Nathan Bransford - The Forums

Author says he wrote vicious reviews, not his wife
By Gregory Katz, Associated Press Writer
LONDON – There may be some marital tension in the home of Orlando Figes, a celebrated author and Russian scholar embroiled in a scandal involving vicious reviews posted on Amazon's website. The anonymous reviews attacked books written by Figes' rivals, and last week his wife, law professor Stephanie Palmer, said she was responsible. But now Figes admits he actually wrote the nasty putdowns, which built up his reputation at other authors' expense.

Read the rest of the article at:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100423/ap_ ... us_reviews

Horrible, plus this guy was willing to dump it on his wife. One more reason for Amazon to put some serious restrictions on their reviews.

I am not surprised one little bit.

Amazon's review system needs a serious overhaul.

It drives me crazy when I see people give authors one star ratings just because they wrote in first instead of third person! Sorry, I know that isn't what this post is about really...

Anyway, I agree. Amazon needs to do damage control for authors. They need to seriously change how reviews are done, because as it is now...they only hurt an authors sales.

It's sort of like a reverse "American Idol" syndrome. When you give people carte blanche to say what they want, it is typically the idiots and the bitterest among us who use it to their full advantage... and they'll do it again, and again, and again.

Not to say that there aren't some legit book reviews on Amazon -- but more often than not, the people who are going to take the time to post a review are the ones who have some ax to grind, or ulterior agenda.