Authors reviewing their own works?

[simonroyle]

Freedom by Jonathan Franzen Reviewed by Padel MeHard

Freedom is not bad, but a bit long.

It is similar to Padel MeHard's bestseller, "Free Dom". Following his hard-hitting debut, "Self Flagellation for Idiots", Padel has produced another masterpiece of brilliantly insightful prose for the proletariat. Free Dom explores the world of the dominatrix and how you can get one free.

Like Freedom, Free Dom is set in America, and they both have people in them. Only in Padel's bestseller they're mostly butch types with short hair.

More in common is how these two brilliant authors wrote their books. Padel too wore a blindfold and had ear protectors on (the industrial jackhammer kind - red), but even more, Padel had his hands tied behind his back, and was enclosed in a full body PVC suit - he typed Free Dom with his nose.

Padel's efficiency sets the authors apart. Whereas Franzen took seven years to write his book, Padel completed Free Dom in 7 hours.

Just so that you can compare all of the amazing similarities I've included a link to Padel's page here on Amazon. Padel is currently at work on his third novel, which should be released later today, maybe in the evening.

By now their're all a steel at R.i.P 99.99 each or ALL three (only after 6pm) for 250

[R. Reed]

I recently asked some writers I know and respect to review my latest book. I will accept their honest opinion. It seems to me no one I don't know will even look at the book, much less review it, unless they see other reviews there. Does that make sense?

[lene1949]

Originally Posted by simonroyle

Sometimes the difference between being good and great is a little encouragement. There really are enough negatives in a run-of-the-mill life without having your dreams crushed when you're young.

My mother, who's in her seventies now, recently took up drawing and painting. When she was a little girl, sometime after ten, and before being a teenager, she joined an art class in her school. In her first lesson, at the end of the lesson, her "teacher" held up her work to the class and said (words to the effect of), "This is a good example of how some people cannot be taught. You can either draw or you can't. And if you can't you shouldn't bother ..."

That little speech shattered a dream that day, and a desire to create. Only some sixty years later was my mother able to put that woman's comments in perspective. The upside of that event was that my mother also taught children and she used that woman's words as a reminder of how not to be.

Comments like that can be shattering to a child... Not that I was ever any good at anything... but I was taught not to speak by my mother, because everything I said was stupid... I took that on board and never voiced my opinion.. Even today at 61, I don't voice my (sometimes) good ideas in a meeting with the group... Rather I will tell one person, and that person will help putting the proposal forward without really involving me.

All this doesn't belong in this thread, but sometimes at get so angry at how she made me feel so inferior.

Rant over.

[foreverjuly]

Originally Posted by lene1949

Comments like that can be shattering to a child... Not that I was ever any good at anything... but I was taught not to speak by my mother, because everything I said was stupid... I took that on board and never voiced my opinion.. Even today at 61, I don't voice my (sometimes) good ideas in a meeting with the group... Rather I will tell one person, and that person will help putting the proposal forward without really involving me.

All this doesn't belong in this thread, but sometimes at get so angry at how she made me feel so inferior.

Rant over.

I'm sorry to hear about your experience, Lene. It really goes to show the huge impact we can have on each other, and I know after reading this I'll be a little more mindful of being positive about my criticism too. It's sad to think how many great ideas you've had that have been pushed by the wayside. I hope you'll do your best to use your voice in the future.

Originally Posted by ATDrake

I've seen something like this happen on a bunch of books, not necessarily indie. Someone will give what looks like a glowing review to the book in question, then go on to write, "and if you liked this, you'll love INSERT LINK TO OTHER BOOK HERE, which is also a really great read!" And they do it across practically all the books they "review".

The other thing that happens is that people tag completely unrelated books with the name of the author they're essentially spamming.

See this author for a particularly egregious example. She's written only two books, but has personally tagged her own name and her series title across 125 and 113 items respectively, including works by other indie authors as well as professionally published ones.

And she hasn't even done those other indie authors the dubious "favour" of reviewing their books which she's plastered her own into the tags of.

Personally, this is such a turn-off that I'd be strongly tempted to return-tag any authors who do this as "spammer", but they're just not worth it. Thankfully, the majority are generally much better behaved.

Yikes that's really pretty bad too. It is tempting to do something back, because it does seem like they're asking for it/deserve it. But I know that putting myself back on his radar in this way would only make things that much worse. Right now I have just over 20 reviews, from what I hear he could amass an army of fake usernames to completely drown those out with 1 stars. Even just a couple would cause me big problems. And then there are things he could do on countless other book sites. So I really don't think it's worth it, and I'll wait for Amazon to remove the review...eventually.

[foreverjuly]

A little bit of an update on my situation, Amazon finally removed the fake review from my book's page. Hopefully now things stop being so slow...

[ATDrake]

Originally Posted by foreverjuly

It is tempting to do something back, because it does seem like they're asking for it/deserve it. But I know that putting myself back on his radar in this way would only make things that much worse. Right now I have just over 20 reviews, from what I hear he could amass an army of fake usernames to completely drown those out with 1 stars. Even just a couple would cause me big problems. And then there are things he could do on countless other book sites.

Glad to hear that Amazon was finally willing to remove the off-topic review for you. Personally, I'd have left it up as a) it was a "positive" review as regards star-rating I assume, and would have inflated your overall balance while b) effectively warning people off the book he was trying to hijack-plug with such pathetically obvious tactics. You might have even gotten bonus sympathy sampling/sales out of it, provided you weren't seen as complaining too much about it.

Frankly, people like that author tend to have no sense of proportion, yet a huge sense of entitlement. As one of my favourite writers writes: "Never argue with drunks, idiots, or fanatics." and it's best not to engage with such unless they start a direct attack. A review-jack can be easily dealt with via passive (or perhaps passive-aggressive) resistance.

As with tag-spammers et al. really the best thing to do is to simply click "no"/"report abuse" on the page where Amazon asks you if these tags are appropriate and give the system the feedback it needs to self-correct.

Off-topic reviews, they get spotted pretty quickly and people will generally vote the genuinely unhelpful stuff down (this is of course, exclusive of authors asking their friends to vote down reviews that are genuinely helpful but insufficiently stellar for their liking, which is an unfortunately common tactic) and/or comment*/complain to the management.

And in the meantime, you get the benefit of a ratings-boost and he looks like a total jerk who's turning people off his own book. Because I don't think it's a good thing for an author to get a reputation as someone who asks to have reviews removed, no matter how good the justification may be.

Like reviewing one's own books, even if it's only for the helpful purpose of adding description/a video trailer, what gets around is not *why* you did it, but that you did it at all in the first place, and fairly or not, it'll probably negatively affect potential readers' perceptions of the kind of author you are to do this sort of thing.

* I don't know about you, but I'm drawn to click on reviews with comments under them, just to see what people have said about it.

[simonroyle]

Originally Posted by ATDrake

* I don't know about you, but I'm drawn to click on reviews with comments under them, just to see what people have said about it.

+1 Me too.

[jaxx6166]

RE/ Robert Stanek,

I don't know HOW he made it into the Sony store, but back before the self publishing revolution, he somehow managed to get a bundle plug right on the front page of the Sony bookstore. He called it "Star Wars with Elves" or some such nonsense.

Not knowing what the heck I was getting into, I took the bait and spent like 50 bucks on his "bundle." And I don't think Sony had excerpts at the time, so I pretty much bit it on the glowing cover copy about how it was being read in schools and this and that....

And then I read the first five pages and stabbed my eyes out with a fork.

[simonroyle]

Originally Posted by jaxx6166

RE/ Robert Stanek,

I don't know HOW he made it into the Sony store, but back before the self publishing revolution, he somehow managed to get a bundle plug right on the front page of the Sony bookstore. He called it "Star Wars with Elves" or some such nonsense.

Not knowing what the heck I was getting into, I took the bait and spent like 50 bucks on his "bundle." And I don't think Sony had excerpts at the time, so I pretty much bit it on the glowing cover copy about how it was being read in schools and this and that....

And then I read the first five pages and stabbed my eyes out with a fork.

LOL - sorry for laughing but the set up brings the word - rueful - to mind.

The problem to a large extent lies in the fact that traditional publishing has been asleep at the wheel. Fact is that market size has tripled under their noses and they're not scaled up for it.

At the moment trad publishing is putting out about 300K books per year, and they do that slowly. They need to double that number or else lose serious market share. The factor that they are competing for is not dollars, it's time.

If I was a publisher (said to the tune of Fiddler on the roof), I'd be stealing people from the software industry. If I was in software I'd be stealing people from publishing - well hiring them anyway. With the layoffs going on no need to steal...

[GraceKrispy]

Is there some author agreement that says you have to leave 5-star reviews on every other author's book so they'll return the favor?

I think I need to stop reading other reviews.

(I had more to say, but I refrained from )