@Kim – Again thank you so much for the great feedback. I’ve got to say comments like this are more than enough for me to want to forget all about the negative stuff!

@Jim – Good point. No, very few with 5 stars.

@Joanne – Thanks for your feedback, and yes I agreee it’s sad that here in the UK success seems to be perceived as bad by many people. And yes bang on… it amazes me how some people seem to put so much effort and spend so much time being negative. Just think what they could achieve if they redirected that energy elsewhere!

Thanks for all your comments and feedback.

But I really regret that lots of people confuse this positive quality with a tendency to criticise for the sake of looking worldly wise. People are very suspicious of achievement and seem to start from a position that all success, especially stellar, MUST be corrupt or immoral and then ask to be convinced otherwise.

Us Brits like to think of ourselves as healthy cynics, less gullible than other folk, but in reality a lot of it is essentially sour grapes dressed up as clever insight. And while self deprecation and a celebration of achievement are not mutually exclusive, disparagement and celebration are, and this whole affair seemed to slip into the latter.

The problem is that many people put infinitely more effort in to tearing something down than in to building things up. It is dead easy to disparage something and much less easy to spend some time to actually produce something positive. If you check some reviewers’ reviews they clearly spend a lot of their life thinking of something terribly clever to say in criticism of someone else.

I do agree that we should point out when we have evidence that something is deceiving people, or is of poor value. But I wish we spent the same amount of time rewarding the other people and things that have improved our lives. We are extremely privileged in this country and there are lots of things to be grateful for. When we criticise something we should always be mindful to our motives – are we REALLY saying it to help someone else? Or if we’re honest, is it really about how we want to appear?

I was very disappointed when Matthew responded to the first message being taken down by immediately replacing it with another, taking no account of the counter comments. However I have just checked in here and seen that Matthew has now taken some time to come here and say that his attack was misjudged and ill informed. I applaud him for that. Most people in his position make a lot of noise when they are looking clever and slink away quietly when they are proven wrong and I think it shows a lot of character to hold your hands up and say you made a mistake.

PS I notice the original reviews, both positive and negative, have been put back up on Amazon. I’m not sure Amazon know what they think about this kind of issue. I do agree with Matthew that their policies towards prompted reviews is very unclear. I know of a writer who produced an annual anthology on commission for a publisher. The anthology had been out of print for some years. When it was revamped and relaunched with a slight twist, the previous writer (who the new publishers had not asked to write the new version) waged a really vicious war on the new version, with suddenly lots of reviews – all with suspiciously similar writing styles and identical gripes – appearing on Amazon slagging off the new version and calling for the old writer to be brought back. On the flip side, you can often detect a ‘house style’ in positive reviews which any one in publishing can recognise as having been written by the marketing department. But on the whole the review system on Amazon works very well and I think we just have to accept that human nature, both positive and negative, will show up anywhere.

-Jim

Sorry, on my soap box now. But, Ed – you keep doing what you’re doing. We all think your great – and your practical, very useable information helps us to become tall poppies too.

Kim.

I wouldn’t give it anymore energy Ed. Anyone who sticks their head above the parapet and by that I mean being more prominent than most people, or more successful, more knowledgeable etc, is bound to get shot at occasionally. It comes with the territory. I would advise (and I don’t mean to sound patronising) that you concentrate on and appreciate the people who love what you do. By all means, address genuine concerns that people may have but not someone who hasn’t even read your book!

For what it’s worth, my husband and I think you’re great – very knowledgeable, honest, lovely to talk to – what more can I say without making you blush? And by the way, we gave you a review and we are definitely real!

Also I do totally see where you’re coming from regards loads of positive reviews suddenly appearing from nowhere.

In my own defence I never realised I’d get so many glowing reviews so quickly… (guess I underestimated the power of e-mail marketing!

No hard feelings and I wish you all my best,

Ed.

It is as you said… a long period of no reviews. Then the sudden appearance of 22 reviews, all during the working week, almost all from people who had never reviewed another book, and all positive, caused me to be suspicious, mistakenly it seems.

In self defence I would say that the pattern was highly unusual. Most books, even quite famous ones, take a long time to garner reviews. Most books are not exclusively reviewed by people who’ve never reviewed any other book. Most books are not reviewed by a sudden rush of people, all at once, there having previously been total silence. And most books are not reviewed during a period in which there’s a note on Amazon, saying that the book is not available for sale.

My apologies that I rushed to point out the pattern, from which people could have drawn conclusions which, it turns out, would have been erroneous.

I am frankly surprised that Amazon allows authors to email their contacts to ask for reviews, because this would tend to bias the sample towards positive reviews. But if Amazon does allow it, so be it. As you say, it hadn’t occured to me that this had happened, and now that you explain it, everything falls into place. Again, my apologies.

Clearly Ed has a large base of support from real people, for which congratulations!

I look forward to networking with you and maybe helping you with your InfusionSoft Application.