Ethics – Patricia J. Parsons

Ethical issues in self-publishing: Why you should care

Posted on 16 Apr 202216 Apr 2022 by Patricia J. Parsons

It’s probably safe to say that most of us don’t think about ethics on a daily basis―at least not consciously. But every once in a while, we see, read or hear something that makes us think that something is not quite “right.” Something about it makes us feel that it’s just wrong. That something might be perfectly legal but still doesn’t feel right. That’s your internal ethical compass telling you to look at the issue more closely. The problem is, often, when we ought to see something as not quite right, we don’t even notice. Self-publishing comes to mind.

Writers have been self-publishing for many years. Mark Twain, Edgar Allen Poe, Beatrix Potter and Virginia Wolff come immediately to mind, giving self-publishing what should be a kind of positive cache. However, the image of self-publishing has, over the years, diminished in the eyes of many―the media, literary critics and even many readers are among those who often carry a negative prejudice toward self-published works and their authors. This bad reputation is not always unjustified. There are myriad ethical transgressions perpetrated by self-publishers every day. These are the activities and people who give everyone a bad name.

Historical novelist Jane Steen in her article, “Opinion: Why We Need to Talk About Ethics in Self-publishing,” suggested we should be concerned about ethics because “we owe it to our readers,” but perhaps even more importantly,” We owe it to ourselves. Our indie career is not just about the books we write. It’s about the person we are” because improving the image of self-published works is essential to broader acceptance and in the end, it has to be said, success as an author.

My personal experience and observations suggest that a few key areas have contributed to negative perceptions and are ethical minefields for indie authors. They are behaviours to be avoided at all costs.

Writing 5-star reviews for crappy books: It is beyond irritating to buy a well-reviewed book only to find it riddled with stylistic errors (grammar, punctuation, sentence structure etc.) at a minimum and just plain awful at the worst. Some indie authors write these reviews for others to ensure glowing reviews for their own publications. This is dishonest and, therefore, unethical. Don’t do it.
Asking friends and family to write glowing reviews for your books: This is hardly a third-party endorsement. These individuals are biased and likely want you to succeed, so their reviews are not objective. Readers are looking for objective, honest recommendations. This is unethical. Don’t do it.
Buying reviews: Since the surge in self-published books, a whole industry has grown up for paid book reviews. You can find thousands of review writers more than willing to write and post (for a fee, of course) glowing reviews for you. Traditionally published authors can also use this disingenuous practice. Any way you look at it, it is a dirty practice and should be avoided at all costs. Dishonest. Unethical. Don’t do it.
Flooding the ebook stores with appallingly poor, ill-conceived ebooks: There is another cottage industry that has grown up around the notion of simply writing ebooks on anything you can think of merely to generate income. This practice is one of the most insidious ways that the reputation of all self-published authors is dragged through the mud. Unless you are an expert on your subject matter, step away from the computer with that brilliant idea for an ebook.
Over-inflating your wonderfulness and success: This is so problematic in the self-publishing industry. Every time someone sells themselves to me as “best-selling” or “award-winning,” I get out Mr. Google and have a look. That award should have been from a credible, well-known organization, and you had better have had a best-seller on the New York Times (or equivalent) best-sellers list, or you’re padding. This is dishonest. Unethical. Don’t do it. (If you want to see how even being on these lists can be dishonest, read “Here’s How You Buy Your Way Onto The New York Times Bestsellers List.”)

There have been several bloggers who have suggested codes of conduct for self-published authors. They are worth reading and are among the following list of pieces you should read if you care about your reputation as a self-published author.

Some Resources for You

The Mystery of the Book Sales Spike http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424127887323864304578316143623600544

Opinion: Why We Need to Talk About Ethics in Self-publishing http://www.selfpublishingadvice.org/opinion-ethics/

Here’s How You Buy Your Way Onto The New York Times Bestsellers List http://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffbercovici/2013/02/22/heres-how-you-buy-your-way-onto-the-new-york-times-bestsellers-list/

Ethical Author http://www.selfpublishingadvice.org/alli-campaigns/ethical-author/

Ethics in Self-Publishing : An Indie Author’s Manifesto http://martinfhengst.com/publishing-authors-manifesto/

Code of Ethics for Self Published Authors vs. Hell http://houseoflit.org/?page_id=222

8 Issues In Author Ethics http://thoughtcatalog.com/porter-anderson/2014/08/8-issues-in-author-ethics/

Book marketing, Book promotion, Electronic Publishing, Ethics

When is a bestseller not a bestseller?

Posted on 20 May 201520 May 2015 by Patricia J. Parsons

So, what does it take to be a bestselling writer? In fact, what does it take for a book to be a bestseller? Have you ever gazed on the New York Times bestseller list, or the Amazon list of today’s best sellers and wondered how these books got there? I know I have, and even more to the point, recently I’ve often wondered what it really means when an author’s LinkedIn or Twitter profile says “bestselling author of…” and I’ve never heard of them. The truth is that whatever you may have thought through the years, whatever you infer from those “bestselling” monikers, all bets are off. The landscape has changed. It ain’t what it used to be. And that’s important – for readers. And for writers who actually care.

So I did some research (you’re welcome).

What is a bestseller?

Let’s begin by going back to definitions – dictionary and other. The Oxford English Dictionary, arguably one of the premier arbiters of word meanings in our language, says that a bestseller is “[a] book or other product that sells in very large numbers.”[1] Okay, this definition implies that there ought to be some kind of quantitative measure of what it takes to be a bestseller, although falling short of actually telling us what that number might be. However, the phrase “very large numbers” does have some resonance, n’est ce pas?

Back as far as 1955 a bestseller was defined as “a book for which demand, within a short time of that book’s initial publication, vastly exceeds what is then considered to be big sales.”[2] Again the concepts both of high demand and bigger than “big” sales.

Next, we’ll join the twenty-first century and see what other online definitions might offer to us in our quest for understanding. Of course, next stop Wikipedia which says this:

“A bestseller is a book that is identified as extremely popular by its inclusion on lists of currently top selling or frequently borrowed titles that are based on publishing industry and book trade figures and library circulation statistics and then published by newspapers, magazines, or book store chains.”[3]

Wikipedia further suggests that the term is evidently not associated with any specific number of sales and that the term is often applied rather “loosely” often as a marketing ploy, but that it does, in fact, refer to a book that is “extremely popular.”

It seems, then, that a real bestseller is a popular book in high demand with high sales. As reasonably intelligent readers (or writers) we can conclude that a book isn’t a bestseller unless it sells lots and lots of copies. So how is it possible that so many of these online self-published authors suggest that they are bestselling authors? Remember what I said earlier? The landscape has shifted. Dramatically.

The Making of a Bestseller

In the past few years, it’s become clear that there are ways of manipulating online book sales figures to artificially create a bestseller, thereby giving the author marketing cred, even if it is a bit disingenuous. However, don’t be fooled into thinking that this is just a recent, eBook phenomenon.

Back in 1995, two ambitious consultants wrote a book titled The Discipline of Market Leaders which was published by Addison-Wesley. Rather than let it languish in a warehouse or gather dust on bookstore shelves only to be returned if unsold (the dreaded ‘returns’ of the book selling business – don’t get me started), the authors decided to figure out a way to get that book on the New York Times bestseller list so that they could use this as a springboard to marketing themselves as consultants, and thereby make more money. As business experts, they were willing to make a financial investment and take the risk that it would have a big payout in the end.

In summary (you can read the whole story in the online archive of Business Week linked in my footnotes below[4]) they spent $250,000 buying 10,000 copies of their own $25 book from small and large bookstores throughout the US resulting in it climbing to #8 on the NYT bestseller list where it stayed for 15 weeks and peaked at #1 on the BusinessWeek list. The results of this manipulation were spectacular for their consulting business: speaking engagements, new clients, future book deals. Illegal? No. Unethical? Clearly. Readers draw the conclusion that a book on the top of the bestseller list has made it there on its own merits. When it didn’t, those who colluded to get it there are effectively lying. That was then. This is now. And the opportunities for this kind of manipulation are even more available.

In 2013 Publisher’s Weekly tried to get bestseller numbers from Amazon, but were unsuccessful, so they decided to try to figure it out by looking at the status of a couple of books over the course of two weeks. They began with the hypothesis that was widely held that a book would have to sell 300 copies a day to reach the top five on Amazon’s list and found that this wasn’t far off, but that it varies considerably depending on the time of year.[5] For example, in holiday sales times, the numbers would have to be higher. Nevertheless, if you can get approach this level of sales for a day or two, whatever ranking you achieve on the bestsellers list sticks with the book based on the Amazon algorithm. And there you have a “bestseller” that doesn’t even come close to the definitions above, nor the connotation associated with it by potential readers. So, just about anyone can use the term bestselling author based on just about any criteria he or she decides applies. Hmm.

So, when is a best seller not a best seller?

A few years ago, my husband and I wrote a piece on our travel blog The Discerning Travelers about when a perk (from an airline, a hotel etc. via loyalty programs) is not a perk. We concluded that a perk is not a perk when everyone has it (for our full explanation read The ups and downs of travel loyalty programs: When is a perk not a perk?). It loses its real meaning.

I submit to you that when everyone is a so-called bestselling author, no one is. And that is sad. I’d love to be a bestselling author, but I’m more interested in being a writer. When the term bestseller now applies to everyone and his or her dog, I don’t really care about that anymore. How about you?

[1] http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/us/definition/american_english/bestseller

[2] Steinberg, S. H. 1955. Five Hundred Years of Printing. as quoted in Wikipedia.

[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bestseller

[4] Did dirty tricks create a bestseller? August 7, 1995. Business Week (from the online web archive), http://goo.gl/lmqR9y

[5] Gabe Habash. March 10, 2013. How Many Copies Does It Take To Be an Amazon Bestseller? Not So Much. http://goo.gl/ULwI6a

Ethics, Publishing, Self-Publishing

Barter, buy or blackmail: The ethics of book reviews

Posted on 28 Apr 201528 Apr 2015 by Patricia J. Parsons

It matters not whether one of the “big” publishers puts out your book, whether your great-aunt with a penchant for publishing edits and distributes it for you from the trunk of her car, or you publish it electronically all by yourself, if you want people to read your book, you’ll probably want book reviews.

Book reviews, and the concomitant moaning that goes on in writers’ circles about reviewers, has a long and storied history. According to Jane Hu, the term book review first appeared in 1861, but the notion of the review or “criticism” (after all, those who write reviews of books or movies have traditionally been referred to as “critics”) goes back as far as 1661 in Paris.[1]

As Sarah Fay, writing in The Atlantic has said, throughout history book review writers, “seem to delight in publishing manifestos that outline the book review’s shortcomings and inadequacies.”[2] She went on to suggest that book reviews have been criticized as reeking of “mediocrity, elitism, nepotism or all three,” and further that they lack intelligence. In the current Wild, Wild West world of digital publishing, it has never been truer. And although as Hu says, “Most often, dissatisfaction with the state of book reviewing has come not from the readers who are the reviewers’ intended audience, but from writers who have felt their work mishandled, unjustly ignored, or cruelly misunderstood,”[3] this too has changed. Discontent with the reviews is now springing from readers – like me.

Although traditional book reviewers – those who through history largely worked for magazines and newspapers – have been criticized for their overall general meanness, today’s book reviewers seem to have the opposite problem. According to Amazon, the majority of book reviews are in the four-and-a-half to five out of five range. How is it possible that so many books are truly worthy of five stars? Well, they’re not.

Earlier this month, Amazon filed a law suit against four web sites that they believe are producing fraudulent book reviews. According to a report in Entrepreneur, “The suit alleges that fabricated 4- and 5-star product appraisals dilute Amazon’s brand and negatively impact sellers on its site who don’t subvert the system by paying for fraudulent reviews.”[4] It is this notion of the fraudulent (read: paid-for) book review that incenses me the most.

The companies in question just might be ones with whom you have dealt, but I hope not. It seems that Amazon and its readership are no longer going to stand still and accept that so many books can possibly be as good as they appear to be. But the lack of integrity demonstrated by buying book reviews is only one of the loathsome ways that writers these days (self and traditionally published, mind you) are procuring deceitful reviews.

A writer recently related a story about being approached to do a review. When the honest review was completed, the writer was informed in no uncertain terms, that anything less than a five-star report would result in one-star reports being posted for her books. Clearly, no honest review could be forthcoming.

Then there are the writers who approach you with the offer to provide your book with a terrific review – in exchange for one for their books. Honest? I think not.

Who suffers in all of this wrong-minded marketing? The readers. I can hear writers out there now telling me that readers will, in the end make the decisions. The problem with that line of thinking is that it smacks of a very utilitarian approach to ethics (i.e. the end justifies the means – in this case, very clearly, they are saying that lying up front is okay if they make a sale. I beg to disagree), and it fails to recognize that readers will already have purchased god-awful books, spending hard-earned money on crap that could have been avoided if honesty had been forthcoming.

Although I recognize that great reviews are terrific for marketing books, why are so many people afraid of honest reviews? The reason is probably related to the fact that most people don’t write as well as they think they do (if you haven’t been exposed to this truth, read William Zinsser’s On Writing Well immediately), aren’t interested in hearing negative criticism, or don’t care. The latter care only that you buy their book and quality be damned. Maybe readers aren’t going to take it anymore. Bravo Amazon.

[1] Jane Hu. 2012. A Short History Of Book Reviewing’s Long Decline. The Awl online. http://www.theawl.com/2012/06/book-reviewings-long-decline

[2] Sarah Fay. 2012. Book Reviews: A Tortured History. The Atlantic online. http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2012/04/book-reviews-a-tortured-history/256301/

[3] Jane Hu.

[4] Kim Lachance Shandrow. April 10, 2015. Amazon Sues Alleged Sellers of Bogus 5-Star Product Reviews. Entrepreneur. http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/244950