I’m usually not much of a petition-signer, but in this case, I made an exception. Last week, Dear Author broke a story about how a gang of romance writers has been gaming the Amazon system to inflate their books’ ratings and to fraudulently have reviews lower than five stars removed by reporting them as abusive content. The story of how these people stalked a reviewer is mind-boggling, and the owners of Dear Author have put together an iPetition** to urge Amazon and the relevant state authorities to investigate and to implement policies that will help discourage these abusive practices in future.
Like one DA commenter said, the way these people behaved is “boil your bunny” crazy.
** When you see the screen asking for a donation, close it. Your vote has already been recorded at that point. There’s no fee to sign the petition.
Posted in Publishing Industry | Comments Off
Zoinks! Our local Internet provider dropped off the face of the planet last week, so we were without access for several days. They claimed to be having hardware issues, but given the very grim information in their parent company’s recent SEC filings, it’s much more likely to have been the result of unpaid bills to their upstream provider.
We ordered service from another local company on Saturday, and everything went live earlier today. Yay! Let’s hope these guys don’t get bought out by clueless n00bs like the last company was.
Edited To Add: I’ve heard that people may be having trouble posting comments since I upgraded to a newer version of WordPress. Please send me an email if you’ve commented and your post appears to have been eaten.
Posted in Miscellaneous | 4 Comments »
I’ve mistrusted Amazon book reviews for years. I mean, you read a book that’s sucky by pretty much any objective standard, and then when you look at its Amazon reviews, they’re all 5-star fangirl squees? Uhh, yeah. Like that happened legitimately.
Well, apparently there are gangs of writers and their fans who live for voting negative Amazon reviews as “unhelpful” or even reporting them as inappropriate content so that the reviews will be automatically deleted. Rumors about these tactics have been floating around the blogoverse for a few years now, but the most recent reports document a much more coordinated campaign.
That’s why I trust people like Mrs. Giggles to give it to me straight. I may not agree with every one of her reviews, but you know what you’re getting is her honest opinion. Gaming Amazon reviews is tantamount to fraud, in my opinion.
Posted in Books | 2 Comments »
From 8 to 9 tonight, we plan to take a walk by the lake and then sit on the deck for a while. I wonder if our neighbors will participate?
Posted in Miscellaneous | Comments Off
You’ve gotta see this video at Jody’s site. I particularly loved the baby giggles in the background. When I played the video, all four of our cats came running into the room. Chester had a few things to say in response to the chirps and yowls he heard coming from Meankitty. Rosie insisted on climbing into my lap to watch the whole thing for herself. She already opens the bi-fold doors to all the closets, so I suppose it’s only a matter of time before she masters Meankitty’s door knob trick.
Posted in Miscellaneous | Comments Off
