I Am Awesome

I should shout this to the world, then everybody will know how awesome I am. But wait, I can´t do it that blatantly, people won´t understand my awesomeness… not straight away. I know, I´ll pretend to be someone else and then that person… or many people, will tell the world how incredible I am. I will … I mean, they will proclaim my excellence from the rooftops, and soon my name will be shouted in the streets and my books will fly from the shelves quicker than anybody believed possible. Yes… oh good god, I am just so awesome.

If you are still reading this post, then thank you. That bit above is a pile of steaming (Insert animal of choice) shit isn’t it. Yet, why is it that the more I looked around online, the more I find that people are doing exactly what I have outlined above?

I don’t get it, I mean are people really that desperate to read a good review that they will fabricate one themselves? Surely that speaks volumes about the confidence they have in their own writing, and should be an indicator to the author that maybe, the book wasn’t ready.

In the last week I have read not one, nor two, but three articles involving different people each time, who have been trapped posting glowing reviews of their own work under different aliases across a number of forums. Is this a growing trend that we should all be aware of? Or is it rather something that has always been there, but is now being shown under a spotlight in order to remove it from the playing field?

I for one could not do it. I just don’t think I have it in me to create something so blatantly false. I would feel too guilty.

What do you think?

What should be done with these writers? Should they be named and shamed? Prosecuted in some way, surely it is an electronic form of fraud or mis-representation? I don’t know. All I am certain of is that Independent and small press writers (all writers when viewed on a larger scale) have a hard enough time making their name, climbing the ladder to a place where their books are searched for and not stumbled across.

The world of publishing is changing, and the pendulum will not stay with the Indies forever, we will need to work and hard keep evolving in order to stay in the game, and it is idiotic things like the above, posting your own reviews, or creating social media accounts to do nothing but talk about how amazingly talented you are, is not going to help us improve.