We found this recent post, Outdoor Writing: Reviewing the Reviewers on To Hatch a Crow. It is a thoughtful piece which draws attention to what so many have ignored for so long. And to what, in our view, has amounted to harassment of authors who are perceived to be ‘the competition’. Here is a paragraph from the article:
99% of reviewers, I would suggest, are honest and conscientious. They tend to be scrupulously fair and objective and never allow personal feelings about an author to cloud their judgement. However, that’s not to say that there are not some bad apples in the barrel. One of our best known climbing writers does a good line in rubbishing authors he sees as rivals by writing one and two star reviews on Amazon under a series of pretty transparent pseudonyms. Rather amusingly, he always gives his own books five star glowing reviews.