Beware the Smiling Sock Puppet
Today, my provocation for you has to do with one aspect of author community.
The incident I’m going to tell you about didn’t occur in the Writer Unboxed community. This commentary isn’t about the Writer Unboxed community, per se, nor about my bro Vaughn Roycroft and the other great people who shepherd that group so faithfully, nor about the terrific writers who draw strength and aid from it. You’re all golden. And I’d like you to give me your input on this issue.
We’re going to talk about false consumer-review ratings of the happy kind. I’ll tell you about the incident that prompts this.
Last week, a friend of mine who’s an author–a very good one–needed help in putting the cover image of her forthcoming book into a listing on a big Web site we all know well.
She went to a major writing community of which she’s a respected member, and she put out the call for help.
Happily, my friend got the assistance she needed from a kindly fellow author, who helped her get the image into place.
And then my friend got a five-star rating for the book from that kindly author.
The kindly author hasn’t read the book. Because it’s not out. She hasn’t been given an advanced reading copy, either. She gave a five-star rating to a book she’s never seen, surely as what she felt was a generous gesture.
My author friend who was helped with the image was just as shocked as I was. She’d asked for no rating or review-ish support whatever.
So this is a case of a good-Samaritan writer, our “kindly author,” responding to the supportive-community concept with some technical assistance…and a bogus rating. Our kindly author evidently thinks it’s okay for her to give a five-star endorsement to a book she’s never seen. On the site in question, a five-star rating is the best possible.
As my provocation today, I propose that we examine this event for several important issues.
Is our kindly author a representative of the goodness that can come from author community? Or is she making a wrong-headed interpretation of the one-for-all dynamic?
‘Truthful Hyperbole’ and ‘Sweet Subterfuge’
It’s easy for us to guess what our kindly author thinks she’s doing when she endorses a book she’s never read: she wants to give my author friend some friendly help with the new, unlaunched book.
Negatives? I propose these:
- The kindly author has lied to readers, our authors’ customers.
- She has lied to her fellow authors, too.
- She has compromised the star-rating system.
- And her rating reflects an errant Musketeer on the loose: she’s operating on the premise that the honorable context of “mutual support” among authors somehow excuses unethical behavior.
I seriously doubt that the rank-and-file reader expects this to be happening. When that user sees such a rating, does he ask himself it it’s possible that the rating was falsely conferred on the book by a kindly author who’d never turned a single page of that book but wanted to give my friend a leg up? No. Why would he suspect such a thing? If he acts on that rating and buys the book, he’s been duped.
And this falls along the same lines as an opinion I’ve heard some authors express, that if you can’t give a positive review to another author’s book, just don’t give a review. I say that this, too, is a bad-faith argument. It’s perfectly possible to say in a review that you appreciate and like this fellow author and that you’ve encountered what you feel are certain shortcomings in the work and that you hope readers will give the book a try, see for themselves what they think. This is what the best professional critics do.
But let’s not miss a step here: Why does telling the truth to reader-consumers matter?
Because it’s simply right, for starters, especially if you’re willing to take readers’ money for your own work. Your readers are the people you serve as a writer. They’re your patrons. It’s not okay to lie to them.
And in the wider context, it matters because we’ve entered an age of culture-wide untruth. Tony Schwartz, the president’s co-writer in The Art of the Deal, created the phrase “truthful hyperbole” for Trump’s way of exaggerating and lying about issues. Jane Mayer covered this in July 2016 for The New Yorker, in case you’re unfamiliar with the phrase in the Trump lexicon. Today, the effects of this idea of rationalized falsehood are impacting our public life daily.
And the phrase “truthful hyperbole,” of course, as Schwartz has said in interviews, is an oxymoron.
- Hyperbole is not truthful.
- Truth is not hyperbole.
Let’s call our kindly author’s version “sweet subterfuge.”
- Subterfuge is not sweet.
- Sweetness is not subterfuge.
If an author writes negative reviews to damage another author’s sales, we call it sock puppetry and we furiously (and rightly) condemn it.
But what if the sock puppet wears a smile? What if the sock puppet is whispering sweet nothings into consumers’ ears? Does that make the falsehood okay?
Look, we all get it. The book market is saturated. Any break an author can get may be welcome. And the rise of author community for mutual support and promotion is a noble element of the contemporary expansion of the author base, no question about it.
But where does collegial support cross the line into unethical behavior?
Have you been the beneficiary of good reviews and/or ratings from authors who didn’t read your work? Should the community of authors condone “sweet subterfuge” in the signals authors throw to readers about each others’ work?
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About Porter Anderson
@Porter_Anderson is Editor-in-Chief of Publishing Perspectives, the international news medium of Frankfurt Book Fair New York. He and Jane Friedman co-own and produce @The Hot Sheet, the essential industry newsletter for authors. Anderson previously was The Bookseller's Associate Editor for The FutureBook in London. Formerly with CNN, CNN.com and CNN International–as well as the Village Voice, the Dallas Times Herald, and other media–he has also been a featured writer with Thought Catalog in New York, creating as a longtime arts critic the #MusicForWriters series. More on his consultancy: PorterAndersonMedia.com | Google+
Hi, Porter,
Thus far, as part of the mass of the great unpublished, I have not received any reviews, truthful or not, so I can’t speak to that part of the question. I also rarely read reviews before I read a book; I don’t want spoilers, I don’t want to be influenced by others. I’ll read them sometimes after I’ve finished, just to see what others think, and compare their views to my own.
In my opinion, we should not condone “Sweet subterfuge.” A lie is a lie is a lie. Maybe you get points for good intentions, but we know where that particular road goes. As for the notion of not leaving anything less than a three or four star review, I disagree with that, as well. What is the point of a review system if people are only going to be honest when they either love, love, love the book or hate, hate, hate the book (I’m sure we know of reviewers out there who only leave scathing, slaggy, horrible reviews)? Too many people have been scared off by the stories of ‘reprisal reviews’ or badly-behaving authors mobilizing their legions of fans into burying someone for the sin of leaving an honest review (I’ve seen people gripe about getting 3-star reviews, which in my view is a decent review).
Thanks for the provocation, I needed that!
Ah, Jeffo, beware typos here, this flight I’m on has some turbulence.
A special thanks for your Shavian reference. We do indeed know what the road to Hell is paved with, as GBS told us (or Jack Tanner did) in The Revolutionist’s Handbook that follows ‘Man and Superman.’ Capital reference, really, well done.
And having been a critic first (and always) in my journalistic career of 483 years, I’m so pleased that you write, “What is the point of a review system if people are only going to be honest when they either love, love, love the book or hate, hate, hate the book (I’m sure we know of reviewers out there who only leave scathing, slaggy, horrible reviews)?”
You’ve used an important word there. “Reviewers,” indeed, are the ones who are uni-directional boors. They’re also the ones who tend toward “consumer review,” telling consumers to buy this or avoid that. This is not criticism.
The true critic (and I’m trained in this, as a fellow of the National Critics Institute) forms an opinion based on what the author (or playwright or sculptor or choreographer or composer may have set out to do) and then promulgates that opinion only with the intention of giving the reader a way of looking at a work. “I loved what Author X did with this book because she succeeded in making me feel this and that.” The message to the reader of such a professional critique is, “Now, go read this book yourself and decide for yourself how well Author X did this, don’t follow or obey me, the critic.”
That approach, of course, is all but unknown today. Especially was we watch, sadly, as Michiko Kakutani takes her leave of the Times. Today, “reviewing, (which was never the art but the craft) is all about this social thing, this garden club, that too much of writing (which was never enough of literature) has become.
Garden club members will tell you that if you can’t say anything nice about your neighbor’s roses, you don’t say anything at all.
The critic Dorothy Parker would tell you, of course, her famous line, “If you can’t say anything nice about someone, come and sit by me.”
I’m as sorry to see this mistake of praising unread work as I am to see authors unwilling to truthfully critique each other. Many, many fine authors are hired by the Times and a few other outlets with something left of book sections to review other authors’ work, and they do so honestly, sometimes quite negatively if they feel that’s appropriate, and good for them. The art is better for it, and writing was never meant to be a garden club.
Thanks again for your good head. Keep it once you’re published. We can use more like yours on the other side of pre-order.
Cheers,
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
Hi, Porter,
You’ve made many good points and I’ve read all books I review, so maybe my remarks aren’t pertinent. I’ve pretty much made the decision not to review any book I can’t rate 4 or 5 for the following reasons.
For one thing, a review takes a fair amount of time and I want to use that time supporting authors whose work deserves it. If I don’t think a book is good or if I’m not enjoying reading it, I stop reading and would not review.
Also, I wouldn’t like to critique an author’s work in a public forum. Seems rude. So if I found areas that could be strengthened, I’d be more likely to let the author know in a private email. But probably not unless they’d asked me for critique help.
Sometimes I’ve been asked to read a book and maybe it’s not my favorite genre, but I recognize that it is a stellar example of that genre. Should I give it a 3 star review if it is a 5 star example of that genre, but it’s not “All the Light We Cannot See”? It makes sense to me to give that book a 5 star rating and share what readers of that genre will love inside its covers.
I leave it to other critiquers to provide the 1 and 2 reviews. I guess I could bring myself to write a 3 star review if there was a really good reason, but I think, if I’m honest with myself, I’m probably just to lazy to write a review for a book I think deserves an average rating.
Hi, Dana,
Apologies for the very late reply — it turned out to be a long weekend of travel and now a longer week of work.
I appreciate your thoughts on how you approach reviews. There’s absolutely no reason you should think as I do on these things — and absolutely nothing wrong with your own thoughts and decisions — but speaking as a professional critic (the first 12 years of my career in journalism, I was entirely a full-time critic on papers including the Village Voice), the negative review is the more interesting thing to write. Not a nasty, snarky, biting review. A negative review.
In professional criticism, a review starts with what an artist set out to do, and then evaluates how and where it has succeeded and/or not succeeded. Most legitimate criticism is mixed. The unbridled cheer is virtually non-existent in the world of trained critics because creative endeavors are so…human, right? Imperfections can always be found.
But having to write, “It’s perfect!” is completely boring, too, lol, so most critics learn to welcome the difficulties. The real key is learning how to say that something has gone off the rails in one way or another, without running off someone who might want to read the book, see the dance concert, go to the museum exhibition, buy the composer’s new album. The purest critical stance is, “Here is my considered opinion of how things went with this creative effort. Now, go read this book, yourself, and see if you agree or disagree with me.” Good critics are, in other words, people who make you think, give you a way of looking at that new film, a way of talking about that new play, an entry point for evaluative regard, yourself.
So I’m going to encourage you to do two things:
(1) Don’t think of a negative review as not worth your time. The author and her or his readers will likely learn more from a “problem piece” review than from a happy upbeat review that mentions no drawbacks.
(2) Forget the ratings. Star ratings are the curse of a neurasthenic society that thinks it doesn’t have time to read a review and must be given some ridiculously simplistic and crude short-form signal about “go” or “don’t go” to that movie. Unless you’re the activity director on a cruise ship, telling other consumers to read or not read a book isn’t your business, anyway. A good critic never says go or don’t go, read or don’t read, buy or don’t buy. That’s a consumer reviewer. Lift yourself above all that. Forget the stars. Write a review that says, very clearly, “This good effort had much going for it, such as this, this, and this, and it ran into difficulty on that, that, and that. You may enjoy it and have a different reaction from mine.”
And thanks again for your good note.
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
Thanks for addressing the issue of truth, Porter. In the era of ‘truthiness’, a word I now hate, it’s important to talk about this! When the person in the highest office in the land sets such a poor example, is it any wonder people confuse the issue? I agree, the bestower of the stars probably meant well, but as they say, the road to hell…I read a friend’s published novel a while back and had some issues with it and lost sleep over how to leave an honest review. In the end, I found a way, and I know she’d do the same for me. But we’re living in virtual reality these days, so I suppose there’s the assumption that truth is virtual, too. Which frightens me on so many levels. So thank you for your provocation today. It sounds like a call for sanity.
Hi, Susan,
Apologies for the slow response, and thanks for this good note, it’s much appreciated.
We’re indeed in a very strange era, probably because having someone in the White House who habitually (and compulsively) defies all respect for truth creates an aura of legitimacy for exaggeration, embellishment, and direct lies.
Do you know the play “Old Times” by Harold Pinter? In it, Anna has one of the most honored and daunting lines of Pinter’s career: “There are things I remember that may never have happened but as I recall them so they take place.”
The character isn’t coming from anything like the political and ideological stance of Trump, but the line keeps coming back to me these days because there’s an almost childlike assumption at work here that you can imagine things into reality. It’s the Harold Hill “think system” from “The Music Man” all over again. Think of yourself as achieving one thing or another and you’ll achieve it.
In actuality, that’s sadly magical thinking, self-delusional, and, most dangerously, a bald-faced corruption of the office and institutions of the American experiment. The only thing more disturbing may be the sight of thousands of people at Trump’s campaign rallies, fans who stand there cheering and nodding and grinning at every falsehood thrown their way. Over time, we’ll see a bigger and bigger divide opening in the culture between people who care about truth and those who want to overthrow its critical importance because being able to make up “alternate facts” is a much easier way to deal with life.
You’ve probably noticed the exhaustion of all this. Manic energy at the top is incredibly draining. It’s a time to “pace our outrage,” as commentator Kirsten Powers puts it.
Our system of government and politics will handle this, but it’s going to take every bit of our vigilance and outrage to keep pushing to maintain values that this leadership is trying to reverse: tolerance, inclusiveness, intelligence, compassion, and, yes, the absolute sanctity of truth. One analyst recently said that it’s as if we’ve crossed the bridge on so many issues, only to see this new power trying to walk us the other way across that bridge: backward.
I fear that we’ll have to say a lot more about this before we can finally get things going back the right way across the bridge. We can’t let it wear us out.
Thanks again for your good note.
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
I hadn’t thought about how declining to review a poorly-written book is a form of falsehood, but I see your point. Someone recommended a “humorous mystery” writer to me. I bought one of her books and found no humor whatsoever, just a boring tsunami of obscenities. Not to mention the confused storyline and characters acting out of character. I gave up after a few chapters.
Yet 91% of reviewers gave it 4 or 5 stars. I’ve been had!
Hm, perhaps I should warn the others…
Hey, Janice,
Apologies for the slow response. Yes, I’ve actually had the experience you’re talking about of wondering what on Earth a lot of consumer reviewers were thinking when I tried something that got glowing reviews, only to find it wasn’t anything like as good as those reviews made it seem.
So, as you rightly point out, the gratuitously positive review can have a direct bad effect on the consumer/reader, never mind the ethical issues of what it says authors are saying to each other.
I’d say yeah, warn the others. We probably all should start watching for chances to leave a contrarian review when we see a big gleeful pile-on of happy reviews going on.
“Humorous mystery.” Reminds me of a stage show that was pitched to me at a backers’ audition — for a musical about the citrus industry, lol.
Thanks again,
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
Reviews are about trust between reviewer and reader, and anything that undermines that trust is unethical.
I have yet to publish any of my fiction, so I’m only coming from my experience with journalism. When it comes to reviews, I believe that honesty is an absolute requirement. While it is hard to criticize reviewers for telling a “white lie” when they have not been offered any obvious compensation, the act still undermines the reader’s trust as effectively as a malicious one. And the same goes for choosing not to post a review just because it would be negative.
This question is frequently discussed in j-school and I’ve kept my prof’s answer in mind whenever I write a review (though her answer was specifically about coming to terms with publishing negative reviews):
Readers are going to search for your review because they want to know how best to invest their time and money. It is your responsibility to provide them with an honest answer. By not publishing a negative review, your readers will spend time and money on something they might come regret. Readers might be able to shrug off the $15 they spent on a bad movie, but what about the two to three hours they just wasted? And what if something costs even more time and money? If a reader avoids spending money on something and it turns out to be terrible, they will thank you for it. If you publish a positive review simply because you feel bad about being mean, the reader will blame you for wasting their time and money. Your responsibility is never to the companies or individuals who sell their products, your responsibility is always first and foremost to the reader.
Ever since, I’ve always asked myself, when writing a review, whether my intentions are to protect the reader or to protect the author. I think we’d all agree that in this business, the reader always comes first.
Although on the other side of things, I also believe it is a disservice to readers for another published author to write a negative review of another writer’s work, but that’s a different discussion.
Actually, I am going to add in why I think we shouldn’t write negative reviews as published authors: it’s because we’ve stepped over to the other side. We’ve entered a weird space where we are both experts and untrusted sources at the same time. To promote another author’s work which we have honestly enjoyed is a service to readers because anyone who has enjoyed our writing might also enjoy that author’s work. However, once we are published, our opinions are “professionally” tainted in a way. We can’t provide a trusted public opinion on another author’s work: just because we find fault with a book doesn’t mean our readers will dislike it too. We can’t always distinguish what we know about our craft, or what we know about the difficulty of publishing a book, from how an average reader would experience that story the first time. It is impossible for us to recognize if there is any underlying bias in our opinion. Our negative reviews do not represent the average book reader anymore and are therefore unhelpful to them.
You make a great point, Porter. I once friended someone–a writer I had “met” online (not here!) on Goodreads. He went and rated all my books with five stars. Now, I’m pretty sure he didn’t read all the books, as he rated them all at once and there were no reviews attached. I’m also sure he did it because he thought I was a nice lady and he was doing me a good turn. But, quite honestly, it felt dirty. It felt like I was cheating my readers. I want them to like my books for their merit, because they actually LIKE what I’ve written, not because I’m a nice lady.
Of course, we all like getting good reviews and the bad ones suck and stick in our brains. But compliments mean nothing if they aren’t heartfelt.
I hadn’t of this as being destructive, since it was certainly well meaning, but it is, isn’t it? Deception is wrong–even if it’s meant in the best way.
Regarding your statement: ‘if you can’t give a positive review to another author’s book, just don’t give a review. I say that this, too, is a bad-faith argument’
It’s my personal policy not to review books unless I can write a positive review. I don’t feel that this is acting out of bad-faith, nor is there anything wrong with my decision. I don’t continue reading a book unless I am enjoying it. How can I write a review unless I have read the entire book?
Each author has a right to determine their own policy regarding writing reviews. And also not to have that decision judged harshly by another author.
I only write reviews of books I can say a bunch of good stuff about. If I don’t review your book, it doesn’t mean I didn’t like it, just that it didn’t inspire me to write a review. I leave negative reviews to the professional critics. “Them that can’t write, criticize,” I guess. I do not use hyperbole, because there is no need with a book I truly feel is a great one.
Much of the problem described in this post can be attributed to the indie publishing phenomenon. The emphasis for indie authors–necessarily–is on self-marketing through creation of a platform. To succeed, the writer is urged to develop a posse of supporters or groupies. Social media is used to establish these connections between the writer and her/his online contacts.
Conventional wisdom argues in favor of developing these connections even before publishing anything. In such a strategy, the emphasis is clearly on the author/fan connection, not on what’s written. Such an approach almost guarantees the kind of dishonest “reviews” that Porter Anderson is talking about. Friends don’t need to read their author-buddy’s latest book before writing a review because, after all, what are friends for?
I find it interesting that some, if not most, writers believe reviews are solely for their benefit. They aren’t. They are for the readers. You know. The ones who pay to read your prose?
If a book is lacking in interest, doesn’t a reader have the right to know? If a book’s reviews are nothing but 4- and 5-stars, I expect it to be a great read. If it isn’t, I lose faith in the author, as well as those who reviewed it. This doesn’t serve the author well, because I probably won’t purchase that author’s books again.
Giving an honest review doesn’t mean you have to be cruel. It all boils down to—the reader of the review wants and deserves to know the truth.
I cannot argue with anything you have said. It is the honorable position to take and a good teaching point. It is hard not to feel like it is a hopeless battle though. The five-star rating system is virtually useless they way it is used online. I rated a duct cleaning company online as 3/5. They called me and offered me one price reduction after another to give them a five-star rating. Luckily, for my self-esteem, I said no and went with 3/5 ranking. I feel though, that we writers are such a tiny group compared to the people who mis-rank things for a wide variety of reasons – it feels hopeless. I have to go now and carry a bottle of water over to Africa to help people dying of thirst over there. ;-)
Hi Porter,
Interesting topic. To me, this type of behavior is tantamount to the kind of wink and nod behavior you see in politics or really any other clique.
While I don’t think I’ve ever been the giver nor receiver of this exact ‘gift’ I have had people praise my book to others and my writing skills when in fact, I know they’ve not read anything I’ve written. Not even so much as a blog post. I don’t know if that falls under the same category but it is horrifying in a way. I mean, I don’t think any writer slaves away at their craft and produces a book where they think, “let’s see…how many fake reviews do I think I can get, and how soon?”
While I may understand one author’s desire to help and support her fellow authors, at best this kind of behavior is wrong-headed because essentially lying for another author does them no good. At worst this type of behavior, to me, signals a future quid pro quo expectation.
I’ve left writer’s groups because of this sort of thing – like parties where everybody likes everybody else’s page, swapping reviews, review groups that figure out ways to hide the fact that they’re swapping reviews and so forth. Head spinning.
It’s sad to see that gaming the system in one way or the other is getting to be normal and widely accepted – especially among writers. Who I would’ve thought would be above such behavior.
If we as writers feel it’s perfectly okay to hoodwink readers (who are our audience, our public, and our people) out of solidarity to other writers, than who exactly are we writing for – certainly not them.
Good post, already tweeted you.
Have a good one.
Annie
Thanks for the provocation Porter. I’ve rec’d a 1-star review because the reviewer didn’t get a chance to read the book. That was weird. Esp. since it was a children’s book on graphing and it’s a short book with very few words and bold illustrations and pictures that would take an adult 5 min. Oh, another reviewer gave me a poor rating because it was a children’s book–but I wrote it precisely for children learning to read and reading to learn.
I used to only review books I could give 4 or 5 stars but I’ve noticed that my internal scale has shifted to be more accommodating so I can no longer compare my earlier reviews to my later ones. Still, I always try to be honest, and I would never dream of rating a book I’ve not even read. I suspect we’re seeing this because of the proliferation of self-published titles.
I do rely on reviews when I’m making a purchase but I have reviewers I trust when it comes to books.
Who trusts reviews any more? I’ve watched too many positively-reviewed (e.g. 95+% on RT) movies that were terrible to trust reviews by people I don’t know.
But I still use them: on RT, I go to just the Rotten reviews, and I look at what the reviewer thought was wrong with the movie. If I agree that yes, if the movie has the characteristic many of the reviewers claim, it’s a bad movie, then I skip it. If the Rotten reviewers seem like a bunch of idiot whiners, I might give the movie a try.
The point is, stars or any other scale can’t be relied on. Look at the content of the review, and look for specifics, preferably objective ones, that demonstrate that yes, the reviewer indeed read the book, and yes, they thought about what they read a little. Pros and cons should be present, perhaps even as tradeoffs: E.g., “Flip’s unabashed enthusiasm for employing obscure but unflinchingly precise words to perfect the mythopoetic rhythms of his prose at times delights, but at other times disrupt the flow and the mood of the scene. A little moderation would go a long way, Flip.”
Minor nit: “sock puppet” is “an online identity used for purposes of deception. The term, a reference to the manipulation of a simple hand puppet made from a sock, originally referred to a false identity assumed by a member of an Internet community who spoke to, or about, themselves while pretending to be another person. The term now includes other misleading uses of online identities.” — Wikipedia, “Sockpuppet” So the reviewer in question isn’t necessarily a sockpuppet.
It you can’t trust stars, then what can you trust? I put more faith in reviews, awards, best seller lists, Indie picks.
Traditional stuff. Huh. Go figure.
One of my current struggles is nerving myself up to get back into reviewing on Goodreads. Nowadays I read a lot of comp titles so obviously my views will be tainted by the fact that these are my “rivals”. Except that they’re not my rivals because I stand behind the abundance model and WANT my readers to read these other books and get invested in my sub-genre…oh dear. No wonder I stopped reviewing.
Yet as I’m sure you know, I’m 100% behind the right of readers–including other authors–to say exactly what they think about my books and other people’s. And I deplore the practice of leaving any review or rating, good or bad, for a book you haven’t read. I have a rule that if I start spouting opinions on a controversial or bestselling book on the basis of what other people have said, I have to read the book. As far as I know, all the reviews and ratings of my own books are by readers who’ve actually read them.
There’s nothing wrong with an honest opinion. There’s a great deal wrong with deception, and as you point out, rating or reviewing a book you haven’t read deceives the reader whose decision to buy you influence.
As a writer I’d far rather get an abrasive review from another writer than silence–you guys who only say something if they have something nice to say aren’t doing me any favors, and you’re not helping my readers either. Who better than a novelist to point out the flaws in other people’s novels? I’ve learned more about the technical side of writing novels from reading snarky Goodreads reviews than I have from craft books, because those reviewers understand the craft they’re writing about. I’d love to go back to the days when authors could take a bad review on the chin instead of whining about it online.
And that’s why I’m going back to reviewing, hopefully with the fearless voice I used to have. Apologies in advance if I hurt anyone’s feelings.
Hi Porter,
Interesting post with thoughtful points and comments.
Now I feel that I must consider the possibility that reviews of (e)book are questionable…..
Perhaps next time that will be interested to buy a book, I will have to be undoubtedly convinced by the reviews (and still will have to think twice before I buy it ……).
If marketing is indeed crossing ethical boundaries, then everything will start feeling a bit fake around us. Not a pleasant thought.