Author Christopher Keenan has caused a bit of a stir on Amazon after it was discovered he had faked over 200 five star reviews of his book the Hacker Hunter. I checked out his Amazon page about a week ago and looked at some of the fake reviews. They were very obviously fake. They were all very, very over the top with the glowing praise and all claimed to not have reviewed much on Amazon before.
Not surprisingly, people wrote in and complained and now the book only has 6 reviews on Amazon and they are all pretty negative. People are saying they feel scammed and that the author should be banned from Amazon for his stunt.
There’s been a lot of news of authors behaving badly on Amazon in the past couple of months. There was the case of Jacqueline Howlett who challenged a reviewer after they gave a negative (but gentle) review of her book the Greek Seaman. She accused them of not reading the second error free copy she had sent and even posted copies of some four and five star reviews she got on Amazon UK to show that others had liked it. When she got attacked from others for her astounding lack of professionalism she responded with several f-bombs then picked up the shredded remains of her dignity and ran like hell. The trolls were quick on her tail though and soon her Amazon and YouTube page racked up hundreds of negative reviews.
There is also the case of author Chris McGrath who disliked an Amazon review of his book The Attempted Murder of God: Hidden Science You Really Need to Know so much he is now suing the reviewer for libel.
The actions of these authors are just unbelievable to me. I can pity Christopher Keenan a little. He had self-published his book and was just trying (the wrong way) to get it some attention. The lesson to be learned from these authors is to respect your damn readers. Do not think you can trick them. Do not lose your marbles if someone gives you a bad review. Be professional. Because all it takes is one moment of emotional immaturity on your part and then boom---your career will end up in the toilet before it even had a chance to take off.
---Find out more about Marisa and her books on her blog.
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