Stuffing the ballot.

[davywavy]

About a year ago now, an email popped into my inbox inviting me to join the Amazon Vine programme. In case you haven't heard about Vine, it's a pre-release review service offered by Amazon where they send you free stuff before it's released on the condition that you must post a review of it on the site. Basically, if you buy a lot of stuff off them and post a lot of reviews, you might get an invitation to join and then every month you'll get an email with a list of books and films and other goods and you pick the ones you want.
For me, it's a handy way to get free books - especially brain-candy. As you know, I spend so much time improving my mind by reading difficult tomes with titles like How to do really difficult sums and The meaning of life for dummies, and then every month the Vine newsletter drops into my inbox with a list of schlocky sci-fi and fantasy for me to relax my neurons with.

Vine appears to be used by publishers as a way of generating pre-release 'buzz' for products they've invested a lot into and have high hopes for. It's a well-established psychological principle that if you give people stuff for free they're supposed to feel well-disposed to you and so the hope is presumably that glowing reviews of new books will appear. The problem with this idea is that so much of what they send out turns out to be so much tosh. Yes, I've had a few good reads out of it, but a lot of the fun has been getting complete stinkers and then writing comedy reviews for them. They sent me The Left Hand of God, which according to the blurb is "This year's most anticipated fantasy novel", but according to me was hopeless, derivitive crap. They sent me I Am Number Four, which is apparently "soon to be a major motion picture", but as far as I'm concerned is more likely soon to be in the £1.99 straight to video bin at Asda. Most recently, they sent me The Nemesis List, which... well. Oh, boy.

For some reason which reading it didn't make clear, The Nemesis List actually got into print due to winning a writing competition. It really does make the imagination boggle to consider the quality of the writing it was up against in order for it to win, but win it did. I shan't go into detail, but suffice to say that it is Not Very Good and have done.
Anyway, I read it and posted my review, and then browsed the other reviews out of general interest - and it was then I noticed something a trifle odd. In general the reviews weren't very positive. A few were more praising than mine, but the general consensus was that it's not the greatest book ever. However, the very first review posted - and one of the most popular - was glowing and effusive in it's praise and in a moment of suspicion I used my google-fu to quickly discover that the author of The Nemesis List and the author of the review were members of the same writers group.

It's been niggling me ever since, this. On the one hand, if I were to write a book I'd expect all my friends to write glowing reviews of it or I'd kill them. Kill them. Oh, yes I'd be quite upset. On the other hand, I do think it's somewhat... deceitful not to admit to a personal relationship when encouraging others to spend their money. As you can write comments on reviews on Amazon, I've been thinking of making a pithy comment about this. But should I bother? Would it just be petty of me? What do you think?

Oh, and feel free to tick up my review. It seems everyone else is doing it, so I may as well get me some of that action.

Comments

[crocodilewings.livejournal.com]

I'm really selective about what books I read, and even then the occasional turkey still slips through. I can't imagine how polluted my brain would feel if I let someone else make those choices.

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

I like a good degree of variety in my reading, and random finds in charity shops and amazon are a source of joy for me.

[crocodilewings.livejournal.com]

If you read a bad book, how bad an event is that? Can you think of an analogous universal experience that's about as bad?

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

It depends - some books are truly so bad they're good and I derive a great deal of pleasuer being rude about them. Some are just rubbish, and I don't. I didn't actually bother finishing The Nemesis List, for example, as it wasn't worth my time.

[(Anonymous)]

Flag the fawning review as inappropriate, and explain why.

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

Are you volunteering?

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

I tried using the 'report abuse' button, and it just gives a 'thanks for reporting' page - nothing for me to explain why on it.

Irritating. I don't want to create internet drama by posting a comment on it, but it's really rankling me.

[sherbetsaucers.livejournal.com]

Bring attention to it. Just point out that everyone is entitled to their own opinion but the majority of reviews are negative and this one is written by a friend of the author.