wtf

Crazy Authors Continued. . .

More inappropriate author behavior from Candice Sams from the ever-growing comment thread on Amazon. Here an enterprising commenter found an interesting plea on her Facebook page. (And here’s an LJ post with the full text in case Amazon deep-sixes the original comment.) So here we have someone pulling a reverse Deborah MacGillivray, piling on a reviewer and then calling out the internet stormtroopers to game Amazon. What follows is her Facebook plea, with my commentary in red.

Hi all,

If you have the time or the inclination…might I prevail upon you for a small favor?
Would you please click on the link that I’ve inserted…go over to Amazon.com and just click YES under… the helpful reviews left by amazon reviewers, Harriet Klausner, C. Roberts and Tammie King (these are wonderful ladies who first gave me a chance when I started writing about thirteen years ago and I cannot thank them enough). [What is with this woman and ellipses? I thought I had an ellipsis problem, but three random ellipses in the same paragraph? And since when do reviewers “give you a chance?” That’s the sort of acknowledgment one usually gives the people who buy your book.]

These lovely reviewers left very kind remarks but were undercut by two individuals who are known as hit-and-run reviewers (reviewers calling themselves BBB and LB Taylor). [So not only do negative reviews reflect badly on the book, they are undercutting poor Harriet Klausner. Coming soon, Amazon reviewer cage matches.] These two people repeatedly give very poor rankings on books; they’ve done this many, many times. [A guy in the comment thread actually did an analysis of LB Taylor and the rankings of those reviews fall on a pretty nice (and flat) bell curve.] (more…)

By S Andrew Swann, ago

Self-Imploding Authors, just add crazy

I’m late to this party, but when I found it via Making Light I couldn’t resist blogging about it:

Candace Sams, author of Electra Galaxy’s Mr. Interstellar Feller (mass-market paperback, Dorchester/Love Spell), has exploded all over a comment thread on Amazon. She’s posting as Niteflyr One, but the comment thread has her ID’d as the author as of comment #8.

Head’s up, newbie writers, it is a bad idea to comment on reviews of your work.  It’s a really bad idea to start a flame war over your work.  The following is on page #2 of 26(!) pages of comments:

NOTE TO READERS: authors leave themselves open for attack by having their work posted for sale…they hope that if there’s anything engaging about the books, someone might say so. They hope that if others don’t like the books, they will find a more tactful, professional and mature way to express themselves. They (the authors) hope that so-called reviewers (often shameful people who abuse the power Amazon provides) will not directly try to keep the author from making a living.

That is only a short little segment of a tirade where our author decides to rant and insult her audience.  Always a smooth move.  You know, if you are this insecure and thin skinned, maybe you should find another line of work.  But, as I said, page #2. Hasn’t slowed down a bit by #4:

Because, that’s the way the business works in some New York venues. Only the highest paid authors won’t have their manuscripts ripped apart by some editors. As to my bad author behavior…I’m getting a lot of email telling me to stand my ground…from people who ARE buying my books.

Lady, an editor “ripping apart” your manuscript is a sign you have a sucktastic editor.  And, if your fans told you to jump off a bridge. . . (more…)

By S Andrew Swann, ago

Narrowcasting

The advent of the internet has meant the arrival of all sorts of programming serving niches that were, until now, ill-served by the mainstream media. For instance, a series of “let’s put random crap in a microwave and see what happens?” Then there’re Lovcraftian talk shows: And the Sith Lords Read more…

By S Andrew Swann, ago