"Gaming" Amazon is Despicable

Please excuse me. I'm about to rant. It's not a pretty sight and I wouldn't blame you if you went somewhere else right now. (And, if you're wondering where would be a good place to escape to, try the Hope anthology online book launch - it's in a very good cause.)

I've just been followed on Twitter by another jerk with another book marketing scam. In this one, thousands of "independent" (self-published) authors, with books on Amazon, are signing up to "like", "tag", "rate" and "tweet" each other's books in an orgy of deception and back scratching. They aren't reading each other's books, merely recommending them to others in return for their own book being recommended.

Arseholes like this seem to think there is no harm in "gaming" sites like Amazon to give their own work an advantage. For some reason, they don't see it as lying to people and cheating people for pecuniary gain, they see it as "marketing" or "book promotion" or some other euphemism. Well it's not, you tossers, it's lying and cheating. It demeans you. It brings every book rating and recommendation system you touch into disrepute and makes the whole system worthless.

And if you think this is going to give you anything other than short-term gain, you are even bigger fools than you seem to be. Anyone who buys your books on the basis of these fraudulent recommendations, is going to be very annoyed if your books are a load of crap – and if they're not a load of crap, why are you resorting to this kind of subterfuge to trick people into buying them? Frankly, I wish that each of you could be exposed to as many people as possible for the worms that you are. Public humiliation is the least you deserve.

As for the jerk who followed me and tried to get me to join his disgusting little scam, I blocked him and reported him as a spammer. I'd have liked to have done more but that was all that was in my power to do. If enough of us do the same, maybe some of these guys will lose their accounts.

OK, rant over. Normal service will be resumed shortly.