Authors Behaving Badly-- A Case In Point

In recent days more examples of authors behaving badly have come to light. Frustration over reviews seems to be driving these authors to do various things, even criminal behavior on occasion, in some misguided attempt to sell books. While one can sort of understand why some of these things happen with a new book, one wonders what drives an author to suddenly complain about a book review more than ten years later?

Over ten years ago I reviewed Bourbon and Bliss: A Palmer Morel Mystery by Larry Rochelle on Amazon and elsewhere after getting the book sent to me because of my review work for "The Blue Iris Journal." That fact as well as the fact I had reviewed a couple of other ones preceding this one in the series. Like the others I had read, there wasn't much mystery to it. Instead, it was a very graphic men's adventure novel. Not that there is anything wrong with that, but it failed from the cover and content in the mystery genre. I noted the pluses and minuses of the book in my review at the time and moved on to the next read.

I had completely forgotten all about the author and the series he has self published through a number of outlets until last week when the author cut and pasted a twelve year old review by another reviewer into the comment field on my review at Amazon. In recent months a number of sites have turned off their comment fields because of such behavior, but Amazon has yet to do so. Thinking that author Larry Rochelle had simply made a harmless and accidental mistake, I reclaimed the discussion by posting my own review back into the comment field.

I then got what should have been my first clue that the author was doing some very deliberate and very desperate marketing. Larry Rochelle responded with another posting. This time using the cliched marketing phrase "ripped from the headlines" to describe in detail another book in the series he recently had self published he posted a spam ad. While clearly deliberate, I thought he was just being a jerk so I pointed out he was spamming and showed a lack of class.

Proving he could sink even lower, Larry Rochelle decided he would heap insult after meaningless insult on me in subsequent posts as seen here. The more off base with his hysteria and assumptions about me the funnier it got. Clearly he still has no idea of my body of review work. While his book has gotten one review since my review in 2004 creating a total of four reviews, I have gone on to do several hundred more reviews at Amazon and elsewhere while also having my fiction work published in a variety of outlets.

Then it got kind of sad because I felt sorry for him that he had to resort to such weak name calling in an effort to try and disgrace what was an even handed review. At his age, he should have been able to do trash talking better---- if he was going to do that-- as well as know better.

Usually, those who try and trash me in public are much better at it. As any reviewer knows, we are brilliant when we love the book and an evil idiot and worse when we don't. I figured it was that sort of thing though Rochelle seemed to trying very hard to insult me while missing by a mile. I just didn't know why.

I started doing some research this morning in the wake of his most recent nonsense and realized as I looked around at his many self published books and the few reviews on them that his actions were not the accident I first thought they were. Instead, he has recently done the same thing to other folks on Amazon. This is his shtick these days. Not that he gets reviewed that often, but over the last week or so he has posted cut and paste spam ads in the review discussion fields as well as more positive old reviews he lifted from others. Instead of dealing with the issues reviewers have noted again and again in his series so that he can try to improve his product, he has gone on this pathetic and very misguided marketing campaign.

While other reviewers ignored his foolish nonsense I gave him the benefit of the doubt in the beginning and then continued to engage with him. I didn't realize that what he was doing was a deliberate and very pathetic desperate marketing campaign destined to fail before it got started. I should have done my research earlier and not written off his first attempt at nothing more than a mistake. If I had figured that out from the start, I would have never engaged him and wasted a little bit of my time.

While I am playing into his desperation a little bit by detailing his actions here, it also serves as another example how NOT to go about things. Such actions by a desperate author will not help sales. It also serves as yet another warning to reviewers to do your research regarding author behavior before you agree to read and review the work as well as before you respond to nonsense on your reviews. Even ten years later a review can cause trouble if the author involved decides to play games instead of focusing on moving forward and improving his or her craft.