Sock puppetry and fake reviews: publish and be damned

A Quiet Belief in Angels by RJ Ellory is, according to a review in the Guardian, "thriller writing of the very highest order". High praise indeed, but one Amazon reviewer, "Jelly Bean", goes further. RJ Ellory's story of a man who as a child was at the centre of a series of brutal killings of young girls is "one of the most moving books I've ever read", Ellory himself is "one of the most talented authors of today" and "his ability to craft the English language is breathtaking".

Too much? No, because Amazon reviewer "Nicodemus Jones" agrees: the book is a "modern masterpiece", and "whatever else it might do, it will touch your soul". A reader wondering whether or not to make a purchase might be convinced by this breathless praise: the only problem is, Jelly Bean and Nicodemus Jones are both the pseudonyms of Ellory himself, who was outed this week by fellow crime writer Jeremy Duns as the author of 12 glowingly positive writeups of his own books on Amazon, as well as two reviews critical of his fellow crime authors Mark Billingham and Stuart MacBride. MacBride's novel Dark Blood is, according to Ellory's pseudonymous review, "another in the seemingly endless parade of same-old-same-old police procedurals that seem to abound in the UK".

On Monday, Ellory took responsibility for the reviews and apologised for his actions, both publicly to his fans and privately to Billingham and MacBride, but this has been a bad summer altogether for the credibility of authors and online book reviewing. It started when the bestselling thriller writer Stephen Leather admitted at the Harrogate crime festival to using various names online, and even having conversations with himself, to build buzz about his novels, sparking a huge debate among authors about the ethics of the practice known as "sock puppeting".

Leather was shown by Duns to have set up a fake Twitter account in the name of a fellow author who had criticised his books. Then came Ellory, following dishonourably in the footsteps of Orlando Figes, who two years ago was found to have been disparaging rivals and vaunting his own works on Amazon. Meanwhile, the Northern Irish crime writer Stuart Neville has accused the author Sam Millar of a series of vicious pseudonymous Amazon attacks on his work, since strongly denied by Millar.

"It's a very long, slippery slope," says the crime author (and Guardian reviewer) Laura Wilson, who believes she too has been the victim of Millar's attacks after she wrote a less-than-flattering review of his latest book in the Guardian. "For donkey's years you've had people like Private Eye pointing out that so-and-so puffed so-and-so's book because they're buddies," she says. "But this – and it's not just crime fiction which is affected – puts it into a new and rather horrible arena."

Wilson's situation is this. An Amazon reviewer, Cormac Mac, "Crime king", has written of her novel Stratton's War: "A lot of old cliches litter the book. She does what a lot of authors seem to be doing: write one book, then simply rewrite it with a different title." Millar's novel The Redemption Factory, meanwhile, gets the writeup: "Each page is a bloody treat for those who love their noir dirty, dark and bloody," while a host of other novels are also recommended by Cormac Mac, nearly always with a mention of "bestselling crime noir writer, Sam Millar".

Neville, in his lengthy accusation of Millar, also provides a screengrab of Cormac Mac's wish list, now taken down, which credits the list to "sam millar".

Millar has denied the allegations. His publisher in Ireland, O'Brien Press, is taking him at his word, but is also looking into the accusations itself. "It is a strong case and Stuart has put time into putting it together, and from his perspective it definitely looks as if Sam is the perpetrator," says managing director Ivan O'Brien "It looks very bad, but it's innocent until proven guilty and I have to believe him at the moment. We are just being very strong in our conviction that it's a very bad thing to do, and that nobody should do it."

As Duns, who spent a great deal of time investigating Leather and Ellory before coming forward with his accusations, admits, it's difficult to find definite proof. "Since this has happened, I have got a whole inbox of people saying: 'I've got a problem with this guy.' But it's very time-consuming to follow up – it's very hard to prove this stuff and I do have books to write. Christ knows what my editor thinks of all this."

But Duns believes the practice of posting fake reviews is "absolutely rife", and to that end has gathered a group of authors including Lee Child, Joanne Harris, Roger McGough, Tony Parsons and more than 50 others who have put their names to an open letter condemning sock puppeting and committing to never doing it. "But there's no easy fix," Duns acknowledges.

The trustworthiness of online reviews has also taken a beating this summer thanks to the rise of the paid-for write-up. In July, the chick-lit author Michele Gorman says she was stunned to be offered a positive review in exchange for $95 by a purportedly impartial website. Then the New York Times revealed the existence of a service enabling authors to pay for hundreds of reviews from "readers" – the hugely successful self-published crime author John Locke admitted using it.

"Lots of people are trying to make money by exploiting writers. They try to convince us that our best chance of success is to pay for favourable reviews," says Gorman, who turned down the offer and outed the site – The Chick Lit Girls – on her own blog (she was subsequently threatened with legal action for her revelations; the site has now disappeared). "But a writer's best chance of success is to write good books that lots of people honestly enjoy. Taking shortcuts by paying for fake reviews cheats readers. It cheats our own integrity. And it damages the reputation of the vast majority of book bloggers whose only payment is a free book in return for an honest review."

One suggestion from authors to combat these practices is for review sites such as Amazon to only allow accounts linked to Facebook pages, or to verified purchases, to post reviews (Amazon.co.uk did not return requests for comment about how it will tackle the issue). Another is to introduce a new code of practice for writers.

The Society of Authors says it will consider this if sock puppetry becomes more widespread. "It is in every respect wrong. It is misleading about the book it praises, it is worse than misleading about the works it disparages. And because the truth is increasingly likely to come to light, it is also entirely counter-productive," says deputy general secretary Kate Pool. "The Society of Authors has never had a code of practice – it does not make value judgments on its members of their work – and would prefer not to have to introduce one, but clearly if sock puppetry becomes established, it is something the management committee would have to consider."

With false online identities endemic across the internet, Pool puts their growing prevalence in the world of books down, partly, to the move towards authors being forced to become their own publicists, both because of the rise of self-publishing and because traditional publishers are putting pressure on their writers to engage in social media. "This has always been an uneasy balance," she says. "Some of the bad side effects have been sock puppetry, the new wariness of Waterstones about hosting author events, and attempts by some individuals to boost their books in Amazon rankings by methods – largely beyond my comprehension – that have little to do with the work's actual success or popularity. All of these seem to me to be the flailings of an industry in a state of major transition – from long-established traditional grooves into nobody is yet entirely sure quite what."

And as many authors admit, there are grey areas here. Novelist Ceri Radford admits to tapping a friend for a review when her first novel, A Surrey State of Affairs, received a one-star writeup "from someone who complained bitterly that the plot of my comic novel was 'laughable'. I would have enjoyed the irony if I hadn't been a weeping jittery wreck at the time," she says. "When a friend started telling me how much she'd enjoyed the book, in such a detailed way I was confident she was being sincere, I couldn't resist asking her if she wouldn't mind sticking that on Amazon. Yes, I felt a little shifty, but I just couldn't bear that that one spiteful swipe was there at the top of my Amazon page, scaring people off something I'd put so much heart, soul and toil into."

I, meanwhile, will own up to reviewing my father-in-law's book Music and Mathematics: From Pythagoras to Fractals, back in 2006. I gave it five stars, and 14 out of 20 people found my urging that "I would heartily recommend this volume to anyone fascinated by the complex relationship between mathematics and music" helpful. I wrote it under my own name, and I stand by what I said – but still, it's the opening of the rabbit hole.

"It's hard to tell where the line lies," agrees Radford. "Sure, pretending to be someone you're not in order to describe your own work as a searing work of literary genius is wrong, as is buying up batches of five-star reviews, but is it dodgy to ask one friend? Or five? Or 10? What about asking your Twitter followers to post reviews? The internet has dissolved the distance between author and reader in a way that is still throwing up difficult questions."

Neville and Duns are clear that the practice of sock puppetry is something for the books industry as a whole to tackle. "Authors and publishers should behave ethically, and of course the vast majority of them do. I also feel companies such as Amazon should look at tightening up their own procedures and policies to minimise this kind of behaviour," says Neville. "Any system can be gamed if someone knows the right tricks to play, but it shouldn't be as easy as it seems at present."

"Ian Rankin said on Twitter that authors have taken a stand, and that publishers and agents could also start speaking out about it," agrees Duns. "The more people who condemn it publicly, the harder it gets."

The author signatories to Duns's open letter, who also include Rankin, Mark Billingham, Charlie Higson and Susan Hill, hope that readers can help too. "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 marginalised to the point of irrelevance," they write. "No single author, however devious, can compete with the whole community. Will you use your voice to help us clean up this mess?" Well, will you?