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turns out I’m a fraud.

Posted on by Marko

Did you know that I have rigged Amazon’s review system to sell my mediocre, derivative novel, and that I’m taking money from other authors that actually deserve those reviews and sales?

Yeah, that’s why the novella still isn’t finished. I spent all my writing time making seven hundred sock puppet accounts to game Amazon’s review system. Because, uh, PROFITZ?

Category: capitalism., idiots., writing.

19 thoughts on “turns out I’m a fraud.”

  1. Dammit. Sluff off the internet for a couple days, and look what happens: Late to the party, and the troll review is gone. I’d’ve liked to have seen it. Troll sniping is fun. 🙂

    (Note to self: get off derriere and go buy the book.)

  2. I liked your book because it was good. I bigged it up on my Facebook page because it was good. Haters really are gonna hate. You’ll wake up tomorrow morning and still be a good writer. The guy who made that comment on Amazon will wake up tomorrow and still be the sort of dick who makes allegations like that on the internet. And life will go on. Am looking forward to the next book. A lot.

  6. Consider that Mr. Weber is probably laughing all the way to the bank, I would certainly give that idiot review may one grain of salt.
    WHen can I look for a paperback of “Terms”?

  7. Nice.. It’s always better to have the idiots hate you. When they show up on your side is when you’re in trouble.

    I actually did buy and read, and re-read, and re-re-read ToE. I like it very much, but my review will never add up to any standard acceptable to the esteemed Mr. Xyzion would consider legitimate, since I tend to review tersely, such as: “Nice, tight prose drew a stark portrait of a world occupied by still-interesting people.”. or some such.

    Hey! Maybe if “Lyra” wrote a huge Wikipedia page about you, he’d take you seriously?

    Guard the fowl. This is a guy who would decide that you owe him half your birds, since his crappy novel self-deleted from shame.

  8. The only reason I could possibly see for a one-star without having read the book might be if there was a file problem that the author/publisher refused to correct (as in, file unreadable, entire chapters missing, sort of problem). Or for that matter, if the print book had major technical flaws of a similar nature. But using a review to bash the store’s ratings system? Idjit.

  9. I too read TOE and left a good review. I thought that I had enjoyed the book but after having read Xyzion’s brilliant logic in his negative review I realize now what a dupe I was. I will immediately change my review to zero stars (but only because they won’t let me give your book negative stars).

  11. Were the reviews of the pre-May, self published release merged with the 47North version of the book? Or am I confused on how the Kindle release worked? I thought it was taken down after 47North signed on, and then put back up in a updated form?

    1. They let me keep the reviews I collected for the self-pubbed version because the book went back online as a 47North book without any changes. The re-release in January will have new content and cover art.

  12. That review has the flavor of coming from a person who has tried the self-publishing route and has not met with the degree of success that Marko has.

  13. Been an avid reader since before I figger’d out how to string squiggly marks on a page together to form words and sentences and chapters and such. I’ve delved into genres populated with plots and characters thinner than the paper they were printed on, and I’ve read short stories with more meat to them than a mammoth. I tend to encourage and support the indie-pub crowd when possible, because I’ve grown rather….disenchanted…with the modern publishing phenomenon, with editors that seem to have skipped out on Basic English classes, especially punctuation, sentence structure, and have yet to find the spell-check button on their editor programs. A good portion of the time, most indie stuff reads the same way, or worse, but occasionally a tale comes along that just HAS IT. Grammatical errors are very few and far between. Sentences flow. Correct word usage is present (“they’re” “their” “there”….kills me every time). And the plot is refreshing and deep and realistic enough that I’m drawn in to the world almost from the start. I actually first heard about your site and book from Larry Correia’s bookbomb. Glad he mentioned it…I’ll definitely be on the lookout for “Lines of Departure” when it comes out. This reader…my guess is that he slapped a few “inspired” words into a doc, self-published it, and wasn’t even able to sell it to the enlightened bearded hippies in coffee shops. The whole review just screamed “bitter failure” to me.

  14. Definitely ignore and move on – this person has a peculiar axe to grind and unfortunately you seem to be on the receiving end. I did like the comments leaping to your defence however. And I also notice that the original reviewer has not elected to respond to those comments.

    Kind of ruins your day though 🙁

  15. Damn! Turns out I’m a fraud too and I didn’t even know it. 🙂

    However, as one fraud to another, I read Terms of Enlistment and loved it. I didn’t write a review because I didn’t want folks getting their knickers in a knot over one indie author reviewing another.

    I just shake my head when I read this stuff. I don’t know about you, but I don’t HAVE hundreds of friends and relatives I could press into service, and creating ‘sock puppet’ accounts would seem to me to be more trouble than it’s worth. In my opinion you could have thousands of phony reviews, but if your book sucks, it’s success will be transient at best.

    You write terrific stories and I eagerly await Lines of Departure.

    Best regards,

    Bob

  16. Wow. Just… Wow.

    You know speaking as one of your earliest readers, a purchaser of your novel and also an author selling his book on Amazon I can safely say that this guy person is a tiny tool.

    For whatever reasons your book is selling and selling very well. I’m gonna guess those reasons are that it’s very well written and compelling military science fiction.

    This person’s grasp of how Amazon works is flawed at best. They may also labor under the confusion that the sun is pulled across the sky by one of the Teletubbies.

    You deserve every sale you get because you wrote a damn fine book. Anyone who don’t like the truth can wrap more tinfoil around their head and curse the weather.

  17. Lob kriegt man umsonst, Neid muß man sich verdienen.
    (Praise is for free, envy has to be earned)
    Carry on regardless.
    Greetings from the -stan, MK

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