Well, what horror the week brings. Countless miserable deaths, mayhem and other normal local behavior in the Middle East, Prince Harry in the altogether. Oh and the sock-puppet melodrama. Some mystery writer was nabbled setting up fake Amazon accounts and giving himself luscious reviews, and his competitors stinkers. Shock. Horror. Fainting in the aisles, and of course suitable righteous indignation from the stunned ‘bestselling’ authors.

How dare anyone manipulate public opinion to their advantage! Amazon ought to police it better! Only ‘approved’ critics should review! Or to put it another way, it’s all Amazon and the great unwashed masses fault, eh. As usual. The rot started with allowing them to self- publish…

Heh. Iffen a don’laff, I shore as hail gonna cry. As a bloke with relatively few Amazon reviews, many of which I recognize the source of as long-term friends and fans, I can’t say the thought hasn’t crossed my mind myself, on a few occasions just to give that helpful pointer a la Cliff’s Notes as to what it is actually about — especially the jokes, because I, with my appalling sense of humor, think they’re screamingly funny and can’t understand the blank reviews… the groans now that I would accept. I’ve groan accustomed to it. Oh and to give my beautiful baby five stars, ‘cause although only a mother could love it, I came as close as any male is going to, to obstetrics from the other side, and a breech presentation with that book.

I’ll bet every one of those outraged dahlings has thought the same. Probably a fair number have done it… Or prompted their friends, family, fan (singular), and pet Daschund to do so, or sent them glowing paeans of praise to insert. Fervent accusations of others generating foul flatulence… is pretty close to proof of having produced it. And I’d guess poking a few rivals anonymously would be far too ignoble, for our best-seller heroes.

Let’s be real here. Push aside the indignation and the righteous wrath for a moment and look at what the ‘crime’ or ‘sin’ was particularly?

He cheated. He did something in an underhand manner.

And what precisely was his motive, and who did he hurt?

Well… it might have been vanity. Or even malice. Or most likely it was to deceive readers of such reviews that this indeed was a great book in the opinion of someone other than it’s creator. In other words, he engaged in self-promotion, without admitting it was himself he was promoting, which, yes, is somewhat scaly. It’s dishonest.

So… who got hurt by this act of dishonesty?

Well, obviously the reading public, who assume a fair judgement of the value of the book. And that is very wrong, because the book is not judged on merit.

Books, stories, writing… need to be judged on merits, if we’re going to get the best books. If we want writers to be rewarded for working hard, having talent, reflecting the interests and values of their society, making us think, making us laugh. If we want writers to get better we need to recognize and reward merit. One man’s merit is another man’s drekk, but still – numbers tell that a lot or a few people recognize the same value.

The sock-puppeteer angers all of us, because he was cheating the merit system. We were all needled by it, because that merit is IMPORTANT to us.

Yet… in the scale of dishonest cheating… he’s a litterbug in a mob of axe-murders. No… he’s more like a jaywalker in the company of genocidal murderers. His cheating is so small, so ineffectual and so irrelevant… why are the best-sellers bothering to pile on him… When the real destroyers of the merit system are not even questioned? Look, we know various reviewers — Kirkus being an example quoted on this site before — are frankly being paid for those reviews. We also know — unless we’re really stupid, that the ‘professional’ review system is self-selected, and, um, not designed for the purpose it is supposed to serve. It’s supposed to trawl the vast output of books and allow readers to match their tastes and desires to a book they’ll love… without having to read all the books out there. Which means if it is to work, the tastes of the critics have to reflect the tastes of the population, or the reviewer needs to a person of such talent that they can say: ‘I am an aging feminist hippie, but a Mormon teen boy would love this book. Therefore I will say this is a great book for Mormon teen boys (or whatever).’

It should take you very little time to establish that the professional reviewers are, by in large, not that able, and they sure aren’t that demographically representative either. And their reviews are read by far more people than will ever see the sock puppet’s work. And that’s still the most minor part of cheating the merit system. Authors – myself included- cheat the merit by asking (at their publisher’s instruction) for sympathetic fellow authors to write cover copy.

Then publishers get in on the act. And they do not just cheat the merit system… they lie, extort, corrupt, bribe, willfully deceive. Oh and they think it’s fine to do so. The print run they brag about to puff the book up in the book-world… is in most cases around 1/3 what they say it is. Authors in the same house are pressured for good cover copy. The ordering system is willfully cheated by pseudonyms, the buyers are pressured with terms like if you want 10 cases of John Bigsale, you have to take 10 copies of Jane We’repush. They pay for book dumps, front window displays, end displays… All of which are not allowing merit a fighting chance. The large publisher with a big advance to recover on full promote-and-push with a few million dollars in the slush-fund gives the small/self publisher with no spare cash the same chance to win on merit as two marathon runners do… where one has his legs tied together at the start of the 60 miles and the other has a Ferrari waiting to rush him three yards from the finish line.

And that’s without even getting to really underhand stuff that is rumored to go on, the buying of thousands of copies, the rigging of prizes and awards.

Strings are pulled, and the puppets dance.

If we want to beat up on people who cheat the merit system to all of our disadvantages… I know where those outraged best-sellers could start.

But they’re not going to because the crooked system has produced….
Them.