I Got Jumped on Amazon
You would think the book buying public were a civil bunch, who gently discuss their favourite books on an Amazon sci-fi forum. Well, there behind the open ended questions and the recommendations, lies a terrible beast, just itching to leap out at unsuspecting authors.
It was one fateful Saturday afternoon, I was preparing to leave to go and meet my fiance. I had just twenty minutes before I had to leave, when browsing on my new book page Super Red, only released on Friday, that I spotted in the list of forum titles, 'I need a new sci-fi book, any recommendations please?' I clicked the link and a woman was asking for a romantic sci-fi adventure, possibly post apocalyptic. I thought to myself, that describes my book, so I replied with a short message including a link to my book and a synopsis. Oh dear. What a mistake that was. I immediately got attacked from three members of the forum accusing me of 'spamming' their forum. My mistakes were many fold. Firstly I had failed to read the guidelines, which included authors not adding links or recommendations of their own work to a forum. Oops. My second mistake was that all these forum members were vicious pendants, who pick you up on the smallest errors of syntax, grammar and punctuation - in a forum!? I never stick to strict rules on English on anything other than prose or articles for magazines. The third mistake I made was to reply to their attacks. Admittedly I can be fiery and I was angry enough to reply to their unpleasant remarks, about me, my book and my post on their forum. The fourth mistake was not being able to access the Internet properly, as by this time I was away from my computer and using my Blackberry. The fifth mistake was not knowing how to delete my original post, which I figured out days later. Anyway you get the idea.
By the time I had finished a long drawn out argument with them, an argument which I couldn't win, simply because they wouldn't accept my apology, which made me even more angry, they ended up posting comments on my book page on the review section, despite having never read the book, which Amazon refused to take down. Nightmare. They also discovered that I had used the review section on a short story collection, I had a story in, to post a link to my other work. The publisher, my uncle btw, asked me to take it down. But I said to him in a private email that it wasn't a review - just a link - which is true, so I kept it there. The forum members lept on this and called me a self reviewer and a vanity publisher. No-one cares about vanity publishing anymore. It's all part of the citizen journalism stuff that everyone now talks about. Publish your own work and you may do so well that you get picked up by the industry and they take you to a new stage on your career. Its normal now. And I have never self reviewed in my life. I accused them of not knowing the difference between a review and a synopsis or link to other work. But because it was in the review section - you guessed it - they insisted it counted as a review.
The lesson is read the guidelines, don't get drawn into a row online, and never underestimate the nastiness of the online crowd. They hide behind anonymity, and they will say and do what they like, because of it. It was a miserable week. Lesson learned, but I am now stuck with this attack on me and my work on my book page, using the review section to do it, and Amazon refusing to take it down. It makes me feel like throwing in the towel.
It was one fateful Saturday afternoon, I was preparing to leave to go and meet my fiance. I had just twenty minutes before I had to leave, when browsing on my new book page Super Red, only released on Friday, that I spotted in the list of forum titles, 'I need a new sci-fi book, any recommendations please?' I clicked the link and a woman was asking for a romantic sci-fi adventure, possibly post apocalyptic. I thought to myself, that describes my book, so I replied with a short message including a link to my book and a synopsis. Oh dear. What a mistake that was. I immediately got attacked from three members of the forum accusing me of 'spamming' their forum. My mistakes were many fold. Firstly I had failed to read the guidelines, which included authors not adding links or recommendations of their own work to a forum. Oops. My second mistake was that all these forum members were vicious pendants, who pick you up on the smallest errors of syntax, grammar and punctuation - in a forum!? I never stick to strict rules on English on anything other than prose or articles for magazines. The third mistake I made was to reply to their attacks. Admittedly I can be fiery and I was angry enough to reply to their unpleasant remarks, about me, my book and my post on their forum. The fourth mistake was not being able to access the Internet properly, as by this time I was away from my computer and using my Blackberry. The fifth mistake was not knowing how to delete my original post, which I figured out days later. Anyway you get the idea.
By the time I had finished a long drawn out argument with them, an argument which I couldn't win, simply because they wouldn't accept my apology, which made me even more angry, they ended up posting comments on my book page on the review section, despite having never read the book, which Amazon refused to take down. Nightmare. They also discovered that I had used the review section on a short story collection, I had a story in, to post a link to my other work. The publisher, my uncle btw, asked me to take it down. But I said to him in a private email that it wasn't a review - just a link - which is true, so I kept it there. The forum members lept on this and called me a self reviewer and a vanity publisher. No-one cares about vanity publishing anymore. It's all part of the citizen journalism stuff that everyone now talks about. Publish your own work and you may do so well that you get picked up by the industry and they take you to a new stage on your career. Its normal now. And I have never self reviewed in my life. I accused them of not knowing the difference between a review and a synopsis or link to other work. But because it was in the review section - you guessed it - they insisted it counted as a review.
The lesson is read the guidelines, don't get drawn into a row online, and never underestimate the nastiness of the online crowd. They hide behind anonymity, and they will say and do what they like, because of it. It was a miserable week. Lesson learned, but I am now stuck with this attack on me and my work on my book page, using the review section to do it, and Amazon refusing to take it down. It makes me feel like throwing in the towel.
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