The Daily Mail looks at a pair of authors who are trying to fight back against what appears to be a concerted effort to deluge books on Amazon with negative reviews. Rosie Alison is the author of The Very Thought of You, a novel that, to put it charitably, did not burn up the sales charts:

By yesterday it had attracted 119 reviews on Amazon — 50 per cent more than the book which won the [Orange] prize, The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver.

While many praised its qualities, 16 reviewers give the book the minimum one star.

One compares Miss Alison’s writing to Mills and Boon novels, while another claims she ‘has no feel for fiction at all, no sense of what makes a plot tick along, no flair for language’.

Another implies that the author’s success is connected to her marriage to Tim Waterstone, founder of the chain of High Street bookshops.

Miss Alison, 46, is said to be in dispute with Amazon about the hostile reviews and has approached Kwikchex, a company which specialises in protecting online reputations, run by Chris Emmins.

The reporter also talks to a PR firm that writes positive Amazon reviews for a price. This is getting silly. Authors either need to accept the fact that negative customer reviews—as part of a concerted effort or not—are a part of being an author, or they need to stop reading customer reviews entirely.