FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: new Freud book

I had to quote this:

Zigmund Feud says:

What we have here Problem Child is a textbook example of what may be referred to as Top Amazon Reviewer Delusion Syndrome (TARDS). I have a chapter on TARDS in my soon to be published masterpiece "Amazon and its Discontents". (Ironically I intend to send free copies of this book to everyone suffering from TARDS in order to promote sales here. Sweet!)

Some pathologies to look out for in identifying people suffering from this syndrome:
- complete acceptance of the belief that quantity of reviews is directrly proportional to quality. Most people believe the relationship is inverseley proportional;
- complete acceptance of the belief that getting your friends to vote for your reviews validates your belief in the quality of those reviews; (There is a corrolary indicating a relationship with multiple personality syndrome sufferess where people create multiple identities to vote for their own reiews and believe that is okay cause they are, well, different people);
- the belief that obtaining a high rank through the posting of copious reviews, including multple reviews of different versions of the same product, somehow vests you with an ownership interest in Amazon sufficient to dictate what others can do here;

Just a few key notes here to whet your appetitie. Please pass this comment along to all your friends and PLEASE BUY MY BOOK AND WRITE A REVIEW OF IT!!!! PLEASE

Hurried Klausner Hurrying a little too much?

Looks like she got a little carried away with the cut and paste. http://www.amazon.com/review/R2VVA7JHP3D6SR/ref=cm_aya_cmt/102-4421097-9253744?%5Fencoding=UTF8&ASIN=0312355289#wasThisHelpful

Yes, of course! I mean no. (a.k.a. Free Cheese)

From the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award FAQ:

Q: Do I keep my content rights if I enter?
A: Yes, you maintain full content rights when you enter the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award [; however,] if you are selected as a Semi-Finalist on January 15th, 2008 [...] [,] you will be required to provide Penguin right of first refusal on any publishing contract until you win, are eliminated from the contest, or April 22, 2008.

That is, if it's worth anything, Penguin owns you. And not only as far as the submitted manuscript, but "any publishing contract"! Am I misreading this?

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Here's another good one:

The Grand Prize winner will be selected from among the Finalists based on Amazon customer voting [...]

I foresee quite a bit of overtime work for The Notorious Grady Harp Voting Machine (TNGHVM). ;-)

What's it worth, this so-called 'customer' voting? To know the answer, one needs only to check out Grady Harp's reviews record with his invariable 60-100 votes for every single item received near instantaneously upon posting of every review of his.

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More funny stuff:

5. PRIZES. The following prizes will be awarded:

One (1) Grand Prize will be awarded, consisting of a full publishing contract with Penguin to market and distribute Grand Prize winner's winning Manuscript as a published book, including promotion for such published book on Amazon.com. Upon the full execution of the publishing contract, Penguin will pay the Grand Prize winner US $25,000. (The approximate retail value ("ARV") of the publishing contract is US $25,000 for the advance.) This US $25,000 payment is an advance against the royalties to be earned by the Grand Prize winner under the publishing contract. Penguin will determine the royalty rates to be paid under the publishing contract, which will depend on the format in which the book is published. Publishing contract with Penguin is not negotiable, and Grand Prize winner must sign "as is" upon receipt of the executable contract [...]

Twenty-five grand is cool of course, but the rest... and what if the royalties (determined by publisher alone!) do not eventually amount to the advance? Will the happy advancee have to return the dough ? How hard is it for the publisher to arrange for such a royalties schedule that there'll be nothing left for the author or even to leave him in the red? Even 'creative accounting' won't be required. Comments invited: tell me whether, and if so, where I'm misreading this.

I mean, why would anyone deny himself the right to negotiate? Doesn't having no right to negotiate amount to a guarantee of being fleeced? What publishing risks does Penguin take here? They are under no obligation to publish anything, winner or not; they are getting a nice free marketing survey, and they are to determine the price IF they do decide to publish. Seems like a risk-free strategy to me.

If I were an aspiring writer, what would I gain by forgoing the regular publishing route (agent, etc., including pay negotiation) and resorting to this contest? The high privilege and distinct honour of being 'judged' by the likes of Hurried Klausner?

But, that said, I know nothing about publishing industry, so -- whoever is -- please enlighten me.

Amazon Break Through Novel Award

This is interesting, I received an email from Amazon wondering if I'd like to participate in reviewing some of the entries.http://www.amazon.com/b?node=332264011

David Oakford strikes back!

Haven't seen this yet. Lack of ethics and a feeble mind, combined with a blissful absence of awareness of the two: such is the psychological portrait of an aspiring writer who's just made his entrance on one of the Amz comments section.

Check out the exchange between our old friend Gregory Callahan and poster 'David'. Here's a guy who openly threatens a commenter with retaliation for commenting under a review of his book. Mind you, comments are about a review, not the book itself (not that there would be anything wrong the other way too). Finally, for the lazy readers, here's a quote:

David writes:
Gregory,

Since you seem to think it is OK to spam and conduct personal attacks through comments on other people's reviews, I've decided to hit every one of your reviews with the same type of thing you've done to this review. I mean, you must think it is OK because you do it.

You can avert all of this by removing your comment from my review, then and only then will I stop spamming your reviews. You want dialogue, you got it.

Aaaaand.... here's a few signs showing that poster 'David' is fully intended to make good on his threats ! Incidentally, poster 'David' apparently has no problem with um... reviewing his own books and, yes, you guessed it, giving them top, five-star ratings.

Quoth Albert Einstein: "Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe." Truly so, eh?

Reincarnation

MM (Marie), the indisputable queen of jabberwocky, has apparently made good on her threat to disappear and return as a sockpuppet. All of her recent cryptic utterances have been deleted by author, though now under the nom de plume of "Sarah Goldberg." I wonder if Sarah will post her future comments not in adolescent "code," but in intelligible English. Can she? Will she? Inquiring minds want to know.

A note from a blog reader

We've received a letter (btw, if you -- I'm addressing the collective passerby commenter here -- if you email to us with your comments and you'd like your name quoted, mention that: otherwise we'll protect your privacy).

I just discovered your blog and am reading through the archieves. [...]

On your post talking about the delete/repost feature wiping out all comments [probably this?] [...]:

The delete/repost issue you are discussing was instigated when a top 100 reviewer was found to be deleting and reposting the same 5 or 6 reviews over and over again to gain more votes and climb the ladder.

So, while it now helps people bury comments, it was started to keep people from cheating.

Someone had already proposed this, I think. So, OK, perhaps (though who knows). So? Besides, I have a hard time believing in Amazon's intolerance toward cheating: just look at what Our Friends Top Reviewers do -- like, for example, 'reviewing' piles of books daily, all rated five stars. Robert Morris seems especially active lately, check him out -- this man reads (and highlights!) way too many books too quickly it seems to me. Likes them all! Of course.

Actually, W.Boudville picked up some speed too. Soon he'll be at his previous level, reading a dozen books a day.