This sock puppet is not RJ Ellory. But it could be. Photo credit: Shutterstock
The background
This week, bestselling crime fiction writer RJ Ellory was unmasked as also the writer of several very glowing reviews of his own work and some rather masterful bad reviews of his rivals’ books on Amazon.
Ellory, who has won awards and plaudits for his novels A Simple Act of Violence and A Quiet Belief in Angels, took to the online department store under the pseudonyms “Nicodemus Jones” and “Jelly Bean”, praising his own work and slagging off that of other writers. Declaring of A Quiet Belief, “whatever else it might do, it will touch your soul”, Ellory encouraged readers to “just buy” the “modern masterpiece” and “make up your own mind”.
Fellow crime writer Jeremy Duns, who was not one of Ellory’s victims, exposed Ellory’s “sock puppeting”, as it’s called, on Twitter. And though the Ellory has apologized for the “lapse of judgment”, he said, that “that allowed personal opinions to be disseminated in this way”, other writers are lining up to cast their condemnation on him.
But, said The Guardian, Ellory is just the tip of the sock puppeting iceberg – more than a few writers, perhaps mad with the power of creating characters and worlds, are now creating false reviewing identities.
“It’s absolutely rife,” Duns told the paper. “It’s so tempting, it’s so easy … and it’s very very hard to prove it.”
Ellory not alone
Earlier this summer, bestselling writer Stephen Leather admitted at the Harrogate crime festival that he does the same thing, seemingly without remorse, The Guardian reported. “As soon as my book is out I’m on Facebook and Twitter several times a day talking about it. I’ll go on to several forums, the well-known forums, and post there under my name and under various other names and various other characters. You build up this whole network of characters who talk about your books and sometimes have conversations with yourself,” he said.
It’s undermining readers’ faith in online reviews
After Leather’s admission, Laura Miller at Salon balked at the way he seemed to see readers as “cattle to be milked” and social media, including Twitter and online reviews, as a way to do the milking. “They’re human beings who do writers the great favor of spending their time and attention (and sometimes their money) on authors’ work. Their good faith, once lost, is unlikely to return. … Most of them still believe that the fellow readers who recommend books to them online are sincere and actually exist, but how much longer can that last?”
Sock puppetry killing crime fiction
Ruth Dudley Edwards, crime writer, was disgusted by the “dishonourable” practice at The Telegraph, writing that it “debases the internet currency”: “Who would trust Wikipedia, or Amazon reviews or forum debates if they believe writers are bent on deception?” Edwards observed that there’s a burgeoning industry in the whole sordid thing, with some agencies hiring writers to seed places like Amazon with good reviews of some books. “Publishers are distressed by such new dodgy practices, but then did they not sell the pass when they agreed to pay shops to position their books favourably or call them ‘Staff picks’?”
End sock puppeting now
Stephen Mosby, also a crime fiction writer, is joining other writers, including Joanne Harris, Mark Billingham, Lee Child, and Jo Nesbo, in a letter condemning the practice and calling on readers to “take possession of the process”: “The internet belongs to us all. Your honest and heartfelt reviews, good or bad, enthusiastic or disapproving, can drown out the phoney voices, and the underhanded tactics will be marginalized to the point of irrelevance. No single author, however devious, can compete with the whole community. Will you use your voice to help us clean up this mess?”
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