Indie Book Club discussion

Some of you may already know about the petition started by Todd Barselow to end anonymous reviews on Amazon products, particularly books. The purpose of this petition is to protect self-published authors from attacks and sock puppet reviews, such as in the case of RJ Ellory who supposedly faked his own glowing reviews and posted negative reviews about other writers' works in the same genre.

Please sign this petition and share it with your friends, fans and family so we can change this system and make as fair as possible.

http://www.change.org/petitions/jeff-...

The other side of this is that too many self-published authors are attacking reviewers for negative reviews. As a result, more and more people are refusing to review self-published work.

Then, there's the complication of writers who write under pen-names. If reviewers are forced to disclose their names, they will expect the same from writers.

You make a valid point about authors attacking negative reviewers, but any writers who lower themselves to that level invite more criticism and they should know better than to be drawn into it. However, I can understand where they are coming from even if I don't react as they do. I have gotten a few nasty reviews and they were under aliases. It is bad enough to have someone thrash your work, but when they do it while hidden behind an alias, it makes the whole act seem a bit underhanded. If someone doesn't want to do a review under their real name then that is their choice. I don't think it will deter as many reviewers as you might think.

As for authors using pen names, the internet makes it pretty easy to find out who the author's real name is. I doubt readers will care much or make many demands for authors to use their real name.

I agree about moderating the forums, but these are product reviews. If you want to use an alias in the forums, that's fine, but I don't think it should be allowed when giving reviews that affect how potential buyers view the product.

Surely though it is up to a potential buy to decide whether to take into account a review buy Bobthebuilder, or Happymoron? And would that not mean two accounts?