And Why Beholdest Thou The Mote In Thy Brother's Eye...?

*Updated Below*

In response to recent revelations of novelists buying Amazon reviews and creating sock puppet accounts to praise their own books and trash those of others, a group of writers has come together to post a message -- No Sock Puppets Here Please ("NSPHP") -- condemning these practices, urging other writers not to engage in them, inviting readers to "take possession of the process," and asking "anybody who loves books" to sign the document, too.  I had my own idea for a voluntary code of conduct regarding purchased reviews and sock puppets a few days ago, and overall I'm glad to see that others have thought of, and have adopted, their own approach.  After a lot of consideration, I've decided to add my name (I don't flatter myself that my name would make much difference one way or the other, but still, it's my name) to the message these other writers have posted.  But I did so with reservations, and I'd like to talk about those reservations here.

My first reservation about NSPHP is that it names three recent authors who, to varying degrees, have outed themselves or have been outed engaging in the practices NSPHP addresses (purchasing reviews; self-praising sock puppets; sock puppets attacking third parties).  This made me uncomfortable.  After all, the problem isn't specifically RJ Ellory, Stephen Leather, and John Locke -- the named authors.  These three are just recent examples -- and examples of something probably much more widespread (NSPHP itself acknowledges that "Few in publishing believe they are unique," and if these three were likely the only ones, there would be no need for an NSPHP in the first place).  Why make a document, presumably intended to be relevant and read for many years to come, about three specific examples who are primarily notable because they did what they did in 2012?  Historian Orlando Figes was caught using sock puppets to praise his own work and to attack that of his rivals in 2010, but he isn't shamed by name in NSPHP.  It's not that I object to people like Ellory being shamed -- he's been widely, and, in my opinion, deservedly shamed, including here just now -- but is NSPHP supposed to be about shaming individuals, or about articulating the details of an enduring code of conduct designed to guide authors and reassure readers?  If the latter, the former strikes me as unnecessary, unhelpful, and even unseemly.

My second reservation was about this odd, italicized paragraph:

But the only lasting solution is for readers to take possession of the process. The internet belongs to us all. Your honest and heartfelt reviews, good or bad, enthusiastic or disapproving,­ can drown out the phoney voices, and the underhanded tactics will be marginalized to the point of irrelevance. No single author, ­ however devious, ­ can compete with the whole community. Will you use your voice to help us clean up this mess?

It's hard to know what this is.  I don't know what process readers are supposed to take possession of, or what taking possession of a process would mean.  The only way I can make sense of the whole thing is as a request for readers to post more reviews than they have so far.  Because if the current quantity of "honest and heartfelt" reviews is insufficient to "drown out the phoney voices," then "Will you use your voice to help us clean up this mess" can only logically be a request for readers to post more reviews -- and presumably many more, if any meaningful level of additional dilution of dishonest by honest is likely to occur.

This strikes me as… strange.  Is it really proper to try to recruit readers to post reviews as a way of protecting the integrity of the review system?  Maybe.  But I can't help feeling the most honest and disinterested course of action would be to just leave readers alone and let them post whatever they want for whatever reasons they want.  And that in attempting to recruit readers to join this battle -- even if the suggested weapon is itself honest reviews -- the authors of NSPHP have perhaps muddied their own message.

Now, maybe I'm reading this wrong.  But at a minimum, NSPHP seems susceptible of this interpretation, and I wish it weren't.  I wish the document were clearer and more straightforward in pursuit of its purpose, which I think, as noted in the first paragraph, is the protection of "the health of this exciting new [online] ecosystem."  This separate plea to readers seems, again, an odd and confusing way of furthering that end.

My third reservation is about the use of "unreservedly" in the paragraph, "We the undersigned unreservedly condemn this behaviour, and commit never to use such tactics."  As I mentioned above, adding my name to NSPHP wasn't an easy call.  I believe there's a significant difference between buying reviews, on the one hand, and using sock poppets to trash other authors, on the other (more on this below) -- so in addressing these practices without distinction, am I condemning "unreservedly?"  I'm not sure.  I think I'd rather condemn with some explanation, self-reflection, and nuance.  In the end, I decided NSPHP was likely to do more good than harm, and on that basis, decided to sign it.  But still -- adverbs, as Stephen King pointed out in his book On Writing, are not your friend.  I think NSPHP would have been improved by the absence of this one.

My fourth reservation stems from my belief that, for behavior to be ethically wrong, it has to in some meaningful sense harm others.  And while I find many of the alarums regarding the severity of damage to author finances and to the perceived integrity of the customer review system to be overblown, I do think that, in general, revelations that authors are buying reviews can only weaken reader trust in a system that has been a huge boon to authors (and particularly to indie authors).  For this reason alone, I think it's ethically wrong for authors to buy reviews.  Think of it as an author's version of the Kantian Categorical Imperative:  if all authors did it, all authors would suffer, and by this measure, it can't be right to do.

Self-praising sock puppets are, to me, similar.  Minuscule-to-nonexistant harm, extremely diffused at best, to individual authors, but, in light of revelations and suspicions about such behavior, caustic to the system itself.  And if the system suffers, everyone is to some degree harmed.

(I can't help adding just for proportion that I don't think the average online customer is some sort of naif who accepts the veracity of all online reviews with the unquestioning trust of a child believing in Santa Claus.  We're not talking about the first pollutants in a previously pure system, but rather of additional impurities in something already widely understood to contain a fair bit of turbidity.  This isn't grounds for cynicism or complacency, but again, worth mentioning, I think, to suggest some sense of perspective regarding the degree of likely harm.)

Because I think intent matters, I also have to add my sense that review-buying and self-praising-sock-puppet-deploying authors aren't trying to hurt anyone else.  They're only trying to help themselves.  Yes, at least arguably, there is a likelihood of harm regardless of intent, but in criminal law intent matters, and for me it matters here, too.

This is part of why the use of sock puppets to trash other authors is, for me, another story.  I find it disgusting and not just regrettable, but reprehensible.  In addition to its inherent, direct likelihood of harm to the authors against whom it's directed, it is intended to cause harm.  Harm, not just personal advantage, is its purpose.  Plus it's just so gutless.  Even as a novelist I have trouble getting my head around the notion of someone doing this shit and not realizing there is something seriously wrong in his or her psyche.  We all have unworthy urges, but if you actually do things losers do, doesn't that make you a loser?  Then why are you doing them?

So yes, I find all three practices addressed in NSPHP to be worthy of censure, but not in equal measure.  And I would have liked NSPHP to somehow account for the differences as well as the similarities.  Lumping them all together felt to me a bit like posting a message simultaneously condemning, I don't know, embezzlement and murder.  Yes, they're both bad, but I wouldn't want to suggest they're roughly equivalent, either.  Doing so makes embezzlement sound worse and murder, better. 

Speaking of similarities, my first reaction to these revelations was to find them abhorrent -- even the review purchasing, which upon reflection I consider to be the least of the three.  I've never done any of these things; I reassured myself.  Never even been tempted; never would.  Yea me.

But I didn't stop there.  I asked myself, "Well, okay, you haven't done those things… but have you ever done anything like them?"

And the honest answer was… "Well, for the first book (and maybe the second -- it's been a while), I gave out free copies to friends and family and said, 'Hey, if you like it and you feel inclined, don't be shy about posting an Amazon review...'"

Did I ask for a specific kind of review, or a minimum number of stars?  No.  Did I boost my chances by threatening to impose punishments or withhold favors if proper reviews were not forthcoming?  Of course not.  But come on, I knew these people were kindly inclined and motivated to help me.  They weren't obligated, there was no quid pro quo, but wasn't I at least to some extent trying to game the system?

And then I thought about blurbs, a system I believe is irredeemably corrupt.  Now, I give fewer blurbs than most, and, I suspect, more judiciously than many, but still, I'm hardly without sin when it comes to giving and receiving blurbs.

I thought hard about all this, and it wasn't easy for me to logically distinguish the widespread if not universal practices of review trading and blurb trading among authors, on the one hand, from the practice of buying reviews and self-praising sock puppets, on the other (the use of sock puppets to attack third parties, by contrast, was an easy call -- again, harm is the primary purpose and effect).  In the end, I think I did come to some sound conclusions about how these practices differ, but the reflection it took to get there left me feeling not comfortable or relieved, but rather humbled -- like someone who, in recognizing that he himself is not without sin, ought to be cautious about enthusiastically throwing that first stone.

I mentioned the Kantian Categorical Imperative above:  if all authors did it, all authors would suffer, and by this measure, it can't be right to do.  So I asked myself:  with the Categorical Imperative in mind, are blurb and review trading, and other forms of log-rolling and back-scratching, defensible where purchasing reviews and self-praising sock puppets are not?

I couldn't find a distinction.  Well then, I asked, what about deception?  Deception is at the heart of review-buying and sock puppeteering.  And that's what makes those practices bad.  Absent the deception, the review wouldn't work -- or would at least work a lot less well.

True enough, I thought, but it's not like authors include disclaimers on their blurbs:  By the way, Author X is a buddy of mine, and I'm doing this for her not just as a favor, but in hopes that she'll do me a solid in return. And remember, too, gentle reader, that all blurbs help the giver, not just the recipient, because the giver's name gets thousands of ad impressions when it appears for free on someone else's book.

Look, I know you can distinguish these examples, but I also think you'll find the distinctions are often a matter of degree rather than of kind.  It's like asking when "honest graft" becomes real graft, or what the actual difference is.  Maybe more a matter of social acceptance than of real ethical or logical differences.

Still, in the end, I concluded review buying and sock puppeteering were qualitatively worse than publishing "honest graft."  Here's why.

First, a paid-for review is practically a guaranteed review, and while yes, theoretically the review might be honest and thoughtful, in reality in a paid-for system most reviews will be anything but.  It's an explicit cash exchange -- money for services.  This strikes me as worse than implicit barter.  Still, I think you could argue that implicit barter, because it's more subtle, is also more insidious, widespread, and corrupting.

But I think there's another difference between review and blurb trading, on the one hand, and review buying and sock puppeteering, on the other, a difference that has to do with definitional clarity.  Defining what constitutes a bartered-for review or blurb is difficult.  Identifying a straight cash exchange or a fake Amazon account, on the other hand, is pretty easy.  Easier to define means easier to self-regulate and to police.  Now, the definitional difficulty means that bartered-for reviews and blurbs are always going to be part of publishing.  But I don't think it follows that because we can't cost-effectively fix all aspects of publishing, we ought not bother to try to improve any.

A fifth and final reservation about NSPHP.

Many of the posts on the recent revelations of deceptive practices in publishing felt to me like versions of "Shocked, shocked!"  Others struck me as embarrassingly self-important and sanctimonious:  yes, deception is ugly, and yes, the integrity of pretty much any system is important, but come on, people, we're not talking about whitewashing torture, or concealing safety problems in nuclear reactors, or a ginned-up controversy to persuade people that climate change isn't real.  We write stories.  We sell them online.  Yes, it matters and yes, we need to ensure insofar as possible that it's done with integrity, but it isn't life-or-death.  Perspective.

The emotions I sensed in play in many of the online condemnations I read made me uncomfortable.  Anytime I feel anger, umbrage, dudgeon, outrage, etc -- any emotion that inherently involves a sense of personal superiority -- I distrust the emotion and try to rigorously question whether the sense of personal superiority isn't at least in part what's driving the ostensibly underlying emotion.  Most people would argue that to the extent they feel self-righteous, it's because they feel angry.  In my experience, though, it's frequently the opposite:  they feel angry so they can feel self-righteous.  Multiply this dynamic a bit and you quickly get a mob.

Now, I wouldn't call NSPHP mob behavior, but I wouldn't describe it as maximally well conceived or executed, or a model of dispassion, either.  There are a lot of problems in this document, problems that could have been avoided by the application of just a little more care and consideration.  There are times it comes across, unnecessarily, as the author's answer to the Purity Ring.  So I can't help but wonder… why the rush?  Was this an emergency that permitted no time for that care and consideration?  Of course not.  So then what caused a group of demonstrably smart people -- every one of them a professional writer -- to produce a document as problematic as this one, a document that names bad actors when it should focus on bad actions; that equates pernicious deception with the truly noxious variety; that muddies its own purported purity with a strange and jargon-laden plea to readers?  And the answer, I think, is that they were in too much of a hurry to condemn, and probably because (i) condemnation feels good; and (ii) if there's a hurry, the whole thing must be Very Important.  Exactly the kinds of emotional drivers I've learned to distrust (but which, I hope needless to say, I recognize in part because I struggle with them myself).

This is just my sense -- just my opinion -- and I could be wrong about all of it.  But it leaves me feeling uneasy.  I would have much preferred something shorter, simpler, and less redolent of those untrustworthy emotions.  Maybe:

We're concerned about recent revelations of authors buying -- and creating false accounts ("sock puppets") to post -- online customer reviews.  Although publishing is hardly a perfect industry, and although these specific practices differ in various respects, we believe buying, and using sock puppets to post, online reviews are particularly deceptive practices that degrade the integrity of the online customer review system.  Because we want to protect both the actual and perceived integrity of that system to ensure that it remains useful and trustworthy for authors and readers alike, we're posting here to condemn these practices, and to invite others similarly concerned to add their names to ours.

That's more or less what I would have written, but the NSPHP folks did theirs first and I respect that.  Given that NSPHP is already out there, is garnering signatures, and is backed by some major names in fiction, I don't think it would be productive at this point to try to improve it, or to try to replace it with something better.  Which left me with a fairly simple choice:  do I do more good by signing, or by steering clear?  The document invites people to "put your name behind these sentiments," but it's precisely the sentiments I distrust.  And so this simple choice wasn't an easy one -- which is too bad, because it could have been.

So I signed, but not "unreservedly," and I'll be watching this thing with a wary eye because of the kinds of emotions I sense are partly at work behind it.  And whether or not others agree with my call or anything else I've written here, I do hope all authors will honestly consider the more mundane and more widespread types of corruption endemic to publishing, and what they might personally do to improve those practices given their demonstrated concern about the integrity of the overall system.  All this will require cool heads, a distrust of insidiously self-pleasuring emotions, and the humility fostered by reflection upon the meaning of Matthew 7:3.

Update:

Almost immediately after putting my name to it (with reservations and a link to this blog post, for what that's worth), I've been feeling increasingly uneasy at the way people are rushing to ostentatiously demonstrate their GoodThink at NSPHP.

I've found myself thinking about what it must have been like to be in Congress at the time of the Tonkin Gulf Resolution, or after 9/11 when the Patriot Act and Iraq War Resolution were passed.  Too many scared and angry people, too many people afraid of being accused of not supporting the ends because they couldn't condone the means.  Too many people acting in haste and not sufficiently in touch with their real motivations.

(The critical difference, of course, being... what did Henry Kissinger say when asked why academic politics are so vicious?  "Because the stakes are so small.")

Hoping to foster a bit more reflection, I posted at NSPHP the following video.  The moderators removed it (explaining publicly that they did so because they want the comment section to be only for signatures).

Although I think it would have been useful for the NSPHP site to note in advance that the comment section is only for signatures, I respect the right of the moderators to run the site however and for whatever purpose they wish.  But given everything else I've discussed here; given what I've seen since; and given my increasing concern about the applicability of the Two Minutes Hate, I've come to believe I made my close call in the wrong direction.  NSPHP has plenty of engine; what it really needs, I think, is more brakes.  Had I thought of this a little earlier, I would have made the right call the first time around.  But better late than never.  I've asked the moderators to remove my signature.  I think I can better serve authors and readers with disinterested individual commentary than by being just another Me Too.