Needless to say the ball for this guy was already rolling before he even got his group off the ground, and the hostility spilled over. The response to this advice was shocking, this first time writer, who to be honest had not written a very good book was challenging the credibility some serious writers who knew their stuff. The general consensus was that most authors want their sales to be genuine ones where the books are actually read and reviewed. A group of more experienced writers politely explained that amazon could suspect some system being played and remove the books and authors. My own book sold two copies the other day and I rocketed up my genre chart by 230,000 places to 35000, so 180 purchases over a couple of days can easily propel you into the top 1000, maybe higher. A lot of digging was done and a dead forum thread was uncovered where this moderator had suggested a scheme for everyone to reduce their book prices and then buy each others books, he was talking about 180 people. What looked like two egos getting pricked seemed to generate a hell of a lot of mileage in this forum. There was the throwaway remark directed at someone wanting to enter the group and then there was the sudden blocking of a senior writer. Something had always bugged me about why so much hostility was being directed at this guy, and in turn the writers group itself. There was an interesting development involving the moderator of the facebook group that a load of us were members of. I posted a while ago about the beware of walking over bridges for the trolls that lurk.etc.

I kinda had a hunch about this situation.

Renatus 2 by John A. Saunders