Don’t know about the latest indie kerfuffle? That’s because you’ve probably been spending your free time writing. Mazel tov. In case you haven’t looked up in a while, here’s what you may have missed:
A few weeks ago, in a New York Times article, a gentleman named Todd Rutherford and his now-defunct company were “outed” for selling thousands of fake, five-star reviews to authors hoping to get an edge on their e-book sales.
As if that wasn’t bad enough, one of Rutherford’s customers was a rather well-known indie scribe who published a rather well-referred-to book about how he became a well-known indie scribe, mainly by purchasing hundreds of fake reviews. Now, Indieland has exploded with blogination: pro, con, and indifferent. Aspersions are raining down on this well-known scribe, who shares a name (if that indeed is his real name) with a dead philosopher and says of his meteoric rise to million-dollar sales, “Reviews are the smallest piece of being successful. But it’s a lot easier to buy them than cultivating an audience.” Continue reading “Paying for Reviews? Just Say No.”
