 What's shakein'? My name's Cam, welcome back to another video. So I've been wanting to make this video for a pretty long time. Probably literally like almost two years, but I haven't for a very specific reason. My concern when talking about authors buying fake reviews and author tubers buying fake reviews is that I could piss off the wrong person. And then that person could turn around and go and buy fake reviews for one of my works and use that just to spite me and say, hey look, what a hypocrite. That's a genuine concern I've had every time I've thought about making this video, but my hope is that if I can show you how easy it is to get and spot fake reviews, that won't be an issue. It's also really important that I make something really clear right off the bat. I'm not going to be mentioning anyone by name, so if that's why you're here, if you're here for like author tuber on author tuber shade, I'm sorry, that's just not what's going to happen here. I'm sure you already have a few names in mind. I know authors or author tubers buying fake reviews has been at the center of a lot of conversations in and around this YouTube community that we have, but at the end of the day it comes down to one thing, and that's that I cannot say with absolute certainty that any one person actually bought fake reviews. I can point out a few examples and say that I think the evidence that there are fake reviews there are overwhelming, but I can't say that the author is the one that bought them. So for that reason I'm not going to be calling anyone out, because it's just it wouldn't be fair. Maybe they did buy fake reviews, but I don't know for sure. Anyway, with that said, this video is going to be in three major parts. Goodreads, which is where the majority of these fake reviews happen, Amazon, because you would think that you can't get fake reviews on Amazon because they have a number of roadblocks up, but I've done some deeper digging and I'm incredibly skeptical. So I want to talk to you about that. And then finally to close off the video, I just want to give a direct message from me, two people that are thinking about or have bought fake reviews in the past, just a bit of a general discussion about the practice of doing it, why I think people do it, why I think there should even be a bit of empathy there, but ultimately why I think it's such an incredibly bad idea. Before we jump into it, you'll notice I'm growing a glorious or disgusting, depending on who you're talking to, mustache. Thank you. And the reason I'm growing it is for the same reason I grow a mustache every November. I've been doing it for years and years. I'm doing Movember. I'm raising money for the Movember Foundation. It's a very special cause to me. I do it every year in memory of my father. It helps to promote positive men's health, prevent suicide and raise awareness for prostate cancer. You'll find in the description below a link to the Movember page if you can spare even a couple of dollars. That would be great. You would be helping out a lot of people, or even if you can't afford anything at all, that is completely fine. All I would ask is that you go and visit the link and just have a look. It's all about awareness. So that's why that's the point. Under no other circumstance would I be trying to convince people that I can pull off a mustache like this. Moving on. So the reason fake reviews are so prevalent on Goodreads is because it is so easy to do. When you review a book there, you only need to have a Goodreads account. That's it. That's the only gate. You do not need to prove that you have read or even owned the book. I want to be clear. I think that's a good thing. I think that's one of the best things about Goodreads. However, this is why one-star bombing happens a lot. It's kind of a whole different discussion, but I'll touch on it quickly. That's something I really hate. One-star bombing is basically when a controversy or something will break out about an author, and a bunch of people will immediately go to the authors Goodreads page and leave one-star reviews on all of their stuff, whether they've read the book or not. To be clear, I am all for calling out authors when they do the wrong thing. I encourage it. But I am still firmly of the belief that you should only leave a star review for a book if you have read it. If you read the book and you hated it, give it one star. That's fine. If you started reading the book and stopped because you hated it so much, if you DNF'd it, give it one star. That's fine. But if you're giving it one star on Goodreads simply because you heard something that you didn't like about the author, I just don't agree with doing that. That's just my belief. That's my personal opinion. Anyway, I've talked about that in quite a few videos. I will leave a card up here if you want to check one of those videos out. But that's a different chat for a different day. Anyway, fake reviews on Goodreads have been at the center of a lot of controversies and discussions, particularly here on YouTube, and especially involving authors in the author-tube community. And yeah, I think it's pretty safe to say that some popular author-tuber books have been padded with bogus reviews. I think the writing is on the wall there. I think it's very obvious. Again, whether that author is responsible or not is not for me to say. But it is really, really easy to spot fake reviews on Goodreads because they usually come in big waves. On a seemingly unimportant date, you'll see the book just be inundated with an influx of five-star reviews. The reviews will usually be from newly created accounts or from accounts that have only ever reviewed other books five stars. When you see this happen, I think it's pretty obvious that what is happening is that there is a company that someone is paying money to and then that company is giving a bunch of random people out on the internet a very small amount of that money that you pay them to go to a link, the link to your book on Goodreads and leave a review. This happens with a lot of stuff. You will notice on Lionel, I'm sure you've seen it a hundred times, you'll see a thing that asks you to do surveys for like, you'll get like five cents for every survey you do, that kind of thing. I imagine it's the exact same thing when it comes to like these fake Goodreads reviews. When it comes to Goodreads, the reviews themselves will usually either not have any text in the review or any writing in the review at all or it will be something super generic like great book, highly recommend, cannot wait for second book. Now, Amazon reviews are a little more complicated because at a first glance, a lot of the reviews that I think are fake, they won't seem that way. But bear with me because after some digging I do think I've found a pretty easy way to identify them. See the thing with Amazon reviews is that not only does the reviewer have to have bought the book first before they can leave a review but they also have to have had an active Amazon account for a significant amount of time first. This makes sense. I think that's a good thing and it almost seems foolproof, but not quite. Generally the book in question and you can try this out yourself. Go find one of your favorite author tubers books on Amazon. Generally the book will have a between four and five star total rating with at least a couple of hundred reviews. What you'll start to notice if you scroll through is a bundle of five star reviews and the review itself will not say anything that couldn't be gathered by simply reading the book's blurb or about section at the top of the Amazon page or by reading other reviews on that Amazon page. To be clear, I think there are definitely people leaving fake reviews on Amazon and I think there are definitely people buying them but the people leaving these reviews are a bit more clever and I imagine it's because they're probably being paid a bit more. In like one Google search I very quickly found a website that sells Amazon reviews so this is happening and the way I think they do it is very similar to Goodreads. I think people who have active Amazon accounts and want to make a bit of extra money can sign up to do this and they will be gifted the product by the website. They'll be gifted your book and the reviewer will be paid a very small commission to leave a review and then the thing is after they do that they can request to return that book. They may not always get their money back for it but they can request it. What I think is happening is that these fake reviewers again I think they're a bit more clever than the Goodreads reviewers I think that going to your book's Amazon page they will read the like description about the book they'll scroll down maybe read a couple of the other reviews and then they'll type up their own little mini review. Give it a five star rating and away they go. You may be wondering why I think this. Where's the proof? Well if you find a review that you think might be fake on Amazon all you need to do is go to the profile of the person who left the review. What you might find is that that person has been leaving a ton of five star reviews on a bunch of different books in blocks of like one day. Every single review they do is five stars without question and they're always done in clusters. What that looks like to me is like someone is logging in getting a bunch of links for them to leave reviews on going there and doing that and then cashing out. Now this on its own could be nothing. I could be overthinking it, sure. But when there are multiple maybe even hundreds of reviewers exactly like this I think it's pretty clear that something's going on. When I found this I realized something else. If you find a reviewer that you think is fake is doing fake reviews you can also find other authors potentially buying fake reviews simply by looking at the other reviews that that reviewer has done. I made that sound way more complicated than it needed to be. Say you find a reviewer that you think is fake look at the other books that they have reviewed. Again I can't say for sure but I think chances are those books also have a ton of fake reviews. That's what I thought so I started clicking through these different books and lo and behold they all had influxes of five star reviews from accounts that were again exactly like this. And it's always the same group of authors. Like I said I won't say names but go and take a look for yourself. It is the same reviewers giving nothing but five stars to the same small group of authors. I just don't think that's a coincidence. Unfortunately I did also find a few author tubers in there that it looks like they have a bunch of fake reviews and these are author tubers that I've never seen mentioned in these conversations before. I don't think anyone suspects these people of having fake reviews. These are author tubers that I really want to believe are legit but the more and more I dug the more reviews I looked out on their stuff. I just I don't know man I found a lot of reviews that looked very sketchy. Just take a look for yourself that's all I can say. Look I could be wrong about all of this maybe I'm just doing the Charlie from It's Always Sunny meme but the fact is it's the same reviewers giving five stars to the same authors in the same small time frames and it just seems too coincidental. So why would people buy fake reviews for their books? I think it's pretty obvious it's fear and I can completely empathize with that. The fear that your book won't take off the fear that its overall score will be driven down by just a few one star reviews those are legitimate concerns when you're writing a book and I get it it's terrifying you know you pour your heart and soul into something for months or years hundreds of hours of work like it's the emotional toll of writing a book I think is way too often understated and to think that in the end it could end up with a two star total it's scary so I do feel bad for the people that feel like they have to turn to fake reviews but you still shouldn't do it if you're thinking about doing it don't and if you have already done it maybe even look into ways to reverse it you probably can't at this point but having those reviews up is bad it's really bad for a few reasons one and most obviously it's disingenuous it's really it's sketchy man you're basically falsely advertising your product you are effectively tricking people into reading your book that's kind of gross reason two the fake reviews are really easy to find really easy and the moment that people do find bogus reviews on your book your reputation can be tarnished indefinitely your book is something that you've poured your heart and soul into right getting some negative reviews may feel pretty bad but those people may still assume that you could get better over time they might read your next book and like it more but if you get busted having fake reviews on your book there's almost no coming back from that and also why do that to yourself I don't mean to sound cheesy but like have a bit of faith in yourself you know don't ruin all of your hard work all of those hundreds of hours of like blood sweat and tears don't ruin it by giving yourself a fake round of applause I just I can't imagine that would even feel good you know I get why you would want to do it I really do uh but it's just not worth it I know all of this seems pretty negative but I do want to see my fellow indie writers and author tubers succeed I really really do that is why I'm I'm doing this to send a message to say you don't need to do fake reviews and there's no point and it's not worth it and don't do it anyway uh let me know what you think I guess what would your reaction be to finding out that one of your favorite author tubers had a bunch of fake reviews or allegedly fake reviews I don't know it's very disappointing for me like I said I saw a couple of author tubers in there that have some very questionable our reviews that I never even suspected of of doing it and maybe they didn't but I'm I'm questioning it now so that's something anyway good luck with your writing good luck with your nano-rimo if you can spare a couple of dollars don't need to move ember great cause and hopefully I'll see you in the next one catch ya