I was just followed, on Twitter, by one of those "Buy Amazon reviews!" services.<\/p>\n
I blocked them and reported them as spam. And the only reason I didn’t do more than that is that the "Crotch-punch poster over the Internet" attachment I ordered is out of stock.<\/p>\n
Let me be clear. Authors rely on reviews. Word of mouth sells more than anything, and reviews are–and generate–word of mouth.<\/p>\n
But that only works as long as readers believe that at least the majority of reviews are honest\/accurate, at least where the reviewer is concerned. "Services" like this? They’re not helping you. It becomes real obvious, real quick, if a book is paying for good reviews. All you’re doing is damaging the readers’ trust–and not just of you, but of all reviews, and by extension, of all authors.<\/p>\n
So, to the folks at the "service" who followed me–briefly–and to the folks at all other, similar services, and to the authors who use them…<\/p>\n
Kindly piss the hell off, and stay there.<\/p>\n
No love–and sadly, no ability to crotch-punch you via the internet,<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Ari<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I was just followed, on Twitter, by one of those "Buy Amazon reviews!" services. I blocked them and reported them as spam. And the only reason I didn’t do more than that is that the "Crotch-punch poster over the Internet" attachment I ordered is out of stock. Let me be clear. Authors rely on reviews. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-5519","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-old-news","7":"czr-hentry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/mouseferatu.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5519","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/mouseferatu.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/mouseferatu.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mouseferatu.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mouseferatu.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5519"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/mouseferatu.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5519\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/mouseferatu.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5519"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mouseferatu.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5519"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mouseferatu.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5519"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}