Tuesday, September 4, 2012

RJ Ellory: detected, crime writer who faked his own glowing reviews

Article from The Telegraph
By

A best-selling British crime writer, RJ Ellory, used pseudonyms to pen fake glowing reviews about his “magnificent genius” online while simultaneously criticising his rivals.

He admitted he had used fake identities to write about his own work on the Amazon book site, giving himself five star ratings. He gave his rivals bad reviews and low ratings using the same pseudonyms.

Ellory, one of Britain's leading authors who has won a variety of awards including Crime Novel of the Year 2010, was compelled to apologise after Jeremy Duns, a British spy author now based in Sweden, aired the accusations on Twitter.

The 47 year-old's apology, in a statement to The Daily Telegraph, came amid a storm of condemnation from the literary world over the “unfair” and “misleading” practice, known as “sock puppeting”.

In his fake posts, many of which appeared to have been deleted, he used the names “Nicodemus Jones” and “Jelly Bean” to heap praise on his works.

Ellory, whose real name is Roger Jon Ellory, also attacked his rival authors, including Mark Billingham and Stuart MacBride, under the same assumed identities, in a series of withering posts.

Read the rest of the story.

No comments:

Post a Comment