Shame on You: The Worst One Star Review I've Ever Seen

I've contemplated doing a spot light of one star book reviews for a while. Not to make fun of writers who didn't do as professional a job as they could, but to get the Indie community to strike back at people who use one star reviews just to damage, not to inform. I haven't done a post like this up till now because I didn't want to hurt the reputation of the authors and books that would be highlighted. Until I saw the following one star review.

The Worst One Star Review I've Ever Seen

BEWARE: most/many of the 5-star reviews are from reviewers who have only one review or only Blaine books to their credit.

The first thing a review like this tells me is that either the reviewer is a competing author or a friend of a competing author. Why else would anyone write a review like this? Because they want to tell the world about a cheating author? Humph! Find an author you like and support him or her. Don't slander!

In any case, I don't believe the reviewer read the book. That's when a one star review should be used, when someone has read the book (or at least part of it) and can give details as to why they hated it, not because of the marketing efforts of the author—legit or not.

If you agree with me that this is a lousy use of a one star review, tell Amazon it was not helpful.