# John Locke -- was it really true??



## RM Prioleau (Mar 18, 2011)

At the writing conference I went to last week, they were giving out conference bags with lots of goodies inside. One of the goodies was John Locke's book, "How I Sold a Million Ebooks in 5 Months". I thought this was really awesome to get this book, so I began reading and taking notes. I'm almost done with the book now, and I was going to post a review of my thoughts of the book when I went on Amazon and saw a bunch of reviews about Locke being a fraud and paying for reviews and such. Basically saying that the real reason he sold a million ebooks was through this pay-for-review service, which has since been out of business since 2011 or so.

Is all this really true? Did he really pay for reviews to get his 5 million ebook sales? I can't believe I haven't heard about this before. I think when it happened I was still new to the self-publishing game and didn't know anything like this existed. I Googled stories about it, but I would like honest opinions from you guys, since many of you are veterans and have been here from the start, seeing practically everything that's been going on in the self-publishing world.


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## Betsy the Quilter (Oct 27, 2008)

Here's one of the threads discussing it here:
http://www.kboards.com/index.php/topic,124847.0

Betsy


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## dotx (Nov 4, 2010)

Well, he still sold the million ebooks. The fact that he paid for reviews might have helped, but the other part is still true.


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## JRTomlin (Jan 18, 2011)

RM Prioleau said:


> At the writing conference I went to last week, they were giving out conference bags with lots of goodies inside. One of the goodies was John Locke's book, "How I Sold a Million Ebooks in 5 Months". I thought this was really awesome to get this book, so I began reading and taking notes. I'm almost done with the book now, and I was going to post a review of my thoughts of the book when I went on Amazon and saw a bunch of reviews about Locke being a fraud and paying for reviews and such. Basically saying that the real reason he sold a million ebooks was through this pay-for-review service, which has since been out of business since 2011 or so.
> 
> Is all this really true? Did he really pay for reviews to get his 5 million ebook sales? I can't believe I haven't heard about this before. I think when it happened I was still new to the self-publishing game and didn't know anything like this existed. I Googled stories about it, but I would like honest opinions from you guys, since many of you are veterans and have been here from the start, seeing practically everything that's been going on in the self-publishing world.


Anyone who thinks that reviews will get you a million sales isn't being realistic. I find the idea fairly ludicrous, to be frank.

Did he pay for reviews? Apparently. I have way too much experience at this to think that had much to do with his success. That doesn't mean I condone buying reviews. I just don't see that reviews make all that much difference.


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## RM Prioleau (Mar 18, 2011)

Betsy the Quilter said:


> Here's one of the threads discussing it here:
> http://www.kboards.com/index.php/topic,124847.0
> 
> Betsy


So it's confirmed.
That is disheartening... So everything I read in his book has pretty much been a lie, and I've been wasting my time reading his book. I wish it wasn't true. Why do people feel they have to cheat their way to the top?


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## Al Dente (Sep 3, 2012)

I'm sure my opinion isn't going to be too popular, but I've read a few samples of his work. I'm pretty sure he got where he is today because he writes books that are easy reads, fun, and appealing to a wide audience. The reviews probably helped somewhat, but not enough to sell a million books.


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## cinisajoy (Mar 10, 2013)

Ignoring that fact that he paid for reviews, how was the book?
Let me rephrase: if you knew nothing about the author, how was the book?
There is no way a few (could be anywhere from 1-1000) bought reviews could sell a million books.

So again how was the book?
Was the book lying or was it just a few paid reviews that have you in a tiff?

Now something to think about.
You basically gave one of your books away.  Should the ones that picked up free review it for you?


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## Terrence OBrien (Oct 21, 2010)

We know he sold a zillion books. We don't know why. The first thing I would ask is did people like the books.


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## Victorine (Apr 23, 2010)

Obviously paying for reviews is dumb. However, I agree with the others who have said there's no way the paid reviews is what sold a million books.

Here's my opinion: He sold a million books because 1) People liked his books 2) He priced them low 3) Amazon saw he was selling well and helped promote his books.  (#3 being the KEY as to how he sold so MANY books. And I believe that's how anyone sells tons and tons of books on Amazon.)


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## Edward W. Robertson (May 18, 2010)

Social proof is a pretty big deal, though.


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## Desmond X. Torres (Mar 16, 2013)

I paid five bucks for that lousy eBook late last year.

It wasn't just the paid reviews, it was the Twitter scam he wrote.

I don't want to burst your bubble, but John Locke is a weasel fraud that ginned the system with really crummy books and then made a fortune selling his bs to suckers like me as if it was the truth. Honest man, burn that book, there are better PEOPLE on this board that will help you with the marketing than that clown. 

His book did more to hurt indie authors than any other single thing I can think about. He got in, made his pile and got out of town.
He's the Amway rep of self publishing.


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## 60169 (May 18, 2012)

I feel very blessed to have received as many reviews as I have on my first book. Even more so that they are mostly good reviews. Still, even with 405 reviews , I have not sold a million books. Or ten percent of that. One percent? Yes!

A thousand great reviews might be one small piece of the puzzle, but it won't help you sell mega-loads of  books, IMO.


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## Nicholas Andrews (Sep 8, 2011)

RM Prioleau said:


> Why do people feel they have to cheat their way to the top?


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## cinisajoy (Mar 10, 2013)

Desmond X. Torres said:


> I paid five bucks for that lousy eBook late last year.
> 
> It wasn't just the paid reviews, it was the Twitter scam he wrote.
> 
> ...


I didn't know the rest. Though to me just the title of the book screamed scam. But then I figure the 17,876 books on how to sell on Amazon/publish a book are all just out to make a quick buck off the unsuspecting.


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## Guest (Oct 25, 2013)

RM Prioleau said:


> So it's confirmed.
> That is disheartening... So everything I read in his book has pretty much been a lie, and I've been wasting my time reading his book.


Sounds like he's got another review comin', this one for free! Please post this sentence on his page!


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## RM Prioleau (Mar 18, 2011)

cinisajoy said:


> Ignoring that fact that he paid for reviews, how was the book?
> Let me rephrase: if you knew nothing about the author, how was the book?
> There is no way a few (could be anywhere from 1-1000) bought reviews could sell a million books.
> 
> ...


Actually, prior to my knowledge of this, I honestly thought the book was mediocre. Much of the beginning of the book was him going on and on about his success, delaying what I really wanted to read about. The chapters/sections I found helpful were:

-What Didn't Work!
-What You're (Probably) Doing Wrong
-What You Should Be Doing
-How To Write a Life-Changing Blog

I felt the majority of the book was spent talking about how to utilize Twitter for marketing your book. While I agree that Twitter is indeed a powerful tool, I think that method is less effective in 2013 than it was in 2010/11 when the book came out.

Overall, the above sections I thought were most helpful had talked about practically all the trials and errors I've done, and the 'what you should be doing' section talked about everything that I have and already am already doing, so it sort of confirmed that I must be on the right path if that's the case.

I was very interested in the "Target Marketing" section because that is something that I've been really trying to work on, and I've been trying to find more books on the subject. But what Locke had to say about that didn't exactly solidify how someone like me should go about finding/defining my target market.

So maybe I was exaggerating when I said that everything in the book was a lie, but it's very hard for me to take someone like him seriously knowing that he did something so immoral and wrong, especially when he talked a great deal in his book about getting reviews and didn't mention the paid review thing.


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## cinisajoy (Mar 10, 2013)

RM Prioleau said:


> Actually, prior to my knowledge of this, I honestly thought the book was mediocre. Much of the beginning of the book was him going on and on about his success, delaying what I really wanted to read about. The chapters/sections I found helpful were:
> 
> -What Didn't Work!
> -What You're (Probably) Doing Wrong
> ...


So basically the book wasn't worth the paper it was printed on. A case of people don't want to admit they were taken for a ride and he got rich off of it.


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## Vaalingrade (Feb 19, 2013)

You're not exactly going to get impartial consensus here on him because this is one of the few demographics that knows or cares about review buying.

I imagine the review buying thing had nothing to do with anything because, well, it never does.


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## RM Prioleau (Mar 18, 2011)

cinisajoy said:


> So basically the book wasn't worth the paper it was printed on. A case of people don't want to admit they were taken for a ride and he got rich off of it.


Haha, well lucky for me, I didn't pay for the book. It was a free giveaway in the conference bag they gave me.


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## Edward W. Robertson (May 18, 2010)

People here have compared fake reviews to using steroids/PEDs, and it's pretty much the perfect metaphor. Steroids alone can't turn your average dude on the street into an MLB player. To reach the highest levels, you have to be a world-class athlete. There's no getting around that. But if you're already there, or you're right on the bubble, they might push you higher than you're capable of on your own.

Locke wrote a bunch of books with commercial appeal and marketed the heck out of them. He also cheated. Would he have sold a bunch even without purchasing reviews? Probably. But now, there's an asterisk after his sales. And there's no taking it away.


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## Lisa Grace (Jul 3, 2011)

Victorine said:


> Obviously paying for reviews is dumb. However, I agree with the others who have said there's no way the paid reviews is what sold a million books.
> 
> Here's my opinion: He sold a million books because 1) People liked his books 2) He priced them low 3) Amazon saw he was selling well and helped promote his books. (#3 being the KEY as to how he sold so MANY books. And I believe that's how anyone sells tons and tons of books on Amazon.)


This.


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## daringnovelist (Apr 3, 2010)

cinisajoy said:


> I didn't know the rest. Though to me just the title of the book screamed scam. But then I figure the 17,876 books on how to sell on Amazon/publish a book are all just out to make a quick buck off the unsuspecting.


When I was young, they used to sell books titled "make big bucks selling X." (Mail order, drop ship greeting cards, etc.) You'd see the ads in the back of comic books.

I bought one, and I had friends who kept buying others and we compared them and found they all followed the same boilerplate: Start the book with exciting promises, then dole one tiny hint of real info early in the book, then for 50 pages or so, keep promising more information, but mostly just give testimonials about how this information changed lives. Drop another tidbit of the info every so often, but mostly keep promising and promising, whip up excitement, and finally get to the meat of the info toward the end of the book -- which turns out to be standard advice you can get anywhere. (Or in the case of some gurus, give a little vague info and promise more detail in the next book.)

It's not that such books have wrong information, it's just that it's a small amount of easily found advice which you can easily find if you show half an ounce of interest. And they don't really go into the techniques in the kind of depth that could be useful. They're more "tips" booklets, padded out with snake oil, imho.

HOWEVER... these books do sometimes introduce people to concepts that they might overlook without the heavy sales pitch.

There are a a few best selling financial advice books that do this same thing. My rule of thumb, if you open the book to three random pages and don't actually learn something you can use, then forget it.

Camille


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## RM Prioleau (Mar 18, 2011)

daringnovelist said:


> they all followed the same boilerplate: Start the book with exciting promises, then dole one tiny hint of real info early in the book, then for 50 pages or so, keep promising more information, but mostly just give testimonials about how this information changed lives. Drop another tidbit of the info every so often, but mostly keep promising and promising, whip up excitement, and finally get to the meat of the info toward the end of the book -- which turns out to be standard advice you can get anywhere. (Or in the case of some gurus, give a little vague info and promise more detail in the next book.)


Wow, this is EXACTLY how Locke's book was set up!


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## Victoria Champion (Jun 6, 2012)

There is another author who made over a million who offers good advice. His name is J.A. Konrath. I recently read his novel _Afraid_ and it was stunningly good. More Konrath less Locke imo.


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## cinisajoy (Mar 10, 2013)

Victoria Champion said:


> There is another author who made over a million who offers good advice. His name is J.A. Konrath. I recently read his novel _Afraid_ and it was stunningly good. More Konrath less Locke imo.


If you liked _Afraid_ you must get _Serial Killers Uncut_.

And I will agree with you on listening to JA Konrath. Also Joe_Nobody and Russell Blake are two others to listen too.


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## Writerly Writer (Jul 19, 2012)

NicholasAndrews said:


>


I agree with your answer, and I raise you a deeper reason.










Capitalism makes us competitive and sometimes causes us to compromise our morals and ethics. Art is not an economic necessity (even though art can become a way to earn money, it's not typically a 'need' per se) and thus sometimes we take shortcuts to do what we love and earn a living (although I recognise John Locke's 'living' is way better than average).


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## blakebooks (Mar 10, 2012)

There was much debate over this at the time.

Here are some facts most people forget. Locke did buy a ton of reviews, beginning in Nov, 2010. His sales ascent began, well, in Nov, 2010. To a sociopath, or a smart business person, that end would justify the means. 

His remarkable trajectory caused several things to happen. One was that the WSJ wrote an article about him, I want to say, in March or so, 2011, citing, you guessed it, his remarkable sales achievement. That made him a national name. Also, Mr. Konrath featured him on his blog, I think it was around then, too, wherein his moral philosophy and the secrets of his success were aired ad nauseum to the usual credulous acolytes in search of a new Messiah. Of course, that interview, as did his book, necessarily left out the review buying, which in turn got him the visibility in the algos, which in turn put him in front of every new kindle owner, which in turn got him into the WSJ, which in turn put him in the national limelight as an author everyone needed to buy, if only to see what the fuss was all about.

These are complex reactions. Chain reactions, each building upon the prior, none analyzable as a singularity with any meaning, especially in another place and time - the dizzy time when anything was possible, at the front of the bow wave of self-pubbing hopefuls that flooded the market with their work. When people use the post hoc reasoning of, "well, 1 million flies can't be wrong," they are in fact doing nothing but arguing a sort of confirmation bias - "a hack couldn't possibly sell a million books!" As though that declaration makes the statement true.

Of course a hack can. Many, many have. There are books that, if you go back five or ten years later, sold a million or more, and which are almost unreadable they're so bad. I'm not talking nuance here. I'm talking complete stinkers. As an example (and I can't wait for the one star reviews tomorrow, if I check, which I don't anymore), the second book in the Millennium trilogy, I think it's the girl that kicked the hornet's nest, is in my opinion barely edited, unreadable drivel, unless you consider several hundred pages of unpronounceable Swedish names and virtually every item ever offered by Ikea to be gripping reading - not to mention Billy's Pizza, which I've thankfully never consumed, but which I still remember to this day from a transcontinental flight. And yet it sold untold millions. As did the third, even less readable, dross.

Now, some might argue that those books are genius. Why? Because they sold a lot. But guess what? Go back and read fifty pages now. They're garbage. Really. Pure tripe. I know, I know, how dare I. Because they must be good. After all, they sold millions.

Or go read the first Bourne book. First bit? Wonderful. Then around the 20% point it's like Ludlum's slow cousin started writing by numbers, and it never gets any better. I recall those books as brilliant. But go back and reread it? Do it. Really. At about the 15 or 20 percent mark, it jumps the shark to the point where I can't control literary giggles, it's so bad. And I love Ludlum. Love him. One of my inspirations. And yet the movies are so much better than what he put down in print. Really. Don't believe me? Go back and read em.

Sometimes things go viral for no apparent reason. Often it's because the first book in a series was decent and got popular, so the publisher or author milked it, out of ideas, phoning it in. Don't even get me started on more recent tomes that sold more than Elvis and the Beatles. I'm pretty sure that, like so many other pop culture aberrations, five years from now most will claim they couldn't get through 50 Shades. And yet it was unprecedentedly successful.

Does that mean it was good?

As I like to say, depends on what you mean by good.

JUST BECAUSE SOMETHING IS POPULAR FOR A BRIEF WHILE DOESN'T MEAN IT'S GOOD. I can't say that often enough.

I know that as good little product sponges we're supposed to credulously lap up whatever is offered while hucksters use the tired argument, "How can this taste like sh#t? Millions have bought it!" But the truth is that many wildly popular movies, when watched a year or two after the fire, on DVD, are at best, meh, and so are many books. So are many records. That's pop culture for ya. A civilization that's transfixed by Jersey Shore's consumption habits shouldn't be the litmus test of what's good and what ain't.

End of rant.

I do these sometimes. Lo Siento.


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## Terrence OBrien (Oct 21, 2010)

> Now, some might argue that those books are genius. Why? Because they sold a lot. But guess what? Go back and read fifty pages now. They're garbage. Really. Pure tripe. I know, I know, how dare I. Because they must be good. After all, they sold millions.


God Bless a zillion consumers and their wide variety of tastes and preferences. I suspect they don't give a hoot what I think of a book.


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## DarkScribe (Aug 30, 2012)

JRTomlin said:


> Anyone who thinks that reviews will get you a million sales isn't being realistic. I find the idea fairly ludicrous, to be frank.
> 
> Did he pay for reviews? Apparently. I have way too much experience at this to think that had much to do with his success. That doesn't mean I condone buying reviews. I just don't see that reviews make all that much difference.


Read his books, those involved at the time, and see if that doesn't change your mind. They are so appalling that it would be hard to imagine him selling more than a few dozen. Whatever the reason for his sales, it certainly wasn't his writing skill.


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## Desmond X. Torres (Mar 16, 2013)

RM Prioleau said:


> -How To Write a Life-Changing Blog


Yeah, and shortly after I read the book, Joe Paterno- Locke's hero and the subj of that chapter- was disgraced because of his actions in helping covering up the sexual assaults of boys at Penn State. Paterno was so disgraced the University took a statue of him down for what he did to protect a pedophile.

It's so cool to put John Locke and the Penn State scandal in the same sentence.


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## Terrence OBrien (Oct 21, 2010)

Desmond X. Torres said:


> Yeah, and shortly after I read the book, Joe Paterno- Locke's hero and the subj of that chapter- was disgraced because of his actions in helping covering up the sexual assaults of boys at Penn State. Paterno was so disgraced the University took a statue of him down for what he did to protect a pedophile.
> 
> It's so cool to put John Locke and the Penn State scandal in the same sentence.


Locke had nothing to do with the scandal or molesting of kids.


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## dalya (Jul 26, 2011)

RM Prioleau said:


> So it's confirmed.
> That is disheartening... So everything I read in his book has pretty much been a lie, and I've been wasting my time reading his book. I wish it wasn't true. Why do people feel they have to cheat their way to the top?


Pick any industry and you'll find a real mix of people at every level.


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## blakebooks (Mar 10, 2012)

Terrence: That's why I say, depends on what you mean by good. If you mean good as, a million people bought X, remember that something like 10 million people bought the pet rock, and a third as many bought the pet rock companion - which was another rock.

Millions of people also bought internet stocks that were worth nothing shortly thereafter because, well, they were worthless piles of dung. And no matter how many rubes were duped, they were still worthless piles of dung.

Capitalism often equates to hucksterism. That's one of the byproducts. I have no problem with that.

But pointing to the masses for evidence of worth has always been a fool's game, as most market watchers agree. Because for every buyer, there's someone selling, and usually those selling have an agenda - to sell.

I think at best we can say about popular products is that they sold a lot. Not that the swarm possesses some innate wisdom. Mob rules doesn't equate to better decisions, even if the majority in the mob advance a notion. Mob purchases aren't a reliable differentiator of quality. It just means that a lot of people bought something. As an example of large scale purchases of ideas, consider that virtually every scientific advancement flew in the face of the consensus of the majority, whether the theory of the microbe, or a round earth, etc. The plain evidence of history is that many people can be wildly wrong for long periods of time, while defending their wisdom by virtue of the popularity of their pet idea.

So then we're back to, depends on what you mean by good. If you mean popular at the time, sure. Milli Vanilli was popular at the time. Does that mean they were good? Hardly. Vanilla Ice was popular at the time. Now he's a punchline. 

Plenty of popular things were later understood to be idiocy and ludicrous on their face. I believe Mackey sort of laid that out better than I ever could in Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds. Right then, right now.

To worship popularity is to worship a false god, in my opinion.

Then again, sure hope the Xmas selling season is a good one!


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## Desmond X. Torres (Mar 16, 2013)

Terrence OBrien said:


> Locke had nothing to do with the scandal or molesting of kids.


I'm sorry... where did I say he did?


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## Victoria Champion (Jun 6, 2012)

The gist of Russell's posts can be shrunk down to one phrase from the 80s:

*Don't believe the hype.*

_hype_
'A fad. A clever marketing strategy which a product is advertised as the thing everyone must have, to the point where people begin to feel they need to consume it.
Millions of suckers fell for the hype...'

(from urban dictionary)

Whenever I start to see the _fnords_ in pop culture I think of that phrase.


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## Terrence OBrien (Oct 21, 2010)

> But pointing to the masses for evidence of worth has always been a fool's game, as most market watchers agree. Because for every buyer, there's someone selling, and usually those selling have an agenda - to sell.


Disagree. If we are looking at a hyped stock, we have an objective measue in its subsequent valuation. Same with Beanie Babies or Bernie Maddow's birthday list. As Mackey pointed out, both the tulips and South Seas stock fell like Pet Rocks.

But I don't know what comes after the consumer's book buying to objectively determine if he was right or wrong. All I can do is ask some guy if he liked the book. If so, it met the purpose of both producer and consumer. If a product meets those purposes, I say it's good. I sure can't argue the point when someone says they liked it. Do I tell him he didn't, or he shouldn't have?

So I agree it all does depend on what is meant by good. In mass consumption, I do point to the masses, and would disagree it's a fool's game for books. If a book meets a consumer's needs, its good because he says it's good. He speaks for a very small segment of the population, but aggregate lots of folks who agree with him, and we have a good book. You can aggregate your crew and label it a bad book. I'm happy if Schrodinger's Cat is reading it..

Worship of popularity in books is worship of success. And I liked the first Bourne book. I have no problem stating that in the face of opposing standards. It's a fact. I liked it. You didn't. I'd say that tells us nothing about the book. It probably just tells us we have different standards. And I don't see much reason for either of us to adopt the standard of the other.

And I'd agree there is a heavy dose of hucksterism in capitalism. I see the same in literary criticism. Hucksters are running rampant.

I also bought a Pet Rock and we had a great deal of fun laughing over the product. It wasn't a serious investment. Ain't this a great country?


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## daringnovelist (Apr 3, 2010)

cinisajoy said:


> If you liked _Afraid_ you must get _Serial Killers Uncut_.
> 
> And I will agree with you on listening to JA Konrath. Also Joe_Nobody and Russell Blake are two others to listen too.


Yep, they give you more in ONE POST than is in several such books.

Camille


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## CoraBuhlert (Aug 7, 2011)

blakebooks said:


> Of course a hack can. Many, many have. There are books that, if you go back five or ten years later, sold a million or more, and which are almost unreadable they're so bad. I'm not talking nuance here. I'm talking complete stinkers. As an example (and I can't wait for the one star reviews tomorrow, if I check, which I don't anymore), the second book in the Millennium trilogy, I think it's the girl that kicked the hornet's nest, is in my opinion barely edited, unreadable drivel, unless you consider several hundred pages of unpronounceable Swedish names and virtually every item ever offered by Ikea to be gripping reading - not to mention Billy's Pizza, which I've thankfully never consumed, but which I still remember to this day from a transcontinental flight. And yet it sold untold millions. As did the third, even less readable, dross.
> 
> Now, some might argue that those books are genius. Why? Because they sold a lot. But guess what? Go back and read fifty pages now. They're garbage. Really. Pure tripe. I know, I know, how dare I. Because they must be good. After all, they sold millions.


Larssen was a Swedish writer and while Swedish names may be weird to non-Swedes (and IMO Larssen was better than other Swedish authors in that there was a bit of variety to his character names, while other Scandinavian authors have given us books filled with people named Ole, Lasse, Las and Sven with the surnames variations of Olsen, Svenson and Larssen), they are generally not unpronouncable for Swedes. Ditto for some of the details about corporate corruption, ex-Nazis in high positions, human trafficking, etc... that tend to irritate American and British readers. Those are hot issues in Sweden, so to Swedes all that talk about corporate corruption was no more boring than a lot of talk about baseball or the Second Amendment (which can drive non-American readers up the wall) is to Americans. Even the whole IKEA stuff probably made a lot of people nod and smile and think, "Hey, I had exactly that bed/cupboard/shelf unit."

That's not to say that the Stieg Larssen are not flawed, cause they are. They could definitely have used a good editor, but I guess the editor didn't feel comfortable editing too much, since Larssen was already dead by the time the first book came out. What is more, the English translation seems to be particularly clunky, at least compared to the German translation. Though without reading the original Swedish it's hard to say how much of the clunkiness originates with Larssen.

But in the end, Stieg Larssen was a Swedish writer writing for a Swedish and to some extent general Scandinavian and North European audiences (Scandinavian crime fiction is very popular in Germany, for example). The Millennium trilogy is closer to US-style thriller than most other Swedish crime fiction, but it's easy to forget that it is not a US-style thriller and was never intended to be one, because Swedes normally don't do US-style thrillers.

I do agree with you on John Locke, though. I looked at the samples of one or two of his books, while he was on the top of the news, and they weren't my cup of tea at all. I have never been able to force my way through a Ludlum novel, so I can't comment.



> JUST BECAUSE SOMETHING IS POPULAR FOR A BRIEF WHILE DOESN'T MEAN IT'S GOOD. I can't say that often enough.


Indeed. _Love Story, Jonathan Livingston Seagull, The Bridges of Madison County, The Da Vinci Code_ and _Fifty Shades of Grey_ were all massively popular for a while, even though they are objectively not very good and indeed the earlier ones have largely faded from popular conscience.


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## Book Master (May 3, 2013)

Really enjoyed reading this thread! Some of the post had me laughing so hard, my side was hurting.
After reading all the posts, this thread should have been called, "John Locke; with Tar and Feathers.

Oh well, the guy came up with a killer game plan and made his money. I never read the book in question. I don't think I care to either.

BM


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## JRTomlin (Jan 18, 2011)

DarkScribe said:


> Read his books, those involved at the time, and see if that doesn't change your mind. They are so appalling that it would be hard to imagine him selling more than a few dozen. Whatever the reason for his sales, it certainly wasn't his writing skill.


That they wouldn't suit my taste is irrelevant.

He wrote rather simplistic, easily readable books. No, he didn't have great writing skill but that kind of writing doesn't require great skill. There are a lot of people out there who like that kind of novel. Cora mentioned a whole list of fairly bad books that were quite popular for pretty much exactly that reason. You may not like them, but the readers didn't ask you.


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## ChrisWard (Mar 10, 2012)

He sold a million ebooks because he wrote books called things like "How I sold a Million Ebooks" and indies everywhere went and bought them because they thought they would actually help them sell a million ebooks. Same with pretty much every other big gun where you see loads of people saying "well, I went and bought (insert big selling author's name)'s such and such book to see what all the fuss was about". It's the snowball effect. He was a marketing demon, pure and simple. It doesn't matter whether he could write or if he bought reviews, he knew how to SELL.


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## A.A (Mar 30, 2012)

Is it because it was 2010 and on the brink of the Christmas season that his huge amount of reviews did work for sales? As someone said earlier, social proof is a powerful thing.
From the start of 2012 on, I'm assuming it would have stopped working because a tsunami of books came along, and so many with a ton of (hopefully legitimate) reviews.
I haven't read his books, so can't comment on the content of them.



blakebooks said:


> Or go read the first Bourne book. First bit? Wonderful. Then around the 20% point it's like Ludlum's slow cousin started writing by numbers, and it never gets any better. I recall those books as brilliant. But go back and reread it? Do it. Really. At about the 15 or 20 percent mark, it jumps the shark to the point where I can't control literary giggles, it's so bad. And I love Ludlum. Love him. One of my inspirations. And yet the movies are so much better than what he put down in print. Really. Don't believe me? Go back and read em.


Oh man, no. I read so many of his books as a teenager and thought they were amazing. Can I really go back now and have all that smashed to pieces  I think I'd better let that sleeping dog lie.


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## DarkScribe (Aug 30, 2012)

JRTomlin said:


> That they wouldn't suit my taste is irrelevant.
> 
> He wrote rather simplistic, easily readable books. No, he didn't have great writing skill but that kind of writing doesn't require great skill. There are a lot of people out there who like that kind of novel. Cora mentioned a whole list of fairly bad books that were quite popular for pretty much exactly that reason. You may not like them, but the readers didn't ask you.


There are also tens of thousands of eBooks on Amazon that are far better - some in similar genres. Many of these book have very few sales. His paid reviews started his success, it didn't happen by accident, and it would be disingenuous to pretend that they had no effect.


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## B.A. Spangler (Jan 25, 2012)

Victorine said:


> Obviously paying for reviews is dumb. However, I agree with the others who have said there's no way the paid reviews is what sold a million books.
> 
> Here's my opinion: He sold a million books because 1) People liked his books 2) He priced them low 3) Amazon saw he was selling well and helped promote his books. (#3 being the KEY as to how he sold so MANY books. And I believe that's how anyone sells tons and tons of books on Amazon.)


This - the ball was already rolling&#8230; Amazon gave it a little nudge. Magic happens when Amazon gets behind one of your books!!


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## WordSaladTongs (Oct 14, 2013)

If I remember correctly, he didn't just buy reviews, he bought VERIFIED reviews, which means he paid people to buy his book and boost his rank. In 2010, just a couple of hundred purchases in a short time span could have bought some nice placement on various lists and could really help jump start a book's sales. That, to me, is the key point we're missing here. Reviews may not sell book, but a majorly inflated sales rank sure can.

Of course, this is standard procedure for many non-fic authors who get on NYT, so orchestrating mass purchases to game the system is nothing new or innovative, he just figured out how to do it for ebooks.


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## WordSaladTongs (Oct 14, 2013)

ChrisWard said:


> He sold a million ebooks because he wrote books called things like "How I sold a Million Ebooks" and indies everywhere went and bought them because they thought they would actually help them sell a million ebooks. Same with pretty much every other big gun where you see loads of people saying "well, I went and bought (insert big selling author's name)'s such and such book to see what all the fuss was about". It's the snowball effect. He was a marketing demon, pure and simple. It doesn't matter whether he could write or if he bought reviews, he knew how to SELL.


He "sold" a million .99 books before he wrote the book on selling millions--hence its title. Of course, a million books with a .35 royalty isn't a huge amount of money, especially considering what he likely makes as a successful insurance agent. I think the plan all along was to make money on the ebook for indies, not on the fiction, but I could be wrong.


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## AmsterdamAssassin (Oct 21, 2011)

I read samples of John Locke's work and didn't think his books were worth the 99c he asked for them. Still, he tapped into a vein. Probably the same vein that hooks viewers to Jersey Shore, but John Locke knew how to do that. Barely dressed babe on the cover, simple story with identifiable heroes and baddies, sex and violence.

Despite writing all his books, Locke isn't 'like us'. Locke is a businessman and entrepreneur. He saw the e-book business as a money-making machine and approached the whole venture as businessman, writing tripe that would appeal to the easily excitable masses. Like the people who sold the Pet Rock, as mentioned by Russell Blake, there is a certain genius in managing the mind of the masses to the extent of selling worthless crap. And I agree with whoever it was that said Locke might have done more damage to self-publishing than good. Not only did he encourage thousands of crap artists to follow his strategy, he also duped many serious self-publishers looking for a way to emulate his 'success'.

I think I read somewhere (GoodReads?) that this phase will pass and the crap artists will move on to the next money-making scheme and the serious indie/self publishers will remain. I can't wait.


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## RM Prioleau (Mar 18, 2011)

I think defining a book as 'bad' is a matter of individual perception. There are many books I enjoy reading that most people hate and many books I really hate that most people like. Same with movies and everything else. I've never read any of Locke's Donnovan Creed books that he kept touting in his 'How I sold' book, nor am I interested in reading them, but I'm pretty sure he really does have a ton of dedicated fans that buy his books. After all, he's still releasing new Donnovan Creed books and selling well. Whether or not he's still doing the paid review thing is another story.

I agree about not believing the hype. But when you go to his Amazon page and all those 1-star reviews are the first thing you see for his book, it makes you wonder. I got his book for free prior to seeing the reviews, so I figured, what the heck! I am getting some free information about book marketing! What do I have to lose? Well, apparently, the only thing I did lose was my time. You definitely get what you 'pay' for, it seems.


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## dmburnett (Feb 4, 2011)

I read John's book when it first came out and I have to say, some of the stuff is actually very useful. I fully believe in the loyalty transfer blog post idea (another name for that would be knowing and blogging to your audience) and the one that I keep repeating to myself is that part about taking Shakespeare to the beach. My writing may not be "art" like Shakespeare, but more people are reading my book at the beach than Hamlet.

JA Konrath is one of the very best sources regarding indie publishing and writing in general.  He too talked about review services, I believe it was Book Rooster or Review Rooster (Something about a rooster), makes me think they started out honest (like blog tour companies accepting payment for setting up tours that include reviews) and then a few services came around that weren't so honest and were only selling glowing reviews...Anyway, JA is one of the very best resources for the new world of writing and publishing.

If you read any sort of writing book or article, all that you can do is take from it what you can with a grain of salt.


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## CoraBuhlert (Aug 7, 2011)

The loyalty transfer thing isn't a bad idea and it can work. There were only two problems with John Locke's example. One problem - and that is in no way Locke's fault for once - was that the loyalty transfer figure he picked, Joe Paterno, was found to be involved in a particularly nasty scandal not soon thereafter. Indeed, I had never heard of Paterno until John Locke mentioned him (which only confirmed my impression that his books weren't for me) and when the scandal broke and even made the news over here, my first reaction was "That sports coach John Locke admires is involved in a child abuse scandal."

The second problem is that a lot of writers copied Locke's Joe Paterno post and did so badly. Hence, you suddenly got posts extolling the virtue of random sports figures on blogs by writers who had never previously expressed any interest in sports at all. Or similarly random praise of random celebrities. Quite often those posts were worded very similarly to John Locke's Joe Paterno post, too.

The gist of John Locke's loyalty transfer method is "Blog about things (movies, books, TV shows, music, sports, celebrities involved with any of the above) that interest you and you will attract people who like those same things to your blog and maybe they will try your books." And that's good advice, pretty much the only nugget of good advice in that book.


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## ElHawk (Aug 13, 2012)

I agree that some paid-for reviews wouldn't have enough power to sell a million books all on their own.  However,  I get the OP's dismay.  If Locke was dishonest about his reviews, how can he/she trust what Locke wrote in his book?

Fortunately, there are many more sources of information out there from successful authors, who have not paid for reviews.  Lots of great threads on Kboards, to start with!


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## Guest (Oct 25, 2013)

Russell hit on the issue. Locke didn't just buy a handful of reviews. He bought HUNDREDS of reviews. Not only did he buy hundreds of reviews, but he bought them in such a way that they were actually timed when they would posted and made purchased as "verified purchases" (he refunded the cost of the book to the people he paid to review them just to get the verified purchase label). So he not only bought reviews, he was buying rank because all of those reviews were tied to sales. The entire thing was specifically orchestrated to take advantage of the way Amazon algorithms worked at the time. These artificially inflated his sales numbers and thus pushed the Amazon algorithms at the time to promote him. From what I understand, he also bought Twitter followers to create the illusion of success. 

But let's be clear, without those hundreds of paid reviews, his books never would have gone as high up the ranks as they did and he never would have benefited from Amazon's promotional machine. The reviews themselves didn't get him a million sales DIRECTLY. But Amazon's promotional machine did. And that promotional machine was triggered by him dumping a few grand on fake sales and fake reviews.

And then he had the gall to sell a "How to" book full of lies to the very indies who supported him.


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## scottmarlowe (Apr 22, 2010)

RM Prioleau said:


> Why do people feel they have to cheat their way to the top?


Why do people have to cheat their way PAST the top a la Barry Bonds, Ryan Braun, Lance Armstrong, etc. For some people, it's just never enough.


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## unkownwriter (Jun 22, 2011)

I'm more concerned with a writing conference that's handing out books touting tips and techniques that are two years old or more. What use are those? Things change so fast in the business, stuff that was valid six months ago is old hat.

That said, I agree with Russell. 

I remember reading all of Ludlum's books back in the early 80s, and thought they were okay. I wouldn't want to try reading them again, because I know they wouldn't hold up now.


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## scottmarlowe (Apr 22, 2010)

Bards and Sages (Julie) said:


> And then he had the gall to sell a "How to" book full of lies to the very indies who supported him.


Irony of ironies.

Locke deserves whatever criticism he receives for his fraudulent activity. The guy's a liar and a cheater.


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## Betsy the Quilter (Oct 27, 2008)

scottmarlowe said:


> Why do people have to cheat their way PAST the top a la Barry Bonds, Ryan Braun, Lance Armstrong, etc. For some people, it's just never enough.


Who is Ryan Braun?


Betsy


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## Al Dente (Sep 3, 2012)

JRTomlin said:


> That they wouldn't suit my taste is irrelevant.
> 
> He wrote rather simplistic, easily readable books. No, he didn't have great writing skill but that kind of writing doesn't require great skill.


This is exactly what I was trying to say earlier. Thanks.


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## Guest (Oct 25, 2013)

Sheila_Guthrie said:


> I'm more concerned with a writing conference that's handing out books touting tips and techniques that are two years old or more. What use are those? Things change so fast in the business, stuff that was valid six months ago is old hat.


Usually items in swag bags are promotional items either donated or paid placement. I'd be curious who paid to put those books in the bag...


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## RM Prioleau (Mar 18, 2011)

Bards and Sages (Julie) said:


> Usually items in swag bags are promotional items either donated or paid placement. I'd be curious who paid to put those books in the bag...


I have no idea who was behind that promotion. Maybe the 'sponsor' was trying to clean out their inventory?


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## KerryT2012 (Dec 18, 2012)

RM Prioleau said:


> So maybe I was exaggerating when I said that everything in the book was a lie, but it's very hard for me to take someone like him seriously knowing that he did something so immoral and wrong, especially when he talked a great deal in his book about getting reviews and didn't mention the paid review thing.


I have read the book and it is a good book. The guy paid for reviews, but the starting chapters of the book talks about he focused on his writing and how to write better. There is a strong empthasis on him trying to improve his writing and his marketing. I think this is an exaggeration about how he sold so many, I liked the book. I have not applied most of what he says simply because I am still trying to get my writing to that stage. With anything you can pick out bits of his book apply it. If it works, happy days, if not then try something else.


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## Marti talbott (Apr 19, 2011)

Bards and Sages (Julie) said:


> Russell hit on the issue. Locke didn't just buy a handful of reviews. He bought HUNDREDS of reviews. Not only did he buy hundreds of reviews, but he bought them in such a way that they were actually timed when they would posted and made purchased as "verified purchases" (he refunded the cost of the book to the people he paid to review them just to get the verified purchase label). So he not only bought reviews, he was buying rank because all of those reviews were tied to sales. The entire thing was specifically orchestrated to take advantage of the way Amazon algorithms worked at the time. These artificially inflated his sales numbers and thus pushed the Amazon algorithms at the time to promote him. From what I understand, he also bought Twitter followers to create the illusion of success.
> 
> But let's be clear, without those hundreds of paid reviews, his books never would have gone as high up the ranks as they did and he never would have benefited from Amazon's promotional machine. The reviews themselves didn't get him a million sales DIRECTLY. But Amazon's promotional machine did. And that promotional machine was triggered by him dumping a few grand on fake sales and fake reviews.
> 
> And then he had the gall to sell a "How to" book full of lies to the very indies who supported him.


That's how I remember it too. The real crime was that he paid the reviewers back after they made the verified purchase at $.99. There was another author, I don't remember his name, but he bought thousands of his own paperbacks to raise the ranking to bestseller. When he got caught, his sales flat-lined. Of course, it's harder to return a paperback than an ebook.


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## Nancy Beck (Jul 1, 2011)

Betsy the Quilter said:


> Who is Ryan Braun?
> 
> 
> Betsy


Baseball player - you've heard of Alex Rodriguez? Well, he's in a similar boat re Performance Enhancing Drugs, specifically that "clinic" in Miami.

Here's a video link that might explain things, if you care: http://video.answers.com/ryan-braun-linked-to-miami-ped-probe-517664933


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## daringnovelist (Apr 3, 2010)

For those who think it's a good book, let me point this out:

The "Loyalty Transfer" idea -- which is the one idea in the book that you didn't see floating around places like KB all that much -- is an old-time standard SEO trick, and actually was a marketing trick from long before.  Furthermore, he doesn't really give good information on how to do it.

For that matter, he held back on ALL the information about how to make this stuff work.

The thing to remember is that it's actually easy to sell a million books if you are willing to spend more money than you earn on the process.  Given the advice he gives, there are a whole lot of "blackhat" techniques he may well have been using to pump his numbers. Paying hundreds of reviewers to buy his book (therefore get it on best seller lists and into the "hot new items" on Amazon -- before garnering a single review) was just one of the sorts of things you can do.  There is also a lot you can do to drive artificial traffic to your books (which does affect the relevancy rankings and internal "hot book" rankings -- one thing that I have been told in person by an Amazon insider).

Furthermore, everything he did was in the playbook of how you go about making a ton of money with your "How to Sell a Million X" racket.  I don't know the guy, so I'll put in this disclaimer -- this is just my educated opinion: His goal wasn't to become a famous thriller author. His goal was to sell that "How to" book.  So he spent a lot of money to get to that magic "million" word.

Camille


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## ElHawk (Aug 13, 2012)

blakebooks said:


> JUST BECAUSE SOMETHING IS POPULAR FOR A BRIEF WHILE DOESN'T MEAN IT'S GOOD. I can't say that often enough.
> 
> I know that as good little product sponges we're supposed to credulously lap up whatever is offered while hucksters use the tired argument, "How can this taste like [crap]? Millions have bought it!" But the truth is that many wildly popular movies, when watched a year or two after the fire, on DVD, are at best, meh, and so are many books. So are many records. That's pop culture for ya. A civilization that's transfixed by Jersey Shore's consumption habits shouldn't be the litmus test of what's good and what ain't.
> 
> ...


No, that was so spot on. The media often forgets that just because something's popular that doesn't make it good. I don't think I can even count the popular books I've read (or tried to read) which just sucked out loud.

I think the only really remarkable thing about Locke is that we can actually look back and analyze exactly how he got so popular...what specific steps along the way added up to the seemingly incomprehensible "lighting strikes" kind of popularity some books enjoy now and then. When it happens with tradpubbed books it's often difficult to see and looks more mysterious because there are lots of people involved along the way and the links in the chain are harder to identify clearly. In this case, as Russell pointed out, it's pretty easy to see how one thing built upon another and ended up with a lot of very terrible books making a lot of money.


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## Christopher Bunn (Oct 26, 2010)

blakebooks said:


> Sometimes things go viral for no apparent reason...Does that mean it was good?
> 
> As I like to say, depends on what you mean by good.
> 
> JUST BECAUSE SOMETHING IS POPULAR FOR A BRIEF WHILE DOESN'T MEAN IT'S GOOD.


Yup. And like ElHawk just pointed out, the media tends to run with success stories, thus perpetuating the popularity of whatever book/widget/whatnot is currently the flavor of the day.

However, what about things that are popular for a very long time? I hope that doesn't automatically equate to good. McDonald's fries have been popular for a long time, but I don't think that means they're good. They're certainly marketed well...


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## LBrent (Jul 1, 2013)

David Scroggins said:


> I'm sure my opinion isn't going to be too popular, but I've read a few samples of his work. I'm pretty sure he got where he is today because he writes books that are easy reads, fun, and appealing to a wide audience. The reviews probably helped somewhat, but not enough to sell a million books.


Exactly my thoughts on this subject.


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## Andrew Ashling (Nov 15, 2010)

daringnovelist said:


> The thing to remember is that it's actually easy to sell a million books if you are willing to spend more money than you earn on the process.


But he didn't do that. He may have spent money, but I'm fairly sure he recuperated it, and then some.

Okay, this needs a bit of suspension of conscience:

He didn't transgress the law. Don't trade publishers "buy" reviews, backcover recommendations, prime spots in book stores? Don't they advertise?

Locke just went a few steps further in "doing what it takes" to sell books. He also did what some here - and don't shoot me, I'm in no way comparing them to John Locke - keep recommending. Be predictable, for instance, or otherwise put: give the readers what they want. He explains in his book that once he creatively transgressed that rule. Readers were disappointed, and he never did it again.

I also disagree about the effect of reviews. I'll repeat my theory, unsubstantiated as it is, that reviews in and of themselves have almost zero influence on sales. But, if you have a lot of them (and it doesn't matter whether they're good or bad, as long as they average out around three stars) people think there must be _something_ to your book. The sheer number of reviews is what counts, not their content. I suspect that's why he bought them. Of course, making the reviewers buy his book, and financing them indirectly, will have helped a lot too.

Look at his reviews now. I don't think he buys them anymore. Certainly not wholesale. He still gets them, though not as many as before, and some are glowing. His books still rank high, though not as high as they used to.

Not that it matters all that much, but I've exchanged some emails with him at the time, and he was very charming and respectful. As he was in some replies on boards that vilified him (this was before it became known he had bought reviews).

Myself, I've chosen to not even ask for reviews in any way. If the book itself doesn't move a reader to review it, so be it.


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## Guest (Oct 25, 2013)

Andrew Ashling said:


> He didn't transgress the law.


Technically, he did. The reviewers did not disclose that they were paid for the review. In fact, he worked in collusion with the review service to make sure nobody could differentiate the paid reviews from the non-paid ones. This is a violation of the disclosure rules. Two years ago, they government was not targeting "small time" scams like this. But only recently, they announced several major criminal prosecutions of review mills. What he did IS illegal. He just never got prosecuted. I suspect that if this story broke today, in the current environment, there would have been a different outcome.



> Don't trade publishers "buy" reviews,


No. The places that sell reviews only charge indies. Kirkus and those places still review trade books for free.

And if a publisher IS paying for reviews, they have to follow the same rules as everyone else. The review must disclose that it was paid for. People always say "publishers buy reviews" but I have yet to see any actual proof of this other than as justification for buying reviews.



> backcover recommendations, prime spots in book stores? Don't they advertise?


The issue is not advertising. The issue is fraud. If the relationship between an endorser and a product is not clear, it must be disclosed. With an advertisement, it is clear that the manufacturer is paying the actors or whatever to promote the product. With an in-store display, it is clear the manufacturer paid for the display to be produced. With customer reviews, it is not expected or clear that those reviews were bought and paid for. Thus the law says they must disclose.


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## Guest (Oct 25, 2013)

To clarify my above point: buying the reviews was not itself illegal. The failure to disclose that the reviews were paid endorsements is what was illegal.

Here is a link to a recent article on a massive crackdown on fake review services.


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## daringnovelist (Apr 3, 2010)

To clarify my point: I'm not talking about the reviews. Nor am I talking about the quality of his novels.

I'm talking about the fact that, given the boilerplate he used to write the "get rich quick" book, the purchased reviews are likely the tip the iceberg.

We do know that, as a part of his purchase of reviews, he also paid people to buy his book -- which is actually much more important than the reviews in terms of gaming the Amazon system. We do know that he advises rather vague versions of blackhat internet techniques, and from his background he's not only very much aware of how to game the search engine system, he also followed a well established business model of get rich quick scammers in creating the book.

And the number one issue is: *The book doesn't actually tell you how he got where he did.* He's selling a boilerplate get-rich-quick scheme, done so on point, that it couldn't possibly be an accident.

Does this mean he is a scamster? That he definitely set out to do anything but what he claims? No.

I'm just saying that if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck and lays duck eggs... I personally am assuming it's a duck.

Camille


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## Terrence OBrien (Oct 21, 2010)

If millions of consumers are incapable of determining if a book is good, how do we identify the few who can?

Anyone here whose opinion trumps the lumpen? Since I tend to flow with them, mine doesn't. It's a burden, but I cheerfully bear it on a freely chosen path. (Adverb alert.)


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## Edward W. Robertson (May 18, 2010)

I don't know, but it probably correlates to the tweed content of their closets.


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## Terrence OBrien (Oct 21, 2010)

Edward W. Robertson said:


> I don't know, but it probably correlates to the tweed content of their closets.


So maybe I can park my Winnebago on a rocky seaside lot, set out a few Lazy Boys and a charcoal grill, perch on a mossy boulder, and pose for scowling, windswept profiles of me, my hand knitted scarf, and worn snap brim cap?


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## Edward W. Robertson (May 18, 2010)

That would probably upgrade your prose to "deathless," yes.


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## Christopher Bunn (Oct 26, 2010)

Terrence OBrien said:


> If millions of consumers are incapable of determining if a book is good, how do we identify the few who can?


I have no idea. The problem of popularity not automatically equating to good is easy to determine, but the solution is impossible. Perhaps death and the passage of at least one century is a partial solution to identifying good writing?

John Locke's popularity is a solid example of popularity deriving from reasons other than good. A book that is entertaining, a quick read, whatever, isn't necessarily good. Heck, snorting cocaine is entertaining for a lot of people. Good aside, there's a lot to be mined from Locke's career. He's an amazing marketer, and people tend to make consumption choices under the influence of marketing. If a writer is not intent on pursuing good (whatever that means), then emulating Locke, to a degree, makes sense. Utilitarian sense.


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## Terrence OBrien (Oct 21, 2010)

Edward W. Robertson said:


> That would probably upgrade your prose to "deathless," yes.


Problem is, Oshkosh still doesn't have a line of tweed overalls.



> John Locke's popularity is a solid example of popularity deriving from reasons other than good. A book that is entertaining, a quick read, whatever, isn't necessarily good.


The standard I am using for good is a product meets the purpose of both producer and consumer. If the producer's purpose is a quick, entertaining read, and the consumer is indeed quickly entertained, then it meets the standard. I acknowledge other standards and am comfortable with having multiple standards active in the population. That implies I am comfortable with one standard saying a book is good, and another saying it is bad. I don't see much value in insisting on a definitive answer.


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## daringnovelist (Apr 3, 2010)

FWIW: for all that Locke's "how to" book gives me a violent reaction to the snake oil in it, I find myself agreeing with Terence more than not here on the novels.

It's one thing when a hyped book makes a flash best seller and then the author disappears into oblivion -- that may just be hype or luck.  But Locke's books continue to sell.  Maybe not at the same rate as before, but obviously his books satisfy his readers.

That's a different thing than the disingenuous touting of his numbers game.

Camille


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## CraigInOregon (Aug 6, 2010)

RM Prioleau said:


> So it's confirmed.
> 
> That is disheartening... So everything I read in his book has pretty much been a lie, and I've been wasting my time reading his book. I wish it wasn't true. Why do people feel they have to cheat their way to the top?


RM,

I'm someone who reads Locke regularly, even now. I've known about this illicit review-buying for most of the time I've been buying his books. Here are my thoughts on the matter:

1) Yes, it's true, he bought a load of positive reviews to help "boost" himself in the early going. It's not clear whether he still does or not, but I kinda-sorta doubt it and it kinda-sorta doesn't matter to me, because I already have discovered his books and, what can I say? I enjoy his stuff. It's funny, mostly well-written, and fairly clever fiction.

2) Review-buying, like every other practice he actually DID write about in his "How I Sold" book, is, in all honesty, no magic bullet. Or at least that's what I strongly suspect, as I've never bought any reviews myself. (As my very THIN accumulation of reviews on Amazon over the past couple years should attest.)

3) Why is it no magic bullet? Because, no matter what you do to attract readers initially, once there, they will either find books that they want to keep buying, or not. A person could buy 1M 5-star fake reviews, and it might help a bad writer temporarily, but soon word would spread that the books are actually manure and not worth even $0.99.

4) Locke continues to sell well, long after the "fake reviews scandal" broke. Why? Because his audience by and large discovered books that appealed to them, in the end, and they wanted to buy more of what he wrote.

Some people will contest this. They're so peeved at Locke (and most have never read him) that it's no longer about his books, for them. Which is, by and large, a fate he brought on himself by cheating the system through purchasing reviews in the first place.

But let me tell you WHY Locke's still successful in spite of the scandal and probably in spite of the shortcuts he took.

In England, there's a thriller writer of virtually NO discernible skill as a writer. He can pump stuff out fast, but it's all manure. Observing John Locke's success in the US, he took on the name "John Lock." His cruddy books are listed in the US Amazon store, BTW.

John Locke's first two novels utilized the word "Lethal" in the title... something he's never gone back to since penning "Saving Rachel." His main series focuses on an assassin named Donovan Creed.

ALL of John Lock's novels start with the word "Lethal." His latest, I believe, is "Lethal Bible" or something like that. And Lock's series utilizes a main character named "Donny."

Clearly, whoever this UK bloke is, he was banking on people confusing him with John Locke, and confusing "Donny" with Donovan Creed.

I've heard he even tried buying some reviews when he'd heard Locke had done so.

The difference is, Lock's no good. He, more than anyone else, has attempted to mirror Locke's career, from name, book titles and book pricing, all the way to similarly named characters and such.

If anyone was going to emulate Locke's success by emulating his practices, it'd be Lock.

But Locke has a rather normal spread of reviews for his books. Lock's are all averaging about 1 to 1.5 stars.

Most of Locke's books spend a fair amount of time on Amazon bestsellers lists, at least in their categories, even now.

Most of Lock's books are ranked around 300,000+, on average.

So, my point is not to rip on Lock, but to say that anyone who thinks they can read a "How *I* Sold X Number of Books" tome by a successful author, and then go out and do all the same stuff and experience identical results? It won't happen. Success comes to good writers, over time.

For example, if I wanted to take a shortcut, I could take on the pen name Steve N. King and publish a book with the title Animal Cemetary, but how long do you think it would take for folks to realize it's not a new book from the Boy from Bangor?  (Pretty quickly, I'd hope...)

Ultimately, one's success will rise or fall on the quality of their own work.

Locke's shortcuts got him that initial surge, got him noticed quicker, but if his books had been as bad as Lock's? They'd have gone nowhere.


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## Andrew Ashling (Nov 15, 2010)

It all goes to show that the Internet may be forever, but that people's memory isn't.

Moreover, I suspect that a lot of his readers, much like OP who is a writer and a member of a writer's forum, are unaware of an almost two-year old kerfuffle.

And even if they knew, would they care?


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## CraigInOregon (Aug 6, 2010)

Andrew Ashling said:


> Moreover, I suspect that a lot of his readers, much like OP who is a writer and a member of a writer's forum, are unaware of an almost two-year old kerfuffle.
> 
> And even if they knew, would they care?


If they find the books entertaining, should they care?

Most readers are not writers. They ultimately won't care that he got his attention the way he did. All they care about is whether his latest is a good read, and entertaining.

You seem to be suggesting that moral outrage should prevent the man from ever selling another eBook.

With the exception of Pete Rose, and perhaps O.J. Simpson, I can't think of many victims of "moral outrage" who "never worked again," so long as they kept working.

I mean, Paula Deen's already reviving her career, post-Food Network....


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## jaimee83 (Sep 2, 2009)

Don't know much about the topic but I've read all his books.  Seems they were @ $3.00 each which goes to show the big names don't need to be charging $14.00.  Maybe John Locke is happy with a regular income and big numbers while more mainstream authors are driven by greed.  I tend to read many authors I read about here in the Kindle Boards.  I'm just not going to pay >$10.00 for an E book that probably costs the same to format until greed gets in the way. He does toot his own horn but that seems to keep prices down and sales up.


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## Amanda Brice (Feb 16, 2011)

David Scroggins said:


> I'm sure my opinion isn't going to be too popular, but I've read a few samples of his work. I'm pretty sure he got where he is today because he writes books that are easy reads, fun, and appealing to a wide audience. The reviews probably helped somewhat, but not enough to sell a million books.


Agreed. Do I condone what he did? Absolutely not. But I honestly don't think the paid reviews really made that much of a difference. It might have gotten him a bit of attention at the beginning, but there's no way that he would have sold 1 million ebooks on paid reviews alone.

I've read a few of his books, too, and quite enjoyed them. The sad thing is he totally didn't need to buy reviews. But made him sell 1 million ebooks is that he can write books that people want to read.


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## Andrew Ashling (Nov 15, 2010)

CraigInTwinCities said:


> You seem to be suggesting that moral outrage should prevent the man from ever selling another eBook.


I'm suggesting nothing of the kind. Please, don't put words in my mouth.

In fact, I'm rather philosophical about the whole thing. If you take the capitalist stance, there's little (nothing) he did that others haven't done a million times before him, and to a greater degree. Not my style, by the way.

What I did suggest was that the dire warnings that a few posts or missteps will be remembered for ever thanks to the Internet is just panic-mongering.

We're more or less on the same line.


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## blakebooks (Mar 10, 2012)

Terrence: Fair question. I don't have an answer. There are countless examples of bad or mediocre artists having phenomenal careers while those who are without question better at what they do struggle in obscurity. It's one of the frustrating thing about the arts.

I think time is the great leveler. For example, there were many bands whose music was popular in any given era, and yet there are few Pink Floyds, Led Zeppelins, Beatles, etc. Plenty of Moby Grapes go by the wayside in spite of their 15 minutes of fame. I view Locke as somewhere on the literary level of Dog The Bounty Hunter or the Kardashians reality show, as compared to, say, 24 or Seinfeld or ER, but that's just my opinion, and I tend to read smarter books when I read fiction, so perhaps I'm not the target audience. I also think Umberto Eco is a master of his genre and Dan Brown sort of Eco lite. Everyone's a critic, but certainly not all, or even most, popular artists are particularly good. Time filters out a lot of the noise in the signal, and a show you can watch 10 years later and find meritorious or a band you can listen to two decades later in awe is probably a "better" or even a "good" show or band. They're all entertainment, and as such do the job, but some are good, others aren't. That's as close as I can get to an answer. Again, the mob is usually a poor judge of merit in the short term.


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## Andrew Ashling (Nov 15, 2010)

blakebooks said:


> (&#8230 I tend to read smarter books when I read fiction, so perhaps I'm not the target audience. (&#8230


No, you aren't. Neither are most of us.

He writes the equivalent of dime novels. He has stated this somewhere explicitly. He writes books for people who are looking for facile escapism after a nine-to-five job they hate. No challenges, no ripping them out of their comfort zone, no great moral questions asked. Just entertainment. The male version of the poor nurse marrying the rich, handsome doctor.

I'm sure he knows he isn't writing for eternity.


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## blakebooks (Mar 10, 2012)

Andrew: We can certainly agree that I'm not the target. And I certainly don't have anything against facile reads. Hell, the Elmore Leonards, Chandlers, et al of the world were certainly lumped into that pot of pop fiction/dime novelists.

My view is that a Locke doesn't threaten me in any way, so I sort of don't care, beyond how the review thing tarnished indies as a group. Also, there's a certain moral relativism in shrugging off what to me is somewhat fraudulent, but that's just me, and only my opinion. I'm certainly not writing for the ages, either, so hardly one to hurl feces, however I do aspire to a higher literary bar, and if I manage to occasionally elevate my prose to the point where it engages at more than a moving the lips kind of reading level, then so much the better.

As long as people keep buying my screeds, I'm not complaining.

And what I consider good, many might not, so there's an #ss for every seat, as they say in the car biz.


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## Terrence OBrien (Oct 21, 2010)

blakebooks said:


> Terrence: Fair question. I don't have an answer. There are countless examples of bad or mediocre artists having phenomenal careers while those who are without question better at what they do struggle in obscurity. It's one of the frustrating thing about the arts.
> 
> I think time is the great leveler. For example, there were many bands whose music was popular in any given era, and yet there are few Pink Floyds, Led Zeppelins, Beatles, etc. Plenty of Moby Grapes go by the wayside in spite of their 15 minutes of fame. I view Locke as somewhere on the literary level of Dog The Bounty Hunter or the Kardashians reality show, as compared to, say, 24 or Seinfeld or ER, but that's just my opinion, and I tend to read smarter books when I read fiction, so perhaps I'm not the target audience. I also think Umberto Eco is a master of his genre and Dan Brown sort of Eco lite. Everyone's a critic, but certainly not all, or even most, popular artists are particularly good. Time filters out a lot of the noise in the signal, and a show you can watch 10 years later and find meritorious or a band you can listen to two decades later in awe is probably a "better" or even a "good" show or band. They're all entertainment, and as such do the job, but some are good, others aren't. That's as close as I can get to an answer. Again, the mob is usually a poor judge of merit in the short term.


That's a reasonable standard. If I understand it, it judges a book based on whether people still read and like in ten years. It's your standard, so I invite correction.

If I apply that standard, I am limited to judging only books published ten years ago. For all the others, we have to wait ten years. Alternatively, we can forecast the ten year popularity curve for recent publications. But I question the accuracy of those forecasts. We also can't judge any self-published books. They are way too young.

I acknowledge that as one standard among others.

That standard can coexist with a standard that values books that sell well for a year, then pass into oblivion. For that year lots of people found satisfaction with the book.

I'd also note that waiting ten years and judging by the crowd reaction is a pretty good way of looking at things. It's a good standard.

But it's not the only standard. All this stuff about what is good revolves around standards, and people are rallying around their chosen standard. It's far more precise to simply state the standard and observe how a book meets it or fails to meet it. No standard gets special rights to defining good for all the rest of us.



> He writes books for people who are looking for facile escapism after a nine-to-five job they hate. No challenges, no ripping them out of their comfort zone, no great moral questions asked. Just entertainment


.

I think he writes books for me, and I'm happy to stand on the standard of just entertainment. I don't hate my job. I love it. I like just about everything I do. If my escape is an entertaining book, I'm not sure how that makes it facile.

You identify another standard based on challenges, comfort zones, and moral questions. Ok. Nothing wrong with that. It's a good standard. But like Blake's longevity standard, and my utilitarian standard, it is simply one of many.

I'd suggest we might learn more by applying all three standards to a book and see how it does on each. when large segments of the population embrace different standards, I don't know what we gain by telling the other guy he is using the wrong standard.


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## Andrew Ashling (Nov 15, 2010)

blakebooks said:


> Andrew: We can certainly agree that I'm not the target. And I certainly don't have anything against facile reads. Hell, the Elmore Leonards, Chandlers, et al of the world were certainly lumped into that pot of pop fiction/dime novelists.
> 
> My view is that a Locke doesn't threaten me in any way, so I sort of don't care, beyond how the review thing tarnished indies as a group. Also, there's a certain moral relativism in shrugging off what to me is somewhat fraudulent, but that's just me, and only my opinion. I'm certainly not writing for the ages, either, so hardly one to hurl feces, however I do aspire to a higher literary bar, and if I manage to occasionally elevate my prose to the point where it engages at more than a moving the lips kind of reading level, then so much the better.
> 
> ...


I think we agree.

I wouldn't exaggerate the tarnishing thing of indies as a group. Most readers are smarter than tarring us with the same brush. The moral relativism is another thing altogether.

We will survive dinosaur-porn as well, I suppose.


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## blakebooks (Mar 10, 2012)

Terrence: I'm not saying any standard is the right or the wrong one.

My standard isn't even whether people in general are still reading and liking a novel 10 years later. It's whether I like it 10 years later. In that context, it's even less useful for anyone but me. But since my inner universe is composed of me, my opinion on my reading material is all I really care about. 

One can also look at it in this light: Sometimes you want a meal, not a snack. Some books are meals, some are feasts, some are 3 star Michelin epicurean marvels, and others are...caramel covered popcorn. TV dinners sell well. So does fast food I find largely inedible. Twinkies do well.

When one views entertainment the same way one views dining experiences, I think it makes it easier to define what is "good." Is a salisbury steak TV dinner as good as a Morton's filet on the beef spectrum? No, even if more salisbury steak beef-like patties are sold per year, most would understand there's a palpable quality difference. But the SS may be "good" for the person with only a few bucks, little time, and very little in the way of expectations. So it is "good enough" in that context.

There is no question that books that sell a lot in a short period are popular. Whether they are better than "good enough" is probably an easier question to answer than whether they are good in the absolute. If they sell a bunch, they are clearly good enough. That doesn't make them good in the absolute. It also doesn't necessarily make them bad in the absolute. As an example, I happen to think Monty Python was very good. They were also very popular at the time. I thought Sam Kinison's first album was good. It was very popular at the time. I thought 24 was good, and it was quite popular, and it stands up to the test of time, at least on my DVD player. These are all programs or comedy that I believed good at the time, that looking back and viewing or listening again, are still good today. That timeless quality is one of the things I think differentiates the good enough from the good.

It's an imperfect litmus, but it's the best I've come with to date.


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## Andrew Ashling (Nov 15, 2010)

Terrence OBrien said:


> I think he writes books for me, and I'm happy to stand on the standard of just entertainment. I don't hate my job. I love it. I like just about everything I do. If my escape is an entertaining book, I'm not sure how that makes it facile.
> 
> You identify another standard based on challenges, comfort zones, and moral questions. Ok. Nothing wrong with that. It's a good standard. But like Blake's longevity standard, and my utilitarian standard, it is simply one of many.
> 
> I'd suggest we might learn more by applying all three standards to a book and see how it does on each. when large segments of the population embrace different standards, I don't know what we gain by telling the other guy he is using the wrong standard.


Agreed.

I never said anything about a standard being wrong. I merely paraphrased Locke's own, self-chosen standard. He stated that was the demographic he aimed for. I'm sure he doesn't mind that you love your job and love his books as well.

But I think you touched a very important issue here. Whenever marketing techniques (or even craft) are discussed, we do this from the standards we try to adhere to. Since standards are what they are, namely standards, inevitably they will color our appreciation of the arguments presented. When we have to decide on a course of action, we'll always measure the arguments for ways to act by our standards. There's nothing wrong with that. There's also nothing wrong with disagreeing with somebody else's standards (or perceived lack thereof). This in no way invalidates the other position.

It's a free country. Ain't it great?


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## Terrence OBrien (Oct 21, 2010)

> There is no question that books that sell a lot in a short period are popular. Whether they are better than "good enough" is probably an easier question to answer than whether they are good in the absolute. If they sell a bunch, they are clearly good enough. That doesn't make them good in the absolute. It also doesn't necessarily make them bad in the absolute. As an example, I happen to think Monty Python was very good. They were also very popular at the time. I thought Sam Kinison's first album was good. It was very popular at the time. I thought 24 was good, and it was quite popular, and it stands up to the test of time, at least on my DVD player. These are all programs or comedy that I believed good at the time, that looking back and viewing or listening again, are still good today. That timeless quality is one of the things I think differentiates the good enough from the good.
> 
> It's an imperfect litmus, but it's the best I've come with to date.


Under the utilitarian standard, good enough is high praise. It means the book met the purpose of both producer and consumer. Good in the absolute has no meaning under the utilitarian standard.

It may have significant meaning under another standard, and I'm happy to learn about it.

The food analogy comes up a lot, but I don't deal with it since it ignores the user's purpose.

And absolute good? I think that just restates the notion that there is some good that transcends specific standards, and some folks who can pronounce on it.

I have no litmus test since I see it as far too limiting. I'm open to other standards.

In terms of personal standards, I have no standing to comment on anyone's personal standards. I simply recognize them and their aggregation. I lack standing to pronounce any standard as having the exclusive right to define a good book for the rest of us.


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## Terrence OBrien (Oct 21, 2010)

> It's a free country. Ain't it great?


Amen, Brother. God Bless the freedom of everyone to enjoy a book no matter what I think about it.


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## S.E. Gordon (Mar 15, 2011)

I wouldn't be surprised if Amanda Hocking also bought fake reviews by the truckload. Some of her early reviews really made me wonder.


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## RM Prioleau (Mar 18, 2011)

segordon said:


> I wouldn't be surprised if Amanda Hocking also bought fake reviews by the truckload. Some of her early reviews really made me wonder.


I sincerely hope not. I look up to her as a role model and respect her highly...


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## AmsterdamAssassin (Oct 21, 2011)

segordon said:


> I wouldn't be surprised if Amanda Hocking also bought fake reviews by the truckload. Some of her early reviews really made me wonder.


They didn't make me wonder, since her early readers were probably in their teens. And teens will write different reviews, often gushing, when they like something. I don't think Amanda 'stooped'* to buying reviews, she mainly had a lot of reviews because she interacted with her many, many followers, and she appears to be a genuinely friendly and humble author.

*I use stoop, because I think (personal opinion) that any author who buys reviews/twitter followers/FB likes is dishonest and unethical.


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## CraigInOregon (Aug 6, 2010)

SE Gordon:

Be careful. Amanda Hocking once walked these hallowed halls and us old-timers remember her. She worked very very hard to get where she is today, and she wrote to HUNDREDS of book bloggers, offering nothing more than a review copy, on a regular basis, cultivating those relationships. Her rate of growth was encouraging, perhaps inspiring for some, but it was not unrealistic.

There are a lot of folks you can toss verbal bombs at around these parts, pard'ner, but not Amanda. She's "one of us."


Andrew:

I was unsure what you meant to imply. Thus the use of the word "seems." I said it "seems like you're suggesting..." I used that word very intentionally because I knew I might be reading your intent incorrectly.

Correction accepted and appreciated. 


Blake:

Your arguments are well-made, but they ultimately boil down to the underlying truth that you believe that the stuff you read and like are superior to what other people read and like. But there are those who would disagree.

I respect a fair amount of the work of John Irving, for example, and can express enthusiasm for certain novels of his. At the same time, his penchant for drifting away from the narrative and into long, windy political diatribes eventually overcame his storytelling power, and I found him, eventually, too difficult to read because he was so self-indulgent in that sense. The worst of it (so far as I know) that I actually finished was A Prayer for Owen Meany. I tried to get through Cider House Rules, but it was all just too much by then.

I've noticed he's stayed active and perhaps some of his more recent novels are better (or worse, for all I know), but I do know he lost me with all his self-importance and diatribes that pulled the reader away from the narrative.

If you wish to avoid novels that are intended as entertainment, that's certainly your choice, but you'll have to swear off William Shakespeare and Charles Dickens, then. Both wrote their works as popular entertainment for their day and were highly popular. They were the Steven Spielbergs, Stephen Kings, and yes, even John Lockes of their day.

Hamlet wasn't the first, or necessarily even the best-written "revenge play" of Shakespeare's day. Commentators of that era mention some of these similar works. So we know some of the basic plot structures pre-existed Shakespeare's treatment of them. One commentator indicated a Spanish version of the Hamlet plot was far superior, but it didn't survive into modernity. If you think Shakespeare's popularity didn't have something to do with that, you're fooling yourself.

I mean, E.T the Extra-Terrestrial wasn't the first "alien from space" movie, nor is it necessarily the best... but how many of those others will outlast E.T., in part due to Spielberg's popularity?

I mean, if being funny and popular were bad for a book's longevity, the works of Gregory MacDonald would be quickly forgotten, but his Fletch novels are still quite well-thought-of, even though he stopped writing in 1999 and passed from this mortal coil in 2008.

Dismissing works due to their aim to entertain, or due to popularity, or a perceived "lack of depth," simply because they're not written solely to amuse college literary professors, is actually rather thin stuff, critically speaking.

And these things turn around over time, too.

When King started out, he was regarded as a writer of "junk food" literature, and even today, critics like Chris Hewitt will say idiotic things like referring to CARRIE as "Stephen King's schlock-horror novel" while simultaneously (and quite oddly) praising Brian DePalma's adaptation as a "masterpiece."

King embraced the insults, happily crowing in one interview that "I may be the literary equivalent of a Big Mac and fries, but my job is to make sure it's the best d**n Big Mac and fries you've ever had."

Since his slow re-emergence to popularity, beginning with Under the Dome or thereabouts, lots of folks who used to dismiss him as a writer of schlock are now recognizing the skill behind the genre trappings. Didn't hurt that's he's strayed outside of horror once in a while, too: 10/22/63 is pure suspense with SF trapping, while Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption, as well as The Body (Stand By Me) and The Green Mile are less supernaturally-influenced and his storytelling skills hold up.

In the same way, Locke has the chance to overcome the critics by simply keeping at it and improving with each new release. Locke's not dumb; his plots are structured with a lot of misleads before he gets to the actual surprises. Anyone who reads Saving Rachel without prior knowledge of Donovan Creed's world will certainly not see the resolution coming. There's just too many twists.

The fact that he can be that clever, and yet disguise it as light-n-breezy entertainment, is part of the fun. He reminds me a bit of Steven Moffat, in that regard.

Many writers tend to get a fair share of disrespect early in their careers. So... Locke's certainly not alone in being dismissed as a lightweight at this point in his career.

But the secret is: Shakespeare and Dickens and Spielberg and King? None of them were "writing for the ages," either.

You may now feel free to insult me and my opinions as off-focus, irrelevant, and unimportant you your superior intellect and opinions, as you so often do, my friend.


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## S.E. Gordon (Mar 15, 2011)

> Be careful. Amanda Hocking once walked these hallowed halls and us old-timers remember her. She worked very very hard to get where she is today, and she wrote to HUNDREDS of book bloggers, offering nothing more than a review copy, on a regular basis, cultivating those relationships. Her rate of growth was encouraging, perhaps inspiring for some, but it was not unrealistic.
> 
> There are a lot of folks you can toss verbal bombs at around these parts, pard'ner, but not Amanda. She's "one of us."


Point well taken. I should have chosen my words more carefully. If she did it solely with the aid of book bloggers and spent countless hours cultivating those relationships, I can respect that. It reminds me a little bit of how J.A. Konrath visited thousands of stores and promoted his books by hand to build his career. Sometimes promotion is harder than writing the actual book.


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## ElHawk (Aug 13, 2012)

Terrence OBrien said:


> If millions of consumers are incapable of determining if a book is good, how do we identify the few who can?
> 
> Anyone here whose opinion trumps the lumpen? Since I tend to flow with them, mine doesn't. It's a burden, but I cheerfully bear it on a freely chosen path. (Adverb alert.)


Good is in the eye of the beholder. If somebody honestly thinks a thing is good, then it's good, for that person. There are plenty of consumers out there who, when seeing how popular something is, will decide that they like it, too.

It's a losing proposition, to try to quantify or standardize "good." All you can do is acknowledge that some books which you or I think are "good" never make it huge, and some books which you or I think are "terrible" do make it huge.


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## AmsterdamAssassin (Oct 21, 2011)

ElHawk said:


> Good is in the eye of the beholder.


I'd say, 'good is in the eye of the reviewer'. One of the reasons I enjoy GoodReads is that people can voice their opinion on books. If you like someone's opinion, you can 'follow the reviews' and see if their taste matches yours.

Although opinions are as ubiquitous as haemorrhoids, some opinions are more valuable than others. Which is why many self-publishers are willing to pay for a Kirkus review. There are top reviewers on GoodReads who have a large following because they weigh and judge with finesse. And I know that books that receive their four or five star review will sell like hotcakes.


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## Guest (Oct 26, 2013)

segordon said:


> I wouldn't be surprised if Amanda Hocking also bought fake reviews by the truckload. Some of her early reviews really made me wonder.


Comments like this are why people like me still consider people like Locke pond scum. Because when one high profile "success" is shown to be a fraud, people assume all successes are and the good people get painted with the same blackened brush. His behavior makes all of us suspect. More importantly, because now people assume "everyone does it" it almost makes the bad behavior acceptable and expected. It reinforces the notion that it is impossible to be successful honestly, and therefore you have to cheat.

People who think this behavior is no big deal have not been paying attention. The hotel and restaurant industries have been dealing with this for years. These are industries where analysts say a half-star movement up or down can increase, or reduce, bookings by 13%. And as the NY Times article pointed out a few years ago, it becomes an arms race. The more five star reviews being posted, the more five star reviews you need to get attention. Because now you have no reason to be happy when you get that first good review, because everyone is just going to assume it was at best a friend or family and at worst paid for. Nobody cares about your reviews until you have 20 these days, unless of course those 20 aren't verified purchases. In which case nobody cares about THEM because everyone assumes they are sock puppets or paid reviews. So now you need 50...or 100...but then you better hope your sales rank equals what people think it should, otherwise people will dismiss all of your reviews as bought.

And if people really think this isn't a problem, then this whole thing becomes a game of who can afford to buy the most reviews the fastest. In which case, we should all just as well go back to trade publishing because the game is over for most people and only the people with a lot of money can afford to keep playing.


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## S.E. Gordon (Mar 15, 2011)

Wow, 5,000 of them? I didn't realize it was that many. I seem to remember reading that he was able to hang onto some of them.


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## Andrew Ashling (Nov 15, 2010)

EelKat said:


> Think about it, how many times have you said to a friend "Hey I'll give you a copy of my book if you write a review!" Every author does this, it's just human nature. You said it to your mom, your dad, your brother, your sister, your grandmother, your neighbor, your co-worker, every body in your circle of friends. Whether or not they acted on it is not the point here, the point here is that you offered to buy your own book and pay them with a copy of it to write a review. That means by FTC Law that person is required to write in their review, as part of their review, a disclaimer saying they were paid to write said review. Receiving a free copy of the book is regarded by the FTC (Federal Trade Commission) as receiving payment for services rendered.


I have never done any of those things.


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## Edward W. Robertson (May 18, 2010)

EelKat, do you have links on any of that (beyond the original NYT piece)? That's way more information than I've ever seen on the matter. Crazy.


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## scottmarlowe (Apr 22, 2010)

Edward W. Robertson said:


> EelKat, do you have links on any of that (beyond the original NYT piece)? That's way more information than I've ever seen on the matter. Crazy.


This discusses the service (or one of them, anyway) Locke used:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/26/business/book-reviewers-for-hire-meet-a-demand-for-online-raves.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0


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## Edward W. Robertson (May 18, 2010)

Yeah, I was interviewed for a followup piece to that, heheh. But a lot of the specifics mentioned above aren't things I've ever heard before.


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## AmsterdamAssassin (Oct 21, 2011)

EelKat said:


> Think about it, how many times have you said to a friend "Hey I'll give you a copy of my book if you write a review!" Every author does this, it's just human nature. You said it to your mom, your dad, your brother, your sister, your grandmother, your neighbor, your co-worker, every body in your circle of friends. Whether or not they acted on it is not the point here, *the point here is that you offered to buy your own book and pay them with a copy of it to write a review*. That means by FTC Law that person is required to write in their review, as part of their review, a disclaimer saying they were paid to write said review. *Receiving a free copy of the book is regarded by the FTC (Federal Trade Commission) as receiving payment for services rendered*.


That's incorrect. Every reviewer in the history of trade publishing has been reviewing ARCs of books provided for free by the publisher. This is not considered payment, since no reviewer would be able to pay for all the books they review. Same thing with theater or film critics, do you think they pay for their own theater or cinema tickets? Of course not. It's payment if you go above and beyond providing the free book, and either pay the reviewer a bonus for a good review or wine & dine them to curry favour.

Sending reviewers free review copies or ARCs is common practice and the FTC only demands stating the source, since people need to know whether the review is by a reviewer or a customer.


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## Caddy (Sep 13, 2011)

> That's incorrect. Every reviewer in the history of trade publishing has been reviewing ARCs of books provided for free by the publisher. This is not considered payment, since no reviewer would be able to pay for all the books they review. Same thing with theater or film critics, do you think they pay for their own theater or cinema tickets? Of course not. It's payment if you go above and beyond providing the free book, and either pay the reviewer a bonus for a good review or wine & dine them to curry favour.
> 
> Sending reviewers free review copies or ARCs is common practice and the FTC only demands stating the source, since people need to know whether the review is by a reviewer or a customer.


Correct. That is what reviewer blogs and sites do.


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## Terrence OBrien (Oct 21, 2010)

ElHawk said:


> Good is in the eye of the beholder. If somebody honestly thinks a thing is good, then it's good, for that person. There are plenty of consumers out there who, when seeing how popular something is, will decide that they like it, too.
> 
> It's a losing proposition, to try to quantify or standardize "good." All you can do is acknowledge that some books which you or I think are "good" never make it huge, and some books which you or I think are "terrible" do make it huge.


Agree. That's why I tend to challenge the notion of absolute good for a book. It's also good to challenge the idea that some folks' purpose in reading is more virtuous than the purposes of others. They really aren't that special.



> Although opinions are as ubiquitous as haemorrhoids, some opinions are more valuable than others.


They are indeed more valuable as a function of the purpose for which they can be used. A positive review by Stephen King is far more likely to lead to increased sales than a review from me.

But a positive review by Stephen King is worthless to folks who hate King's work and are looking for something to read. They might even find my review more valuable.

All depends on the standard of valuation.



> "Comments like this are why people like me still consider people like Locke pond scum. Because when one high profile "success" is shown to be a fraud, people assume all successes are and the good people get painted with the same blackened brush."


We can hang that squarely around the necks of the people doing the assuming. They are assuming and they are responsible. It's not Locke making the unsupported assumptions.



> People who think this behavior is no big deal have not been paying attention.


I've been paying a great deal of attention, and still think it's no big deal. I see no indications consumers give a hoot. I see lots of independnet authors who do. That's not a big deal.



> Creating multiple accounts with the intent to sway the star ratings is against Amazon's ToS.


A TOS is a funny thing. Until late 2011, Google's TOS said nobody under 18 could use the service.



> That's incorrect. Every reviewer in the history of trade publishing has been reviewing ARCs of books provided for free by the publisher. This is not considered payment, since no reviewer would be able to pay for all the books they review.


Of course it's payment. Something of value is given in the expectation of receiving something of value. It doesn't matter how long it has been happening. Nor does it matter what a reviewer can afford.

It's fine with me, but there is really no reason to pretend it isn't payment. The fact that people tell each other it isn't payment doesn't change the characteristics of the transaction.



> Sending reviewers free review copies or ARCs is common practice and the FTC only demands stating the source, since people need to know whether the review is by a reviewer or a customer.


So payment changes a consumer into a reviewer?


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## 56139 (Jan 21, 2012)

daringnovelist said:


> HOWEVER... these books do sometimes introduce people to concepts that they might overlook without the heavy sales pitch.


I won't get into JL's ethics, but this is true. Every once in a while you pick up one of these marketing things and something in there just rings your bell, ya know? And suddenly you have an epiphany about what yu're doing wrong, or what you could do better.

I read this book JL wrote - and I wouldn't say it was a scam. he gave concrete examples of what he did. People can take it or leave it. I left it. But that doesn't make his advice bad.


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## AmsterdamAssassin (Oct 21, 2011)

Terrence OBrien said:


> They are indeed more valuable as a function of the purpose for which they can be used. A positive review by Stephen King is far more likely to lead to increased sales than a review from me.
> 
> But a positive review by Stephen King is worthless to folks who hate King's work and are looking for something to read. They might even find my review more valuable.
> 
> All depends on the standard of valuation.


If you write in King's genre, a review by King will do more good than harm, since he has more supporters than detractors in his genre. Outside his genre, who cares? The detractors of King outside his genre would probably not buy your genre book anyway.



Terrence OBrien said:


> Of course it's payment. Something of value is given in the expectation of receiving something of value. It doesn't matter how long it has been happening. Nor does it matter what a reviewer can afford.
> 
> It's fine with me, but there is really no reason to pretend it isn't payment. The fact that people tell each other it isn't payment doesn't change the characteristics of the transaction.


Are you really this unaware of how professional reviewers work?



Terrence OBrien said:


> So payment changes a consumer into a reviewer?


No, receiving a free copy for review purposes turns a customer into a reviewer. I don't know about you, Terrence, but I don't work for 3.99$, so a free book which retails at less than 10$ is not an incentive for me to write a review. Also, if I'd pay a reviewer, I'd give them some inkling of what I'd expect in their review beyond their 'honest opinion'.

If a restaurant wants a professional review, they'd have to get a professional reviewer to come and eat their food. If they'd charge for that food, no professional reviewer would eat at their restaurant, simply because if they'd pay for the food, they'd be a customer and customers don't require to write a review about it. However, professional reviewers are paid by their employer (publisher) who might even pick up the tab. Amateur reviewers, like on Amazon and GoodReads don't have anybody picking up the tab, so a free review copy is standard practice and apart from stating the source of obtaining the copy, they do not require to write a positive review.

And yes, it's a transaction, but a 'transaction' does not equal 'payment' or even 'equal services'. A free e-book costs me nothing, a review will cost the reviewer time and effort that are not compensated by the four or five dollars they save on not having to buy my book.


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## CraigInOregon (Aug 6, 2010)

segordon said:


> Sometimes promotion is harder than writing the actual book.


True. Something Amanda said more than once when she had the time to hang out here.


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## CraigInOregon (Aug 6, 2010)

Bards and Sages (Julie) said:


> So now you need 50...or 100...but then you better hope your sales rank equals what people think it should, otherwise people will dismiss all of your reviews as bought.
> 
> And if people really think this isn't a problem, then this whole thing becomes a game of who can afford to buy the most reviews the fastest. In which case, we should all just as well go back to trade publishing because the game is over for most people and only the people with a lot of money can afford to keep playing.


Trade publishing cheats the system at times, too. I say this in the spirit of "there's corruption everywhere," NOT in the spirit of "that makes it okay, then." Because it's not okay.

I mean, I've heard it's regular practice with celebrity books that their agents will often buy up tons of copies of their clients' books in the first week of release, just to guarantee their Famous Actor or Stand-Up Comic or Former Politician's title spends at least one week on the best'sellers' list, so they can go on to promote their client as a "best-selling author" and for no other reason.

That way, when they go on Letterman or Leno, the host can say, "She's a former First Lady, New York Senator, Secretary of State, potential 2016 presidential candidate, and tonight she's here to add 'best-selling' author to that like of accomplishments. Here to talk about her new book, 'It Takes a Solar System,' ladies and gentlemen, the honorable Hillary Clinton."

And even at $25/copy, if they bought up, say, 50,000 copies over the counter for that very purpose, that's only $1.25M, which is still chickenfeed to entertainment types when they have clients getting paid $20M per film in blockbusters that cost $200M to make... I doubt they'd even hesitate. (Some of them, at least.)

I mean, when Alfred Hitckcock decided to select Robert Bloch's PSYCHO to be his next movie, he had "his people" scour up and down the east and west coasts, buying up "every copy available" of the book (making in an instant bestseller) because "If this is going to be my next film project, I don't want anyone knowing how it ends." He wrote the expense off as "production costs."


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## Terrence OBrien (Oct 21, 2010)

> If you write in King's genre, a review by King will do more good than harm, since he has more supporters than detractors in his genre. Outside his genre, who cares? The detractors of King outside his genre would probably not buy your genre book anyway.


Sure. Reviews have different values for different people.



> Are you really this unaware of how professional reviewers work?


Count me among the unsophisticated lumpen. I am indeed inferior in this regard. I don't know squat about professional reviewers. But I do know a payment when I see it. Seems the FTC wants us to know who got paid and who didn't. But I wish they would stop wasting our money on this nonsense.



> No, receiving a free copy for review purposes turns a customer into a reviewer. I don't know about you, Terrence, but I don't work for 3.99$, so a free book which retails at less than 10$ is not an incentive for me to write a review. Also, if I'd pay a reviewer, I'd give them some inkling of what I'd expect in their review beyond their 'honest opinion'.


Fine. We react differently to the same payment. God Bless Gordon Gekko.



> If a restaurant wants a professional review, they'd have to get a professional reviewer to come and eat their food. If they'd charge for that food, no professional reviewer would eat at their restaurant, simply because if they'd pay for the food, they'd be a customer and customers don't require to write a review about it. However, professional reviewers are paid by their employer (publisher) who might even pick up the tab. Amateur reviewers, like on Amazon and GoodReads don't have anybody picking up the tab, so a free review copy is standard practice and apart from stating the source of obtaining the copy, they do not require to write a positive review.


OK. Payments are standard practice. That's fine.



> And yes, it's a transaction, but a 'transaction' does not equal 'payment' or even 'equal services'. A free e-book costs me nothing, a review will cost the reviewer time and effort that are not compensated by the four or five dollars they save on not having to buy my book.


I agree a transaction does not mean it is payment. It is the characteristics of the transaction that do. The specific reviewer is getting a specific item of value in exchange for an expected value. It doesn't really matter if a bunch of authors say it's OK because it has been done for a long time, or that's how publishing works, or there is no other way to do it, or reviewers are paupers. It's payment.

I simply acknowledge the payment. No big deal.


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## daringnovelist (Apr 3, 2010)

I would like to note something here: while it is normal for publishers to send out review copies and arcs, it is NOT considered ethical for restaurants or movie producers (or theaters) to give away freebies to their reviewers.

As a matter of fact, it is normal in the restaurant reviewing field for reviewers to keep their identities a secret so that the restaurant can't put on an extra effort to impress the reviewer. Of course, this is different from restaurant journalism, where the journalist has to interview the restauranteur, but they aren't actually rating and reviewing. (And it is still unethical to take free food from a place you are covering.)

That said, I have nothing against sending review copies -- that's normal and expected in the industry, and something every does openly. I used to review for a library annual which made a point of reviewing EVERY book published in the genre that year (something easier to do before self publishing). Publishers provided them with some copies, but at least half the list we had to scramble around and try to cover on our own.

I think it's pushing it, but not unethical if you pay someone to distribute a book to reviewers, (but only when the reviewer is still only getting the book and there is no incentive to give a positive review).

However, paying someone to _buy_ your book is not acceptable because that in itself is gaming the algorithms. It doesn't matter if other people do it -- it's not considered acceptable by anyone in the industry. It's something people do to cheat

If a reviewer feels they need a "verified purchaser" badge to be taken seriosuly, then they should buy the book. If you want to write reviews for free books, write them on your blog or Tumblr or something.

Camille


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## Guest (Oct 28, 2013)

EelKat said:


> The issue here was not that he paid for reviews (because a lot of authors do this) but the fact that he paid ONE PERSON to create 5,000 Amazon accounts and write 5,000 reviews. 1 person wrote 5,000 individual reviews. THAT was the issue. Creating multiple accounts with the intent to sway the star ratings is against Amazon's ToS. He paid 1 person to write 5,000 reviews and THAT is what got him in trouble. Had he paid 5,000 people to write 5,000 reviews no one would have batted an eye, but that is not what he did - he paid 1 single solitary person to write all 5,000 5-star reviews.


Please explain how paying one person to write 5000 fake reviews is wrong, but paying 5000 people to write 5000 fake reviews is OK. Besides the fact that you have your information wrong, I'm having difficulty wrapping my head around what you just said here.



> The fact remains that MOST authors do pay for reviews. Many hire a publicists to do it for them while some do it themselves, but either way, it's common practice and it's been common practice since the 1950s, long before either the internet or Amazon were invented.


But NO, most authors don't pay for reviews. Heck, most authors I know don't even hire publicists. I'm not sure you even understand what the actual job description of a publicist is.



> Think about it, how many times have you said to a friend "Hey I'll give you a copy of my book if you write a review!" Every author does this, it's just human nature. You said it to your mom, your dad, your brother, your sister, your grandmother, your neighbor, your co-worker, every body in your circle of friends.


No, I didn't. In fact, I made it clear to these people that they were NOT to review my books. But that was mostly because most of my friends and family in the real world are not literary-inclined and the reviews would be embarassing.  



> Whether or not they acted on it is not the point here, the point here is that you offered to buy your own book and pay them with a copy of it to write a review. That means by FTC Law that person is required to write in their review, as part of their review, a disclaimer saying they were paid to write said review. Receiving a free copy of the book is regarded by the FTC (Federal Trade Commission) as receiving payment for services rendered.


The FTC requirement requires disclosure of relationships. Payment is one form of a relationship. But not all relationships are payment. If my mother reviewed my book and disclosed in the review that she was my mom, that would be fine (embarrassing, but fine.) Nobody considers giving a book reviewer a copy of the book "payment" because the reviewer can't review something he hasn't read. The FTC requirement is simply that you disclose that you were given a copy for review.



> It is the FTC that was the real issue here. One person wrote 5,000 reviews, not one of those 5,000 reviews had a disclaimer saying they were paid to write said review, Amazon discovered that all of these 5,000 accounts each had only 1 review (all on Locke) and that each had the exact same ISP address. In the initial accusation, he was accused of writing all 5,000 reviews himself, Amazon was threaten to delete his account for ToS violation (you can't write a review for your own book, let alone write 5,000 reviews for your own book) which was WHY he came forward with the fact that, no I didn't write the reviews I paid this guy over here to write the reviews.


Locke was outed in the NY Times article. Not by Amazon. As far as I know, Amazon never actually did anything to Locke. I suspect because it would have been too embarrassing to kick Locke off the site for TOS violations after having promoted him so heavily. But plenty of authors with far fewer offenses have had their accounts locked and closed. I have no idea what court case you are talking about. Do you have links to something that the rest of us have not seen? What is your source?

_Removed a comment that went over the line. --Betsy_


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## Guest (Oct 28, 2013)

daringnovelist said:


> I think it's pushing it, but not unethical if you pay someone to distribute a book to reviewers, (but only when the reviewer is still only getting the book and there is no incentive to give a positive review).


The actual distribution of a book for review is an administrative function. Paying a freelance service to distribute books for review is no different than paying an employee to send out books for review. I can manually go through the Amazon top reviewer listings and find reviewers, or I can pay someone to do that administrative function for me. In a trade publishing house, sending out review copies is not a function done by the author or editor. It's something done by an administrative employee.

I think part of the problem is that we lump "customer reviews" in with traditional critical reviews in these discussions. The real issue is customer reviews. The purpose of the FTC rules was to make sure that consumers KNOW the source of the information they are getting. If someone reads a review in the NY Times, they know the reviewer was given a copy of the book and is being paid by the NY Times to write reviews. If someone reads a review in USA Today, they know that the reviewer was given a copy of the review and that it is the reviewer's job to write reviews.

But when people see something labeled "customer review," they assume that the review is from a normal customer. The expectation is that someone bought the product, liked it, and reviewed it. THIS area is where the problem comes in. This is why disclosure is required. So that customers have genuine information.

There is nothing unethical about your mom reviewing your book if she read it, so long as she discloses her relationship with you. The problem comes in when your mom or sister or cousin writes the review in a way that is designed to HIDE the relationship. "I just discovered this great new author!" type comments designed to make people think the reviewer just happened upon the book.

Even if you want to pay for reviews, there is nothing unethical about paying for reviews IF those payments are disclosed. The FTC wouldn't care if the reviewer said "I was paid $5 to write this review" because now it is disclosed as a paid endorsement. (It would still be an Amazon TOS violation, but that is a different matter). The issue is a matter of making sure that the customer knows the relationship between the endorser and the manufacturer. This is why you don't have to have disclosures on commercials, because consumers know that the people in commercials are paid to participate in the commercial. But most people won't automatically assume that the blogger raving about the latest hot new book was paid to rave about it.


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## 10105 (Feb 16, 2010)

I was one of those salaried paid reviewers that Julie mentions. I wrote a column for a monthly, often discussed books, and the magazine paid me for the column. Other times I wrote reviews in the book review section of the magazine, and the magazine paid me.

Publishers sent books directly to me or to the magazine, who then sent them to me. The publishers hoped I'd write about the books. Often I did; more often I did not.

Today I have a library of upwards of 1,000 books that were given to me in the hopes that I would review them. In a way, that's payment, but I don't think you could call it the buying of endorsements.

These books aren't ARCs. They're the published editions. The only unwritten, unspoken condition is that I should not resell them. To that extent, the books are not real payment.

It took a while for someone to point out, as Julie did, that the real difference is in how readers of the reviews (and, thus, potential buyers of the books) perceive the reviews. Are they written by professional reviewers or by customers?

About Locke: He saw a system he could game, and so he did. That's enterprise. We're surrounded by it.

I think I'll write the next runaway best seller: _How I Made $100 by Self-Publishing_.


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## JA Konrath (Apr 2, 2009)

People love celebrities.

But people love disparaging celebrities even more.

It feels good to say "Lance Armstrong cheated" because we then get to feel superior to Lance. He's rich, he's famous, people love him. But guess what? He took steroids! Anybody could have won all those Tour de Frances on steroids! Even I could have if I cheated like Lance!

Uh, no. It doesn't matter how much juice you took, you won't ever win the Tour de France.

And it doesn't matter how many reviews you buy, it won't lead you to selling a million ebooks.

When Locke talked about buying reviews (he never hid it, and offered the info during an interview without being prodded) he considered it just another part of marketing. While I've never bought reviews, I didn't have a problem with what he did. Locke analyzed how the system worked, saw a way to exploit it, and went for it.

What happened after he went public was a fascinating study in the dark side of human nature. Lots of people overreacted. This lead to witch hunting and finger pointing and chest thumping, which lead to Amazon ultimately deleting thousands of legitimate reviews, which hurt the people complaining about Locke (irony is funny.)

We all question our own success (or lack thereof) and wish we sold more books. When we see someone who has sold more books, we want to believe there is some secret they know that we don't.

There isn't any secret to success. Success involves working hard and getting very, very lucky.

Locke appeared on the scene when having a lot of 99 cent books gave his titles an amplification effect. With Amazon's algorithms and bestseller lists, along with a conflux of many other variables, some known and some unknown, Locke won the sales lottery. Like so many authors have before him. 

I find it interesting that people point to Locke's impressive success as cheating because he paid for reviews, but they look at a book that got huge marketing support from a legacy publisher (Twilight, Dragon Tattoo, Hunger Games) which includes buying full page ads in the NYT Book Review for tens of thousand of dollars, and don't bat an eyelash. I'd say there is a big conflict of interest in buying expensive ads in a newspaper that reviews your book. I'd say that was equivalent to what Locke did.

Publishers print hundreds, if not thousands, of galleys and give them away in hopes of getting reviews. Is that buying reviews?

Kirkus and PW actually sell reviews. Where is the uproar?

There's no uproar because there is no Schadenfreude sense of self-gratification to be gained from criticizing a newspaper, magazine, or large publisher.

But oh how good it feels to criticize a peer that has outsold you. To disregard his writing, his marketing, his hard work, because he did something you don't agree with.

Here's something that everyone needs to remember: Publishing will NEVER be fair. Some books you despise will sell millions. Some books you love will wallow in obscurity. No one knows why some things take off and others don't. I say this as an old salt in this biz, who has had some things take of and others that didn't.

John Locke didn't sell a million because he bought reviews. He sold a million because he got lucky. Just like any other author who sells a million.

I've probably tried more marketing things than most of you. I was one of the first authors to blog. One of the first on MySpace (remember MySpace?) One of the first on Twitter and Facebook. I recognized early on that being visible was essential to success. I was one of the first to tout BookBub. One of the first to do blog tours. One of the first to put my blog posts into an ebook. I was given a free trial at BookRooster, and saw no moral issues with it, even though I never used it to buy reviews.

The goal is the same as it has always been: to make people aware of your books. Locke analyzed the system, saw a way to exploit it, and went for it. His biggest mistake was not putting it in his How To book, because it made it look like he was hiding something.

Having never read his How To book, I cannot critique it. But I do know that a lot of successful people tend to point to what they did as the road to success. This is a fallacy. 

When you finish a marathon, it's easy to explain how you did it: you put one foot in front of the other until you ran 26 miles.

Success is not that easy to explain. But successful people incorrectly look at what they did prior to their success, and then decide their actions were directly responsible.

Finishing a marathon is within your control. Selling a million books is not. No matter how well you market. No matter how good your books are.

I've sold over a million ebooks. Know how? I got really, really lucky. And I won't charge you 99 cents to tell you that.

But I also don't attack other writers. The only author who ever got the brunt of my public ire was Scott Turow, and that's because of the terrible job he's doing as President of the Author's Guild. I'd never disparage his talent. I'd never begrudge him his success. But I do fisk him when he spouts harmful nonsense that hurts my fellow writers.

We need to worry less about what our peers our doing, and more about how we can help each other. Kindleboards is a wealth of good information, with many people helping. But when it turns into witch hunting and author bashing, I feel sad for our profession.

You may not like what Locke did. You may not ever do the same. But I've never ever seen a situation where proudly proclaiming superiority did a lick of good.


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## 10105 (Feb 16, 2010)

Jack Kilborn said:


> I find it interesting that people point to Locke's impressive success as cheating because he paid for reviews, but they look at a book that got huge marketing support from a legacy publisher (Twilight, Dragon Tattoo, Hunger Games) which includes buying full page ads in the NYT Book Review for tens of thousand of dollars, and don't bat an eyelash. I'd say there is a big conflict of interest in buying expensive ads in a newspaper that reviews your book. I'd say that was equivalent to what Locke did.


In the traditional publishing industry (speaking of magazines and newspapers here), advertising and editorial are divided. A so-called Chinese wall is thrown up between them. Or should be. The advertising people have no control or influence over what is written in reviews. If it isn't done that way, the readership would not trust the editorial content, and the periodical would fold. As a reviewer (books and products), I did not tell a potential advertiser if or when a review would appear. They did try to influence me from time to time. I've been offered money, free stuff, even the attentions of a lovely lady, not to ensure a good review, but merely to make me feel good about the company whose stuff I might review.

Unless things have changed drastically since I retired from journalism, which is possible, Locke's marketing and publisher/NYT advertising practices are not equivalent.


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## Guest (Oct 30, 2013)

Al Stevens said:


> In the traditional publishing industry (speaking of magazines and newspapers here), advertising and editorial are divided. A so-called Chinese wall is thrown up between them. Or should be. The advertising people have no control or influence over what is written in reviews. If it isn't done that way, the readership would not trust the editorial content, and the periodical would fold. As a reviewer (books and products), I did not tell a potential advertiser if or when a review would appear. They did try to influence me from time to time. I've been offered money, free stuff, even the attentions of a lovely lady, not to ensure a good review, but merely to make me feel good about the company whose stuff I might review.
> 
> Unless things have changed drastically since I retired from journalism, which is possible, Locke's marketing and publisher/NYT advertising practices are not equivalent.


Those walls have gotten stricter in corporate America. There are disclosure rules regarding gifts now. Heck, even at my day job, if a salesperson gives me a gift, I have to get permission to accept it and we have to disclose the value of the gift. Most of this, however, is tied to Sarbanes-Oxley, but the impact has been that yes, you had BETTER gave those walls or else. Those walls have gotten more stringent because of various federal laws. Ironically, these laws are generally designed to protect shareholders from fraud and embezzlement, but they have the added impact of making it harder to "buy" a good review in the way people think this happens.

Which is why I always find it funny when people make these comparisons. I've worked for local newspapers. The editorial people and the advertising people never talk to each other unless they happen to be near the coffee machine at the same time. When auditors come to our plant to conduct an inspection for a potential customer, we aren't even allowed to buy them lunch so as to avoid influencing them.

I'm not saying people don't cheat (we KNOW they do). I'm pointing out that it is cheating when it happens and not business-as-usual as so many people love to claim.

And again, there is a world of difference between buying an ad in the NY Times, _which everyone knows is a paid ad,_ and buying hundreds of reviews that are disguised as "verified customer reviews" in order to trick readers into thinking this is organic support.


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## JA Konrath (Apr 2, 2009)

Al Stevens said:


> Unless things have changed drastically since I retired from journalism, which is possible, Locke's marketing and publisher/NYT advertising practices are not equivalent.


Locke spent a few thousand dollars buying reviews. He didn't buy "favorable reviews", and from the get-go said that if the review he bought is bad, so be it. He was looking for honest reviews.

But I suppose a regular joe can't be paid for an honest review, because he didn't go to journalism school. Only pros should be paid for reviews.

And who pays those pros?

I have no idea how much the NYT earns from the publishing industry in advertising revenue. Last I checked, a full page ad was $50k. There is a lot of money at play, and while I don't doubt your integrity, Al, did you know what deals were being done above your pay grade? I'd be very surprised if there wasn't some sort of payola going on.

Why hasn't anyone compared the number of ads a publisher runs in the NYT to the number of book reviews that publisher has gotten? Do you really think--in a day and age where the NYT is afraid to criticize its own government--that they don't know which publishers to favor based on the amount of money they spent on ads?

Do you really think Publisher A wouldn't throw a fit if Publisher B--who bought fewer ads--got more reviews?

Again, I'm not talking about buying favorable reviews. I'm talking about just getting a review in print, good or bad.

Do you think it's okay that the books you reviewed were given to you free?

Do you think it's okay that the periodicals you reviewed for were funded by the publishers whose books you were reviewing?

A Chinese wall is nice in theory. But true integrity would mean never taking a dime from any company whose livelihood was improved by your journalist endeavors. Reviews help sell books. The NYT knows this. Locke knows this.

Is the line between Locke and the NYT getting grayer and blurring a bit?

And I haven't even bothered debating the effectiveness of reviews.

By a show of hands, who instantly buys any ebook that has a five star review?

No one?

Okay, who instantly buys any ebook that has over a hundred reviews with an average of four stars? (If you are one of those rare people, please check out my backlist, as I have dozens of ebooks that fit this description.)

Good reviews, especially a lot of them, may get a reader to take a closer look at a book. Some may buy automatically, especially for only 99 cents. But the book is what sells the book, not a bunch of reviews. Twilight has gotten thousands of positive reviews, and I'm still not going to read it.

Readers can sample the book for free. Readers will look at the book description. Readers aren't mindless zombies who buy anything.

Locke bought a few hundred reviews. He's gotten thousands of positive reviews that weren't bought. He's obviously done something right.

But do you know what really amuses me? The many who have given Locke 1 star reviews without having read him, because they heard he bought reviews.

As I said earlier, irony is funny...


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## Guest (Oct 30, 2013)

Jack Kilborn said:


> But I suppose a regular joe can't be paid for an honest review,


Sure he can. But none of those "regular joes" actually stated they were paid for their review. They were told to buy the book so that it would have the coveted "Amazon Verified Purchase" so that other regular joes would think the reviews were from regular customers and not paid endorsements.

Let's not pretend this is about "regular joes" versus "professionals." *It is about disclosure.* Nobody reads a NY Times review and thinks the reviewer just spontaneously bought the book and decided to review it. People know those reviewers are staff of the publication and are paid to write reviews. When I pick up my copy of _Game Informer_, I don't think these are regular guys who just bought a game and decided to write about it. I know they are staff of the magazine and I know they are paid to test the games. The disclosure is clear.

This is about disclosure. People read customer reviews differently than other types of reviews. And they place more value of organic customer reviews than they do paid ads. THAT is why Locke had his reviewers buy the book and then reimburse them. He wanted people to believe they were organic reviews and not paid reviews.


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## Edward W. Robertson (May 18, 2010)

What Julie said. A paid ad is a completely different beast than creating the illusion your book has been purchased by thousands of readers. Popularity sells.


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## JA Konrath (Apr 2, 2009)

Bards and Sages (Julie) said:


> *It is about disclosure.* Nobody reads a NY Times review and thinks the reviewer just spontaneously bought the book and decided to review it.


And I'd really like the NYT to disclose how much it makes in ad revenue from publishers, and if there is any correlation to how many books by those publishers it revues.

Wouldn't you like to see that?

And actually, it is about a lot more than disclosure. I've raised many points, all well-reasoned and valid, and you're focusing on this one and disregarding the rest.

Do you really think it is okay for newspapers to accept money from companies whose livelihood depends on their journalistic endeavors?

If you think it is okay, then you have to acknowledge that reviews are being bought, and can't shame Locke for doing so.

If you think it's wrong, then newspapers should be shamed by you the same way Locke is being shamed by you.

Either condemn them both, or support them both.

Or, better yet, neither. Another point of mine you ignored was that proclaiming moral superiority never did anyone any good.


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## blakebooks (Mar 10, 2012)

Joe - Couple of important points: 

1) Whether Locke has done something right has nothing to do with whether he did something wrong. 

2) In your earlier comment you incorrectly brand Amazon's review removal as being caused by a witch hunt/petition that actually took place at least 3 months after Amazon began removing reviews en masse, so either that has nothing to do with it, or Bezos has a time machine, or the laws of physics have somehow changed in ways I'm not aware of. 

3) In 2010, Locke began seeing the surge in sales almost immediately following his purchase of several hundred reviews in November. I'll go with back then, a surge of reviews gamed the algorithms to create outsized visibility for him, which then translated to curiosity sales (back then .99 was the equivalent of free) by tons of newbies with new kindles, which were then touted as near-miraculous sales by someone who was doing something right (including on your blog), which resulted in the WSJ doing an article on him (due to all his sales), which made him a must read flag carrier of the indie movement. The only reason I ever heard about him was the article. That made him a must buy to see what all the fuss was about. I'm pretty sure I'm not alone. So while any one thing in a vacuum can be positioned as being innocuous, the truth is that it created a chain reaction that was only possible at that time and place, and is impossible to generate now (due to the algos having changed, and the review services put out of business, and the market being three years more mature).

4) Paid advertisements aren't fraud. They are understood to be paid. Paying reviewers to pretend to be genuine, verified reviewers can only have one driver: to deceive readers of the reviews into believing they are genuine. That's the fraud part. Launching into a polemic bemoaning how fraud is industry standard doesn't change that fraud. It merely highlights how fraud denigrates the review process to the point where reviews carry little weight. Whether that's good, or bad, or whether victims of a con should be chastised for not being smart enough to see the con simply changes the discussion of the con itself.

5) There are plenty of con men in every industry. Some would argue Wall St is one big con. I would be one of them. But those duped by con men have still been duped, and being deceived does not make it their fault because they're naive or stupid, although they may well be both. I think the moral backlash is due to the perception of a con man appearing to have elevated himself to a position of significant visibility through trickery and questionable tactics. I fully understand the sociopathic business philosophy of the end justifying the means. There are always apologists for that philosophy.

They're simply wrong, and part of the problem.

Whether or not Locke is a genius or a hack has never been the discussion. I mean, that's a fine discussion and one I could easily argue, however it's not this discussion, that I can tell. Nor is this discussion whether trad publishers use questionable tactics, nor in fact do most businesses. Perhaps they do. More's the pity if so. Moral relativism where because that tribe over there kills its children and eats them makes it ok for us to kill ours and eat them just doesn't sit well with me. That same moral relativism applied to Locke's situation also doesn't sit well with me. There are really two arguments you've advanced, which are basically that what he did isn't wrong or bad because lots of others do wrong or bad things too, and that nobody was really harmed by his behavior. Neither of those address whether paying reviewers to pretend to be verified, genuine, impartial reviewers is fraudulent or not. I happen to believe it is. Others apparently do too. I'm pretty sure that arguing that behaving fraudulently should be condoned because others do the same, or because the harm to the integrity of the system is difficult to measure, doesn't address that key question.

Authors of no small ability like Lee Goldberg seem to have pretty decent moral barometers on this matter, and have spoken their minds. You've spoken yours, and it invariably comes down on the side of trivializing that fraud, or arguing that paying reviewers to deceive readers isn't fraud. On that, I must respectfully disagree. No hard feelings, but I think you're dead wrong on this one.

I tend to agree with many of your positions on a variety of topics, however this ain't one of em. That is, as they say, what makes a market.

And now, back to our regular programming.


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## Guest (Oct 30, 2013)

Jack Kilborn said:


> And I'd really like the NYT to disclose how much it makes in ad revenue from publishers, and if there is any correlation to how many books by those publishers it revues.
> 
> Wouldn't you like to see that?


Actually, I HAVE seen the ad revenue. They are a publicly traded company. Anyone interested enough can review their filings and see their revenue. It takes more than a Google search, so most people are too lazy to do it. But since I work in contract packaging and have a heavy interest in advertising and PR, I do look at this stuff. I also subscribe to publications like _Ad Age_ and others that talk about this stuff. The Times reviews very few books in relation to its biggest book advertisers. And even in regards to their advertisers, the books that are advertised are usually not the ones reviewed. Most of the ad revenue is for genre fiction, which the Times review dept tends to shy away from.



> And actually, it is about a lot more than disclosure. I've raised many points, all well-reasoned and valid, and you're focusing on this one and disregarding the rest.
> 
> Do you really think it is okay for newspapers to accept money from companies whose livelihood depends on their journalistic endeavors?


So long as the editorial content is separate from the ad content, which it is in newspapers, there is no issue. What Locke did was disguise ad content as editorial content. You keep ignoring this point. Nobody checks with the ad department to see if Walmart just made an ad buy before running a story about WalMart. Heck, the disconnect between editorial and ad is legendary (like when some newspapers ran ads for gun stores on the same page as news articles about school shootings or when diet ads run on the same page as articles about bulimia.) The LACK of conversation between editorial and ad is well known and fairly comedic in a lot of ways.


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## Duane Gundrum (Apr 5, 2011)

The problem I have with the whole situation is that he gamed the system from the start and is still benefiting greatly because of it. His cheating in the beginning gained him massive amounts of readers that now drive more readers that continue to find him because of the name recognition his previous actions garnered. As someone who would never pay for a review, or even ask a friend to write one for a book, I find myself suffering big time because I'm struggling to get more than two or four reviews for a book, which relegates me to completely unknown status. As a result, I'll find a lot more criticism from people who see my stuff as "amateur" but someone like Locke is seen as "professional" strictly on the name recognition alone. The fact that I've had my stuff professionally edited means nothing because the stigma of unknown status permeates the dynamic more than pretty much anything else.

The moral of the story, for me, is that cheating and gaming the system is rewarded while slugging it out and trying to go the "right" way is laughed at by others, as it results in very little success.


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## blakebooks (Mar 10, 2012)

Duane: I'm not sure that's the moral. There are plenty of success stories about guys like Hugh Howey who have taken very public positions against that sort of behavior, so while it CAN work, it doesn't necessarily work all the time, nor is it necessary to cheat at all if you have chops like Hugh.

I can think of any number of successful authors who didn't have to cheat to make it. Colleen Hoover. Holly Ward. Bella Andre. Elle Casey. Joe Nobody. I could go on and on. They have achieved success due to hard work, writing books the public embraces, and being good at what they do, including the marketing side of it. 

So I think the moral is more that there are many ways to skin a cat, and you have to choose the one that resonates with your ethical makeup. Whether others cheat is not something you can change. You can condemn it or celebrate it or defend it, but you can't change it. So you need to choose where on the spectrum you lie, and then stick to your knitting. That was my takeaway. In fact, the instances of authors making outsized money through hard work, and even of up and coming authors now climbing the ranks and making waves, are far more common than the cheats. That should give everyone pause. 

A Lance Armstrong denigrates his sport because his cheating robbed other, perhaps equivalently talented riders, from their reasonable place in the hierarchy. You still have to be a pro rider to be in the winner's circle, but cheating to get that extra edge both sullies the sport, as well as robs the other contenders of their true shot at winning. Because you can't go back. Circumstances, your tone, your performance that day, all will be different. The reason he was stripped of his wins was because we as a society either condemn that behavior, or embrace it - hey, lots of athletes cheat, I'm just another cheat, so cheating's ok. The point is society says no, it's not ok. Now, that might well be hypocritical, and we as a species are certainly guilty of hypocrisy at every turn, but we have to at least try to take a stand. Otherwise we degrade into a swamp of moral relativism, a la, "hey, lots of people cheat on their mates, my cheating on my mate is okay, too, for that reason." You have to decide whether it's okay. Part of that is in condemning it, or staying silent, or defending it.

The good news is lots of viable, important voices are enjoying commercial success without gaming the system. That's actually heartening to me.


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## 10105 (Feb 16, 2010)

Joe, you asked specifically about my experience and whether I knew of any hidden back-room deals that defeated the Chinese wall. I was senior staff in editorial and knew of no such deals for whatever that's worth. But that notwithstanding, I can report this much. I wrote the reviews, the magazine paid for the reviews, and nobody ever told me what or what not to review or how to review it. Furthermore, all the reviews I wrote were published.

Now, if the facts as presented do not prop up some allegation, one can always argue that the fact-presenters must be lying. There is no counter-argument to that position, and I would not even try.

You can take the word of someone who worked in the environment under discussion for a long time, or you can reject it. I suggest though, that you back it up with more than speculation. For what it's worth, I agree with much of you said in your post. You just went off the deep end about Locke's fraud being the same thing as what I did for a living. I found that kind of, well, uninformed.

Locke gamed a flawed system that sported huge loopholes. The system is what needed fixing.


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## Terrence OBrien (Oct 21, 2010)

> Those walls have gotten stricter in corporate America.


Exactly what is a wall in corporate America and how do they work? Sarbanes-Oxley is a bunch of paperwork, not a wall.



> And again, there is a world of difference between buying an ad in the NY Times, which everyone knows is a paid ad, and buying hundreds of reviews that are disguised as "verified customer reviews" in order to trick readers into thinking this is organic support.


Sounds like the NYT is tricking people into thinking there is a wall.



> Nobody reads a NY Times review and thinks the reviewer just spontaneously bought the book and decided to review it.


How did he decide?



> Actually, I HAVE seen the ad revenue. They are a publicly traded company. Anyone interested enough can review their filings and see their revenue.


We can see ad revenue in disclosures. Where do we see how much Random House paid for ads in the NYT?



> Whether or not Locke is a genius or a hack has never been the discussion. I mean, that's a fine discussion and one I could easily argue, however it's not this discussion, that I can tell. Nor is this discussion whether trad publishers use questionable tactics, nor in fact do most businesses. Perhaps they do. More's the pity if so. Moral relativism where because that tribe over there kills its children and eats them makes it ok for us to kill ours and eat them just doesn't sit well with me. That same moral relativism applied to Locke's situation also doesn't sit well with me.


It's a bit more than moral relativism. Patterns and practices in an industry are certainly relevant to any discussion of the alleged transgressions of one member.



> The problem I have with the whole situation is that he gamed the system from the start and is still benefiting greatly because of it.


I'd question if behavior we label gaming the system is a problem. The specific deeds have to be examined. For example, is perma-free gaming the system? If so, I wish those folks the best of luck with it.


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## Guest (Oct 30, 2013)

Terrence OBrien said:


> Exactly what is a wall in corporate America and how do they work? Sarbanes-Oxley is a bunch of paperwork, not a wall.


Apparently you have never actually had to deal with SarBox paperwork.  I'd rather deal with a physical wall.


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## Terrence OBrien (Oct 21, 2010)

Bards and Sages (Julie) said:


> Apparently you have never actually had to deal with SarBox paperwork.  I'd rather deal with a physical wall.


Indeed I have. More like a tar pit than a wall.


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## Rick Gualtieri (Oct 31, 2011)

Bards and Sages (Julie) said:


> Apparently you have never actually had to deal with SarBox paperwork.  I'd rather deal with a physical wall.


Seconded. When the auditors show up you can feel the temperature drop by 20 degrees.


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## CraigInOregon (Aug 6, 2010)

Jack Kilborn said:


> And I haven't even bothered debating the effectiveness of reviews.
> 
> By a show of hands, who instantly buys any ebook that has a five star review?
> 
> ...


I agree with most of what you've written, Joe, and so glad to see you here adding in your two cents. I often feel isolated here at KB when I speak up to defend Locke, whose work I enjoy.

But I wanted to underline the point you made here: READERS don't OneClick because of how many five-star reviews one has, or due to an average review score over 4.0.

However, review SITES, like BookBub, IDOLIZE such things. They set up the atmosphere in which Locke, or others, survey the landscape and decide, "The only way to get noticed is to have a ton of reviews."

It is largely because book promo sites require things like "a minimum of XXX reviews" or "an overall average review score of 4.0" that sets up the atmosphere that leads some authors to "front load" their books with purchased reviews.

And why?

Because it's something sites like BookBub can artificially point to as a way of saying "We don't include crapola. Only quality books get mentioned by us."

Because it's quicker, easier, and cheaper to do that, than it is to have enough staff to scan through an eBook and decide for themselves if it's a "good read." That requires staff. That requires time and investment. And even useful sites like BookBub would rather keep the lion's share of their fees as profits, rather than invest in staffing up an internal "board of review." Which is their right... the profit motive drives us all.

But let's be clear about WHY some authors, like Locke, have historically decided to purchase reviews: not because it influences readers, but because sites like BookBub idolize reviews and require certain minimums to even CONSIDER looking at an indie book.

It's like saying, "We only run ads from Coke and Pepsi, because Coke and Pepsi sell. Sorry, Jones Soda, but if you want us to accept your ad money, you'll have to sell a LOT more soda, and buy a LOT more advertising elsewhere, first. Because who cares if you always use only REAL CANE SUGAR in your recipe... we don't have time to actually TRY Jones Soda... we're just going to assume your product isn't good enough until everyone in America is drinking Jones Soda instead of Coke and Pepsi."



DISCLAIMER: I've reviewed just about every book John Locke's written. Total received for those reviews? $0.00. (And actually, I bought all his books, so at about $0.99 each, that ought to actually be a negative number, LOL.)

Also I've consumed plenty of Coke, Pepsi, and Jones Soda over the years. Total received for mentioning them here? $0.00 (And considering all I've consumed over 47 years of life on this earth, that'd be an even bigger negative number...)


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## Terrence OBrien (Oct 21, 2010)

> And even useful sites like BookBub would rather keep the lion's share of their fees as profits, rather than invest in staffing up an internal "board of review." Which is their right... the profit motive drives us all


.

I agree about the profit stuff. Note all the posts here about sales and price.

But I'd add that many firms don't have sufficient profit to cover the costs of providing the individualized attention to authors or books that some folks would like. It's often not a choice. However, I support whatever method these sites choose.


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## CraigInOregon (Aug 6, 2010)

Terrence OBrien said:


> However, I support whatever method these sites choose.


Which is your right.

However, keep in mind that, in essence, you're saying that you support the artificial means of determining quality that BookBub, and many sites like them, employ that actually encourage some authors to "game" the system by "buying" reviews.

To me, BookBub and sites like them are the ones really at cross-purposes.

They want to claim "we are arbiters of quality" without really having an internal mechanism to determine quality.

But they are, simultaneously, the same folks who are accepting ad money from the very authors and publishers they're including or excluding on this artificial quality mechanism.

The NYT has an ad department that makes ad decisions. They have a separate editorial department that determines review assignments and scheduling. It may not be perfect, but it's one way to attempt to separate they editorial function from the revenue function.

The problem with the method BookBub and sites like them chooses is, there's really no separation like that, and the artificial method they choose can be gamed by anyone with enough money and motive to do so.

If one wants their service to be an arbiter of quality, what's the gain in relying on an external method so easily manipulated? It's just a way for them to say, "Your money's no good here; you haven't proven yourself yet."

And heck, Locke's books get called crapola all the time, but does that mean they are? They still sell very respectable numbers after all this time, and I'd take one of his Donovan Creed books over the average trad-published Mack Bolan novel any day. That's a matter of personal preference, but a comparison largely in the same genre.

The basic point here is, BookBub is an advertising service and wants to be perceived not just as that, but arbiters of quality as well. Yet they lack any internal mechanism for determining quality, and the external mechanism chosen is easily gamed with a little cash. Even so, it is accepted by most folks as "just fine," even though it leads directly to review-buying services and the authors who choose to use them.


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## Hugh Howey (Feb 11, 2012)

blakebooks said:


> A Lance Armstrong denigrates his sport because his cheating robbed other, perhaps equivalently talented riders, from their reasonable place in the hierarchy. You still have to be a pro rider to be in the winner's circle, but cheating to get that extra edge both sullies the sport, as well as robs the other contenders of their true shot at winning.


This is what pisses me off. No one wants to skin these cheaters alive more than those of us who feel we worked our butts off to earn every single review and comment we have. And then to find out someone else has been buying their reviews? Which casts all of ours into doubt? It's one of the most frustrating things I've ever gone through. It puts me in the odd position of hoping for my reviews to *stop* piling up in order to prevent them from looking more and more untrustworthy. How insane is that? If reviews were iron-clad, I could celebrate them rather than worry that they look implausible.

The first time I realized that this was going on was a little less than two years ago. I was #2 in the SF category for a long time, and it turned out that the #1 book got there primarily by compiling a ton of bought reviews and sock-puppet reviews. When I found out, I was devastated. I sent tirades to Amazon customer service (who knows if they were ever read) asking that they do something about this. Eventually, they did, and tons of reviews were removed (not because of me but because of the efforts of completely unrelated groups of upset readers). What upset me the most is the negative impact this has on readers, which hurts all of us. If someone buys a highly rated book, and that book is complete drek, are they going to take a chance on another highly rated book? Not likely. For a little self-gain, these cheaters hurt the lot of us. And I throw Locke in there with the rest, however good his writing is. I'll never know, myself.


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## JA Konrath (Apr 2, 2009)

Bards and Sages (Julie) said:


> Actually, I HAVE seen the ad revenue. They are a publicly traded company. Anyone interested enough can review their filings and see their revenue. It takes more than a Google search, so most people are too lazy to do it. But since I work in contract packaging and have a heavy interest in advertising and PR, I do look at this stuff.


That's awesome. So to support your point, since this info is so easy to obtain, please share how much Penguin Putnam paid to advertise in the NYT from 1990 until 2012, and how many Penguin Putnum books were reviewed during that time frame. Then compare that to ten other publishers using the same criteria. Then we can analyze the data and you can prove I'm wrong.



Bards and Sages (Julie) said:


> The LACK of conversation between editorial and ad is well known and fairly comedic in a lot of ways.


I'm less concerned about the conversation between editorial and ad than I am about P&L.

I'll ask this a third time, since you seem to keep missing my point: Do you really think it is okay for newspapers to accept money from companies whose livelihood depends on their journalistic endeavors?

Claiming newspapers keep ad content and editorial content separate doesn't answer my question. Newspapers can shout their integrity from the rooftops, but the fact remains that they accept money from companies whose livelihood depends on their journalistic endeavors. Nothing you've said changes that. Getting a NYT Book Review helps to sell books. Having "NYT Bestseller" on your book helps sell books. Fact: The NYT is accepting money from the publishers who profit from what the NYT says about their books. And you think that's okay because the newspapers claim they keep the two separate?

Or let's look at it from the opposite POV. Do you think Penguin Putnam would continue to spend big money advertising in the NYT if the NYT stopped reviewing all Penguin Putnam books? Can you tell me the percentage of books reviewed in the NYT whose publishers never gave them a dime in advertising?

I'm willing to believe you. But I need proof before I believe things.


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## RJJ (Oct 29, 2013)

Sure, sock puppet reviews and author circle jerks (which many authors are still using on a daily basis) are a gaming of the system. The biggest game going on today however dwarfs the old analog puppet reviews; it's the new and exciting digital Bookbub, which manipulates the top free 100 ebooks on Amazon on a daily basis, day after day after day. 

Do the readers who choose books recommended by Bookbub know that Bookbub has been paid very handsomely on the side by the authors of those books?  I’ve asked people (innocent readers, not authors) that very question. Not surprisingly, they had no idea. They thought the recommendations came from the universe of all books. They had no idea they were being fed bought and paid for advertising and that their recommender, Boobbub, was pocketing insane money in the process. 

Are you an author who uses Bookbub? Then don’t complain about John Locke because you’re doing the same thing. It’s just a different flavor.


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## JA Konrath (Apr 2, 2009)

blakebooks said:


> Joe - Couple of important points:
> 
> 1) Whether Locke has done something right has nothing to do with whether he did something wrong.


Hi Blake. I've yet to see a compelling argument that Locke did something wrong. I see a lot of moral posturing, but morality is always gray, and a slippery slope to defend.



blakebooks said:


> 2) In your earlier comment you incorrectly brand Amazon's review removal as being caused by a witch hunt/petition that actually took place at least 3 months after Amazon began removing reviews en masse, so either that has nothing to do with it, or Bezos has a time machine, or the laws of physics have somehow changed in ways I'm not aware of.


The removal has been going on for years. But after all the complaints about Locke it accelerated greatly, and focused on authors reviewing other authors.

Or perhaps it could be a mere coincidence that days after I took that silly petition to task, Amazon deleted thousands of author reviews. It's my opinion that it wasn't a coincidence. That's really all the detail I can get into. Perhaps I'm conflating correlation with causality.



blakebooks said:


> 3) In 2010, Locke began seeing the surge in sales almost immediately following his purchase of several hundred reviews in November. I'll go with back then, a surge of reviews gamed the algorithms to create outsized visibility for him, which then translated to curiosity sales (back then .99 was the equivalent of free) by tons of newbies with new kindles, which were then touted as near-miraculous sales by someone who was doing something right (including on your blog), which resulted in the WSJ doing an article on him (due to all his sales), which made him a must read flag carrier of the indie movement. The only reason I ever heard about him was the article. That made him a must buy to see what all the fuss was about. I'm pretty sure I'm not alone. So while any one thing in a vacuum can be positioned as being innocuous, the truth is that it created a chain reaction that was only possible at that time and place, and is impossible to generate now (due to the algos having changed, and the review services put out of business, and the market being three years more mature).


Without a control, we'll never know. Certainly there are authors who sold as much as Locke without buying reviews. So only Locke gamed the system, but they didn't?

If I can admit to conflating correlation with causality in regard to Amazon removing reviews, I would think it also applies here. We'll never know how many ebooks Locke would have sold if he hadn't bought reviews. But based on blockbuster bestsellers I've watched who didn't buy reviews, I would hesitate to give those paid for reviews much weight.



blakebooks said:


> 4) Paid advertisements aren't fraud. They are understood to be paid. Paying reviewers to pretend to be genuine, verified reviewers can only have one driver: to deceive readers of the reviews into believing they are genuine. That's the fraud part. Launching into a polemic bemoaning how fraud is industry standard doesn't change that fraud. It merely highlights how fraud denigrates the review process to the point where reviews carry little weight. Whether that's good, or bad, or whether victims of a con should be chastised for not being smart enough to see the con simply changes the discussion of the con itself.


Who was conned, Blake? The millions of people who bought his books, read them, and enjoyed them? The thousands of readers who left glowing reviews because they liked the books?

Last I checked, Locke didn't break into people's homes and force them to buy his ebooks. The ebooks people bought were refundable. I've already blogged at length about how ebook readers don't buy one book instead of another, especially at low prices. They buy both, so Locke wasn't preventing any other authors' sales.

Are you saying Locke engaged in criminal deception to rip people off? Who was ripped off? And what was criminal about what he did?



blakebooks said:


> 5) There are plenty of con men in every industry. Some would argue Wall St is one big con. I would be one of them. But those duped by con men have still been duped, and being deceived does not make it their fault because they're naive or stupid, although they may well be both. I think the moral backlash is due to the perception of a con man appearing to have elevated himself to a position of significant visibility through trickery and questionable tactics. I fully understand the sociopathic business philosophy of the end justifying the means. There are always apologists for that philosophy.


I agree with you about Wall Street. The bailout hurt taxpayers, and allowed the greedy to continue to prosper at their expense.

To equate that with what Locke did, you'd have to show he did a similar amount of harm.

I don't see harm. I see a lot of envy, and I see Schadenfreude, and I witnessed witch hunting as a result (I witnessed it personally as I was one of the ones hunted for defending Locke).



blakebooks said:


> There are really two arguments you've advanced, which are basically that what he did isn't wrong or bad because lots of others do wrong or bad things too, and that nobody was really harmed by his behavior. Neither of those address whether paying reviewers to pretend to be verified, genuine, impartial reviewers is fraudulent or not. I happen to believe it is. Others apparently do too. I'm pretty sure that arguing that behaving fraudulently should be condoned because others do the same, or because the harm to the integrity of the system is difficult to measure, doesn't address that key question.


Before I answer, please show me just one person on the entire planet who accepts every Amazon review as verified, genuine, and impartial.

Anyone with a partially functioning brain can judge an honest review from one written by the author's mother. But that's another debate.

Can you point to me where Locke said he intended to willfully deceive readers? Where he paid to have favorable reviews written about his books by those who never read them?

Locke used a service that promised reviews in return for cash. Locke said he didn't care what the reviewer said. Locke admitted this in an interview without being asked. He wasn't trying to hide it. He wasn't trying to deceive. He didn't think he was doing anything wrong. No one uncovered Locke's immoral behavior.



blakebooks said:


> Authors of no small ability like Lee Goldberg seem to have pretty decent moral barometers on this matter, and have spoken their minds. You've spoken yours, and it invariably comes down on the side of trivializing that fraud, or arguing that paying reviewers to deceive readers isn't fraud. On that, I must respectfully disagree. No hard feelings, but I think you're dead wrong on this one.


Hard feelings? That's silly. I got nothing but respect for you and what you've accomplished.

Goldberg is a friend, and he was wrong. Eisler initially was wrong, and he retracted. The moral panic that ensued after Locke's admission was the problem, not Locke trying to raise visibility for his titles. I'd put what Locke did on the same ethical level as website who sells your email to spammers, not those who got golden parachutes on Wall Street.

Gaming the system isn't fraud, even if you don't like it.

That said, I've never bought reviews. I had an opportunity to. I never took it. I don't know what that says about my morality, but I know that arguing morality never ends well.

I do know that it is a bad thing to inflict your moral center on others, and I also know that no good ever came from publicly bashing someone. Not saying that you personally are doing either, but others are.


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## Terrence OBrien (Oct 21, 2010)

> Which is your right.


Of course its my right. However, feel free to dispute the ideas I put forth under that right. I have no right to my ideas getting a free pass.



> However, keep in mind that, in essence, you're saying that you support the artificial means of determining quality that BookBub, and many sites like them, employ that actually encourage some authors to "game" the system by "buying" reviews.


Correct. I support the various sites choice of evaluation methods. None of my business how they choose. I don't consider their methods artificial. If authors choose to employ various tactics, I put that on the authors, not the review sites. If systems are gamed, it is authors gaming them. If authors buy reviews, it is authors buying them.



> Even so, it is accepted by most folks as "just fine," even though it leads directly to review-buying services and the authors who choose to use them.


I am one of those folks. Authors are 100% responsible for their own actions. That can't be pushed off on anyone else.



> If someone buys a highly rated book, and that book is complete drek, are they going to take a chance on another highly rated book? Not likely.


Of course they are. We have lots of history showing people do not abandon products because they encountered one bad instance. They learn. Thats how markets work.


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## JA Konrath (Apr 2, 2009)

Hugh Howey said:


> It puts me in the odd position of hoping for my reviews to *stop* piling up in order to prevent them from looking more and more untrustworthy. How insane is that?


It's very insane. It's also insular.

The only people who care about paid reviews are writers who are worried that people think they're paying for reviews.

Hugh, I've been accused of everything under the sun and more. Hasn't hurt my sales. Readers don't care that Konrath did this or Konrath did that. They just want to read a fun book.

It takes a long time to learn how to not care about what people think of you. But that's the healthiest way to persevere in this business. Once you start defending your innocence, you've begun to care too much. I quit doing that years ago. The people who like you know you're honest. The people that hate you are sure you're a liar. It doesn't matter what you say to either of those groups, and the one group that does matter--readers--don't care about your personal life or your profession.

Don't worry so much.


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## blakebooks (Mar 10, 2012)

Joe: We don't know the circumstances surrounding Locke's admission. Or at least I don't. I know that the WSJ was running an article on authors who bought reviews with the intention of gaming the system, and Locke appeared two thirds of the way through, acting as though it was no big deal. Having some small experience with the press, my hunch is the reporter knew he was guilty of doing so, painted him into a corner (or just told him she/he had evidence that he had), and then suddenly it was honesty time from his side.

He had over a year's worth of chances to admit to what he did, and didn't make a peep. Wrote a book advising writing blogs about stars suffering from terminal illnesses or baskets of kitties or whatnot as his recipe for success, but just so happened to forget that he bought a sh#tload of reviews, and his sales skyrocketed. "What? Oh, that? You mean the thing I actually paid a bunch to do that seemed to instantly change my fortunes? I have no idea what you're talking about. I didn't think it was worth mentioning." Really? With a straight face?

Your perception of Locke's actions is certainly more benign than mine. I see a con, who when caught, admitted his behavior while dabbing at crocodile tears. Pretending it was no big deal was the only possible defense. Otherwise, he'd have to admit it in fact was, and that would make him a scumbag. Very few con artists admit willingly to being scumbags.

You again say, "hey, show me anyone that was hurt by him doing so." How about every author that could have occupied the slot he did, but didn't, because he was the one with the hundreds of purchased reviews? I know you don't think they were, but that's only your opinion. What you're hearing is that there are plenty who feel they were. Now, you can say, pshaw, they're all a bunch of mewling babies, nobody was, but again, that's merely asserting your opinion as superior to theirs. Declarations don't improve in weight with repetition.

I'm not an attorney, nor do I play one on TV, so I have no idea whether the fraud he perpetrated was criminal or not. But I do know that purchasing reviews that deliberately set up a mechanism to dupe the reader into believing they were real, is in fact, fraud. He claims credulously not to know that those being paid to review - while pretending to be genuine purchasers - would be hugely predisposed to review positively (ensuring a satisfied customer/employer). Perhaps he's that naive. He's sophisticated enough to write an entire how to book, realized that mentioning what actually catapulted him to stardom couldn't be spoken about, but doesn't see that basic, dependable aspect to human nature. This, a businessman who has made millions by being astute. Huh.

A friend of mine who works in law enforcement once said about white collar criminals, that until they are caught they're the smartest guys in the room, and then when nabbed, suddenly become the stupidest, claiming to not know what was going on was bad, or illegal, and that they were behaving with the purest of motives or that it was no big deal. That sounds very familiar to me.

I don't think Locke's actions are the worst thing ever. It hasn't impacted my career one iota. So it's more intellectual than anything. I don't consider taking a stance based on morality to be fraught with ambiguity and peril. I believe your position is wrong, for the reasons I outlined, and nothing you've said, no matter how eloquently framed, has convinced me you're not. All it proves to me is that you strongly believe you're correct, and that by using the two familiar rhetorical tactics of arguing nobody was hurt, and that plenty of others have done as bad or worse, you will convince others you are correct. I just don't happen to be one of them. I think Lee was right, as is Hugh. Simply dismissing moral positions or refusing to concede that your position is moral relativism doesn't make opposing views in error. Rather, it's just a declaration that you don't see moral relativism as a problem, or alternatively, you haven't seen positions staked on moral grounds as being useful. Perhaps. That seems to be the central thesis with which I disagree.

As to the reviews being removed, Amazon was removing thousands of reviews months before the petition. They removed thousands of reviews months after. I look at that and say, no causality. They were in the midst of doing it. The petition, which I didn't sign (I was busy writing), didn't cause the review purge. At most, it might have accelerated the latter portion of it. Frankly, there's far less smoking gun to that position than mine, namely Locke's purchase of hundreds of reviews in November and his meteoric assent that same month are directly and inexorably linked. If Locke had already sold 300K novels and THEN he bought reviews and sold another 300K, one might be able to point at that and say, hey, there's insufficient evidence of it having been effective. But that's not what happened, is it?

We have to disagree on this one. I'm running for plane, so won't be around to interact, but again, I mean no disrespect. I just don't agree with you on this one, at all.


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## Terrence OBrien (Oct 21, 2010)

> I don't consider taking a stance based on morality to be fraught with ambiguity and peril.


Sure it is. If the morality case includes hunches and opinions about an individuals mindset, then it is indeed fraught with ambiguity and peril.



> I don't think Locke's actions are the worst thing ever. It hasn't impacted my career one iota.


He hasn't impacted me either, and I was always ranked below him. So who did he actually impact? Exactly what is being characterized as an impact?


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## blakebooks (Mar 10, 2012)

Terrence: What's impacted is the perception of integrity of the review system, which at this point is right up there with congressional honesty or the incorruptibility of a Paraguayan customs official. If flagship authors touted as heralds of the brave new indie world are later shown to be what many would consider frauds, it harms the integrity of a system authors and readers rely upon. How that damage manifests is debatable.


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## Terrence OBrien (Oct 21, 2010)

blakebooks said:


> Terrence: What's impacted is the perception of integrity of the review system, which at this point is right up there with congressional honesty or the incorruptibility of a Paraguayan customs official. If flagship authors touted as heralds of the brave new indie world are later shown to be what many would consider frauds, it harms the integrity of a system authors and readers rely upon. How that damage manifests is debatable.


Ok. So can we agree individual authors were not impacted? Just like you and I were not impacted?

The integrity of the review system? Thats just an aggregate of the actions of a zillion people. It has no integrity. There is no inherent standard to which it must comply. It has no independent existence. It's not a moral actor. It is part of the market. It can take all kinds of directions.

There certainly are many people who want it to comply to some standard, but there is no reason to think their wishes define a norm for the aggregate behavior of a zillion folks.

Healthy markets change and adapt. They provide information, and the ways of doing that change. Markets are not static things made to serve the needs and desires of any specific segment.

And the market appears to be very healthy. All through the Locke affair, sales have increased. That's what markets do. They facilitate trade. This one is doing it very well.

I'd also say damage that does not manifest is not damage. I have to agree with Joe's observation that this matters to some authors and bloggers. If there is evidence of any material number of others who give a rip, I'd be interested in learning about it.


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## Edward W. Robertson (May 18, 2010)

I suspect most people don't even know about it. I guess we could all buy 200 reviews for our next release and find out what a great idea it is for the market.


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## C.F. (Jan 6, 2011)

Terrence OBrien said:


> The integrity if the review system? Thats just an aggregate of the actions of a zillion people. It has no integrity. There is no inherent standard to which it must comply. It has no independent existence. It's not a moral actor. It is part of the market. It can take all kinds of directions.


Here's what I don't get. You are constantly saying that the market will decide, but it seems like you don't care if the market has honest and accurate information. It would seem like if you believe in the infallibility of "the market" that it would be paramount that the market/consumer have honest information on which to base their decisions.

If I advertise x widget by saying that it will solve all your problems and here's a bunch of testimonials to prove it (fraudulent, of course) and as a result I outsell y widget which was presented honestly to the market, then to declare that the market determined my x widget superior is ludicrous. The market didn't decide anything. I manipulated the market.

If someone looks at a book and decides to buy it because they see there are 100 positive reviews so it must be good, but those reviews were fraudulent, then the market has been manipulated. The market and consumers can only make decisions that are as good as the information they have to base them on. I would have thought you more than anyone would be against buying reviews in order to maintain the integrity of the market.


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## Terrence OBrien (Oct 21, 2010)

> Here's what I don't get. You are constantly saying that the market will decide, but it seems like you don't care if the market has honest and accurate information.


Markets do decide. Thats a simple fact. We can observe that. What I care about has no bearing on whether they decide. I don't matter.



> It would seem like if you believe in the infallibility of "the market" that it would be paramount that the market/consumer have honest information on which to base their decisions.


I don't believe in infallibility of anything. Infallibility implies some objective truth to which it can be matched.



> If I advertise x widget by saying that it will solve all your problems and here's a bunch of testimonials to prove it (fraudulent, of course) and as a result I outsell y widget which was presented honestly to the market, then to declare that the market determined my x widget superior is ludicrous.


Happens all the time. watch TV at 1am.



> The market didn't decide anything. I manipulated the market.


The market absorbs the information and adapts. Thats why we laugh at 1am TV. (Except for my VegaMatic and Magic Hose, of course.)



> If someone looks at a book and decides to buy it because they see there are 100 positive reviews so it must be good, but those reviews were fraudulent, then the market has been manipulated.


Of course markets are manipulated. Advertising is designed to manipulate markets. It has happened forever. Then the players adjust. Thats why we laugh at so much advertising, and companies really don't know how effective it is. These boards are full of people who are trying to manipulate the market by shifting the demand curve for their book to the right. Thats what the ads, blogs, Tweets, and perma-frees target. I wish them all luck.



> The market and consumers can only make decisions that are as good as the information they have to base them on.


Agree. The sources and accuracy of information are constantly changing in all markets. Players adjust.



> I would have thought you more than anyone would be against buying reviews in order to maintain the integrity of the market.


My existence has no bearing on the issue, and I don't know what the integrity of a market means.

In general, markets are not perfect. They all have inefficiencies. There are multiple sources of information for any market. People move from one to another. Some are created, and others die. What we see in many of these discussions is a ceretis paribus mentality that assumes one thing changes and nothing changes in response. Thats a good analytical method for isolating pressures and understanding relationships, but it is not realistic in the real world. After a ceteris paribus analysis, we have to lift that constraint and recognize that all the aspects of a market change in response to any other factor changing. Then those changes cascade in response to each other.

Thought experiment: Suppose Amazon killed the reviews tomorrow morning. All reviews disappeared from Amazon. What would happen?

I don't know, but I do know people would adjust just like they have in zillion other markets. All those reviews are a recent phenomenon. We got along just fine before Amazon published millions of reviews on the net. We bought books before the net. People at B&N didn't scan the shelves and stop dead in their tracks because they didn't have 42 reviews at their fingertips. Markets adapt. Always have.

We also see that free markets do far better than those where some group tries to exert control. But we should observe that vested interests will always try to exert control.

God Bless the free market and the Venerable Hunter S Thompson. Aint this a great country?


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## blakebooks (Mar 10, 2012)

Terrence: One of the problems with market manipulation is that for markets to function efficiently, there needs to be timely and accurate discovery. In financial markets, that's price discovery. If there is manipulation, it causes distortions, which, over time, should, THEORETICALLY, be absorbed and adapted to. However, the manipulation, in the short to mid-term, can result in the manipulators gaining an advantage over the other market participants, wherein the manipulator gains at the expense of the other participants. In financial markets, that would be the harm that comes from cheating. In books, especially with reviews, it's harder to measure.

I understand your rigid adherence to a market efficiency doctrine. It's logical. It, however, doesn't really account for manipulative influences, other than to proclaim that markets will adjust. Perhaps they will. More likely, though, much harm will occur in the interim, where manipulators win while other, honest, market participants, lose. A laisser faire attitude about markets would imply no regulation is required, because they will be self-correcting. The problem, of course, is when that theory collides with fact, where individuals or groups collude to distort the market, whatever it is, for sustained periods, which they can in fact do, for long enough to significantly damage the integrity of the market for all participants, resulting in many abandoning the market as grossly compromised, further resulting in those whose stock is being traded being damaged by less ready access to capital.

In financial markets, it's where investors lose faith in the integrity of the system, and take their capital elsewhere, and liquidity is compromised, including for the participants and the companies whose stock is traded. That market, as a whole, is then damaged. As are many investors in that market due to their system being compromised. One could argue that no single investor has been harmed, but it's untrue. All investors have been harmed, as have all participants in the system.

When the review system, which is designed to enable honest readers to voice their rating of a book, becomes compromised to the point where nobody's sure what's truthful and what's not, it hurts all authors (the equivalent of the companies) and readers (investors). They will adjust, but it doesn't mean that the adjustment is a better moustrap - rather, it's a necessary compromise wherein individual authors who might have received many honest reviews are ignored, because one must assume that all reviews are suspect and thus the review process is untrustworthy, and further, those with plentiful reviews are suspect by virtue of the sheer number of their reviews.

The harm is to the efficiency of the market. To discovery (in financial markets, price discovery, which acts as a signal for investors, and in markets like books, reader discovery based on accurate feedback via reviews). And those harmed are the participants. The manipulators extract their gain, those duped by their manipulations lose (either money, or time, or belief in the value of the selection system using reviews), and the market adjusts to be a less efficient one where the signals are viewed as being lies, and thus the market is less efficient, and less worthwhile to participate in.

None of which I would say is desirable, even if it is reality. Now I'm boarding my overnight flight. Carry on.


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## Hugh Howey (Feb 11, 2012)

Jack Kilborn said:


> It's very insane. It's also insular.
> 
> The only people who care about paid reviews are writers who are worried that people think they're paying for reviews.
> 
> ...


I know this to be true. The question is: Would I truly be "me" if I stopped caring? What other effects would that have? Would my writing suffer? Would I fight less to be a good husband? Would I start to shrug off anything else in my life?

I don't think I'm willing to grow these callouses just so I can remain with a job. I'll stop publishing my work before I do that. It's weird, but I'm pretty sure I'd be happier writing as I am with no one reading it than I would be sliding into a shell and having a vast audience. I know that's not really what you're suggesting, and I know you are giving great advice here (you've been consistent with this, and it has helped and been appreciated), but I'm either too scared or too weak to fully implement it. That's my failing, and I live with it.


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## Sophrosyne (Mar 27, 2011)

One of the things that jumped out at me from the original article was that, while Locke did pay for a number of reviews, his instructions were: “If someone doesn’t like my book,” he instructed, “they should feel free to say so.” 

The Cheap has a service where, if you have a new book, you can pay $65 to get reviews on new books -- honest reviews. Many other sites trade honest reviews for free books. The key is "honest reviews."

So, yes, John paid a slimy service that normally sold stellar reviews, but he instructed them to leave his books honest reviews. So, I'm on the fence about this one. I was all set to vilify him, until I read that instruction.

Look, I haven't ever used a review service. I find that books tend to accumulate reviews over time on their own. And the whole review thing drives me nuts, anyway. On one end of the scale, you have people buying favorable reviews. On the other end of the scale, you have people who intentionally leave bad reviews, just because a book has too many good reviews. What the hell's that about?

I suppose jealousy, suspicion, paranoia and gaming the system are human nature for some people, but I just find it all exhausting. 

But it seems to me that, on the pro/con side, it breaks down like this:

Con: JL hired a slimy service, that probably boasted about its 'good' reviews. 
Pro: JL instructed them to leave him honest reviews.

So…? Anyone for a cup of tea?


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## Silly Writer (Jul 15, 2013)

Hugh Howey said:


> I know this to be true. The question is: Would I truly be "me" if I stopped caring? What other effects would that have? Would my writing suffer? Would I fight less to be a good husband? Would I start to shrug off anything else in my life?
> 
> I don't think I'm willing to grow these callouses just so I can remain with a job. I'll stop publishing my work before I do that. It's weird, but I'm pretty sure I'd be happier writing as I am with no one reading it than I would be sliding into a shell and having a vast audience. I know that's not really what you're suggesting, and I know you are giving great advice here (you've been consistent with this, and it has helped and been appreciated), but I'm either too scared or too weak to fully implement it. That's my failing, and I live with it.


Hugh,
Please don't change a thing. I read your books as they came out, before you hit the big time--before I was on KBoards I believe... Anyhoo, I liked your writing and once I came on here (and your Facebook) and got to know you, I loved your books even more. Don't fix what ain't broke (i.e. your sensitive nature--it makes you seem even more real and human).

Joe,
I also have read many of your books. They're awesome. Thanks for all your input on the boards.

Russell,
What I love about you is your passion in your beliefs, your work ethics, and your never-ending mission to try to help us newbies, no matter how frustrated you might get on some of the threads. I hope you're traveling for pleasure and enjoy your trip (I believe Elvis has left the building). Also I have two of your books on my kindle, but haven't read them yet... I'm excited to start the series.

Etc: if to of (iPad mini and 2:08am = typos) and delete comment about mistaken identity of Avatar--forgettaboudit, found my answer on Amazon author page.


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## Silly Writer (Jul 15, 2013)

Sophrosyne said:


> So&#8230;? Anyone for a cup of tea?


I love hot tea. 3 lumps for me, please


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## CraigInOregon (Aug 6, 2010)

Sophrosyne,


You cut right to the heart of it for some who post here. But there's a third option to the whole pro/con thing re: Mr. Locke.

1) Before even trying his books, I never read a single Amazon review of his work. So any reviews he purchased at that time had zero effect on me.

2) Every journalist in Fall 2010/Winter 2011 who was covering Amanda's rise to fame invariably mentioned John Locke, too. The almost-universal hymnal everyone was singing from at that time went like this: Hocking is good but needs trad-pubs to get solid editing, and Locke is "just trash."

So I was far more influenced by a) my loyalty to fellow KBer and Minnesotan Amanda to focus on her releases, and b) tons of traditional journalism scribes were already bashing the QUALITY of Locke's work so that actually scared me off from even TRYING his books for a long time.

3) That spring of 2011, after Locke hit 1M on Amazon, he released his "How I Did It" book, which, yes, left out the part about buying reviews. As I was about to release my first novel AND was hard at work on a novella, I decided to pick up his how-to book to get a few tips from someone who was obviously successful.

4) I decided if I was going to read his marketing advice, it might make sense to read at least one of his novels, so I took a tip he gave and started with Donovan Creed #3: Saving Rachel.

Glad I did, as his first two were not as smooth and clever as Saving Rachel was. I became an instant fan. I also, at that time, noticed that the journalists who claimed he was trash were as right about him as they had been about Stephen King for the first couple decades of King's career.

(And they still fault Patterson, whose work I also enjoy.) So I decided to read the rest of his stuff, and by the start of 2012, I had caught up with his backlist.

5) I followed Locke's advice about Twitter marketing and found that it didn't do much for me. It was around that time that I realized Amanda had the best advice between the two: "Reader embrace some writers, and other writers, they don't. No one knows exactly why. It just happens."

She had a whole column that was a lot more detailed than that, but that's what it boiled down to, for her. Her illustration of this point was that she'd gotten to know J.L. Bryan, who she felt wrote "way better" (Amanda's words) than she did, but her sales took off while he continued to struggle. She had no idea why, just knew that it was what was going on.

That was when I first realized that there is no magic formula: you can do every single thing John Locke did, INCLUDING buying reviews, and still not produce identical results.

6) By the time the "shocking revelation" that "John Locke bought reviews" broke, it didn't disturb me much, if at all. Why? Well, for one, I already had realized identical practices don't produce identical results. So I figured even if he had written about buying a load of reviews, a) I wouldn't have been able to afford to do so, even had I wanted to, and b) I didn't think it would have made a difference, really, anyway.

7) Also by that time (summer 2012, I believe) I had already given up trying to emulate his marketing advice and just set about concentrating on writing as best I can. Which is the only thing about marketing my work that I *can* control: I can work hard at making each book a good read, or I can rush things out. Obviously, as I've been at this actively for two years and only have four things out, I'm going the quality route more than the rush-route.

8 ) I had also simply become a fan of Locke's work, just as I am of Stephen King's, or Victorine E. Lieske's, or Blake Crouch's, or James Patterson's, or... well, you get the idea. I discovered Stephen King at a young age, though word of mouth; someone was talking to me about how young King was to have already released "Carrie, The Shining, and 'Salem's Lot," and how he had a great future because of that. I discovered Vicki via KB. I discovered Blake Crouch because of his collaborations with Joe Konrath. I discovered James Patterson because I was given a free ARC/galley at a 1994 publisher's conference in Minnesota. And I discovered John Locke because of so many journalists denigrating him while praising Amanda, in essence.

Guess how much I care HOW I discovered any of those writers?

Not one whit. Once you're a fan of someone's work, you're a fan of their work. How you heard of them becomes almost irrelevant.

Which is what so many here don't get, because we're all writers and, as Joe said, we worry a bit too much over such things.

The folks who hear about us will hear about us however that plays out. There are tons of ways to come to a reader's attention. Good, bad, ethical, unethical, etc.

But once readers hear of us, they better find books they love reading, because in the end, that's the thing that turns a one-time reader into a fan.

This is not an endorsement of an amoral mindset like "any publicity is good publicity, just spell my name right."

I'm just saying that if you have great books, the fans will stick around.

If you have not-so-great books, they'll read you once (maybe) and never again.

I can't control how people discover me and my books, ultimately, other than by promoting my work in ways that fit with my personal code of ethics.

What I can control is trying to make sure my books are fun to read, enjoyable, leave a lasting impression, or in some way stand out from the crowd and make people want to read more of my work.

That's what I can do, as a writer. It's about all I can control. Therefore, that matters the most.

Because from the reader's side of my brain, in the end, if I like someone's books, I'll keep reading them; if I don't like someone's books, I won't. How I found out about them is just not that weighty, once I've become a fan of their work.

And yet, here we are, about 16 months after Locke was hit with all those "YOU BOUGHT REVIEWS!" shock-journalism pieces, and a bunch of us are still debating it like it happened yesterday.

To my mind? Time to move on. Put our energy into writing more and better stuff for our own careers, rather than second- and third- and fourth-guessing how someone else got their success.

Because I'll tell you right now: whatever else John Locke did or didn't do, he's spent the bulk of his time between 2009 to present (four years) writing:

11 Donovan Creed novels
4 Emmett Love novels
3 Gideon Box novels
2 Dani Ripper novels
1 standalone thriller
1 Pretty Little Liars book for KindleWorlds, at Amazon's request
1 "How I Sold 1M eBooks" book
23 books total!

That's 23 books in about four years, or an average of almost 6 new titles a year.

Sure, his books are shorter than Stephen King's, but Stephen isn't publishing six books a year, either.

So that's something to keep in mind, too: work AS HARD as Locke, and maybe we'd all be doing better than we are.

Seems to be a theme that plays over and over again in every success story in writing.

Amanda? Worked her tail off. Nine titles in her first eleven months.

Locke? Worked his tail off. About six books a year. (Okay, maybe you call them novellas, but still... six per year, on average.)

Konrath? Crouch? David McAfee? David Dalglish? L.J. Sellers? Anyone who's ever hung out here and become a rousing success? They've all worked their tails off.

The Locke rate of 6 titles a year, even at novella-length, means he's writing (just in first-draft productivity alone) about 180,000 words a year.

Ask yourself: how often have I hit 180,000 words a year?

Most of us aren't working at that pace. Maybe (and I'm including myself here) if we spent more time writing and less time deriding something other writers did that we think we don't approve of, maybe we'd be that much closer to achieving our own goals and dreams.

Because all the KB posts we've ever written gets us no closer to that 180,000 words of first-draft prose per year goal.


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## David J Normoyle (Jun 22, 2012)

Sophrosyne said:


> One of the things that jumped out at me from the original article was that, while Locke did pay for a number of reviews, his instructions were: "If someone doesn't like my book," he instructed, "they should feel free to say so."
> 
> The Cheap has a service where, if you have a new book, you can pay $65 to get reviews on new books -- honest reviews. Many other sites trade honest reviews for free books. The key is "honest reviews."
> 
> ...


Pretty sure you can go on to fiverr.com and buy reviews. They don't read the books, they just copy and paste in a 5 star review. That was the kind of service that John Locke used, not one where people actually read his books and decide whether they like them. Not only did he do that, he paid for the books to be bought to push himself up the lists, and to give the reviews a verified purchaser label.

If Locke thought he was doing nothing wrong, why did he not mention buying all these reviews in the book where he explained his success. I pay money to Netgalley, a service which gets books into the hands of genuine reviewers. If that ends up being important to my success and I wrote a how-to book, of course I'd mention that. If, on the other hand, I went on fiverr and got people to buy my book and post reviews it'd be a different story.

Can't believe people are proclaiming Locke did nothing wrong. Should we start a thread about buying reviews on fiverr and say that's one of the secrets to success and everyone should do it?


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## Hugh Howey (Feb 11, 2012)

David J Normoyle said:


> Can't believe people are proclaiming Locke did nothing wrong. Should we start a thread about buying reviews on fiverr and say that's one of the secrets to success and everyone should do it?


Exactly. The fact that John withheld this information tells me that he is ashamed of what he did. I bet he wishes right now that nobody knew he did this thing, that he knows it tarnishes his reputation and has done harm to indie authors.

Not that I think this is as bad as a million other crimes out there, but it isn't good. And writers shouldn't do it. We shouldn't give a pass to those who do. But I'll add this: If any author admits that they bought reviews and they show remorse, ask for forgiveness, say they had no idea that what they were doing was wrong, but now they see that it was, I will trip over myself to forgive them. I think what steams me about Locke is that he never showed remorse. Instead, he tried to keep this from the public right up until it wasn't any longer possible.


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## C.F. (Jan 6, 2011)

Terrence OBrien said:


> Markets do decide. Thats a simple fact. We can observe that. What I care about has no bearing on whether they decide. I don't matter.
> 
> I don't believe in infallibility of anything. Infallibility implies some objective truth to which it can be matched.
> 
> ...


Thanks for taking the time to respond to my comment.


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## CraigInOregon (Aug 6, 2010)

David J Normoyle said:


> Can't believe people are proclaiming Locke did nothing wrong. Should we start a thread about buying reviews on fiverr and say that's one of the secrets to success and everyone should do it?


Wrong on more than one count, my friend.

David, as one of the "defenders" of Locke, please note that I'm defending his writing, his work, not his review-buying practices. That's not a minor detail; that's missing the whole point.

And yes, I wrote words to the effect that "it doesn't matter," but again, note the context. I wasn't saying review-buying doesn't matter (or does, technically). I'm saying the reviews he purchased at NO impact on me discovering him as a writer, or on my choosing to buy his books, and that ultimately "it doesn't matter" how I discovered him because once you find a writer whose work you enjoy, that's what matters most.

So, please, if you had me in mind (and you may not have), don't mislead.

I could be wrong, but it seems to me that at most, what Joe Konrath was saying wasn't that review-buying doesn't matter, but that one cannot say it's what made him a success. The whole "two writers can do everything the same and get different results" idea. But Joe can speak for himself...

No one in here was saying "let's go out and buy a bunch of reviews, cuz it's a good thing." Again, please don't mislead.


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## CraigInOregon (Aug 6, 2010)

Hugh Howey said:


> Exactly. The fact that John withheld this information tells me that he is ashamed of what he did. I bet he wishes right now that nobody knew he did this thing, that he knows it tarnishes his reputation and has done harm to indie authors.


Hugh, you can't be sure of that, any more than I can be sure of what temperature Capt. Jean-Luc Picard is referring to when he tells the Enterprise replicator, "Tea, Earl Gray, hot."

Locke MAY have decided that the review buying didn't contribute much to his success, other than raising his visibility. Now, you and I could probably agree that'd be darn naive of him to think... but neither of us know for sure what his mindset was.

Also, if he deliberately chose to conceal it, we can't know that means he was ashamed of what it did. On the opposite end of the spectrum, he might have decided he'd stumbled across the Golden Ticket to the Willie Wonka Amazon Millionaire Factory and while he wanted to share general advice, he didn't want to give away that one BIG secret to his success, because then everyone would do it and it'd become less effective. (Kinda the way Twitter-marketing has become.)

Again, we might agree that it's unlikely he thought that. But we can't know.

You also "bet" that "he wishes nobody knew" what he did.

I doubt that. Again, neither of us ultimately knows, but here's the evidence on my side of things:

1) He admitted doing it the first time anyone asked. Doesn't sound like the behavior of someone who "wishes nobody knew" anymore than it suggests shame. Like Joe suggested, he tried something. It may have helped, but who knows to what extent?

2) His sales haven't been hurt that much, or for any significant amount of time. His last three releases (Outside the Box, Because We Can!, and the Pretty Little Liars thing he wrote to help launch KindleWorlds at Amazon's request) were all significant hits. He went straight to number one in each category those books were in, plus he made his regular appearances with them on the Kindle Hot 100 Paid list. So if there's any effect at all, it's probably in a diminished lack of staying power on those lists, not in how hot his titles debut.

As Joe keeps asking of anyone who brings up your other point... what direct harm has Locke's actions done to any indie? I, for one, have bought and read your books without a second's hesitation created by John Locke or anyone else. I buy your books (when I buy them, because I don't have them all) because of who you are as a writer. Locke doesn't enter into my thinking at all.



Hugh Howey said:


> Not that I think this is as bad as a million other crimes out there, but it isn't good. And writers shouldn't do it. We shouldn't give a pass to those who do. But I'll add this: If any author admits that they bought reviews and they show remorse, ask for forgiveness, say they had no idea that what they were doing was wrong, but now they see that it was, I will trip over myself to forgive them. I think what steams me about Locke is that he never showed remorse. Instead, he tried to keep this from the public right up until it wasn't any longer possible.


Maybe he doesn't consider it that big a scandal. Maybe he thinks it's something he tried and, to whatever extent it helped or didn't help, it's just not something he does anymore. Again, neither of us know for sure, and that's the point I'm trying to bring to the table. Unless someone were to ask him directly, none of us knows his mind.

And for a reader like me (when I'm in reader mode), the reviews he bought never influenced me at all. I was more influenced away from him (for a time) because every journalist in the world was saying "his books are trash." Until I remembered they said the same thing about King and Patterson, and I enjoy both of those writers, so why should I start listening to journalists?

Again... I think we can all accomplish a lot more by matching his work ethic (he has to be producing at least 180,000 words of first-draft prose per year, not to mention revisions and polishing) rather than sitting here railing about whether his results are ill-gotten gains or not. I know I have a ways to grow before I'm writing at that pace. Of course, with your level of success, Hugh, I suspect you're at or very near that level of hard work already...

...but to paraphrase an old Hardee's shift manager I once hated, "If you've got time to (post to KB), you've got time to (write more prose)!"


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## DaveZeltserman (Apr 11, 2010)

For anyone who is wondering whether what Locke did was criminal fraud, NY's Attorney General recently went after a group of hotels and restaurant who were putting bogus reviews up on places like Yelp and Tripadvisor, with NY claiming these reviews fraudulently took advantage of consumers, End result was I believe a 6 million dollar settlement (I read this story a few weeks ago, so I could be off the amount, but is was around this amount).


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## Duane Gundrum (Apr 5, 2011)

DaveZeltserman said:


> For anyone who is wondering whether what Locke did was criminal fraud, NY's Attorney General recently went after a group of hotels and restaurant who were putting bogus reviews up on places like Yelp and Tripadvisor, with NY claiming these reviews fraudulently took advantage of consumers, End result was I believe a 6 million dollar settlement (I read this story a few weeks ago, so I could be off the amount, but is was around this amount).


There's also the question of intent involved. As another writer pointed out (which was news to me, so I was educated in this thread early on), Locke may have bought reviews, but he was not aware that they were bogus reviews. That was solely the work of the business that he bought the reviews from, and sadly enough that has tainted the whole review process for Locke. Now, i can't say he did or didn't know this was happening, as I'm not a mindreader, but from what I read in this thread alone, it sounds more like fraud was perpetuated UPON Locke than Locke perpetuated on readers. As others have said, writers pay for reviews all the time, usually done through their production companies or through their publishers. The whole free book for a review thing goes back to when Plato handed Aristotle a copy of his story on Socrates and asked him for his advice.

The point: This thread changed my perception of Locke, whereas I came into this thread originally thinking nothing but bad thoughts.


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## JA Konrath (Apr 2, 2009)

Hi, Russell. It's fun to talk to someone as logical and level-headed as you are. Thanks for responding.



blakebooks said:


> Joe: We don't know the circumstances surrounding Locke's admission. Or at least I don't.


I've talked to John. He didn't admit anything. He volunteered the info.



blakebooks said:


> You again say, "hey, show me anyone that was hurt by him doing so." How about every author that could have occupied the slot he did, but didn't, because he was the one with the hundreds of purchased reviews?


How about all the authors helped by Locke's "Customers also bought" buttons that appeared on every one of his bestsellers?

Here's the thing about bestseller slots. Yes, they only show 100 at a time. But they aren't static. They don't update weekly like the NYT. Amazon's update hourly. And there can be gigantic gaps between #17 and #18 as far as sales go.

If John was at #100, he was pushing someone out of the #100 spot. But if his books were anywhere from #1 to #99, he wasn't pushing anyone of, because the person at #101 would be at #101 whether Locke occupied the #1 spot of the #99 spot. Makes sense?

Also, because sales fluctuate, and because books no longer have an expiration date, Locke didn't push anyone off of any list, because every author has a chance of getting on a bestseller list at anytime.

In the legacy model, most books sold the most copies during the first week of release. Then sales dwindled until the books went out of print. There were some freak exceptions, but for the vast majority, that was how it worked.

Ebooks are forever. New releases don't mean as much, because _every ebook is new to somebody_. My book The List has been in the top 10 on four different occasions, separated by months each time. Let's say Locke's books occupied a bunch of top 100 slots, keeping The List at #106. That doesn't matter, because I had many other chances to hit The top 100, and I did.

So while your position seems logical at the onset, it actually falls apart under scrutiny. Ebooks don't compete with each other for sales (I've blogged about the buffet mentality of ebook buyers many times) and anyone can get on a bestseller list at any time with any book.

Bookbub was mentioned in this thread as something similar to what Locke did. Both Bookbub, and buying reviews, helped raise customer awareness for a title. But neither can force a reader to buy a book. Leading horses to water doesn't mean they'll drink.



blakebooks said:


> I'm not an attorney, nor do I play one on TV, so I have no idea whether the fraud he perpetrated was criminal or not. But I do know that purchasing reviews that deliberately set up a mechanism to dupe the reader into believing they were real, is in fact, fraud.


I'm not an attorney either, but if it is fraud, shouldn't there be damages? What are the damages?

And please speak to my earlier question. Does _anyone_ read Amazon reviews and automatically believe they're all true?

I'd say Locke buying three hundred reviews (and I gotta say, he bought fewer reviews that I've gotten legitimately on many of my single titles-- I currently have 12 ebooks that each have over 300 reviews, and 6 more that are close) _*may*_ have made his books more visible to browsers. But making them slightly more visible doesn't automatically makes someone press the buy button.

As for the three hundred number, this is where is comes from:


[URL=http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/26/business/book-reviewers-for-hire-meet-a-demand-for-online-raves.html]http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/26/business/book-reviewers-for-hire-meet-a-demand-for-online-raves.html?pagewanted=4&_r=0[/url]

My ebook Whiskey Sour has 900 legitimate reviews, averaging 4 stars. It's currently ranked at #6000. Do you really want to argue that a lot of reviews automatically makes a book a bestseller?

Last point, and I'll let this die. I'm a proponent of free ebooks. Giving away a lot of free ebooks is a way to game the system and increase your number of reviews, agreed? Publishers give away galleys to get reviews. Professional reviewers are ultimately paid by ad dollars coming from the publishers whose books they review. And the Amazon Vine program gives away free books (paid for by publishers) in exchange for reviews.

I think this whole matter is based on varying shades of gray and very blurry lines. Neither of us has bought reviews, Blake. But buying three hundred doesn't lead to selling 2 million ebooks. Especially when you look at me and Hugh and Holly and others who have sold over a million, and we didn't buy any reviews.

I can understand people not liking what Locke did. But I believe pillorying him is wrong. I believe his buying reviews didn't do much. I believe morality is a sticky subject to argue. I believe there are a lot of horrible things being done by legacy publishers that people should be in an uproar about, but instead they focused on Locke because of envy and Schadenfreude and moral panic and circle jerking and witch hunting. I believe Locke doesn't think he did anything wrong. And I believe Amazon deleted thousands of legitimate author reviews (including dozens of mine) because of the attention Locke was getting.

I may be wrong in some, or even all, of my beliefs. But I have yet to see any compelling evidence or argument to change my mind, and I'm famous for changing my mind. The outcry I had to endure, being the first major author to turn his back on legacy publishing and embrace self-publishing, continues to this day. I had longtime friends who decried my actions. I was, and still am, the object of scorn, ridicule, and attacks by the publishing industry and those whose livelihoods are intertwined with it.

I absorbed all of that hatred, because I was correct to change my mind, even though it meant burning countless bridges. There are writing conferences I'm no longer invited to. Parties I can't attend. Lies spread about me. I've sold over a million self-pubbed ebooks, and no publisher would EVER offer me a contract.

I'm saying this because I am always willing to change my mind, even when it goes against popular opinion.

This discussion about Locke has not made me change my mind. And I know how Locke must feel having all of this hate directed at him, because I've had the same directed at me.


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## David J Normoyle (Jun 22, 2012)

CraigInTwinCities said:


> Wrong on more than one count, my friend.
> 
> David, as one of the "defenders" of Locke, please note that I'm defending his writing, his work, not his review-buying practices. That's not a minor detail; that's missing the whole point.


This discussion is not about how good or bad John Locke is as a writer. This is about his cheating practices. Lance Armstrong was a great cyclist--but he still should be, and has been, called to account for his cheating practices. How many cycling tournaments Lance would have won without cheating will never be known, in the same way that John Locke's success without review buying will never be known.


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## Guest (Oct 31, 2013)

Duane Gundrum said:


> There's also the question of intent involved. As another writer pointed out (which was news to me, so I was educated in this thread early on), Locke may have bought reviews, but he was not aware that they were bogus reviews.


Locke specifically requested that the reviewers buy the copies, and he reimbursed them for those purchases, so that the reviews would say "Amazon Verified Purchase." That is not the action of a person unaware of what he is doing.


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## JA Konrath (Apr 2, 2009)

Hugh Howey said:


> I know this to be true. The question is: Would I truly be "me" if I stopped caring? What other effects would that have? Would my writing suffer? Would I fight less to be a good husband? Would I start to shrug off anything else in my life?
> 
> I don't think I'm willing to grow these callouses just so I can remain with a job. I'll stop publishing my work before I do that. It's weird, but I'm pretty sure I'd be happier writing as I am with no one reading it than I would be sliding into a shell and having a vast audience. I know that's not really what you're suggesting, and I know you are giving great advice here (you've been consistent with this, and it has helped and been appreciated), but I'm either too scared or too weak to fully implement it. That's my failing, and I live with it.


Hugh, I think you are mistaking changing for the better with sliding into a shell.

Callouses protect us from injury, and make walking easier. They don't deaden your body to the pleasures of stimulation, or force you to stop caring. If anything, callouses on your feet allow you to not worry about injuring yourself, so you can care about more important things.

But I don't like the callous analogy. Think of it more like building muscles, or improving your vocabulary. These things make us better and stronger.

There is no good that can come from reading your own reviews, Googling yourself, and engaging those who lie about you or hate you.

And, actually, there isn't much good in having people adore you, either.

The opinions of strangers shouldn't matter. If you let faceless people on the Internet control your thoughts and feelings, you are giving them power.

Is being "you" all about willfully being manipulated by anonymous trolls?

Care about your family and friends. Ignoring what is said about you on the Internet or in periodicals won't make you a worse husband. It will make you a better husband, because you can focus on your spouse (who matters) and let go of the haters (who don't.)

You aren't scared or weak. You're just a writer. We all walk the line between grandiose narcissism and crippling insecurity. The fact that we write things that we believe others will enjoy is the height of hubris. The fact that a bad review can send us spiraling into depression is the lot of being an artist. Our profession demands we put our work out there.

_But our profession does not demand we put ourselves out there._

Your work can stand alone without you needing to defend it. And attacking your work isn't attacking you. And those attacking you shouldn't matter, unless they are people you love.

I'm not saying withdraw from the world. I'm saying hit the gym and build some muscles.

This is NOT an easy thing to master. It has taken me 12 years. And I still have lapses where I feel wronged or hurt. But here are some tips.

1. Stop reading your reviews.
2. Take off Google Alert, and stop Googling yourself.
3. Stop responding to criticism.
4. Stop doing interviews. You've grown into a terrific spokesman for the self-pub movement. Take it from someone who did that for years--it's thankless. It doesn't boost sales. It leads to being misquoted, misrepresented, taken out of context, and endless frustration. It equals time taken away from writing. And while it may boost awareness for the cause, you can do that yourself on HuffPo. You don't need to defend your actions to the industry. The industry won't be around much longer.
5. Stop feeling you are responsible for the happiness of strangers, and that strangers have power over your happiness.
6. If it isn't fun, stop doing it.

Changing for the better is very hard. But all I can say, as someone who understands you because I've been there, is that changing is the only way to find happiness.


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## David J Normoyle (Jun 22, 2012)

Jack Kilborn said:


> If John was at #100, he was pushing someone out of the #100 spot. But if his books were anywhere from #1 to #99, he wasn't pushing anyone of, because the person at #101 would be at #101 whether Locke occupied the #1 spot of the #99 spot. Makes sense?


That's if one author is doing what John Locke did. What if it's a hundred? What if it's a thousand. How do the rest get on the bestseller lists then. What if everyone who came to KBs for advice was told that the key to success was to buy 300 verified reviews of your book in the first week. And most people started doing it. Anyone who didn't would suddenly be at a huge disadvantage. (These days 300 sales probably don't mean as much as they did back when Locke was cheating the system.)

It's about drawing a line in the sand. To continue the cycling analogy, it's easy to say the elite athletes are all taking drugs, let them off. The next thing though is that promising 15year old cyclists are then given a drug program as part of their training (and if they don't take drugs might as well give up their cycling dreams).



Jack Kilborn said:


> And please speak to my earlier question. Does _anyone_ read Amazon reviews and automatically believe they're all true?


I would tend to think they were true unless I had a reason to doubt it. Now, if one author buys reviews that isn't going to change that. If suddenly everyone starts doing it (because it's A okay and just a slightly murky marketing tactic) then I would obviously have to start ignoring all reviews.

Don't think about how much buying reviews and a place on the bestseller lists helped John Locke. Think about what would happen if buying reviews became an accepted tactic among self publishers which everyone did. It would make every genuine review worthless.


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## Terrence OBrien (Oct 21, 2010)

> "Don't think about how much buying reviews and a place on the bestseller lists helped John Locke. Think about what would happen if buying reviews became an accepted tactic among self publishers which everyone did. It would make every genuine review worthless."


For discussion, let's accept that model. So what? Think consumers would stop buying books? Think they are too dumb to find other sources of information? We don't see that in other markets. What makes books special?

Anyone know what percentage of Amazon book sales are due to the consumer reading an Amazon review?


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## blakebooks (Mar 10, 2012)

Joe: I have no hate directed at JL. I just disagree that nobody was harmed. I feel as though every indie author's standing was diminished. Establishing damages for an act of fraud is more the work of attorneys than authors. But I know that if my girlfriend bl#ws my best friend, even if there are no measurable financial damages, that was still a slimy act of cheating. If she lies about it, even via omission, it's a kind of fraud - a misrepresentation, a lie, a prevarication intended to deceive.

People lie about all kinds of behavior they find shameful. Happens every day. Way of the world. But taking a lawyerly approach to cheats and demanding proof of fraud damages affords me no illumination or insight. I still know a cheat when I see it.

For the record, paying for advertising in BB isn't in any way the same as buying hundreds of reviews that are marked as legit. BB sells advertising. It's right there on their web page. Advertise. Those receiving the emails, if not brain-dead, can spend an eighth of a second to go to the BB website and see the advertising tab and figure that one out. 

If John claims he volunteered that info, and if you believe him, that's your prerogative. I have a different take. I think he was contacted because his name was on the list of those that used that company, and the reporter reached out to give him a chance to share his side of the story before running an article that would pillory him. So he got to do some rudimentary, if inadequate, damage control. My further belief is that the article was probably instigated by a helpful trad pub industry looking to pillory some indie sacred cows, and damage the public's perception of indies, framing them as a bunch of lying cheats. That's my belief, and it frankly rings truer than "oh, I was contacted by the NY Times, you know, just to talk about stuff, and they mentioned there was a massive review scandal breaking involving indies, and I said, hey, who hasn't bought hundreds of reviews and authored how to books and never mentioned they did?" I don't know. Color me skeptical. Then again, I do write conspiracy novels, so I see conspiracies more easily than most. Doesn't make my take any more wrong than yours. Just different.

As to his ascending to giddy heights from his review buying, again, it was a unique time and place with unique circumstances. It worked. You see nothing wrong with it. I do. Many actually do. As to who was damaged, every indie was smeared with the feces-covered brush of suspicion in that debacle. And every person who bought his how to book was defrauded, in my opinion, because he left out the biggest item that launched his runaway success: he started his review buying in Nov, and his career rocketed. To me that's pretty clear cause and effect. To write a tome, charge $5 for it, and substitute a bunch of hackneyed SEO aphorisms and self-promotional BS for the actual tactics he used to make it (review buying being kind of a big one to "forget"), constitutes an act of fraud against the buyers of that book. Sort of like if my uncle was the head of Putnam, and he put my WIP at the top of his to-read list when handed it at the dinner table, and I sort of left that part out of my "how to succeed as an author" self-help bromide. It might not be technically fraud, but it sure as hell isn't remotely honest.

Again, my career hasn't been harmed by his actions. I'm hitting 250K novels sold this year alone with my little pubbing experiment, at a high ASP, regardless of who does or doesn't buy his books. I can't whine that I've been diminished by his existence. But that doesn't mean I have to condone that aspect of his behavior.

Having said that, I wish every author nothing but success. Even John. There's none of us cast from perfect clay, and we all do things we aren't proud of from time to time. Point being to try to minimize the more egregious examples of misbehavior. Then you don't need to defend them.

And now I begin a much needed vacation of wine tasting and over-eating. See everyone in three weeks. Be nice to each other.


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## B. Justin Shier (Apr 1, 2011)

This reminds me of Akerlof's _Market for Lemons_.

"The cost of dishonesty, therefore, lies not only in the amount by which the purchaser is cheated; the cost also must include the loss incurred from driving legitimate business out of existence."

Here's hoping the professor is a lurker. I think we've got the Austrian School well covered. 

B.


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## Some Writer Cat (Sep 22, 2010)

Jack Kilborn said:


> Hugh, I think you are mistaking changing for the better with sliding into a shell.
> 
> Callouses protect us from injury, and make walking easier. They don't deaden your body to the pleasures of stimulation, or force you to stop caring. If anything, callouses on your feet allow you to not worry about injuring yourself, so you can care about more important things.
> 
> ...


Joe, just wanted to say that was a fantastic post. You should copy and paste that on your blog. Lots of writers would benefit from it. I know I did.


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## Terrence OBrien (Oct 21, 2010)

> As to who was damaged, every indie was smeared with the feces-covered brush of suspicion in that debacle.





> Again, my career hasn't been harmed by his actions.


Can you elaborate on those two? What is being damaged if careers are not being harmed? Locke's career seems to be rolling along pertty well, too.

Perhaps careers aren't harmed because consumers don't give a rip, and the dissatisfaction is limited to a subset of authors?


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## ElisaBlaisdell (Jun 3, 2012)

Terrence OBrien said:


> For discussion, let's accept that model. So what? Think consumers would stop buying books? Think they are too dumb to find other sources of information? We don't see that in other markets. What makes books special?
> 
> Anyone know what percentage of Amazon book sales are due to the consumer reading an Amazon review?


Anyone know what percentage of BookBub advertisements depend on the book having received X amount and Y percentage of favorable reviews?


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## ElisaBlaisdell (Jun 3, 2012)

Terrence OBrien said:


> I don't.


Anyone know what percentage of the best advertising opportunities depend on the book having received good reviews? (Average over 4.0?)

From what I've heard in the Writer's Cafe, it sounds as though most, if not all, do.


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## blakebooks (Mar 10, 2012)

Terrence: Put simply, my career is going swimmingly IN SPITE of that debacle.

Whether I would be selling even more books were indies not eyed with considerable skepticism due to the NY Times essentially saying that they're a bunch of cheating lowlifes is unknowable. But I do know that being lumped in with being an indie after that wasn't a good thing. The question is how bad a thing it was and is.

It's entirely possible that it had no effect on anything. Or that it had a considerable effect. Both are unknowable and unprovable, and thus angels on heads of pins. Hard to be empirical with this sort of denigration. I'll give you an example. When the mad cow thing was going on, I was in Europe with a friend who refused to eat beef on that trip. I'm quite sure she wasn't alone. Even though the MC scare didn't really have anything to do with steaks. But it made a lot of people shy away from the whole class of food. 

I believe that article, and one of the most, if not the most, prominent indies, being revealed to have used, er, questionable business practices, tarnished the group. My personal opinion is it was designed to do exactly that. It's no secret that until 50 Shades broke it wide open, trad pub viewed indies as the enemy. It's also not a stretch to believe that the paper that's in the backyard of the trad pub world, whose employees likely frequent the same watering holes (small world, and all), might have been pitched a story idea that had just the right amount of juicy scandal to make good reading - and further smeared a segment the trad pubbers would have cheerfully burned at the stake.

I always look at events and think, "who benefits?" Why this, why now? Follow the money. If I see an article proclaiming gold to be a crap investment, that it's not money, only takes up space and pays no rent, I immediately think, "Who has the big short on gold?" I've seen far too much to believe anything in the media is honest reporting. Most has an agenda, and the agenda is determined by relationships and objectives of those who use it as their pet method of molding public opinion. I have no reason to believe that slam piece wasn't exactly what it seemed when I first read it - an attack on all indies, coloring them as cheats and scammers, with the most visible of them held up as precisely the sort of scamming lowlife readers should avoid. I could be wrong. We'll never know.


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## Terrence OBrien (Oct 21, 2010)

blakebooks said:


> Terrence: Put simply, my career is going swimmingly IN SPITE of that debacle.
> 
> Whether I would be selling even more books were indies not eyed with considerable skepticism due to the NY Times essentially saying that they're a bunch of cheating lowlifes is unknowable. But I do know that being lumped in with being an indie after that wasn't a good thing. The question is how bad a thing it was and is.
> 
> ...


It looks like the whole market is swimming along with you in spite of Locke. If consumers even noticed, the market quickly adapted. The evidence seems to be falling on the side of no effect.

In terms of motivation of players, I don't care. I'm not engaging that. I'm looking at markets, not individuals' motives.

It is worth considering that consumers may be indifferent to this stuff.


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## B. Justin Shier (Apr 1, 2011)

When information is imperfect, some market players can respond with guarantees, branding, and certifications. 

Amazon's 7-day return window is a money-back guarantee.
Any established author is a brand.
And any traditionally published author has been "certified."

Other players cannot.

Kobo lacks the technical capacity to offer digital returns.
New authors have yet to establish their brands.
And self-published authors have not been formally "certified."

The great gears grind onward. Mind the drop.

B


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## David J Normoyle (Jun 22, 2012)

Terrence OBrien said:


> It looks like the whole market is swimming along with you in spite of Locke. If consumers even noticed, the market quickly adapted. The evidence seems to be falling on the side of no effect.
> 
> In terms of motivation of players, I don't care. I'm not engaging that. I'm looking at markets, not individuals' motives.


No one is saying that Locke's actions had a massive effect on the markets. He's only one guy. The scandal probably caused a slight dip in indie sales which hasn't had any (or only a minuscule) long term effect.



Terrence OBrien said:


> It is worth considering that consumers may be indifferent to this stuff.


And so what if they are. That doesn't affect the morality or the legality of it. Bernie Madoff didn't bring down Wall Street, people didn't stop investing, the markets adjusted--doesn't mean that what he did is fine. (Obviously what John Locke did isn't on Madoff's scale, but the point is that it isn't the markets that have supreme authority on whether something is fine or not.)


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## Terrence OBrien (Oct 21, 2010)

> No one is saying that Locke's actions had a massive effect on the markets. He's only one guy. The scandal probably caused a slight dip in indie sales which hasn't had any (or only a minuscule) long term effect.


It has been suggested that all independent authors were damaged. Thats kind of massive. But I see no evidence of either a short or long term effect.



> And so what if they are. That doesn't affect the morality or the legality of it. Bernie Madoff didn't bring down Wall Street, people didn't stop investing, the markets adjusted--doesn't mean that what he did is fine. (Obviously what John Locke did isn't on Madoff's scale, but the point is that it isn't the markets that have supreme authority on whether something is fine or not.)


What if consumers are indifferent to this stuff? Thats a big deal. It means there is no reason to expect it to affect the market. No harm to authors.

Regarding Lockes morality, its none of my business. I have no standing to publicly discuss another authors personal morality.


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## Carradee (Aug 21, 2010)

For years, self-publishers have been dismissed as naïve unskilled writers at best, and sleazy or irrational salesmen at worst. That's not unique to the current ease of self-publishing.

And individual genres and types of writing (and types of authors) are *all* dismissed and seen as unimportant or unworthy of accolades by _someone_. Some dismiss the romance writers, some the literary writers, some the poetry writers, some the speculative fiction writers&#8230; Some write YA on purpose because it's "easier" than adult fiction, and fans of the writer hate the YA stuff because it talks down to the readers. (I could name a few authors like that.)

What's changed is that it's now easier for people who want to know these things to find out about them-*in an environment that means everyone's overloaded by more information than they could possibly absorb*.

Some of us notice and remember things like John Locke's buying of reviews, and that influences our opinion of him. I'm convinced that's a very small minority of the general public.

Why do I think that? Because most *writers* don't even remember who James Frey is-despite him getting yelled at _twice_ by Oprah. (He's the guy who wrote two "memoirs" that were actually novels.) I've seen programs for writers' conferences where he's the special speaker. (I believe he once was slotted to speak on writing ethics, which was remarkably frightening.)

All those huge fusses about plagiarism cases? A major one pops up once every few years or so, with very few people remembering the the previous ones.

Even in traditional publishing, I remember reading news articles years ago about authors banding together to buy their books from specific stores to get on bestseller lists.

I admit, I read John Locke's book and found it interesting. He approached writing as a salesman, which is different from how most writers approach it. I think it's useful for that reason alone.

None of the other major hullaballoos have had a major impact even on the careers of the people involved. (Cassandra Clare and E.L. James, anyone?) While some traditional authors might have been affected-like in cases I've read of where 9/11 affected sales, but the authors were blamed for the poor sales-I doubt the market _as a whole_ has been or will be significantly affected.


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## David J Normoyle (Jun 22, 2012)

Terrence OBrien said:


> Regarding Lockes morality, its none of my business. I have no standing to publicly discuss another authors personal morality.


The morality of review buying is an important topic for self-publishers. If it's okay, then perhaps it's a good sales tactic and something that more of us should be doing. If it's not okay, then we should speak out against it, so that others don't unknowingly do it.


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## Terrence OBrien (Oct 21, 2010)

David J Normoyle said:


> The morality of review buying is an important topic for self-publishers. If it's okay, then perhaps it's a good sales tactic and something that more of us should be doing. If it's not okay, then we should speak out against it, so that others don't unknowingly do it.


I have no standing to publicly discuss another authors personal morality. I don't care what other self publishers think about that position.


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## CraigInOregon (Aug 6, 2010)

David J Normoyle said:


> This discussion is not about how good or bad John Locke is as a writer. This is about his cheating practices. Lance Armstrong was a great cyclist--but he still should be, and has been, called to account for his cheating practices. How many cycling tournaments Lance would have won without cheating will never be known, in the same way that John Locke's success without review buying will never be known.


Taking one part of my post out of context and attempting to frame it in a way to make it look like I said something I didn't is not the same thing as having an actual reply.

I know what this thread, and countless others like it over the last 18 months, are and have been about. You are the one trying to frame it so that it sounds like others who speak in favor of Locke are saying something they're not.

So, seems to me I'm not the confused one here.


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## CraigInOregon (Aug 6, 2010)

blakebooks said:


> If John claims he volunteered that info, and if you believe him, that's your prerogative. I have a different take. I think...


Russ,

Exactly the point.

Joe has talked to John Locke. You haven't. So your "different take" is simply what you "think."

I tend to prefer direct testimony to gossip.

And since "your take" seems to involve making Locke into a criminal, perhaps direct testimony should matter just a bit to you, too.


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## CraigInOregon (Aug 6, 2010)

ElisaBlaisdell said:


> Anyone know what percentage of the best advertising opportunities depend on the book having received good reviews? (Average over 4.0?)
> 
> From what I've heard in the Writer's Cafe, it sounds as though most, if not all, do.


http://www.kboards.com/index.php/topic,166451.0.html

There's a whole thread on that very subtopic of this sort of discussion. This is my main point in general, in my participation in this thread. BookBub and in fact most review sites lock you out of consideration for taking your money and advertising your book unless you have a minimum number of reviews over a 4.0 average.

BookBub regularly touts books by saying, "A book with over 300 5-star reviews on Amazon.com!"

That's the "minimum level of entry" crud that creates the atmosphere that leads some writers to make poor choices in terms of buying reviews.

I know Terrance disagrees, and that's his right: but I firmly stand by my suggestion that if PR sites like BookBub weren't demanding XXX number of reviews over 4.0 on average, scam-review sites like Fivvr.com or whatever else is out there would go out of business overnight, because no one would need them. (Or think they do, at any rate.)


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## Terrence OBrien (Oct 21, 2010)

> I know Terrance disagrees, and that's his right: but I firmly stand by my suggestion that if PR sites like BookBub weren't demanding XXX number of reviews over 4.0 on average, scam-review sites like Fivvr.com or whatever else is out there would go out of business overnight, because no one would need them. (Or think they do, at any rate.)


That's a perfectly reasonable idea. I can't fault it. There is a rational hypothesis that people are acting to gain a specific benefit. Happens all the time.

I disagree that those sites bear any responsibility for what author's do. Authors are responsible for what authors do. Nobody else.


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## CraigInOregon (Aug 6, 2010)

Terrence OBrien said:


> That's a perfectly reasonable idea. I can't fault it. There is a rational hypothesis that people are acting to gain a specific benefit. Happens all the time.
> 
> I disagree that those sites bear any responsibility for what author's do. Authors are responsible for what authors do. Nobody else.


I don't lay all the blame on BookBub and other PR sites for the actual decision to buy reviews: just for creating the atmosphere that tempts some authors to think they need such shortcuts.

And since this is as close as we ever get to seeing eye-to-eye? I'll take it!


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## blakebooks (Mar 10, 2012)

Craig: If you ask the girl in the bar at two a.m. whether she's a virgin, and she pushes her five empty Long Island Ice Tea glasses aside and scratches one of her tattoos, and says, "sure thing, sugar," are you the greater fool for having asked, or for believing the answer?

News Flash: There's not a guilty man in all our prisons. None of em did it. They're all innocent as newborns.

And bridges are sold every day.


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## Ann in Arlington (Oct 27, 2008)

I think we're done here. . . . move along folks. . . .go read Julie's Third Person Thursday Walking Dead thread.


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