Catch 22 of Great Reviews: Thanks, John Locke!

by L.J. Sellers, author of provocative mysteries & thrillers

This week we learned that John Locke—one of the first indie authors to sell a million books—paid for hundreds of reviews at a now-defunct paid-review site that didn’t require its reviewers to read the books, just to crank out the stars. Because the story made the NY Times, one expert estimates that a third of all Amazon reviews are fake.

This pisses me off, breaks my heart, and makes me—and the other terrific and honest indie authors on this site—look bad. That is, if we have too many great reviews.

GalleyCat weighed in on this issue with this blog post, listing several bestsellers that each have more than 150 one-star reviews. The point of the short piece is that real bestsellers have lots of bad reviews as well as many good ones. The unspoken point is that books with too many good reviews and few bad ones must not be a real bestsellers, that those reviews must have been paid for or written by marketers or friends.

I resent this! Without good reviews, you’re treated like a hack and can’t sell books. Too many good reviews and not enough dogs, and you look like a phony. Obviously some authors—and publishers—resort to these tactics. But many of the books on Amazon’s bestselling and top-rated lists come by their reviews honestly.

I know I did. Dying for Justice is the top-rated novel on two of Amazon’s lists—police procedurals and mystery series—with 54 five-star reviews, 8 four-stars, and 1 one-star (idiot). Not one was paid for or written by a marketer. My sister claims she wrote a review, but she loves my work. And I can’t find it, if she did. And I have many great reviews in print magazines—Mystery Scene, Crimespree, Spinetingler, and RT Reviews—to support those online "amateur" reviews.

Yes, I gave away the book on Goodreads, with the idea that readers would post reviews, but I took my chances that they would be in my favor. And yes, I asked readers in a blog to post reviews for the book—but always with the caveat “if you read and enjoyed the story.” I don’t want or need fake support.

Here’s a question for GalleyCat: If a book with a lot of fake five-star ratings wasn’t good, wouldn’t a lot of honest readers start to give it bad reviews? You can’t fool everybody forever. No author has that many loyal friends or fake online IDs—except maybe Stephen Leather, another example of how some big-name indie authors are making the rest of us look bad.

And I have to throw in one more issue. The site that Locke used was clearly corrupt. Reviewers were directly paid to crank out good blurbs without even reading the books. But what about sites like Book Rooster? For a $60 admin fee, the site lists your e-book internally, then their unpaid reviewers sign up to receive and read books of their choosing. In exchange for free books, they write honest reviews.

This process seems fine to me, and I used the site for The Suicide Effect, my least-read book, just to get some reviews. But there was no guarantee of how many reviews or what they would be. It was just an opportunity for exposure, and I got lucky, mostly. But now I’m wondering if that was a mistake, just because the exchange of money (for the administrative fee) might make people lump the service into a paid-review category—even though no money goes to the reviewers.

What do you think? Have you read John Locke’s work? Does he deserve his success? Are you skeptical of any books with almost entirely good reviews? Do you think Book Rooster is a legitimate service? Should Amazon take Locke's work down to show it's serious about the trust factor for customer reviews?

L.J.'s Standalone Thrillers

by L.J. Sellers, author of provocative mysteries & thrillers

I feel a bit like the kid in the Home Alone movie, having the place to myself while the family is away for Christmas. I've tried to be responsible and post blogs with wide appeal, but today is my last chance to be mischievous and I can't resist a little blatant self-promotion. So here's a post from my personal blog.

Readers are most familiar with my bestselling Detective Jackson books, but I also have three standalone thrillers, two that I wrote before I started the series. I worked for a pharmaceutical magazine for seven years, so the pre-Jackson books have subtle medical themes. I rewrote them before self-publishing to update the stories and to give Jackson a small cameo in each.

The seed of an idea that would become The Baby Thief sprouted one evening many years ago while I watched a few minutes of American Gladiator. I thought about how physically fit the winners were and how genetically superior their children would be. Eventually, I connected that idea to fertility science, and the plot for The Baby Thief was born. In essence, a woman goes to a fertility clinic, hoping to become artificially inseminated, but the clinic director takes one look at her and decides to steal one of her eggs to create a child of her own. Before that happens, the main character, Jenna, meets a charming reporter who won't let her disappearance go uninvestigated. Their relationship is a driving factor in the story, so I labeled the book romantic suspense, my only such label. As info, I'm giving the story away today on Amazon.

The Suicide Effect reflects my concern that some antidepressant medication actually makes some people feel suicidal! The story's structure is similar to a “woman in jeopardy” novel, yet it’s so much more. Sula, the protagonist, combats her deepest fears and risks everything to find the truth about the drug in question. Readers have said the ending made them shake in fear, then cry with joy. And for Jackson fans, he also makes a brief appearance.

My third standalone thriller is quite different. It features Detective Evans from my Jackson series, only it’s set twelve years in the future and she’s no longer a cop. She’s working as a freelance paramedic and enters a national endurance competition called the Gauntlet. Early in the story, she witnesses a crime, which later hinders her ability to compete. And then there’s Paul, the government official with access to personal data who complicates everything. The story was originally called The Arranger, but accidental market research recently told me that it needed a new name. So it's now called The Gauntlet Assassin, and I'm just waiting for the new ebook file to come back from my formatter.

The Amazon reviews/ratings are terrific for all three, and I hope you’ll check them out. 

My plan for now is to write two Jackson stories a year, plus one standalone. Eventually, one of those standalones may develop into a second series. Or I may run for Congress instead. You never know with me.