The same could be said for certain unpaid interns

Yes, negative reviews are a part of being an author, but orchestrated smear campaigns by competing publishers are appalling and should not be tolerated. These people are criminals, and so is that company that charges £5k for seven fake Amazon customers to do your reviews.

Even worse are the Chinese military factories that steal authors works and publish them for sale worldwide without a dime going to the author.

... oh, wait, we're not supposed to admit that?

@3: Eh?
Let me get this straight: Factories that are usually used to make weapons, are used to make fakes of mass market novels on the side. Do you know how ridiculous that sounds?

If it gets more terrible authors to stop writing books, then it's fine by me.

@5, Will has a weird inverted variant of Munchausen Syndrome or something, that causes him to deliberately destroy his own credibility and reputation. Why? Nobody knows. But there it is. It's the same thing that motivates his posts about his special "Nintendo-branded 3D iPad beta".

It could be worse, I guess. He could be out in the street chopping his own legs off or something.

@7, King Arthur and the Black Knight all in one, then:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zKhEw7nD9…

sorry, I don't agree. I think paid or "campaign" good or bad reviews keep me from knowing what people really think about the book after reading it.
I think they should find a way to root out the paid-for or campaign reviews.

More than anything, I'm surprised that Amazon would allow reviews to be posted by PR firms. Doesn't that go against the entire reason to have customer reviews?

The negative reviews of Rosie Alison's book all seem pretty fair to me. I read the book and the complaints in the one and two star reviews, even the three star ones, reflect exactly what I thought of the book:mediocre at best, and not up to scratch for the Orange Prize. Probably it was that nomination that drew in so many bad reviews; the book just does not compare with other shortlisted books. On the reviews site goodreads.com the reviews are even worse: is she going to wage war against that site too? The most professional way to deal with bad reviews is for an author to simply ignore them.