Friends Responding To Amazon Reviews

To be fair, the author may not have asked his friend

I have a couple of well meaning friends who I have banned from commenting. Because they would do exactly that, berate a reviewer and while they don't, it;s not because they don't want to - they want to defend me to the hilt. I've tried to explain how detrimental this would look but.. it's best just to tell them I'll smack 'em one if they do

Friends sometimes do things for the right reasons, but with the wrong results.

Yeah, what Idiots said. Sometimes really good and well-meaning but misguided friends take it upon themselves to defend authors, and don't actually mention to said authors that they're going to defend them, until they have actually done so.

These well-meaning friends further might not be well-versed in netiquette, and therefore unaware of the Golden Rule of "Never respond to reviews."

Sadly, the casual reader does not understand that the well-meaning friends acted without the author's knowledge, and therefore are not speaking on behalf of the author, and therefore are not in fact sock puppets, mean grrls, trolls, or any of the things the responders are invariably labeled. And no amount of protestation on the part of the author will sway the readers, because that's "interfering" or "responding to reviews."

When it's actually responding to responders who responded to responders of reviews, but who's keeping track?

Sigh.

(personal experience may or may not have anything to do with my response about responders responding to responders who have responded to a review)

Or how about the friends/fans who vote-bomb a review with unhelpful votes when they disagree with the reviewer's opinion, however well-stated? Gotta love that.

Personally I can't hold that against the author. I know my friends would do the same whether I wanted them to or not.

Darkshore said:

Personally I can't hold that against the author. I know my friends would do the same whether I wanted them to or not.

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Yes, this is one of my concerns, that when I get a bad review, a friend might respond inappropriately. They might even mention they're my friend, which would be even worse.

Slightly off topic, but I also check reviews on , well, basically everything.

Particularly on books, though. I first note the star/chili pepper/etc rating, and then scroll through some reviews.

I really, truly hate it when writers so obviously have their first 5-10 reviews all glowy and perfect 5 stars or whatever, and then the rest are along the lines of "What is this crap?" Obvious throwing of the average with Uncle Bob's and Grandma's reviewing their work.

I saw an author with 17 five star reviews go after a person who gave her 1 star , and someone else came in and commented that the book had spelling errors (yes, plural) on the first page. She stopped promoting after that

It does reflect badly on the author, but sadly it's often out of their control.

I had a friend respond to a bad review once (not on Amazon) and I had to ask her to stop in case people thought I'd put her up to it.

As it happens, the reviewer was a fucking idiot and I wonder if he'd even read the book or comprehended what I was trying to do with the characters, but it still wouldn't have looked right if I'd allowed the back-and-forth to continue. Even though my friend was in the right, it couldn't have ended well.

One of my friends has reviewed both my books on Amazon.uk. I didn't ask her to and she didn't tell me. She does clearly state she's a friend. Other than that I can't get family or friends to buy my books never-mind review. I'm not even sure any of my family have an amazon account. So I presume I won't have to worry about them sticking up for me if I ever get bad reviews.

However, if I thought it was a possibility I would absolutely encourage them not to.

shaldna said:

It does reflect badly on the author, but sadly it's often out of their control.

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This. I've told my friends and family to never, ever respond to my reviews, but that doesn't mean they're always going to listen.

If I would respond to a review whether I knew the author or not (usually because the reviewer makes factual errors), I'll respond re a friend's book. Always ending up, of course, with a "And you're a poopy-pants baby." Gotta be classy.

Phaeal said:

Always ending up, of course, with a "And you're a poopy-pants baby." Gotta be classy.

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And you just set the bar!

gothicangel said:

Just been back on Amazon and found this comment . . . from the author:



Glad he doesn't need the reviewer buying his books, because I won't be buying any of his again either!

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OMG, I think I ran across that book some time back.

Made the same decision you did.

gothicangel said:

Just been back on Amazon and found this comment . . . from the author:



Glad he doesn't need the reviewer buying his books, because I won't be buying any of his again either!

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Classy.

He just lost another few potential readers.

I just had a quick peek at his other reviews and he seems to be in the habit of responding to anything negative said against him. Admittedly it's not all as hostile as the example above, but it's just not professional at all.

gothicangel said:

Just been back on Amazon and found this comment . . . from the author:



Glad he doesn't need the reviewer buying his books, because I won't be buying any of his again either!

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Ouch...apparently the author is one of "those" writers that make all of us look bad.