It’s hard being a self-published author. There is this stigma attached to us that we just weren’t cut out for publishing so we did it ourselves. We suck. Our writing is awful, blah, blah, blah.

That’s not always true. There are some AMAZING self-published authors out there. In fact, some traditionally published authors are turning to self-publishing.

Then…well, then someone like John Locke comes along. And no, not the guy from Lost.

He was one of the big self-publishing names. He was the FIRST self-published author to make  it to the Kindle millionaires club. He had amazing reviews. Then he published his book How I sold 1,000,000 ebooks in 5 months. I bought it. I spent that $2.99 and I bought the book.

WHAT A WASTE! It was nothing but him bragging about being rich. Ohhhh good for him.

Granted it was how HE sold 1,000,000 ebooks, not how I could. And then the truth came out about all those rave reviews. HE PAID FOR THEM! That’s right, those 300 rave reviews he had are all bogus. He paid some guy thousands of dollars to write false reviews.

I can’t say I’m entirely surprised. After reading his How I sold blah blah blah, I didn’t understand why so many people liked it, or thought it was helpful. It was shit. It was nothing more than a brag book. Okay, good for him, he found fortune in the insurance business.

So I can’t help but wonder, is Amazon going to remove all of those 4-5 star reviews? Will he be banned from Amazon? Is anyone actually going to buy his books anymore?

For those who don’t like self-published authors because of shit like this, I promise not all of us pay for our reviews. There are those of us out there who work out tails off to get the honest reviews that we have. Most of us take the reviews, both positive and negative, and work on our craft from those. There are those of us who truly do care about our writing. It’s our passion. It’s our drive, and I can only hope that people like Mr. Locke stop with their crap.

So, back to my own writing.