Also, it gets noticed. Authors being incessant egosurfers and all.
Jeffrey Ford, demonstrating how not to sell books :-
"'Righteous Protests From the Untalented'
"Hmmmm. Interesting phenomenon over at Amazon.com. It seems my books The Drowned Life and The Shadow Year have been "blacklisted and georestricted," by the prolific idiot reviewer Blue Tyson, whose three word reviews litter the SF/F landscape like rabbit pellets. He gives it one star and here's what he says, "This book is georestricted and hence will not be bought. Unfortunately it is probably good, too." I had to look this term up to see what it meant. I saw on Caitlin Kiernan's blog that her work has gotten the same treatment. Somebody there wrote in to say that it has to do with the fact that Tyson lives in Australia and, since he can't download the book due to the fact it is geo restricted, is giving it one star and "blacklisting" it. Ha. What douche bag. A bad review from that guy has probably sold a few copies already."
[A not very erudite insult, either from someone who claims he has talent]
http://14theditch.livejournal.com/332042.html
Daniel Suarez, similarly :-
"Hey, a**hole, how about sticking with the free stuff and not messing with writers on Amazon trying to make a living."
http://freesf.blogspot.com/2010/01/f...el-suarez.html
and Caitlin R. Kiernan (an author whose work I like more than Ford's) :-
Absolving herself of any responsibility (as do many of them), and also somewhat ignorant of how it works :-
" His complaint is with Amazon.com, and maybe my publisher, but you do not express your displeasure by attacking in such a way as to harm the author, as though we have some say in the matter. It's comes across petulant and childish."
http://greygirlbeast.livejournal.com...16399#t8016399
Jesse Bullington , demonstrating his cluelessless on this, :-
"Re: georestricted
I got hit by the same crumb this morning, a copy/paste job for sure--and here I though I was special:/ What's really weird is my publisher distributed the book in Australia, so yeah, it must have something to do with Kindle whatsits--like region coding on dvds."
http://greygirlbeast.livejournal.com...26127#t8026127