His Twitter bio says: "Most books put you to sleep. Mine wakes you up." What a douche-bag. And a 100 hours a week is clearly a lie if the book sucks that much. I bet he played World of Warcraft for most of those supposed 100 hours and just claims he works that hard so people will like him.
It's pretty obvious that some writing is good and some is bad, but, to a certain degree, quality of writing is just as much of an opinion as the story itself.
"This review is not good for my business, so unless your desire is to ruin my dreams, it would mean a great deal if you could remove this review from my work and forget about it." <--- LOL
Sort of a deviation, but have people noticed how many books in the self-published category that are huge 5-star hits on Amazon (I mean like hundreds of 5-star reviews) are completely awful? I mean like 5th grade writing horrible.
Well you can buy from a review farm fairly cheaply. It's pretty clear that's what he's done. Most of his positive reviewers (that is all of the reviewers that I looked at) have only one purchase and one review on amazon, his.
Wow. Um...yeah. I've no words for that. ¬___¬ I believe I shall recant my previous posts where I attempted to see things from his perspective. It's... Y'know, I should expect this. This should come as no surprise to me. There are very vain people out there who would love a chance to stroke his/her ego and this is an easy way to do it.
In addition to what @Jack Asher said about shills, there is also the issue of self-selected reviewers that I explain in my page 2 post. People are likelier to take the time to rate and/or review a book they like than a book they dislike, and that applies more to self-published books than to other books. Randomly select 100 people and have them all read and rate the same 10 books. Sort the titles by their average ratings given by these 100 readers. Chances are, this ordering will bear little resemblance to the ordering by Amazon average ratings, even if you discount ratings by shills. (And the difference would be greater with shills than without.)
Okay, so after reading 40+ comments from that goodreads war, I've come to my own opinion about the event. Honestly, I can see why he'd feel that hurt by a 1-star review, but confronting it was an entirely different thing. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion and if someone purchases a book, they're allowed to bash it as much as they want. It's officially their purchased product, they own it. Although, he was behaving like a child, defending his book like it's the most illuminating book to human consciousness speaks a lot about him. Every writer is passionate about their work. If you're not, you're most likely not a writer. But, you shouldn't try to force your ideologies on people. He has that tone in his writing. Unfortunately, I'm not just jumping on the band-wagon either. When I see people gathering together to attack one person, it speaks a lot about who they are and the kind of things they do with their time. Especially, if they joined forces to give him 1-star reviews just because of his attitude in the comment section. It's supposed to rate someone's work. Nothing more, nothing less. So, I don't feel sorry for him, but I don't think giving him a bunch of negative reviews is any better.
This. Even if the author deserves it, the book does not. Part of being a mature human being in a civilized intellectual society is separating your opinion of something that is said or written from your opinion of the person who says or writes it.
Maybe people don't feel comfortable giving it credit, like unliking The Cosby Show. Too bad old Dylan didn't make a video. He could've got a Web Redemption on Tosh.O ETA: I'm assuming you guys are only talking about people changing existing ratings, not after-the-fact reviews.
Yes, it's not right for people to band together to give his book bad reviews as a comment on his tantrum, but when an adult essentially falls on the floor, pounds his fists and feet, and holds his breath until his face turns blue...there's not that much hope for his career anyway, IMO. (Though after a quick look at the book, I don't know that I consider it to be worthy even of a 1; if reviews are being changed I'm wondering if previous higher reviews were pity reviews and perhaps people are rethinking their pity?)
OMG. This is certainly an object lesson in how NOT to handle a bad review. I'd like to think it's an object lesson in how not to write an excruciatingly awful book as well, but methinks that seed won't fall on fertile ground, at least not with that author. "Goodreads?" Maybe just "Reads." or "Starts To Read, Gives Up, And Packs It In." Just the quote from that "Foreward" gives me the heebies.
Am in agreement with @Mordred85 , @daemon and @ChickenFreak . Kinda reminds me of a primary school experience when the class twit was being the usual twit and all the kids jumped in to tease him and the emergency teacher joined them. For some reason I found the episode distasteful and I think my disappointed facial expression was evident to the teacher. Hopefully this does not sound too ironically pretentious. He's done nothing to me. I completely understand the thing you made being an extension of your own perception of yourself. I went through that with the first business I started. Lesson learnt, I am far more detached now. He's clearly still learning. I've also interacted with people who come across in the same gratuitous, grandiose, egocentric, attempted-mystical fashion. It's difficult to take at the time, but it really doesn't affect you and you can observe it and then leave it behind.
It might also be interesting to do a study on similar incidents where the original reviewer was male, and see how many people jump in to defend them post-author vitriol. ie how much was group think and how much white knighting.
I worry for the guy. He may have brought it on himself but to see something you've spent a long time creating being systematically destroyed by hundreds of people can't be doing much for his already fragile ego.
What a dick. Out of curiosity I read a sample through Amazon. That was a mistake. The dude can't write for shit. It's shockingly bad. I wasn't actually expecting it to be that bad. 100% pretentious and way over-written. Sigh. I think the one star review was kind. Oh, and his website sucks too.
Lemex, you just wouldn't understand because you're clearly suffering from the "human condition of slavery." Also, here are a couple of choice quotes for those who didn't read the interview: [Interviewer] Is there anything you find particularly challenging in your writing? "The hardest, most challenging, most emotionally draining is to write battle sequences. That’s what takes me the longest, and unfortunately/fortunately, Book 3 is frigging loaded with battle. I hope it doesn’t give people PTSD and break their hearts too much." [Interviewer] Do you have anything specific that you want to say to your readers? "I’m an indie author that doesn’t have the resources to advertise to millions of people, so the most important thing for me is your word of mouth... So if you like my work, you had better start talking about it, because the principles it contains are crucial to defending yourself, your family, and your wealth from the wolves that are already running around in your house."
You mean you could resist the temptation of filling the pit in while he is screaming that he is defending the consciousness of humanity?
But, and I've said it before, a single human paradigm in its own is an enlightened, amazing thing, capable of contemplating the structure of the universe and its place therein. Many human paradigms, working together, without restraint, show us that this amazing, enlightened, individual paradigm is but one step out from the edge of the gallery forest, big toe barely shifted into a position for walking rather than griping (I can hold a pen with my toes), spinal column not even close to ready for a vertical rather than quasi-horizontal position, and to ignore or pretend that we're not just fancy chimpanzees is a mistake. That chimp lives in each and every single one of us. Not in them. In us. In me and in you (the every 'you'). When we forget that, shit like this happens.
I just skimmed through the preview on Amazon. Isn't there an unwritten rule in writing that you don't start three consecutive sentences with the same word?
