There’s been a recent, nasty public row over RJ Ellory, a bestselling crime fiction writer, posting fake reviews on Amazon.com, including shill reviews of other authors’ books. With the potentially high returns enabled by cheating Amazon’s ranking and scoring system, the temptation has never been higher for authors and publishers to engage in review “turf wars”, or use “sock puppet” review accounts, or even buy reviews.

When these activities occur, they damage the public’s perception of Amazon, other booksellers and e-tailers, reviews themselves, publishing as a whole, and the author-reader relationship.

I don’t get it. I don’t get why an author would struggle to establish a genuine rapport with his or her readers, and other folks in the industry, and then risk a torpedo into that effort by engaging in unethical practices. Well, I guess I do get it — there’s a potential for huge cash gains — but I won’t do it. I don’t believe in clawing my way to the top by any means necessary. What’s the point of success if it rings hollow?

There is nothing more valuable in this life than the ability to lay one’s head down at night, to sleep soundly.

Last month I debuted my first short fiction collection, and my first novel just last week. I’m pleased to see both have picked up good reviews on Amazon. I have no idea who it was that left the review on the novel. The man that left the review on the short fiction collection is a friendly twitter follower, but he told me he was going to leave a review — I never asked him personally for one, nor would I.

From the beginning, I have told my family and friends to please, please, don’t post reviews. I have done this publicly — on Facebook — and in private, via email and face-to-face conversation. (Edit 11/14: I’ve relaxed this a bit recently. While I’m not asking close associates to leave reviews, I’m no longer discouraging it, either. I just don’t even mention reviews to them, which is probably all I should have done in the first place. I mean, if they buy a book and feel strongly about leaving a review, who am I to trounce on that? They still bought a copy.)

I will absolutely never use third-party “review vendors”.

I will not encourage people to vote “helpful” or “unhelpful” on readers’ reviews of my books.

I’m not expecting everyone to agree with me on the ethics of these practices — just understand that for me, personally, I won’t engage in them.

I will pursue reasonable, fair practices. I do encourage, via the last pages in my books, for readers to post reviews on the sites they purchased the books from if they enjoyed the books. I don’t see this as wrong. It’s a bit like an eBay seller asking folks to post good feedback. This is very different, in my opinion, than enlisting third parties.

This quote, in the comments section of The New York Times‘ piece, sums up my thoughts very well:

I never fell into this trap. For me it was a matter of pride. If I couldn’t get an honest, good or bad, review from a reader, I’d rather do without. It’s just a matter of waiting it out, if a book is well written, the reviews will come soon or later. There are no short cuts in this world and I’d rather have one good review from a reader who truly enjoyed my work than one hundred fake ones. I also know people use the “Like” feature to show their appreciation for my work, and that’s a lot more meaningful to me than having to pay for reviews.

Right on.

To sum up, I’m not saying all this for bragging points, or as a fount of pretension, but as a personal guarantee, made to all you readers out there, that I will do everything I can to ensure what you’re seeing in reader feedback and reviews on my product pages is legitimate, and honest. That’s my pledge.

It’s the best I can do, and it’s what I’m going to do.

Stay tuned.