It is odd, for it is so utterly irrational, but I really can’t stop digging in this.

A few years ago, a few people interested in boosting one author’s sales started writing lots of glowing reviews of his work. The author in question has never been accepted by a publisher, and publishes his own work at a small press publishing house. The review campaign was very blatantly carried out, to the point where several people remarked on it, here is one comment, and here another one. (Follow those two links - they will explain the background.) In both cases, the author of the comment was suddenly and unpleasantly reminded of the story a few weeks ago. David Langford got his web archive removed after Glasgow University took fright by a vague email from somebody claiming to be a lawyer, and Stephen Leigh was himself contacted by the same pretend lawyer. Rather unpleasant stuff, and this is why I don’t want to write the author’s name in this blog.

In the years between, the review campaigns have continued. Those reviews I’ve seen that appear honest give his work very poor reviews indeed, and the author is largely unknown, I have never seen his books being sold at sf conventions, for instance. That could just be because I didn’t know the name until reading about the fraud, though.

Anyway, that is all just background. What is odd is not the man’s, or his publisher’s, or maybe even a small group of fanatic readers’ attempts to raise the sales by dishonest methods. People are what they are after all. No, but I get this urge to go to Amazon.com^* myself and start writing scathingly bad reviews of the author’s work. Even though I’ve never read them, and I don’t expect I ever will. Really, how does it impact my life if people buy the books by this man? It’s not as if that will make Lynn Flewelling or Steven Brust or Jane Yolen, to name but three genuinely good authors whose books I love, disappear from the shelves. The rational thing would be to read the reports, shake my head and forget about it. But as I say, I’m morbidly fascinated by this whole thing and just can’t stop digging.

No, I haven’t written any bad reviews, of course not. I wouldn’t be surprised if, by now, some of the really negative words are as fake as the really positive words, however. People being what they are.

^*Amazon.com, online bookseller, where customers can write reviews and rate books using a five-star rating system. Books with a high rating will show as recommendations, I think, and so be more likely to sell then low-rated books, all else being equal.