Piper Nuelle

I came across a post and comments on a Facebook group chat about what a rouge author / reader had done recently… They had left reviews on books on Amazon that they hadn’t actually read!!!

And it left me thinking, is it morally wrong to leave reviews on books that you haven’t actually read?

My initial reaction was well, of course it’s wrong, you haven’t read it… But then it got me wondering why they did it? Was there a reason? And what reason’s could someone have for reviewing books but not reading them?

• It’s a book by a family member or friend, they want to support them but don’t have the time to read the book, so they just purchased the book and left a review (Hopefully a good one) without reading a single page.
• To lower the review ratings of a competitors book in the same category or genre. I have heard of this before, where competing authors in certain fields of genre would purposely try to sabotage another authors book to try and make theirs look better to gain more sales. It’s an evil tactic and one I don’t agree with, especially when I have seen it where they then get their own family, friends and followers to also put bad reviews. If you don’t like someone or their book, best thing is to ignore and move on, I can’t stand playground politics.
• If a book has been plagiarised and the original author is trying to warn others, but then again, they probably would have read some of the book to ascertain it has indeed copied their work. But maybe others had flagged it up.
• Thinking they are being nice by giving good reviews to struggling authors and books. Sometimes it is sad when you come across a book and it has no reviews because people haven’t come across it yet, sometimes you just want to hug the author and the book and say ‘It’s ok… I’ll review it’.
• In the hopes of a review for a review. This is where authors team up and review each others work in exchange for a review on their own.
• Paid reviews. Some authors don’t want to wait and grow organically, they want numbers now! And sometimes this causes them to pay for reviews, where a company or a bot writes reviews for a price and X-amount. This to me is most definitely not ethical, and actually can harm your book and reviews and reputation if you get caught out doing this.

So, as you can see there are many reasons why someone may write a review on a book without actually turning a single page and reading it. Some are not that bad, it’s just someone wanting to help out a friend or family member, they wish to support them in anyway they can. In that sense I don’t see the real harm in it, yes it is not their true opinion, but then again, maybe they don’t want to upset the person they love or care about if they read it and don’t like it, so it’s best to do a little white lie.

On the other end of the spectrum, where deviance comes in to play and bad reasons such as to knock another authors book and slander it so theirs does better, or to try and ruin another authors reputation. Those reasons I really do not agree with!!! But unfortunately people in this world are not all nice, some are truly horrible and jealous and just want to drag some people down. In this sense I feel it is very much wrong to leave a bad review on a book you haven’t read. Writing a book takes a lot of time, effort, blood, sweat and tears and for some Ass***e to come along and ruin it by leaving a bunch of fake reviews is not fair.

So, back to the question, is it morally wrong to leave reviews on a book you haven’t read?

YES if you are doing it for bad reasons, NO if you are doing it for good reasons. I guess ultimately it is considered a rather grey area, and I think if Amazon find out about some reviews being ‘Not Legit’, they will and do clamp down and remove them. So, I guess true moral of the story is… Buy the book, have your purchase verified, and leave a review once you have actually read the book!!!

xo Piper xo