This is the first time in forever that every aspect of my life has required work within a one-week. I have to address short term career goals (Get paid) long term career goals (possibly going back to school) while working on projects for The Georgia Voice, Mwangaza Children’s Foundation and polishing up one of the unpublished novels for an approaching contest. Also, it would be awesome I wen for a run four to five times this week.
A lot of my life I’ve sort of taken what’s in front of me, I’ve stayed in bad jobs, gotten sidetracked, gotten depressed, and now I’m in a situation where I have to start making things happen; maybe its time to try something new.
Monday, January 2, 2012
Wednesday, November 9, 2011
Failing as a Man
By now you’ve heard about the sexual molestation controversy that has engulfed Penn State and its football program. A lot of people are calling for the head coach Joe Paterno to resign for his part in the scandal, and in doing so are overlooking perhaps the greater evil.
I read the Grand Jury report on the Jerry Sandusky indictment because I found the news media’s use of euphemisms and the distanced way they were talking about the most egregious Sandusky alleged violation, and what I read in the indictment was far more chilling than what’s been reported.
According to his testimony in front of the Grand Jury Penn State Wide Receiver Coach Mike McQuery was a graduate assistant with the football program in 2002 and walked in on Sandusky anally raping a 10-year-old boy in the football locker room. Again the full truth hasn’t come out yet, but according to the report, McQuery saw Sandusky with the boy pinned up against the wall, both Sandusky and the boy saw McQuery and McQuery walked away.
Rather than stopping the sexual assault then and there McQuery turned and walked away and went back to his office. I can’t imagine being this boy and being violated in such a manor and have adult, a large, former football player in his 20s, walk in and be in a position to stop it only to have him walk away. I would think that would be like being raped by a second person.
McQuery goes back to his office, calls his father. His father -- instead of telling him that he has clear and unflinching moral duty to call the police -- tells him to wait until the morning and talk to the head coach. McQuery follows that advice, is told that information is passed along, but it wasn’t passed along to the police.
I understand that straight guys are intentionally a squeamish lot, and what McQuery saw had to be shocking to him, but he walked away from a rape in progress and didn’t do anything. Yes, Joe Paterno failed in his moral obligation to do more than just kick it up to his supervisor. but McQuery failed as a man. How can you see a child in that much pain and walk away? How does it not haunt you ever night? How does it not drive you to see justice done?
If that wasn’t bad enough McQuery stayed with been state and has moved up the ladder to wide receiver coach and a recruiting coordinator. At best he was being incredibly naive, and worst his position is payoff for his years of silence.
I’m not saying that McQuery was offered a job for not going to the police about Sandusky, but it seems like its s question the media should be asking and they’re not. So far the media coverage of McQuery’s role in the scandal has been mostly positive. USA Today interviewed McQuery’s father who said how hard it’s been for his son. The Pittsburg Post Gazette wrote a story about how awesome and what a “Take Charge” kinda guy McQuery is. Few people are calling on him to resign
At best, McQuery knew Sandusky was a child rapist, knew he had never been to jail, knew he had never spoken to the police which meant there was no police investigation, and decided to stay. At best McQuery is a man who knew what he saw, knew his college swept it under the rug and decided to stay. At worst McQuery is a man who accepted a job given to him for not embarrassing the college. Either way McQuery shouldn’t be allowed around children ever again.
As a former journalist who can’t find work in his chosen profession I understand how painful it is to find a new profession but Mike McQuery saw a boy being raped and he called his Dad. He didn’t act to stop the rape, he didn’t call the police, he didn’t confront Sandusky, didn’t push for an investigation, he called his dad, then he took a job with the school. A coach’s first responsibility is to protect his players, and if Mike McQuery can’t protect a 10-year-old boy during his darkest hour, Mike McQuery doesn’t deserve to ever walk a sideline again.
I read the Grand Jury report on the Jerry Sandusky indictment because I found the news media’s use of euphemisms and the distanced way they were talking about the most egregious Sandusky alleged violation, and what I read in the indictment was far more chilling than what’s been reported.
According to his testimony in front of the Grand Jury Penn State Wide Receiver Coach Mike McQuery was a graduate assistant with the football program in 2002 and walked in on Sandusky anally raping a 10-year-old boy in the football locker room. Again the full truth hasn’t come out yet, but according to the report, McQuery saw Sandusky with the boy pinned up against the wall, both Sandusky and the boy saw McQuery and McQuery walked away.
Rather than stopping the sexual assault then and there McQuery turned and walked away and went back to his office. I can’t imagine being this boy and being violated in such a manor and have adult, a large, former football player in his 20s, walk in and be in a position to stop it only to have him walk away. I would think that would be like being raped by a second person.
McQuery goes back to his office, calls his father. His father -- instead of telling him that he has clear and unflinching moral duty to call the police -- tells him to wait until the morning and talk to the head coach. McQuery follows that advice, is told that information is passed along, but it wasn’t passed along to the police.
I understand that straight guys are intentionally a squeamish lot, and what McQuery saw had to be shocking to him, but he walked away from a rape in progress and didn’t do anything. Yes, Joe Paterno failed in his moral obligation to do more than just kick it up to his supervisor. but McQuery failed as a man. How can you see a child in that much pain and walk away? How does it not haunt you ever night? How does it not drive you to see justice done?
If that wasn’t bad enough McQuery stayed with been state and has moved up the ladder to wide receiver coach and a recruiting coordinator. At best he was being incredibly naive, and worst his position is payoff for his years of silence.
I’m not saying that McQuery was offered a job for not going to the police about Sandusky, but it seems like its s question the media should be asking and they’re not. So far the media coverage of McQuery’s role in the scandal has been mostly positive. USA Today interviewed McQuery’s father who said how hard it’s been for his son. The Pittsburg Post Gazette wrote a story about how awesome and what a “Take Charge” kinda guy McQuery is. Few people are calling on him to resign
At best, McQuery knew Sandusky was a child rapist, knew he had never been to jail, knew he had never spoken to the police which meant there was no police investigation, and decided to stay. At best McQuery is a man who knew what he saw, knew his college swept it under the rug and decided to stay. At worst McQuery is a man who accepted a job given to him for not embarrassing the college. Either way McQuery shouldn’t be allowed around children ever again.
As a former journalist who can’t find work in his chosen profession I understand how painful it is to find a new profession but Mike McQuery saw a boy being raped and he called his Dad. He didn’t act to stop the rape, he didn’t call the police, he didn’t confront Sandusky, didn’t push for an investigation, he called his dad, then he took a job with the school. A coach’s first responsibility is to protect his players, and if Mike McQuery can’t protect a 10-year-old boy during his darkest hour, Mike McQuery doesn’t deserve to ever walk a sideline again.
Friday, October 21, 2011
When two jobs collide
Every so often in life you get paid to do things that you would actually pay good money to do. So, Thursday I got to interview Gregory Maguire.
He’s a massive best selling author, the “Wicked” series has sold over 7.5 million books and spawned a musical based that has netted over a $1 billion, Maguire speaks in paragraphs while dropping words I haven’t heard since my literary criticism classes. He’s a literary hero of mine, and for an aspiring novelist to interview someone who essentially dominates a close sub-genre, and also is an openly gay man… yeah, it’s cool.
But because he’s so successful I didn’t so much have my choice of time and the only time that would fit our schedule that was available was 2:30 p.m. on Thursday… no problem I was only working a day shift and if you’re not in a closing section it’s rare that you’ll be in the restaurant after 2 p.m. I should have plenty of time to finish the day job, run home and interview Gregory Maguire and everything would be smooth… sure… plans, good, yep, best laid plans and all that.
One reason most servers don’t like working lunch is because you only get one turn, it comes in at 12:30 and is done by 1:45. Fast, professional, short, and too the point; you rarely, rarely, get a second full turn during a day shift, Thursday was one of them. Thursday was in fact the first lunch shift at the Midtown restaurant I actually two full turns at lunch. Thursday was the first time I had scheduled an interview shortly after a lunch shift.
As it got to be one 1:30 I started timing everything. It started out at 55 minutes, my last table got their lunch at with 45 minutes left, finished their sandwiches with 31 minutes left and then ordered desert with 25 minutes left. The left the restaurant at 2:28, and I placed my call at 2:30.
I had brought my laptop “Just in case” and I set up in the top corner of the restaurant and called Massachusetts one minute after my last table had left the building. I had interviewed him the last time he swung through town and at one point he asked me, “So how’s the whole journalism thing going?”
“Great, great,” I answered as a party downstairs began to sing happy birthday. “Everything is fine.”
You can read the story I’ll eventually write in next Friday’s copy of the Georgia Voice.
Laura, if you’re reading this you still have to pay me.
Thursday, October 20, 2011
Real Steel = Real Deal
Dakota Goyo should probably get an Oscar nomination for his work in Real Steel, but I doubt it will happen.
Real Steel is one of those projects that show just how far good writing, honest acting and good director can elevate a fairly basic and corny idea. I really want to know why Hugh Jackman signed on to do this movie after a pitch had to include, “There’s this cute kid who dances with a massive robot, but it’s basically a remake of Rocky.”
After watching “Last Air Bender” fail largely because it placed the weight of a movie upon a 12-year-old boy I was ready for Real Steel to fail because kid actors are hit or miss, but honestly the kid carries the movie well. Jackman and Lost alumus Evangeline Lilly turn in solid jobs but the kid does most of the heavy lifting in the film and does it with ease; Apparently Goyo is a natural.
He told the Wall Street Journal, “I never went to school for acting, it just comes to me. I never practice. I read the script, I’ll memorize it. I don’t even practice the acting I’ll just do it the day and it will just come to me. I read the script about two times before I even start the movie about a month before. At least two times. Every night I’d read like a half an hour of the script and usually I’d have it in the back of my head.”
That’s crazy.
Admittedly I studied acting just as a way to be a better writer, but to do what he did in a film isn’t easy. Lots of adults can’t hack it, Jennifer Lopez I’m looking in your direction, but the kid did a great job.
When I was in college the way I was taught to review fiction wasn’t if I liked it or not, but if the creators accomplished what they set out to do. Honestly, in some regards Real Steel is a perfect movie. They set out to make a fun, entertaining film that pays homage to Rocky, and they did that. The special effects are on par with Transformers, the acting is solid and the it never felt like I had seen this movie before. It was inventive and fun, which can’t be said for a lot of movies.
This is the sort of success the genre needs, good, modest budget films that turn a profit.
Real Steel is one of those projects that show just how far good writing, honest acting and good director can elevate a fairly basic and corny idea. I really want to know why Hugh Jackman signed on to do this movie after a pitch had to include, “There’s this cute kid who dances with a massive robot, but it’s basically a remake of Rocky.”
After watching “Last Air Bender” fail largely because it placed the weight of a movie upon a 12-year-old boy I was ready for Real Steel to fail because kid actors are hit or miss, but honestly the kid carries the movie well. Jackman and Lost alumus Evangeline Lilly turn in solid jobs but the kid does most of the heavy lifting in the film and does it with ease; Apparently Goyo is a natural.
He told the Wall Street Journal, “I never went to school for acting, it just comes to me. I never practice. I read the script, I’ll memorize it. I don’t even practice the acting I’ll just do it the day and it will just come to me. I read the script about two times before I even start the movie about a month before. At least two times. Every night I’d read like a half an hour of the script and usually I’d have it in the back of my head.”
That’s crazy.
Admittedly I studied acting just as a way to be a better writer, but to do what he did in a film isn’t easy. Lots of adults can’t hack it, Jennifer Lopez I’m looking in your direction, but the kid did a great job.
When I was in college the way I was taught to review fiction wasn’t if I liked it or not, but if the creators accomplished what they set out to do. Honestly, in some regards Real Steel is a perfect movie. They set out to make a fun, entertaining film that pays homage to Rocky, and they did that. The special effects are on par with Transformers, the acting is solid and the it never felt like I had seen this movie before. It was inventive and fun, which can’t be said for a lot of movies.
This is the sort of success the genre needs, good, modest budget films that turn a profit.
Tuesday, October 18, 2011
Young Earth, Dying Earth, still boring
I want Terra Nova to succeed, I really do, but I don’t think it deserves to.
I’m a fan of the genre, and Sci-fi/fantasy needs a big budget hit on network television, but it’s not going to be Terra Nova.
The ratings for Terra Nova have it on the bubble, it might make it to a second season, but it’s not going to have an epic run, and honestly it doesn’t’ deserve it. Shows like Lost and Battlestar Galactica moved the genre forward while being some of the most thought provoking material on television, Terra Nova is a tepid, backward leaning piece of mildly non-boring fluff.
I don’t care for the concept much, it’s about humanity traveling back to the Jurassic age in order to escape a dying earth. Terra Nova is one part low-tension family drama and one part monster of the week, and sadly neither one is compelling.
I get it; it’s been a long time since I lived with my family, so I’m not the core audience for the family drama half, but it still doesn’t work. Jason O’Mera (From the brilliant but cancelled American adaptation of “Life on Mars”) and Shelly Con play the mom and dad that make up the core of the family. Besides the fact the actors are probably 10 years younger than then their characters, the entire family is unremarkable. They’re a family with no secrets, no drama, no tension and absolutely nothing interesting about them.
The only thing remotely interesting is that the Shannon Family is that they somehow get caught up in these weekly adventures. Oddly, no one in this colony finds it at all remarkable that this new family is at the center of all these massively improbable events. The plot complications are pretty standard sci-fi stuff, the sort of plots you’d expect to see on Star Trek, not the good plots, the plots that were so bad at the end they almost killed off one of the longest live action franchises in history.
It's not that there isn't a place for kid-safe, low tension family dramas, there is a place for those shows, it's called ABC Family. As a fan, and hopeful author in the genre, I feel like the genre carries around a lot of baggage from network sci-fi. Terra Nova isn't "About" anything. Battlestar Galactica was "About" questioning our society in a post 9-11 world. Lost questioned life, death and second chances. Terra Nova has the Hollywood mandatory green themes, but beyond it doesn't examine society, doesn't push any sort of agenda, doesn't make a statement.
Sci-Fi needs a hit on broadcast television; Game of Thrones, Trublood, and Walking Dead have all done well on cable, so it’s time for Sci-Fi to hold up its end of the genre. It needs a hit, but thankfully it doesn’t look like Terra Nova will be that hit.
I’m a fan of the genre, and Sci-fi/fantasy needs a big budget hit on network television, but it’s not going to be Terra Nova.
The ratings for Terra Nova have it on the bubble, it might make it to a second season, but it’s not going to have an epic run, and honestly it doesn’t’ deserve it. Shows like Lost and Battlestar Galactica moved the genre forward while being some of the most thought provoking material on television, Terra Nova is a tepid, backward leaning piece of mildly non-boring fluff.
I don’t care for the concept much, it’s about humanity traveling back to the Jurassic age in order to escape a dying earth. Terra Nova is one part low-tension family drama and one part monster of the week, and sadly neither one is compelling.
I get it; it’s been a long time since I lived with my family, so I’m not the core audience for the family drama half, but it still doesn’t work. Jason O’Mera (From the brilliant but cancelled American adaptation of “Life on Mars”) and Shelly Con play the mom and dad that make up the core of the family. Besides the fact the actors are probably 10 years younger than then their characters, the entire family is unremarkable. They’re a family with no secrets, no drama, no tension and absolutely nothing interesting about them.
The only thing remotely interesting is that the Shannon Family is that they somehow get caught up in these weekly adventures. Oddly, no one in this colony finds it at all remarkable that this new family is at the center of all these massively improbable events. The plot complications are pretty standard sci-fi stuff, the sort of plots you’d expect to see on Star Trek, not the good plots, the plots that were so bad at the end they almost killed off one of the longest live action franchises in history.
It's not that there isn't a place for kid-safe, low tension family dramas, there is a place for those shows, it's called ABC Family. As a fan, and hopeful author in the genre, I feel like the genre carries around a lot of baggage from network sci-fi. Terra Nova isn't "About" anything. Battlestar Galactica was "About" questioning our society in a post 9-11 world. Lost questioned life, death and second chances. Terra Nova has the Hollywood mandatory green themes, but beyond it doesn't examine society, doesn't push any sort of agenda, doesn't make a statement.
Sci-Fi needs a hit on broadcast television; Game of Thrones, Trublood, and Walking Dead have all done well on cable, so it’s time for Sci-Fi to hold up its end of the genre. It needs a hit, but thankfully it doesn’t look like Terra Nova will be that hit.
Monday, October 10, 2011
Sock Puppets and alleged scams
So when I saw the headline, “Marietta science fiction author charged with multi-million-dollar scam,” I thought, “Which one of my friends got arrested for being a part of which Nigerian scam.”
As it turns out it wasn’t any of my friends, it was a guy named Mitchell Gross, who writes under the name, “Mitchell Graham.” Gross allegedly defrauded close to $3 million from at least one woman.
So this got me thinking… it wasn’t one of my friends, but I wanted to see what he wrote, and in doing so probably confirmed something I suspected about Amazon reviews for a long time; many of them are fake, especially about authors with low sales.
I’m not saying that Mitchell Gross is a con man who wrote his own reviews on Amazon, I’m not saying that at all; what I am saying is that Mitchell Graham seems to be the beneficiary of readers who never wrote an Amazon review before, or after, but created accounts to specifically rave about Mitchell Graham’ fantasy trilogy, and his two legal thrillers.
Of the 73 reviews the first book in the series received, 42 of them are five-star reviews, of the 51 five or four star reviews, 34 are from reviewers who have only published one review on Amazon.com, four are from anonymous posters that Amazon certified did actually by the book, and two of the reviewers have only posted reviews on other Mitchell Graham books. Of the five star reviews all of which have at least 15 people saying the review was helpful, while the bad reviews only have two or three people saying whether it was helpful or not.
Not only do these reviewers rave, a word that is repeated several times in reviews, they take issues with reviews.
“One thing I felt the author did an excellent job with was the dialogue between the characters. The speech didn't sound stilted or forced. It was more like people talking to one another.”
There’s also a number of reviewers who only picked up this book because “so many people” were talking about it. One reviewer mentions their professor assigned it as reading, the professor shows up in a review for a later book, and more than one mentioned that the bookstore clerks recommended it, or that their book club read it, or “I heard so much about this book and so many people were reading it, I finally caved in.”
I’m not saying that is a lie, but I’m an aspiring SF&F writer and I have a lot of friends, and one brother, who are deep into the genre, and none of them have ever mentioned Mitchell Graham. If there was considerable buzz about this trilogy I more than likely would have heard about it.
So, for comparison sake, I decided to look at two newer authors in the genre I’ve actually heard other people talk about, China Mieville and Mike Shevdon. Both are smart new fantasy authors with solid selling, but not massively selling, books.
Shevdon’s first book had 42 total reviews, I sampled the ten latest reviews, of which only two are left by reviewers who only read his book. Mieville, the most established and successful of the three authors, had 352 reviews. Of his ten most recent only two were left by reviewers who only wrote one review, and both them were slamming the book.
Honestly, I’m more prone to believe Shevdon and Mieville’s Amazon reviews. Both have big time agents, significant publishing deals and Mieville is a college professor, and if he were posting fraudulent reviews of his own work it would endanger his day job. It seems improbable to me that authors of self-published e-books would have higher reviews, and a higher percentage of one-review reviewers, than two of the strongest new names in the genre.
I kept searching. I looked through Amazon for some self-published e-books and checked out the reviews on some of those. I found “Warriors in the Mist: A Dark Medieval Fantasy” by Susan Kalior, which has received 19 reviews to date in a curious distribution. Eight of the reviewers gave the story zero to three stars while 11 reviewers gave the story five stars.
Of the five star reviews a number of them were suspect. I’m not saying Ms Kalior wrote them, but it potentially illustrates another problem with Amazon reviews: friends and family leaving reviews. Of Ms. Kalior’s 11 five-star reviews one was written by “Mark Kalior,” who more than likely is related to her, and three other five star reviews came from reviewers who written numerous reviews of Ms. Kalior’s other self-published books and nothing else, two of whom share the same last name. Of the other positive seven reviews, three are from reviewers who only created accounts to rave about Ms. Kalior’s book, and at least two who wrote one-star reviews of a competitor of hers.
What’s funny is that according to Amazon people who bought Ms. Kalior’s book also bought the incredibly lengthy titled “Xoe: or Vampires, and Werewolves, and Demons, Oh My! The First Novel in the Xoe Meyers Series,” self published by Sara Roethle. What I find interesting about that is that the two people with the same last name who left glowing reviews about Ms Kalior’s book just so happen to have the last name Roethle. It’s an uncommon name, and it’s unfair to say that they’re related to Sara Roethle based on last name alone, so I won’t actually say that. Even if Sara C. Roethle is the Karolynn Roethle who left glowing reviews about all six of Ms Kalior’s self published work there’s nothing illegal, or even massively unethical about it. It’s friends doing other friends a favor, there’s nothing wrong about it technically speaking, but it is misleading, and I doubt it’s an honest review. If you’re going to review a friend’s book, you should say that in the review.
Sock puppets is an internet term for fake accounts created by one person in order to advance whatever it is they’re selling/pushing. It’s far more common than what people think. For example, the self published novel “Eleganta : A novel of Fairykind” had 28 reviews, which are split between rave reviews and readers saying the book is almost unreadable due to massive grammar problems. Of the 18 five star reviews six came from one review people, most of whom were talking about how they couldn’t put it down and were anxiously awaiting a the next book. Many of the five-star reviews had similar grammar problems.
People who have posted reviews that seem real seem split between people who picked them up because of the “reviews,” and those who realize these reviews are mostly crap. As one of the readers of “Eleganta” wrote, “This reads like a first draft from a very young writer without fully developed self-critical facilities…. On the other hand, the publicist for this is doing an incredible job.”
The problem is that the slush pile is coming for you. The advocates for self-published e-books are looking to crowd sourcing to cut the wheat from the chaff, but that only works so long as you don’t flood the field with sock puppets. People are going to game online systems to try and get their crappy book read. (I haven’t read any of the books mentioned here so I don’t know if they’re crappy or not. I’m not saying their crappy, or that their reviews are fake. It could be that they’re just the beneficiary of a lot of people who are moved to write one review and then never review again; it’s implausible, but possible I suppose.) No, it doesn’t mean we’ll see crappy books getting more attention than what they deserve, it means good books will get lost in the noise of manufactured hype.
Think about it, Mike Shevdon is a real author, with a big time agent and big publishing house, yet his book has less reviews on Amazon than a book written by an obscure author who is now charged with running a $3 million fraud ring. If you’re relying on Amazon reviews for book recommendations the odds are actually greater you’ll come across “The Fifth Ring,” than “Sixty-One Nails.”
As e-publishing becomes more popular the problems are only going to get worse. Authors are trying to game the system by writing fake reviews themselves or getting family and friends -- a number of their friends are self-publishers themselves so their sock puppets have mutually beneficial relationships -- to do it for them. There are marking services paid to leave realistic sounding reviews from accounts with long, believable histories of reviews to inflate ratings of books and create a false buzz about non-buzz worthy projects. As more bad books, and most of them are bad, are dropped onto Kindles and e-readers the ever increasing drone of false buzz will get so loud it will be that much harder to find the worthwhile reads in a sea of slush.
As it turns out it wasn’t any of my friends, it was a guy named Mitchell Gross, who writes under the name, “Mitchell Graham.” Gross allegedly defrauded close to $3 million from at least one woman.
So this got me thinking… it wasn’t one of my friends, but I wanted to see what he wrote, and in doing so probably confirmed something I suspected about Amazon reviews for a long time; many of them are fake, especially about authors with low sales.
I’m not saying that Mitchell Gross is a con man who wrote his own reviews on Amazon, I’m not saying that at all; what I am saying is that Mitchell Graham seems to be the beneficiary of readers who never wrote an Amazon review before, or after, but created accounts to specifically rave about Mitchell Graham’ fantasy trilogy, and his two legal thrillers.
Of the 73 reviews the first book in the series received, 42 of them are five-star reviews, of the 51 five or four star reviews, 34 are from reviewers who have only published one review on Amazon.com, four are from anonymous posters that Amazon certified did actually by the book, and two of the reviewers have only posted reviews on other Mitchell Graham books. Of the five star reviews all of which have at least 15 people saying the review was helpful, while the bad reviews only have two or three people saying whether it was helpful or not.
Not only do these reviewers rave, a word that is repeated several times in reviews, they take issues with reviews.
“One thing I felt the author did an excellent job with was the dialogue between the characters. The speech didn't sound stilted or forced. It was more like people talking to one another.”
There’s also a number of reviewers who only picked up this book because “so many people” were talking about it. One reviewer mentions their professor assigned it as reading, the professor shows up in a review for a later book, and more than one mentioned that the bookstore clerks recommended it, or that their book club read it, or “I heard so much about this book and so many people were reading it, I finally caved in.”
I’m not saying that is a lie, but I’m an aspiring SF&F writer and I have a lot of friends, and one brother, who are deep into the genre, and none of them have ever mentioned Mitchell Graham. If there was considerable buzz about this trilogy I more than likely would have heard about it.
So, for comparison sake, I decided to look at two newer authors in the genre I’ve actually heard other people talk about, China Mieville and Mike Shevdon. Both are smart new fantasy authors with solid selling, but not massively selling, books.
Shevdon’s first book had 42 total reviews, I sampled the ten latest reviews, of which only two are left by reviewers who only read his book. Mieville, the most established and successful of the three authors, had 352 reviews. Of his ten most recent only two were left by reviewers who only wrote one review, and both them were slamming the book.
Honestly, I’m more prone to believe Shevdon and Mieville’s Amazon reviews. Both have big time agents, significant publishing deals and Mieville is a college professor, and if he were posting fraudulent reviews of his own work it would endanger his day job. It seems improbable to me that authors of self-published e-books would have higher reviews, and a higher percentage of one-review reviewers, than two of the strongest new names in the genre.
I kept searching. I looked through Amazon for some self-published e-books and checked out the reviews on some of those. I found “Warriors in the Mist: A Dark Medieval Fantasy” by Susan Kalior, which has received 19 reviews to date in a curious distribution. Eight of the reviewers gave the story zero to three stars while 11 reviewers gave the story five stars.
Of the five star reviews a number of them were suspect. I’m not saying Ms Kalior wrote them, but it potentially illustrates another problem with Amazon reviews: friends and family leaving reviews. Of Ms. Kalior’s 11 five-star reviews one was written by “Mark Kalior,” who more than likely is related to her, and three other five star reviews came from reviewers who written numerous reviews of Ms. Kalior’s other self-published books and nothing else, two of whom share the same last name. Of the other positive seven reviews, three are from reviewers who only created accounts to rave about Ms. Kalior’s book, and at least two who wrote one-star reviews of a competitor of hers.
What’s funny is that according to Amazon people who bought Ms. Kalior’s book also bought the incredibly lengthy titled “Xoe: or Vampires, and Werewolves, and Demons, Oh My! The First Novel in the Xoe Meyers Series,” self published by Sara Roethle. What I find interesting about that is that the two people with the same last name who left glowing reviews about Ms Kalior’s book just so happen to have the last name Roethle. It’s an uncommon name, and it’s unfair to say that they’re related to Sara Roethle based on last name alone, so I won’t actually say that. Even if Sara C. Roethle is the Karolynn Roethle who left glowing reviews about all six of Ms Kalior’s self published work there’s nothing illegal, or even massively unethical about it. It’s friends doing other friends a favor, there’s nothing wrong about it technically speaking, but it is misleading, and I doubt it’s an honest review. If you’re going to review a friend’s book, you should say that in the review.
Sock puppets is an internet term for fake accounts created by one person in order to advance whatever it is they’re selling/pushing. It’s far more common than what people think. For example, the self published novel “Eleganta : A novel of Fairykind” had 28 reviews, which are split between rave reviews and readers saying the book is almost unreadable due to massive grammar problems. Of the 18 five star reviews six came from one review people, most of whom were talking about how they couldn’t put it down and were anxiously awaiting a the next book. Many of the five-star reviews had similar grammar problems.
People who have posted reviews that seem real seem split between people who picked them up because of the “reviews,” and those who realize these reviews are mostly crap. As one of the readers of “Eleganta” wrote, “This reads like a first draft from a very young writer without fully developed self-critical facilities…. On the other hand, the publicist for this is doing an incredible job.”
The problem is that the slush pile is coming for you. The advocates for self-published e-books are looking to crowd sourcing to cut the wheat from the chaff, but that only works so long as you don’t flood the field with sock puppets. People are going to game online systems to try and get their crappy book read. (I haven’t read any of the books mentioned here so I don’t know if they’re crappy or not. I’m not saying their crappy, or that their reviews are fake. It could be that they’re just the beneficiary of a lot of people who are moved to write one review and then never review again; it’s implausible, but possible I suppose.) No, it doesn’t mean we’ll see crappy books getting more attention than what they deserve, it means good books will get lost in the noise of manufactured hype.
Think about it, Mike Shevdon is a real author, with a big time agent and big publishing house, yet his book has less reviews on Amazon than a book written by an obscure author who is now charged with running a $3 million fraud ring. If you’re relying on Amazon reviews for book recommendations the odds are actually greater you’ll come across “The Fifth Ring,” than “Sixty-One Nails.”
As e-publishing becomes more popular the problems are only going to get worse. Authors are trying to game the system by writing fake reviews themselves or getting family and friends -- a number of their friends are self-publishers themselves so their sock puppets have mutually beneficial relationships -- to do it for them. There are marking services paid to leave realistic sounding reviews from accounts with long, believable histories of reviews to inflate ratings of books and create a false buzz about non-buzz worthy projects. As more bad books, and most of them are bad, are dropped onto Kindles and e-readers the ever increasing drone of false buzz will get so loud it will be that much harder to find the worthwhile reads in a sea of slush.
Monday, October 3, 2011
Still scared
No matter how old you get, and how mentally feeble your parents become, you always fear breaking something of theirs.
“You broke the parent’s garage door opener?” My brother accused me of between bursts of laughter.
“Can we just discuss the chain of events before we start assigning blame?” I begged. “I just pressed the button.”
Breaking things in the parents’ house is a big deal, because you have to deal with Mom. We are still hearing to this day about a regrettable incident of collateral damage that happened when I was like six. Hours after my parents returned from their cross-continental trek to Alaska Mom mentioned this pitcher and the matching basin it used to have until my brother broke it.
Seriously, I don’t think she noticed but I totally rolled my eyes at that moment.
First of all, we didn’t break the basin. Our G.I Joes were on a secret mission to break into a terrorist headquarters, and had to stealthily repel from the built-in book case to by the stove the sofa. Snake Eyes tied part of his repelling apparatus to this antique iron. It was the kind that had to be heated in a fire and then used while massively hot.
So during the most sensitive part of Snake Eyes’ descent the iron lost its grip, plummeted to the counter, where the pitcher and basin sat, crushing about one-eight of the basin, which apparently also was an antique and had been passed down on my mother’s side of the family.
Mom heard the crash, came in and started yelling, completely oblivious to the fact that she was compromising Snake Eyes’ mission. Had Snake Eyes completed his mission who knows what sort of sensitive intel he could have discovered…. There you have it people, my mother is responsible for 9-11. Had her iron been more firmly secured to the bookcase when I was six, in the 80s, 9-11 would not have happened.
So yeah, I tried to fix the parent’s garage door opener, but not so much. My story is that it was having trouble reaching the ground, so I thought I’d take it off the chain and just let it cycle. This was a mistake.
Instead of stopping it slammed into the opener with enough force to open the housing and send two pieces spinning to the ground. I was only able to find one. So after a few frantic calls to the brother, and the former roommate/adoptive brother -- who didn’t pick up his cell phone because he was “Working” – I managed to secure the garage door and left the mess for the parents… who surprisingly were cool with it.
“You broke the parent’s garage door opener?” My brother accused me of between bursts of laughter.
“Can we just discuss the chain of events before we start assigning blame?” I begged. “I just pressed the button.”
Breaking things in the parents’ house is a big deal, because you have to deal with Mom. We are still hearing to this day about a regrettable incident of collateral damage that happened when I was like six. Hours after my parents returned from their cross-continental trek to Alaska Mom mentioned this pitcher and the matching basin it used to have until my brother broke it.
Seriously, I don’t think she noticed but I totally rolled my eyes at that moment.
First of all, we didn’t break the basin. Our G.I Joes were on a secret mission to break into a terrorist headquarters, and had to stealthily repel from the built-in book case to by the stove the sofa. Snake Eyes tied part of his repelling apparatus to this antique iron. It was the kind that had to be heated in a fire and then used while massively hot.
So during the most sensitive part of Snake Eyes’ descent the iron lost its grip, plummeted to the counter, where the pitcher and basin sat, crushing about one-eight of the basin, which apparently also was an antique and had been passed down on my mother’s side of the family.
Mom heard the crash, came in and started yelling, completely oblivious to the fact that she was compromising Snake Eyes’ mission. Had Snake Eyes completed his mission who knows what sort of sensitive intel he could have discovered…. There you have it people, my mother is responsible for 9-11. Had her iron been more firmly secured to the bookcase when I was six, in the 80s, 9-11 would not have happened.
So yeah, I tried to fix the parent’s garage door opener, but not so much. My story is that it was having trouble reaching the ground, so I thought I’d take it off the chain and just let it cycle. This was a mistake.
Instead of stopping it slammed into the opener with enough force to open the housing and send two pieces spinning to the ground. I was only able to find one. So after a few frantic calls to the brother, and the former roommate/adoptive brother -- who didn’t pick up his cell phone because he was “Working” – I managed to secure the garage door and left the mess for the parents… who surprisingly were cool with it.
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