that she reported fake reviews and/or questioned PR company reviews in Feedback.

Face it. We live in a world where marketing hype trumps quality of product nearly every time. Personally, I didn't think Veronica Roth's Divergent series was that well written; but it came out of nowhere, hit best-seller status, and now we have one movie out and two more (at least) on the way. I think David Weber's earlier work was good, but now appears to be more of an effort to just fill pages with words; yet he continues to produce best-sellers, partly because of a built-up fan following for his "Honorverse" and partly because of Baen's aggressive marketing.

I think my own books are good, and I have at least one legitimate award (2014 Darrell Award for Best SF Novel) to back up my opinion; but I'm an SPA, don't buy reviews, don't have contacts in the publishing world, and don't know very much about marketing. I've been approached by some offering shady book promotion schemes (and Facebook keeps nudging me to buy their advertising), but too many of these either look like scams or just rub my sense of ethics the wrong way, so I avoid them.

As a result... well, let's just say it's a good thing I have other sources of income, because my books haven't even paid back the cost of publishing yet.

Mark Levine, CEO of Hillcrest Media, said it best in his book The Fine Print of Self-Publishing. He said "If you have any money left at all after getting your book published, spend it on marketing."

Ethical Marketing? Well... maybe that's an oxymoron (like "honest politician") since the whole point of marketing is to make the product look bigger, better, and more desirable to the consumer than it really is. Are paid-for book reviews any worse than glowing product reviews in magazines where the product manufacturer is a major source of the magazine's advertising revenue?

Not saying it's right, mind you... just recognizing a fact of life in the world today.

But then, what do I know. I'm just an old reactionary who thinks Facebook and Twitter are empty substitutes for real social interaction. ;-)

I suppose due to the proliferation of the internet and online book forums, it's exceedingly difficult to sort out the real reviews from the chaff, but nevertheless one still shouldn't pay for positive reviews. As a reader it's disheartening to come across authors who blatantly take advantage of readers by misrepresenting their books.

John wrote: "Face it. We live in a world where marketing hype trumps quality of product nearly every time. Personally, I didn't think Veronica Roth's Divergent series was that well written; but it came out of n..."

Sadly, I have to agree with you on marketing superseding quality. Also, I concur with the drop in standards in terms of Weber's Honor Harrington series. I could bearly put down the first three books in the series, but as the world grew it became less about Honor and more about Weber showcasing every aspect of his world. While Honor is still present, it seems like rather than the vibrant splash of colour she should be, she's become one of many colours in a multitude of rainbows.Pardon the bad analogy. For those who enjoyed Honor Harrington and the accompanying series of books, I'm happy for you, sadly after book 7 I was turned off the series. I really wanted to enjoy the books, but alas Mr Weber, Jack Campbell's lost Fleat series and Tanya Huff's Confederation series came along.

Personally, I have nothing negative to say about authors I don't know.

I also take every review and award with a grain of salt. Maybe a salt shaker. I don't put any stock in praise I read on the internet, unless it's from one of my idols. Looking at you, Gene.

I am certainly aware that fraud and trickery can be an avenue to notoriety, but it isn't one I'd want to trifle with, because it is attempting to pull the wool over the eyes of one's peers and customers. That never ends well.

I don't read my own reviews. By the time the book appears, it is too late -- sometimes years too late. It will have no effect on anything I write or do.

Brenda wrote: "I don't read my own reviews. By the time the book appears, it is too late -- sometimes years too late. It will have no effect on anything I write or do."

Neither do I. Of course, in my case, it wouldn't take me very long to read them. ;-)

Besides, about half of mine would be written by friends to whom I gave free copies of the books. I didn't ask them to write reviews, and I appreciate the fact that they did; but because they are friends, I am also aware that those reviews probably give more praise than I deserve.

And here I was hoping my constructive criticism was helpful to the authors :(

Evgeny wrote: "And here I was hoping my constructive criticism was helpful to the authors :("

Unfortunately, most of the criticism (or for that matter the praise) that I've gotten has not been very constructive. If I do find specific criticism of either style or story, I'll take it to heart; but I am also aware that one person's trash is another's treasure. :-)

I'm not sure how to take something like this written from an anonymous blogger. If I missed the author's name, I'm sorry.

I can say that I bought Wool and really enjoyed it. The only reason it came to my attention is because I was looking for Amazon Direct Print indy authors who succeeded.

I've read that, it's old, and I've seen it pretty much de-bunked (though I can't recall where because it's been a while). The anonymity bothers me. If someone has accusations to make, and they're sure of the truth of what they're saying, they should have the guts to put their name to it.

I've read Wool. It's excellent. It's broken up the way it is because it originally was just the first novella, and then Howey wrote more of it because of reader demand.

Evgeny: Authors are widely advised to NOT read the reviews of their books, in order to prevent the kinds of flame wars and meltdowns that can happen when they do and then want to argue with the reviewers.

Most of the self-published authors I know (I'm one as well) only want honest reviews and know better than to compromise their integrity with fake reviews.

Yeah, I'm also very leery of this blogger's hit pieces. The author is anonymous and there is no hard evidence given, only accusations and claims of research and evidence. There's nothing solid to stand on.

I read all my reviews (all 6 of them spread over 5 products). I keep expecting a few 1 and 2 star reviews that I can ignore. Responding to any of them would be a bad idea. And reviews aren't really anything helpful for an author (aside from making a book appear higher in amazon searches--useful for marketing, not for improving your writing). Critical advice/help should come during the editing and beta reader stage, not post-publication. Reviews should be more helpful for readers, but we all know how unreliable even honest reviews can be. I mean, some people actually like Coldplay. Doesn't mean I do/will.

As for Wool (technically a novelette by word count), I think it's obvious from part one that Kyra has it correct: it was written as a standalone. I didn't think it was anything special. Read my GR review of it for details. It was a simple story, competently written, but it broke no new ground and wasn't particularly imaginative in how it dealt with the story's main trope (which is an old one, BTW). It wasn't nearly as good as the hype would make it seem.

But word of mouth is a powerful motivator.

Wow... I know that I've heard of this practice (mostly in past tense), but this blogger sounds like he/she has a bone to pick. There's some well known names on that list, including Brandon Sanderson and Hugh Howey. While I haven't read Brandon Sanderson's stuff, Hugh Howey is a top notch writer.

Traditional published books always seem to have rave reviews before the release date. I don't know what is involved in getting those. But honestly, as a reader, if the reviews drew my attention to a book that I ended up loving... then I don't really care.

I read a series by this one self-pub author who had a reviewer trash her first book early on. Basically, she hated it. The reviewer has stuck with the author through the subsequent 4 new releases, selling publishing rights to big publisher, getting a book award, and over 1000+ reviews. For every positive review, the reviewer clicks that the review is unhelpful, and you can find comments scattered throughout, telling people that the author paid for all those reviews... And because I defended the author when I was a reader, the reviewer followed me into authorhood, and says the same about my books. Yay.

Micah wrote: As for Wool (technically a novelette by word count), I think it's obvious from part one that Kyra has it correct: it was written as a standalone. I didn't think it was anything special. Read my GR review of it for details.

Micah, I sort of think that the paid review accusation is tossed around way more than it actually happens when a reader just didn't like a book that others liked. Which is mind-boggling to me. It's like some people feel that if they don't like a book then there is just no way someone else will.

Personally, I do not understand the hype around 50 Shades of Grey (sorry to those who like it...just my personal opinion) but at the same time, I certainly don't think E.L James paid 600,000 people to give her book a positive review.

And you're definitely right, word of mouth is still the best way for books to spread.

I agree with everyone who's questioning the blogger's objectivity and balanced arguments. As a potential university law student, I tried to look for corroborating data, but in the end I really couldn't be bothered slogging through endless blog posts and google search results. Still makes me sad that although the authors in the list may not necessarily have bought fake reviews, there are certainly people out there who do buy the aforementioned fraudulent reviews. By the way, Jay Allan who's a self published author of a series of military science fiction novels which I greatly enjoy, is mentioned on a list of authors who bought fake reviews. In one of his blog posts he unequivocally made it clear that he had no clue what the hell the blogger was talking about. I think it's safe to say that I believe Jay rather than the annonimous blogger. For one thing, Jay's sense of fairness and right and wrong clearly comes across in his writing. However, despite my scepticism about the validity of the blogger's information, I do still take onboard the point he's trying to make, undoubtedly even if it's only a minority some authors out there will misrepresent their books to the public. For those who've read the post, I suggest viewing the material in a sceptical light. This post is probably riddled with misspellings and grammatical errors, but I'm in a hurry so appologies in advance for any mistakes you guys spot.

The fact is that if you were an author buying positive reviews you would never admit such a thing. From the other direction, the people you were paying for the reviews might tell -- but they'd be fools to do so, since they'd be cutting the throat of their own business. There is in truth no way to tell how prevalent such activity is. (There is a way to track down authors using sock puppets to buy multiple copies of their works, but this has to be less common, because it costs a lot of $ up front.)

Robin wrote: It's like they're only writing for the money, they've taken the soul out of the craft."

I skimmed a couple of the links and was disturbed by the lack of citation mentioned in them. Did I miss the citations? Or is anyone allowed to write whatever they want to on zonalert? I am honestly completely ignorant of the process.

As for only writing for the money; how can we expect someone to put their soul into the craft unless we pay them to do it? If somebody asked me to do my day job for free, I can't imagine I'd be motivated to do it very well.

Brenda wrote: "...the people you were paying for the reviews might tell -- but they'd be fools to do so, since they'd be cutting the throat of their own business...."

...Or would they? ];P

Here's an example of how my mind works, always turning things on their sides and looking for creative angles...

What if the blooger actually works for a business that sells reviews? They write a bunch of bogus hit piece posts like these, citing (as these articles do) very successful authors.

Then on the sly they make this pitch to their prospective clients: "Take a look at this! See, all these successful authors have used bought reviews to their advantage! This is a proven concept. It works! I mean...you do want to sell your books, yeah? So what if some sour grapes blogger yells about you? The only bad publicity is no publicity...Enter your credit card number here."

(And, no, I don't actually believe any conspiracy theories.)

S. K. wrote: "Robin wrote: It's like they're only writing for the money, they've taken the soul out of the craft."

I skimmed a couple of the links and was disturbed by the lack of citation mentioned in them. D..."

I take your point onboard, but if the blog post is to be believed and I say that with a pinch of salt, then the authors who are being fraudulent are misrepresenting their books, therefore the money they receive is ill-gotten as oppose to honestly earned. I agree with you about the sitations though, I tried to look for any evidence which backed up their claims, but as I said in an earlier post, I couldn't be bothered tralling through further blog posts.

Micah wrote: "Brenda wrote: "...the people you were paying for the reviews might tell -- but they'd be fools to do so, since they'd be cutting the throat of their own business...."

...Or would they? ];P

Here's..."

It's always fun to look through some conspiracy theories though, sometimes purely for comedic value. it's unbelievable what some people come up with. No that's not a direct response to your theory. LOL

Robin wrote: I take your point onboard, but if the blog post is to be believed and I say that with a pinch of salt, then the authors who are being fraudulent are misrepresenting their books,

I think my big issue with the accusations that authors buy their reviews, is that eventually... if say 100 reviews are bought to get an author exposure, and a 1000 people buy the book because of those reviews, then if the book is truly awful, the real reviews will start to reflect the content. Seems like it could easily backfire for an author.

Does that make sense?

It should be possible, purely from analyzing the reviews, to spot the ones that are purchased. If you really love a work, and can write, the review will show your heart.
Have you seen HER, starring Joaquin Phoenix? An SF movie, starring a guy who makes a living by writing letters for people? He is able to do this because he writes really really good letters, letters that sound like they are genuine.
This is not an easy thing. I would expect a review farm to use boilerplate, to resort to stock phrases and standard praises.

I agree, Brenda. Some reviews are just too general for me to even pay attention to when I'm shopping for books. And then there's the flip side on reviews, the 1 star ones that read: Did not read this book. It sucked.

OTOH with modern alorithmic writing software it may be possible now (or soon) to spit out thousands of reviews that sound authentic. Just program in your parameters with key words, characters, plots, etc. from the actual book and press a button ;D

After all...(bots write a lot of online news articles): http://singularityhub.com/2014/03/25/...

Micah wrote: "OTOH with modern alorithmic writing software it may be possible now (or soon) to spit out thousands of reviews that sound authentic. Just program in your parameters with key words, characters, plot..."

Heh, that's very true. Also, a lot of genuine reviews are written by people who are not writers and do not really consider themselves reviewers. They're just people who, when Amazon sends it's 'review this product' email, happen to click a star. Then the review box comes up and they write something like, "Loved this book. It was awesome."

Personally, when I'm buying a book (or any product) that I don't know much about I look only at 2 and 4 star reviews. Mostly 2. If I know why somebody didn't like something (but didn't absolutely hate it) then I can make a reasonable judgement about it.

Sabrina wrote: "I agree, Brenda. Some reviews are just too general for me to even pay attention to when I'm shopping for books. And then there's the flip side on reviews, the 1 star ones that read: Did not read th..."

I think I saw a review like this on Amazon a while back, I was like, "why the hell would you give a rating to something that you hadn't read?" the idiocy of some people! It defeats the whole point of a rating and review system. If your gonna review something, then do it from an informed basis, rather than what you think a book is going to be like.

Robin, your comment made me think of the other side of this discussion. Since fake good reviews are unethical, does that mean fake bad ones are too? Would they delete the one star reviews that admit to not reading a book or the ones that are basically trashing an author?

What does everyone think?

Sabrina, it's definitely a mess, for exactly the extra reasons you've been talking about. If regular ppl start buying a book because of boughten glowing reviews, and it's not that good, they're going to mark it lower than they would if they'd had more realistic expectations going in.

And yes, *fake* negative ratings and reviews do unfortunately exist. And they can be flagged, and some have been deleted.

However, the GR *rating* system is to be used by the readers as we want to. If I've not read a book, it still doesn't matter, I can rate it whatever I want why-ever I want.

There are limits to what I can say about *any* book (read or not, rated hi, low, or not) in the review space, though. Trashing authors in the review space is absolutely forbidden.

Cheryl wrote: "Sabrina, it's definitely a mess, for exactly the extra reasons you've been talking about. If regular ppl start buying a book because of boughten glowing reviews, and it's not that good, they're go..."

Do people buy reviews for Goodreads, too? I wonder if they reason that if anything goes, then so does that, maybe?

The evolution of ratings is an interesting subject. It seems that what started as a way to just keep track of your own personal tastes, has become intertwined with marketing and success (or failure). Now, the business world is even dependent and effected by reviews. I would think the practice of buying reviews would be even more prevalent in the business world.

Even schools have reviews now, lol. I checked a nearby school for my daughter and saw some parents had left reviews. The negative ones were ridiculous to the point of hilarity, complaining about the poorly painted giraffe image on front of the school.

I read the rebuttal/dismissal of these anonymous attacks many months ago.

I have met Hugh twice this year, and he's one of the most genuine and caring human beings you'll ever meet. He writes because he loves to write, and was shocked by the quick and viral success of Wool, so kept writing in that world, quickly, to meet reader demand.

The basic facts of these attack articles get a ton of things wrong, so I wouldn't put any credence in them at all. There are unfortunately a lot of bitter and jealous people that like to attack otherwise good people on the internet. :(

Buying reviews is a bad idea, and Hugh and others would be the first to tell you that.

Everything is reviewed now, often on Yelp. There is probably no good way to keep the review system from being hijacked for other purposes. You've seen those funny reviews on Amazon, sometimes about quite mundane products? Along about the time Mitt Romney assured us that he had binders full of women, someone selected an ordinary plastic binder on Amazon and reviewed it for its women content. The thing went viral, thousands upon thousands of hysterically funny reviews. Heaven knows what the binder manufacturer made of it.

Brenda wrote: "Everything is reviewed now, often on Yelp. There is probably no good way to keep the review system from being hijacked for other purposes. You've seen those funny reviews on Amazon, sometimes about..."

I read those. Hilarious. The one about the pink pens were very funny, too. But they weren't carpet bombs and it was more than obvious that the reviews were only for the laugh value. Not that the [the reviews] were "right" but that the reviews were not meant to trick anyone into spending money.

I trust very few reviews unless I'm familiar with the reviewer. With the Fivver reviews (there's tons of them at GR/Amazon) and the plagiarized reviews - I mostly don't bother anymore.

Now I only get recs from my friends and people I follow. Blurbs can sell me a book but not "random reviewer."

Brenda wrote: "Everything is reviewed now, often on Yelp. There is probably no good way to keep the review system from being hijacked for other purposes. You've seen those funny reviews on Amazon, sometimes about..."

I love those reviews! George Takei has some great ones. There's some really bizarre products on Amazon.

MrsJoseph wrote: "I trust very few reviews unless I'm familiar with the reviewer. With the Fivver reviews (there's tons of them at GR/Amazon) and the plagiarized reviews - I mostly don't bother anymore.

Now I onl..."

So true. Friend recommendations are usually the way to go. I love GR's 'compare books' option too. I always check that out if I have a good conversation with another GR member. And I find some good ones on Bookbub and Amazon's 'customers who bought this item also bought this' list.