I've been confused in the past when people have asked others to vote for their online stories and they have, even without reading the story.

And I've seen reviews on Amazon clearly written by friends of the author.

I just asked a top SF/Fantasy author if she'd provide a quote for the novel I'm putting out shortly. I asked her because she knows my work and had read the story the novel's based on. As is often the case with busy, authors she came back straight away with a great quote both about the story and my writing in general, saying that she remembered both very well. I wouldn't use author quotes on any other basis, or provide them. But I'm wondering if the genuine process hasn't been polluted by the paid-for (either in cash or by exchange of favours) process?

I've seen reviews on Amazon clearly written by friends of the author.

But, Jan... is that necessarily always wrong? In that very balanced piece by Claire McGowan to which EmmaD posted the link above, Claire says that among her Amazon reviews are a few by friends, all of whom have read the book in question and as far as she knows genuinely liked it. She asks the question, should authors specifically instruct their friends NOT to post reviews? Does knowing the author disqualify a reader from having an opinion? Because if so, we'd have to scrap most of the reviews that appear in the broadsheet newspapers.

There are a lot of grey areas, I think. I have posted reviews on GoodReads (in my own name) and on Amazon (not in my own name - because that seemed to be the usual thing there, having a tag or username) of books by my author friends - but only ever when I have read the book and I always believed what I was writing. I have agreed to read manuscripts and to provide a cover quote if I liked the book - again, I would never say anything I didn't believe. I have done it for Catcrag here, and EmmaD has very kindly done it for me, as did Kate Long whom I also met on WW. Are we all corrupt and nepotistic, therefore? Or just being supportive of author friends whose whose work we like?

Out-and-out sock puppetry - using multiple i/ds to talk up one's own books in the third person - seems to me clearly wrong, because it is actually dishonest. It perpetrates a deception. And authors dissing rivals' work in public, whether in their own name or under a fake name, also seems to me to be wrong. But even that is not black and white... I wouldn't wish to argue that one author should never write a bad review of a rival's book, if he/she does so in his/her own name and genuinely believes in the criticisms he/she is making?

It's all a bit of a minefield, isn't it?

R x

Are we all corrupt and nepotistic, therefore?

Rosy, I didn't suggest this nor do I think it. But at the same time reviews on Amazon are supposed to be by ordinary readers for ordinary readers, aren't they? And the direct connection of friendship with the author, especially when unacknowledged in a review, deviates from that somewhat, doesn't it?

Or just being supportive of author friends whose whose work we like?

Is the purpose of reviews to support author friends, though?

Out-and-out sock puppetry - using multiple i/ds to talk up one's own books in the third person - seems to me clearly wrong, because it is actually dishonest. It perpetrates a deception. And authors dissing rivals' work in public, whether in their own name or under a fake name, also seems to me to be wrong.

Absolutely agree.

The more I read about this - and I've read all the links I've found - the more polarised has become my view.
I am of the opinion that any review that is not entirely about the book, and not written by a person emotionally, or blood-related to the author, is not to be trusted.

Let's write that in the positive.

A review only has relevance if it is written solely about the book, and written by an independent reviewer who has actually read it.

Now, as the author may have purchased said review, and the reader has no way of knowing this, it follows that ALL reviews are suspect, and are of no value. (And they may give the ending away.)

So, if my book ever goes on Amazon, I will not pursue reviews, and will encourage potential readers to download a sample.

No. no, I didn't mean for a moment to suggest I thought you were accusing anyone here of corruption, Jan! Just musing about the borderlines of all this stuff.

I agree that the purpose of reviewing isn't to be supportive of the author - absolutely. But things can have more than one motivation, can't they? Say a colleague had written an academic article and another academic had rubbished it. If I agreed with the writer of the original piece I might weigh in on her side, caring about the argument, caring about the case we were making. But say she was also a friend, and I liked her, and wanted to support her, would that make my contributing to the argument wrong, or what I had to say less valuable or persuasive?

And authors do end up running across a lot of other authors, especially in their own genre. Does this mean that in the end they are debarred from reviewing, on the grounds that they are likely to be acquainted with the authors concerned? Because authors are readers, too, and equally have opinions. There has always been a huge overlap in the public sphere between writers and reviewers, and they've often known one another. Did anyone see Alan Yentob's BBC2 documentary about Ford Maddox Ford? he was a big reviewer - edited a major review publication - but he was also a leading novelist, of course. And he knew everyone - helped Conrad with his English, hobnobbed with James, sat in left bank cafes with all the French avant garde, slept with Jean Rhys, blah blah blah. Did that mean his judgment as a reviewer was somehow compromised? I mean, yeah, maybe if he'd written a review of Rhys's novel in which she apparently depicted him, with little disguise and less kindness, squashing her with his bulk in bed! But being a writer who knew other writers wasn't seen as a disqualification - quite the opposite!

It's just interesting, is all.

R x

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(Sorry - crossed with you, Alan.)

So, if my book ever goes on Amazon, I will not pursue reviews, and will encourage potential readers to download a sample.

I appreciate your view but as others have been saying, there are grey areas. For example, a US friend of mine had his first YA novel published last year. I bought a copy and read it. If I hadn't liked it, I wouldn't have told him I'd read it. As it was, I loved it, so I wrote to him to say so. He then asked me if he could use some of what I'd said as review material. I said sure. The shame is, as I mentioned earlier, that people may now read my review and conclude it's not genuine.

Did I like it because I like him? No. I have pretty fussy tastes, and don't like far more books than I do. I've read books by other friends that I haven't liked and haven't said anything about.

Terry

Everyone will take their own spin on this, and many perceive that some situations are grey.

All I am saying is that I see it in black and white.

Because the reader simply does not know about the circumstances of any particular review, NO review can be considered 100% genuine.

IMO

Say a colleague had written an academic article and another academic had rubbished it. If I agreed with the writer of the original piece I might weigh in on her side, caring about the argument, caring about the case we were making. But say she was also a friend, and I liked her, and wanted to support her, would that make my contributing to the argument wrong, or what I had to say less valuable or persuasive?

But that's agreeing or disagreeing with a thesis, so not a review, as such.

It's about openness, I think, about declaring an interest, even if the review is sincere.

And, yes, the documentary about Ford Madox Ford was very good.

It is tricky, isn't it.

Commercially speaking there is a serious issue if paid-for reviews and sock-puppet one-star ones genuinely affect Amazon rankings, as does seem to be the case.

But the ethical issue is different. I think those who yearn for a "pure" system aren't ever going to get it, because only mathematics is pure. Humans are not, and so no human activity, social or aesthetic, is pure. And as a devotee of the messy, baggy, un-resolved, portmanteau beast that is the novel, I prefer it that way.

The book world is a small one, and a sociable one for all the right reasons - learning and innovating and, yes, supporting each other, because a creative career takes courage, and as we all know, sometimes only other people who do the same thing can give us that courage back... Even Emily Dickinson corresponded with most of the big literary names of the day. And if you want a perfect example of an avant-garde who had to support each other because no one else would, then read Sue Roe's brilliant The Private Lives of the Impressionists...

So the more informed a reviewer is, the more likely they are to know the writers they're reviewing, in other words - and probably be a writer in some way themselves. Nonetheless, frankly, I would rather read a review by someone who had some claim to know what they're talking about, than one by someone I know nothing of. If an experience, articulate reviewer says a book's boring, then I'm more likely to believe it than if an anonymous person on Amazon does. That's why I read TLS reviews, and not (mostly) Amazon ones - although I do recognise that there are excellent, experienced reviewers there, too. Actually, I don't read fiction reviews at all, but that's another story.

But I think it's doing the majority of serious (mostly professional but not all) writer-reviewers less than justice, to assume that the fact that they know someone in some social/personal way makes them lose all objectivity, or all capacity to say the honest truth about what they think of a book.

After all, we've all spent a long time learning to be objective (in as far as it's possible) and honest about our own and others writing, as a vital (the vital?) element of our apprenticeship as writers. It's a fundamental part of our creative self-respect to be able to separate our subjective feeling about a book from our objective judgement of it, so why should we assume that that a writer-reviewer loses all that self-respect the minute they're published, and their friends are?

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Crossed with Jan. I do agree that declaring an interest is vital - if there's an obvious interest to declare. If you've also written a biography of FMF, say, then you should say so in the review. You're both the best and perhaps the worst person to review it, so the reader needs to know.

On the other hand, the more blurry, general, "I know them and have had the occasional evening the the pub with them and though at the moment we're both freelance I can't promise that one day one of us won't be in a position to give the other one a job, or at least a commissiion"... isn't quite so straightforward to acknowledge.

On a slightly different note, it may be that life would be more interesting without any reviews at all (not that that's likely to be possible any more). When I was a kid there were no reviews of children's books, at least none I ever saw. So the local library for me was a place of genuine exploration. I picked out my favourite all time novel there (The Once and Future King) not having heard of it and knowing nothing about it. Same with cinema. I've told the story before, I suspect, but one day a friend and I decided to go and watch whatever was on at the cinema. When we got there, the film was 'Blazing Saddles', which we'd never heard of and assumed was a straight cowboy movie. We both hated cowboy movies but kept our pact and went in to watch it. You can probably guess the rest . . .

that's agreeing or disagreeing with a thesis, so not a review, as such

Even that distinction blurs, though, Jan. What if we were in a literature faculty, so that criticism of the novel was the thesis? Almost all academic debate comes down in the end to opinion, just as a review does.

R x

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Because the reader simply does not know about the circumstances of any particular review, NO review can be considered 100% genuine.

Alan, do you include in his just Amazon reviews, or all online reviews, or all reviews, period? And should the purist author therefore refuse to pursue reviews - even in the TLS or broadsheet press?

I think Jan's approach - the disclaimer which states any relationship between author and reviewer - seems the most transparent way forward. But can you imagine it ever happening in the print media?

But can you imagine it ever happening in the print media?

I've certainly seen it for non-fiction - when the reviewer knows the person who's written the memoir, say, or is themselves a specialist in the topic.

A while ago a biggish-name author reviewed a novel by someone who'd been a pupil of theirs on a Masters. And though I think it was probably right to say that that was the case, I do think she should have resisted the temptation to cast the review as "his student work and his debut were wonderful in the following ways, but sadly he hasn't developed and grown further." Somehow it would have been okay from just a critic, but as a teacher myself it made me wince a bit.

Because the reader simply does not know about the circumstances of any particular review, NO review can be considered 100% genuine.

I think the issue of genuine-ness is a bit misleading, though. Why does anyone review anything? You could argue that the fact that a pro reviewer is paid by the newspaper whatever they say in the novel balances out the fact that they might know the writer. Whereas the reviewer who's doing it for free may well be doing it for other, less obvious but less disinterested reasons.

And, ultimately, a novel only exists in the ether between the writer's mind, and the readers' mind. You could argue that no reviewer is reading the same novel as the novel the author wrote, and if you do buy that novel, you'll be reading a different novel again.

At which point, genuineness doesn't really come into it. It's just not existentially possible to write a review which is any use at all to anyone else...

RT104,
This furore sprouted out of Amazon, and that is my focus. As a novice, Amazon reviews are the only type of review I am likely to encounter. Sigh.

I can only speak for myself. Everyone must do what they think is right for them.

Thinking about this affair wearing my reader's hat, I can say that if I had browsed Amazon for something to read last week, I would have read the reviews and probably been swayed by them.
Doing it now, and in the future, I will not read the reviews. Whether I buy, or not, will be based on the sample. If there's no sample, there's no purchase.

Disclaimers? Only valid if those involved are honest.

(Are super-competitive people always honest? I would propose that a high percentage of those who achieve a high degree of success in their chosen fields are not. Would you trust a disclaimer signed by Ellory and his ilk.)

All very fair points, Alan.