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.

Yes, I suppose so. What I should have said is that, in academia (at least, I imagine this is true) you all pretty much know who everyone concerned is so there is an openness there.

Actually, as Alan intends to do in future, I have only ever bought a work of fiction based on reading the opening few paragraphs, either on Amazon or in a bookshop. If you read a sampling of reviews from 5* through to 1* - and there is generally a fair smattering of each - you can only come to the conclusion that one man's meat is another man's poison and that all reviews are a bit pointless. Which renders this debate a bit pointless too, I guess.

I can only feel a bit sorry for the Ellorys of this world, it's rather sad behaviour, in the end.

I suppose it might be possible to read Amazon reviews for their concrete content, if any, even if one suspects the motives of the reviewer. If a reviewer highlights aspects of the book and says why he or she loved it, or hated it, that is at least something. Still subjective opinion, but something to go on. If someone hated a book because it was dreadfully wordy and full of long introspective passages, for example - or that the story took an age to get going - I probably wouldn't care that the reviewer have it one star - I might like it! Or if a five star review said that what was great about the book was all the blood and gore, or all the violent S&M sex - or the richly detailed descriptions of fishing - well, I might still know the book was not for me. Silly examples - but I hope you know what I mean.

R x

What I find most interesting about this debate is the surprise that is being expressed on discovering that some internet reviews are fake. Perhaps if that one bit of information gets more widely-disseminated, it will be worth the fuss.

At the end of the day, any review is just the opinion of the reviewer. I don't think I would base a decision to purchase anything on just one review, and I've always been much more wary of taking internet reviews at face value. I've known for a long time that this sort of thing was going on, online, although I didn't know there was a term for it. There are even companies around who sell the service of trying to spot fake reviews and weed them out, to help the sellers of internet goods/services to avoid them. It's in no one's interest for their customers to be fooled like that.

Which renders this debate a bit pointless too, I guess. I can only feel a bit sorry for the Ellorys of this world, it's rather sad behaviour, in the end.

Jan, it hasn't been pointless for me. In fact, it's helped me to clarify my thoughts about a problem I'm going to face in the coming months. I'm 99% sure I'm going to self-publish - once my novel is good enough - but the peripheral tasks involved (marketing, social-networking etc) are worries for a self-effacing person. And garnering reviews was something that had been bothering me, especially as existing self-pubbers seem convinced it is something you should pursue.
Well, now I know there's no need.

The writers you feel sorry for (okay - only a bit) are unworthy of sympathy, IMO. They're like must-win-at-all-cost athletes who've taken performance-enhancing drugs, in the hope they won't get caught. No doubt they believed they were simply going the extra mile, and weren't doing anything really bad.

It's just not existentially possible to write a review which is any use at all to anyone else...

And this makes me feel even better.

I agree - no sympathy at all for writers caught taking on fake IDs to push their own work. Unless they're actually mentally ill (as seems perhaps to be the case in one previous scandal), in which case I think it's more sad, but still not purely forgiveable, IYSWIM.

Although the shock of betrayal that I've seen expressed in some quarters is really rather comical. Something like this was always going to happen.

I think there is a really big difference between getting friends, say, to post nice reviews, and actually faking an ID. They're NOT the same thing, no matter what these guys

must-win-at-all-cost athletes who've taken performance-enhancing drugs, in the hope they won't get caught. No doubt they believed they were simply going the extra mile, and weren't doing anything really bad.

would say. And no, just because others do it won't wash.

Although I do see that if you struggle to keep going financially, and just one little pill/teeny anonymous review appears to offer the difference between having to go back to working in Tesco, and being able to keep on running/writing... it would be easy to feel it didn't make that much difference. Not really.

But, yanno, some writers would rather do less well, honourably.

It all seems childish and pathetic in the extreme - I can't work up much moral outrage about it because there's something almost touchingly lame and naive about this kind of behaviour. It's a little like that exchange in one of the Goon Shows where they're hiding in the Louvre after hours and the curator comes round:

-- Quick, hide behind this pane of glass.
-- But you can see through a pane of glass.
-- Not if you've got your eyes closed!

But I wonder if it actually works?

According to the link posted at the top of this thread:

Writing about A Quiet Belief in Angels, which won a host of literary awards and was listed for the Richard & Judy book club in 2008, Ellory described it as a “modern masterpiece” and “chilling”. He also gave it five stars. The father-of-one, whose 10 novels have sold more than a million copies, added: “Ignore all the dissenters and naysayers, this book is not trying to be anything other than a great story, brilliantly told. Whatever else it might do, it will touch your soul.”

If the rest of Ellory's review of his own work was in the same vein - gushing, adjectival, hyperbolic, even cliched, and determinedly non-specific - it wouldn't do much to make me want to buy the book, because it makes the book seem too good to be true while at the same time giving the reader little sense of what it's about. You'd smell a rat, wouldn't you?

I find myself wondering whether someone who does this was one of those schoolkids who tried to fake letters from his Mum, to get off PE and so on.

I would generally not pay much attention to a product or service for which there is only a single review that gives it either maximum marks (e.g. 5 stars on Amazon) or minimum marks. I'm also wary if there are a few reviews and they vary wildly between maximum and minimum marks (or are, in words, of a similar degree of enthusiasm or derision). If I see that something has several reviews, and they are of a range of degrees of goodness or badness, then I'll pay them more attention. Even then, though, I'll find myself wondering about reviews which seem highly praising or highly denigrating, especially if the others are more middle-ranking.

Internet reviews are so easy to fake, by anyone, that they're less reliable, in my opinion, than the opinion of a randomly-chosen person in the pub.

The trouble with the drug-taking analogy is that there is an actual advantage - improved performance - in taking the drugs but only a perceived advantage in faking a review. Not defending either.

Sue Roe's brilliant The Private Lives of the Impressionists...

Emma, happened across this in the library today whilst waiting for car to be expensively gummed back together - it really is good, drew me right in. Thanks for the heads up.

I think the Sue Roe is fab - and group biography is an incredibly difficult form to do well. I did that period for Art History A Level, but knew almost nothing about them (except that Manet was in love with Berthe Morisot and she married his brother), and very little, too, about the political/social milieu. Fab stuff.

but only a perceived advantage in faking a review

Although apparently a slew of 1* reviews on Amazon do depress the ranking - so if they're sock-puppet ones by a "rival" author there is an absolute advantage.

Somehow it would have been okay from just a critic, but as a teacher myself it made me wince a bit.

Yes - not even just a bit. That's so wrong in so many ways.

Although apparently a slew of 1* reviews on Amazon do depress the ranking - so if they're sock-puppet ones by a "rival" author there is an absolute advantage.

I guess, but as long as they're all doing it to each other, which is beginning to look like the case, perhaps the good and bad reviews cancel each other out? Dunno, but sock-puppetry is rather pathetic and despicable, whether you're bigging yourself up or doing a 'rival' down. I think I'm now of the opinion that leaving good but sincere reviews for your friends' books is natural and pretty harmless.

Is it just me, or does the expression 'sock-puppet' conjure up images of Lambchop and Charlie Horse for anyone else?

<Added>

I didn't mean to suggest that every author is sock-puppeting, clearly that is not the case. Huge generalisation based on number of cases emerging recently.

Is it just me, or does the expression 'sock-puppet' conjure up images of Lambchop and Charlie Horse for anyone else?

Sooty and Harry Corbett.

<Added>

although Punch and Judy might be more appropriate.

Is it just me, or does the expression 'sock-puppet' conjure up images of Lambchop and Charlie Horse for anyone else?

Shari Lewis and Lamb Chop immediately, for me. It's certainly not Keith Harris and that monkey character that he uses (the one who constantly slags him off).

<Added>

Actually, maybe Rod Hull and Emu are a more apt metaphor.