Liosse de Velishaf
Banned
Interesting discussion.
It reminds me of a situation from several years ago.
I was writing and editing for a web site that specialized in covering auto racing: NASCAR, Champ Car, Formula One, and Indy Car. After a while we began receiving book review requests from publishers and authors. The first 5 or 6 books that we received were very good and we wrote positive reviews because they deserved it.
Then one author sent us his book and it was terrible - a hack job, poorly researched, poorly written, disjointed, etc. The odd thing is that this book was published by what was then a fairly well established publishing house that specialized in sports books, yet the editors obviously hadn't paid much attention to this one, allowing it to be published when it should have gone straight to the trash.
Our editor that wrote the review tried to be kind and diplomatic, but he told the truth about the book.
The author was FURIOUS. "How dare you take my book for free and give it such a horrible review," he wrote back to us.
He obviously thought that just because we had agreed to review it, that it would be positive.
I see that entitlement a lot. I feel like part of it comes from how many authors are starting out as readers or unpublished in the online writing/reading community, and there's a lot of social pressure to be positive and supportive. And authors expect that to carry over into reviews. But it shouldn't.
I don't live on Amazon, and I've actually been dropping over at Goodreads more and Amazon less. I don't write reviews, but when I do give my opinion on a book, even one I loved, there's always something to say about what I think was wrong with it. I basically ignore any review that's all how wonderful the book was, because it's so very often not reliable.
Honestly, if I see no one-star or two-star reviews I start to get suspicious the author is running a scheme like the one described above.