Service humour

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I know that a lot of people who link up to my blog are either in the services, veterans or supporters of our services. This should appeal to you.

A Paratrooper, a Craftsman, a Gunner and a Fusilier got into an argument about which Regiment was “The Best.” The arguing became so heated the four squadies failed to see an oncoming truck as they crossed the street. They were hit by the truck and killed instantly.
… 
Soon, the four soldiers found themselves at the Pearly gates of Heaven. There, they met Saint Peter and decided that only he could be the ultimate source of truth and honesty. So, the four Squadies asked him, “Saint Peter, which Regiment of the British Army is the best?”
… … … … 
Saint Peter replied, “I can’t answer that. However, I will ask God what He thinks the next time I see Him. Meanwhile, thank you for your service on Earth and welcome to Heaven.”

Sometime later the four Soldiers see Saint Peter and remind him of the question they had asked when first entering Heaven and asked Saint Peter if he was able to ask God for the answer to their answer.?

Suddenly, a sparkling white dove lands on Saint Peter’s shoulder. In the dove’s beak is a note glistening with gold dust. Saint Peter opens the note, trumpets blare, gold dust drifts into the air, harps play crescendos and Saint Peter begins to read the note aloud to the four servicemen:

MEMORANDUM FROM THE DESK OF THE ALMIGHTY ONE
TO: All Former Soldiers.
SUBJECT: Which Regiment Is the Best

1. All branches of the Armed Forces are honourable and noble.

2. Each serves the United Kingdom well and with distinction.

3. Serving in the military represents a great honour warranting special respect, tribute, and dedication from your fellow man.

4. Always be proud of that.

Warm regards,

GOD
Royal Regiment of Artillery (retired)

Celebrity attitude

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A few weeks ago I was contacted though twitter and asked to do something I had never done before and never expected to be asked to do.

A young man from Manchester called Marcus is raising money for Help4heroes by travelling around the UK with a t-shirt that he is getting ‘celebrities’ to autograph.  He has successfully persuaded Chris Ryan MM,  Rita Ora, JLS, Victoria Justice, Dan Magness and Victoria Pendleton to sign it. He asked me to also sign it. I was flattered, I don’t think of myself as a celebrity in an shape or form.

A friend of mine was in Manchester working and agreed to transport the shirt to me in Wales to sign it. I did as asked, thanked Marcus for the opportunity and sent him a couple of signed books as a bonus to auction with the shirt.

Soon afterwards Marcus approached several Burnley footballers who were out on a social and asked a couple of them if they would also sign the shirt. Marcus explained who else had signed the shirt and the reason for doing so. The footballers told him where to go.

This week, Wayne Rooney responded positively to a request from Marcus and also agreed to sign the shirt. I understand that signing takes place this evening.

So, with all their success, the likes of Rita, Wayne, Chris and the others take time out of their hectic schedules to help a little guy do a bit for charity.

I hope those Burnley footballers learn about this and, perhaps, start to appreciate the good that can be achieved by being celebrated.

Matt.

A story from Afghanistan

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A padre’s experience.

It was the Company Sergeant Major who noticed it first. ‘What’s that?’ He had noticed a loose bit of plastic poking out from a pouch on Curtis’ armour. ‘Just a Bible Sir,’ the youngster from Manchester replied, quickly tucking it in. The Sergeant Major asked to see it, and then explained that something so special deserved a new bag. Later they sat and the story of the Bible in the young soldier’s body armour was shared, and within minutes we knew about it back at Shawqat. I was due out at Folad the next day anyway, and as soon as I had got my body armour off and a brew in my hand, I sat down with Curtis to hear the story first-hand. The little, battered copy of the New Testament and Psalms had been presented to his great, great grandfather, Private J Greenwood, as a gift from the Naval and Military Bible Society before he deployed into Europe in the First World War. It was then passed to Curtis’ great grandad when he served in World War 2 and then to his grandad, Dennis when he served in Korea with the REME. He never spoke about the time he was captured and held prisoner, but through it all, the times of success and the times that were never given words, that little Bible stayed with him and gave him some degree of comfort and hope, despite the horror. Uncle Gary took it with him to Northern Ireland too, and yet it was only when Curtis’ great aunt died, that the whole of the story of the little book came to light. And now, 98 years on, it has been passed to Curtis as he serves on his first tour of Afghanistan. Almost a century of service, of sacrifice, of willingness to step into the breach for the freedom of others has helped define Curtis’ family: ‘It means a lot; it’s shaped me. The whole family has served, and that brought me to the point of knowing that I wanted to join the Army too.’

And along with all that family’s service, a little Bible has brought words of comfort, hope and promise across the globe. And so it was pleasure, an honour, as I left PB Folad, to give Curtis a new Bible, gifted by the Naval, Military and Air Force Bible Society as it is now. The oldest Bible Society on the planet, and still gently, quietly and generously putting God’s word of healing, hope and life into the hands of any of our finest and foremost who would wish to receive it. ‘I write to you young men, because you are strong and the word of God abides in you.’ (1Jn 2:14) 
 
So, as Christmas approaches, remember to say thanks to soldiers like the Curtis’ family and all those others who for a century and more have lived out their hope in the service of our nation.

Advance2contact

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This sunday, 25th November, I attended the film premiere of a short film called Advance2contact as a guest of the charity @ourlocalheroes.

http://www.ourlocalheroes.org.uk is a small, new charity founded by fellow former Army officer Steve Pearson. The event was well organised by Natasha Kinsey.

Advance2 contact (see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-DYzEVAf8O4 ) is a short film, written and produced by actor Scott Ryan Vickers. It is based on the actual experience of a soldier. Scott has personal experience of PTSD and wanted to make a film about the effects the condition can cause in a person as a means of raising public awareness. 

The film release comes in the wake of an interesting programme on PTSD made by Ross Kemp that was screened on Sky TV called ‘Invisible Wounds’. The documentary made by Ross discussed the symptoms and interviewed some victims, advance2contact takes you into the world of the sufferer and demonstrates very clearly, and quite uncomfortably, what PTSD can feel like.

I have PTSD. I no longer get the regular occurrence of symptoms such as night sweats and violent dreams, but they still strike once in a while. I have learned to manage the condition. I know what triggers my panic attacks and flashbacks, I know what places and situations to avoid. I have learned how to manage the condition and how to regain control of my life. I know what caused it… I think, or at least I understand the situations that led to it developing. I now control it, rather than it controlling me.

Advance2contact was raw, uncomfortable viewing to a PTSD sufferer. It reminded and brought into focus what PTSD feels like. It made me feel emotional and it brought tears to my eyes. It reproduced symptoms that I had struggled to explain to others in a way that I had not seen before and which really impressed me. At points in the films I wanted to stop watching, but in the end I was glad I stuck it out. The reason for this… Advance2contact is a superb film. I re-creates and demonstrates PTSD in a way that is harrowing to the sufferer and informative to the non-sufferer.

PTSD doesn’t just strike soldiers. Scott makes this point in the attached Utube link. Anyone can be affected. It just takes a trigger event to cause it. 

For anyone affected or interested in learning about PTSD I would recommend seeing the film. Scott Vickers has captured the very essence of the condition and should be congratulated for the achievement. 

Sgt Dan Nightingale

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Serving SAS sergeant Danny Nightingale has just pleaded guilty, so we are led to believe, to a charge of possessing a Glock 9mm pistol at his home, it having been found when police raided the house looking for evidence of a similar offence by another resident of the house.

Today, his wife, Sally, has been on radio and television highlighting his plight as he has been sentenced to 18mths military custody. The weapon was, apparently, a war trophy that was intended for display at Hereford but which was forgotten about due to a number of incidents that affected Sgt Nightingale, the most serious of which was recovery from a coma after which he suffered severe memory loss.

Sgt Nightingale could have pleaded not guilty. He certainly seems to have had reason to so plead as it wasn’t actually him that imported the weapon from Iraq (it was packed into his kit by fellow soldiers after he had gone on ahead to accompany dead comrades) and then was left with that kit in a holding secure area at Hereford. At some point this kit was moved to a home Sgt Nightingale had to occupy close to Hereford as he needed to be on standby, presumably the CTW team. He had forgotten that the pistol was there and had forgotten to hand it in, so in fact, he didn’t know of its presence and had a reasonable defence to a ‘possession’ charge. But he chose to plead guilty.

By pleading guilty at an early stage he would receive maximum discount off the sentence the Judge would normally impose. About 1/3 in this case. This suggests the sentence would have been two years but for his early guilty plea. If he had pleaded not guilty and been found guilty he would have received the full 2 years.

By pleading guilty he also minimised embarrassment to the regiment and to the Army. A decision to plead is always a gamble and set against the fear of a maximum 5 year sentence for this type of offence he may well have thought that the risk of being found guilty was too high. It is possible that his defence team may have weighed up the evidence of his innocence and suggested that this was better given in mitigation than as a defence to the charge.

The bringing home of war mementos has been a practice in all Armies around the world since the very first Armies existed. How many of us will have heard stories of our grand dads having an old Luger in the loft, of uncles with Nazi weapons? Just because we are in a modern times doesn’t mean that soldiers have stopped the practice. Sgt Nightingale intended to hand the weapon in but then forgot, due to a brain injury, but would the jury have concluded that he should have handed it in before that? We shall never know, as he took advice and decided to plead.

So, is 18 months excessive. I decided to look at the Ministry of Justice and CPS sentencing guidelines for this offence. This is what they say.

Section 1 Firearms Act 1968

Date Updated: January 2012

Title: Firearms

Offence: Possession of a Firearm/Ammunition without a certificate

Legislation: s1 Firearms Act 1968

Commencement Date:

Mode of Trial: TEW (triable either way, ie magistrates or crown court)

Statutory Limitations & Maximum Penalty:

  • Possession of a firearm or ammunition without certificate is triable either way
  • Summary – 6 months/maximum fine (in a magistrates court)
  • On indictment – when aggravated (see section 4(4)) 7 years, otherwise 5 years. (in a crown court)
  • Failure to comply with a condition of a certificate is triable only summarily – 6 months/level 5 fine

Aggravating and Mitigating Factors, some previous cases

R v Avis [1998] 1 Cr.App.R. 420, CA.

The sentencing court should usually ask itself four questions:

  1. What sort of weapon was involved? Genuine firearms were more dangerous than imitation firearms; loaded firearms were more dangerous than unloaded firearms. Unloaded firearms for which ammunition was available were more dangerous than firearms for which no ammunition was available. Possession of a firearm for which there was no lawful use (such as a sawn-off shotgun) would be viewed more seriously than possession of a firearm which was capable of lawful use.
  2. What use had been made of the firearm? It was necessary for the court to take account of all the circumstances surrounding the use of the firearm: the more prolonged and premeditated and violent the use, the more serious the offence was likely to be.
  3. With what intention (if any) did the defendant possess or use the firearm? The most serious offences under the Act required proof of a specific intent. The more serious the act intended, the more serious the offence.
  4. What was the defendant’s record? The seriousness of any firearms offence was inevitably increased if the offender had an established record of committing firearms offences or crimes of violence.

Relevant sentencing Guidelines (If any)

See R v Avis above

Relevant Sentencing Case Law

Hudson [1998] 1 Cr.App.R.(S.) 124
G plea to possessing a firearm without a certificate. D arrested on suspicion of assault. On searching his house police find a loaded sawn-off shotgun and cartridges. D said he bought the gun for protection. It was established the gun had never been fired.  5 years reduced to 4 years imprisonment.

Addison [1998] 1 Cr.App.R.(S.) 119
G plea to possessing a firearm without certificate x 4, possession of a shortened firearm without a certificate x 2 and possession of ammunition without a certificate. Police search of D’s work place and home address resulted in finds of six firearms in working order and ammunition. 5 years to 4 years imprisonment.

Holmes [1999] 2 Cr.App.R.(S.) 383
G plea before a magistrates’ court possession of a firearm whilst a prohibited person, possession of a shortened shotgun without a certificate, and possession of a loaded shotgun in a public place. Police find a loaded sawn off shotgun and ammunition in a hire car that was traced back to D. Sentenced to two and a half years imprisonment.

Herbert [2001] 1Cr.App.R.(S.) 21
G plea to possessing a shortened shotgun and to possessing a firearm before expiration of five years from release form prison. A search a D’s address revealed a sawn-off shotgun hidden in a bed with a number of live cartridges. D claimed to be ‘minding’ items for a man he was terrified of and received £50. At Newton hearing, basis rejected. 4 years imprisonment upheld although there was no evidence of any contemplated offence the court was entitled to assume that it was for an unlawful use should the occasion arise

Beaumont [2004] 1 Cr.App.R.(S) 393
G plea in the Magistrates’ Court to possessing a firearm without a certificate, ammunition without a certificate and possession of cannabis. Police search of D’s house and D seen to conceal a package that contained a single barrel 12 bore shotgun with barrel cut down. 23 cartridges also found. D said bought them for £100 and intended to wall mount gun. Held that there was nothing to suggest intention to use items in a violent way. 3 years reduced to 2 years imprisonment.

Scully [2006] EWCA Crim 466
G plea  to possession of a firearm without a certificate x 2, possession of ammunition without a certificate, possession of expanding ammunition  and possession of Class A and C drugs. Police had arrested D at his home address in relation to another matter when they find firearms, ammunition and drugs. Also found was a silencer. A sentence of three years imposed.

R. v Flitter [2010] 1 Cr.App.R.(S.) 85

The appellant pleaded guilty before a magistrates’ court to possessing a shortened shotgun without a firearms certificate, contrary to the Firearms Act 1968 s s.1 (1A) and 4(4). He was committed to the Crown Court for sentence. Police officers executing a search warrant at the appellant’s home found a gun split into three pieces, each wrapped in a towel, in a carrier bag concealed within a boarded-up fireplace, which was in turn hidden behind a wardrobe. In an outbuilding, officers found a box of shotgun ammunition although this could not have been used in the shotgun concerned. The shotgun was found to be in poor condition but in working order. The appellant pleaded guilty on the basis that he had purchased the shotgun lawfully in the 1980s when he had a firearms certificate. Following a conviction for possession of cannabis, the firearms certificate was revoked. The appellant surrendered one shotgun to the police but did not surrender the second gun because he forgotten about its existence. When he later came across the gun, he had not handed it in to the police as he was afraid he might be arrested. He cut the shotgun into pieces with a hacksaw to make it inoperable rather than to make it more dangerous. 24 months imprisonment upheld.

These make for rather depressing reading. It seems that criminals can expect the kind of sentence handed out to Dan Nightingale. But therein lies the point. These guidelines deal with criminals who are in possession of firearms that are, clearly, related to criminal activity. Dan Nightingale is not a criminal, he is a decorated soldier who has dedicated his life to the service of his country and yet, he has been treated the same as if he were a drug dealer or a bank robber.

I for one hope that he has the right to an appeal over this sentence and that a combination of public opinion, political pressure and an eloquent barrister results in him being freed, very soon. And I hope the Regiment keeps his job open in the mean time.

STOP PRESS; 20 Nov. Just heard from the campaign team that Dan is ‘locked down’ sixteen hours a day and that at the moment he is reading my novel! I’m made up.

 

An amusing observation on EU influence

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The European Commission has announced an agreement whereby English will be the official language of the European Union rather than German, which was the other possibility. 

As part of the negotiations, the British Government conceded that English spelling had some room for improvement and has accepted a 5- year phase-in plan that would become known as “Euro-English”. 

In the first year, “s” will replace the soft “c”.. Sertainly, this will make the sivil servants jump with joy. The hard “c” will be dropped in favour of “k”. This should klear up konfusion, and keyboards kan have one less letter.

There will be growing publik enthusiasm in the sekond year when the troublesome “ph” will be replaced with “f”.. This will make words like fotograf 20% shorter. 

In the 3rd year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be expekted to reach the stage where more komplikated changes are possible. 

Governments will enkourage the removal of double letters which have always ben a deterent to akurate speling. 

Also, al wil agre that the horibl mes of the silent “e” in the languag is disgrasful and it should go away. 

By the 4th yer people wil be reseptiv to steps such as replasing “th” with “z” and “w” with “v”. 

During ze fifz yer, ze unesesary “o” kan be dropd from vords kontaining “ou” and after ziz fifz yer, ve vil hav a reil sensi bl riten styl. 

Zer vil be no mor trubl or difikultis and evrivun vil find it ezi TU understand ech oza. Ze drem of a united urop vil finali kum tru. 

Und efter ze fifz yer, ve vil al be speking German like zey vunted in ze forst plas. 

If zis mad you smil, pleas pas on to oza pepl.

 

 

Radio Interview – On the BBC!

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I have a lot to thank twitter for. As a new author I have explored several marketing routes. Facebook was almost useless. It seems more useful for maintaining established contacts rather than making new ones. My attempts to be ‘friends’ with people who also write, who read books and who are ‘in the trade’ sometimes fell on deaf ears. After not very long I was blocked from further requests for a week.

Twitter, however, enables a writer to ‘follow’ others and that simply acts as a hook to ask people to look at your work. If they choose not to, so be it, but it doesn’t end up with your twitter account blocked.

At the same time there are journalists, presenters and people from a similar background looking for interesting people to talk to and stories to write. One place they look is twitter. A couple of weeks ago, presenter found author, and within a week I was chatting on the telephone to a BBC researcher prior to being invited to speak on the radio.

Louise Elliott is an established BBC Radio Wales presenter who now has her own afternoon show. It is a very good show and she entertains some very interesting people. Tom Jones was on a fortnight before me and Max Boyce the week before.

Louise wanted to talk about how my PTSD treatment had given rise to the novel. I have to confess to being nervous as I made the drive up to Cardiff. I was outside my comfort zone having never before been in a radio studio. I need not have worried. A space in the car park was reserved for me, security was expecting me, and after being issued with a pass I was led to the studio by Holly, Louise’s assistant.

I sat with the crew at first and through a screen could see Louise in the studio, headphones on, interviewing Thomas Howes, an actor from Downton Abbey who is now touring with the ‘Mousetrap. company. Thomas was a very interesting man to interview and spoke very eloquently. Louise gave me a wave, Holly offered me a cup of BBC tea. I decided to decline, having heard what Terry Wogan had to say about that tea.

Half past three approached, my scheduled time. I could hear the crew asking Louise to wind up but Thomas was in full flow. In the event he over ran by nearly ten minutes and even the BBC news was delayed.

At 2.40 I entered the studio. Louise and I had a brief chat while a record was playing. She was lovely and very apologetic for the delay and the fact that it was going to reduce my time on air. I wasn’t at all worried until she said that she really wanted to concentrate on the writing from PTSD rather than other anecdotes that I had emailed to her as part of her research.

I understood that time was limited but as all that have PTSD will testify to, talking about the experiences that caused the condition can trigger fast and overwhelming emotional reactions. Within a few moments, the record was fading and Louise was introducing me. It was a strange experience, we were just two people chatting. There was no perception that we were broadcasting to, possibly, millions of people.

We chatted about the incidents that had caused my PTSD and how, unable to talk about them without becoming emotional, I had been asked by my counsellor to write notes to use at treatment sessions. In the sidio, I very quickly found myself sweating and starting to heat up. My heart rate increased and I experienced that sense of being out of my body that had occurred during treatment sessions. At one point I felt my voice start to crack and I took a deep breath. Louise seemed to sense my discomfort and moved the conversation on. In the event I was OK, I held myself together and kept talking.

We spoke for twelve minutes, so if Andy Warhol is correct, I still have three minutes of fame owed to me.

Later this month I am doing another interview with BFBS radio for the armed services. If it last three minutes I know I will have had my lot!

As I was about the depart, the weather presenter, Derek Brockway, came into the studio and read the weather report. I had a couple of spare copies of ‘Wicked Game’ with me and he asked me to sign one for him. It was an honour. Derek walked me to the foyer while we chatted about writing and the book. Later that evening Derek tweeted that he had met me and thanked me for signing a book for him.

I returned home and on checking my emails and texts I was amazed at the number of people I knew that had been listening to the radio and had heard the interview. I listened to the recording on the BBC website, fully expecting to cringe with embarrassment.

But, it wasn’t too bad. I sounded a bit like a soldier come policeman, but after 25 years doing just that I suppose that shouldn’t have been too much of a surprise.

For now, I’m going to continue to ride this wave until I fall off. I may be a novice surfer, but it’s a great wave, and I am enjoying the ride.

Matt.

Research trip

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Tomorrow I am off to Bucharest to do some preparation work on the sequel to Wicked Game. Romania is a key source of people who by one means or another are forced into the slave trade, often referred to as human trafficking. I am visiting the British Embassy, Institute of Migration and some other NGOs to see for myself the effect of this crime. I’m sure it is going to be an enlightening if harrowing trip.  

Agent or no?

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A long chat over the weekend has had me trawling the websites of literary agents this morning. A friend of mine has some interesting opinions on them…

http://www.stephenleather.com/index.php?page=getting-published

It doesn’t make for the most encouraging of reads. 

The weekend chat was with a bookshop owner about achieving the balance between creative writing and promotion. I have been doing a lot of the latter since the book first made it onto Kindle. The Wales national paper South Wales Argus was the first, then Police Oracle, Ministry of Defence Oracle and Soldier Magazine. I’ve been on Military Forum and am doing an interview soon with BFBS radio. 

Twitter has been marvellous and has put me in touch with many people who have read the book. Paperback sales are slow but the e-reader ones are very exciting. Not surprisingly, as my friend this week is a book seller, he wants people like me to get into print. 

So I have to decide. As an independent I am able to keep royalties without paying an agent or publisher (just the taxman!). But the 50Shades phenomenon is an example of what first class marketing can achieve and if the novel is to make as good a film as the reviewers seem to think then I would best be represented by someone who knows what they are doing. 

All I have to do is find a good one who I like and who likes me. What I need is match.com for writers, a plentyoffish site to bring authors and agents together. 

The search goes on…

Buying positive reviews

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Extracts from a blog I recently found when researching this practice. Is there anything than cannot be bought?

Authors Behaving Badly: The Seedy Underbelly of Reviewing

Up until a few months ago, I didn’t realise there was a seedy underbelly to publishing. But all of a sudden, I can’t seem to look anywhere without turning up odd or unpleasant behaviour from authors, publishers, or other members of the writing community.

Book reviews for sale

Apparently a certain individual used to work for a marketing department where he would write press releases and contact review sites to organise book reviews. One day he realised it was a lot of hard work, and there were more books than reviewers. So he created GettingBookReviews.com, a site where authors could pay $99 for him to review their book — positive review guaranteed!

For the value-savvy author, there were package deals: $499 would get you 20 different, positive online reviews. A mere $999 would guarantee you 50 individually hand-crafted 5-star reviews posted on the web.

He was soon raking in $28,000 per month.

Per Month!!

A bit of simple maths will tell you that $28K works out to somewhere between  28 and 280 books every month. Now, I don’t know about you, but I don’t have time to read 280 books a month. I don’t even have time to read 28 books a month. Especially not if I have to read 28 books then write 1400 individually hand-crafted reviews. So he outsourced. One of the freelance reviewers quoted in the article admits that she never actually read the books she was reviewing. She just googled them online, skimmed through a couple of pages, then wrote 5-star reviews. (She does say that she wishes she’d been able to read some of the books though, so it’s okay.)

When I read this story, I have to admit that I wasn’t shocked. I wasn’t even surprised that authors were buying good reviews on blogs, GoodReads, Amazon, etc. (In fact, the only thing that really surprised me was how lucrative fake-reviewing could be!) But just because I wasn’t surprised doesn’t mean I was happy about it.

It got me thinking about a few things, though.

  1. Just about everyone I’ve come into contact with today has roundly condemned the practice of buying positive reviews. And yet this site took orders for 4500 reviews. How is it that those authors aren’t jumping up and down and defending the practice? Or is it one of those things that’s only ethically wrong when people find out about it?
  2. Authors and publishers routinely send free copies (ARCs) of books to book bloggers and reviewers. That’s standard practice. So why exactly is GettingBookReviews.com so controversial? Is it (a) Because it involves the exchange of cold hard cash? (b) Because the service guarantees positive (and often gushing) reviews? Or (c) Because the reviewers don’t necessarily read the books?
  3. If the answer to the previous question is (b) or (c), that opens up a whole lot of other questions/concerns. For example, where do we stand on self-published authors reviewing each other’s books as a sort of quid pro quomarketing strategy? If one Indie Author provides a positive review of a friend’s book in exchange for the friend doing the same for hers (with or without reading the novel herself), how is that ethically different to Rutherford’s  services?
  4. Following on from that, what about smaller quid pro quo exchanges such as Facebook likes? Or Twitter follows? No, they’re not directly linked to book sales (although neither are reviews), but we all know that we’re more inclined to hit the LIKE or FOLLOW button if several thousand people have done so before us than if we’re the first one.

As a writer, I’m not comfortable with the idea of paying people to write reviews of my books. However, I can’t categorically say I’ll never feel differently. I can imagine sitting at my computer, proudly looking at my book on Amazon.com while my eyes flick back and forth between the “Buy this book” button and the “Be the first to review this book” link. After refreshing the page several hundred times in the first hour, I may be more than happy to pay someone to write that first review. For my own sanity, if nothing else.

As a writer, I’m not comfortable with the idea of requesting someone write a positive review. I am comfortable asking my friends and family not to write a review panning my book. Seriously, folks, if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all.

As a writer, I’m not comfortable with the idea of someone writing a review of my book if they haven’t read it. I’m not writing so people can pat me on the back, I’m writing because I have stories I want people to read. And writing a review without reading the words I’ve laboured over devalues my work.

Joel Friedlander also has a great post on this topic, explaining how paying for reviews cheapens the review process for both authors and readers.

As a reader… Well, as a reader I instinctively distrust any review that has nothing negative to say about a book. I’m more likely to be influenced by a well-crafted 3 or 4 star review, detailing what the reviewer liked and didn’t like about the story, characters, writing, etc than I am by a gushingly enthusiastic 5 star review. So perhaps this controversy, such as it is, doesn’t affect me overmuch at all.

Writers: Have you ever paid for a review? Would you ever consider doing so?  

Readers: Does this change the way you think about the reviews you read online?