Ms. MacGillivrey** showed up in the comments to provide this endorsement:

Kathryne’s books are indeed enchanting. She’s is one of the best new voices to debut in the past few years. I highly recommend her books.

This led Sybil, the blog owner, to ponder whether DAM was stupid or clueless and whether a recommendation by DAM was actually harmful to Ms. Kennedy. It’s unfortunate, but given DAM’s past behavior and the coterie of authors who assisted her in achieving her goals of review deletion***, a reader can easily become suspicious about the association. Like Sybil, though, I choose to believe that Kennedy does not know what is going on (although given that the request for clickies take place on the Dorchester loop, can this be true? Am conflicted).

Conversely, I know that endorsements can help me to decide to buy a book on a rare occasion or it can serve to validate a purchase. Aka Diana Gabaldon endorsed Joanna Bourne FTW! I didn’t read Joanna Bourne’s book because of the endorsement but I did find that the endorsement “validated” my response to the book. A comment recommending a book by an author whose book I liked will likely move me to buy books. I bought several Lucy Gordon books after a recommendation by Sherry Thomas. I read Lisa Shearin’s Armed & Magical because of the recommendation by Ilona Andrews. I added the emphasis because I kind of view a recommendation by an author as “if you like my book, you’ll like x book.”

PS – Shout out to any RT reader who came here because of the mention in July’s RT. It’s true, RT readers, that Tess Gerritsen decided to shut down her blog after receiving flack from people regarding her tongue in cheek support of DAM. This post (click on link) is the one that apparently led Ms. Gerritsen to believe that the interwebz were not for her. Are we to blame? Feel free to comment. We hope you stick around.

*This famously comes from the Ohio Clinton/Obama debate in which Obama denounced the endorsement of Louis Farrakhan and Clinton said that he should have rejected the endorsement and Obama responded that he would both reject and denounce. So now everyone uses “reject and denounce.”

**Deborah Anne MacGillivray was the recipient of a three star review by a reader named Reba Belle. DAM appeared to use yahoogroups and author groups to encourage or browbeat individuals into taking down negative reviews by reporting that the review is a) not helpful and b) abuse. Reba Belle attempted to fight back and repost her reviews and comments and was ultimately banned by Amazon.

***I can’t help but wonder about the pervasiveness of the deletion of negative reviews. For example, the deletion of reviews continues unabated at Barnes and Noble over the Evanovich reviews of Fearless Fourteen but Evanovich has refrained from stalking and threatening the negative reviewers.

Related posts:

1. Barnes & Noble Engaged in Deleting Reviews
2. More Evidence On the Unreliability of Amazon Reviews

Reba,

Thank you for letting me know you enjoyed "A Restless Knight" so much you read it twice. It’s always nice to hear this. I appreciate when people take the time from their busy lives to let me know what they feel about my books. Sorry, you didn’t let me know before. As it was my debut book, I was very interested in responses.

I think perhaps, as Anne posted, that you are a bit too much in love with Challon, and thus resistant to Damian. It does me credit that I can create a character who conjures such loyalty from you.

-.

However, I fear you did missed the point of Damian wanting to fight Dirk. He was not fighting for Tamlyn, he was going to take Challon’s place – to protect Challon.
-

I am think you skimmed the book, sitting in an auto place, worry about big bad men sniggering, and didn’t bother to see why the characters did things, just took surface reactions. You are keying into Aithinne’s POV, which at many times is not accurate to what was really happening.

-..

And where you got he was hung up on Tamlyn by the middle of the, that is SOOOOO wrong. He knew from his return he was mean for Aithinne, she was THE ONE. You are reading your quick assessment into that. He was NOT hung on on Tamlyn at any point after his return and he saw Aithinne. For you to keep saying that, shows how totally you are missing the true emotions of these characters.

As for accusing Athinne of asking Dirk into her room – he is MALE. Male do silly thinks when they are upset and jealous. This is so TM – Typically male. Men do silly things at times of high emotions. Damian is human, not perfect.

-

P.S. Thank everyone for the lively discussion. Sales have jumped!

She has since deleted the review, but not before it came to light that MacGillivray uses yahoogroups and author groups to encourage, browbeat, or by other means, individuals into taking down negative reviews by reporting that the review is a) not helpful and b) abuse. MacGillivray also appears to have taken even further steps to ascertain personal information about Reba

2c. Re: vote down this bitch please
Posted by: "DeborahAnne MacGillivray"
writer@DeborahMacGIllivray.co.uk scotladywriter
Date: Tue Aug 21, 2007 10:17 pm ((PDT))
Well, thanks to XXXXXX our PI , we now have her name, her husband’s
name, her chidrens’ names, her grannies and great grannies name. Her
address phone number and email
lol-quite interesting.

Hilary Sares, MacGillivray’s Kensington editor, purportedly ” is very aware of this situation and said only people with nothing better to do plays in this mess.”

As a reader, I hope that this is not true, that an editor wouldn’t be so cavalier about an author hunting down a reader’s personal information in this manner. I also hope that MacGillivray and her pals would stop using the Amazon system as their own little playground. This sort of thing works to devalue the very product that MacGillivray is working so hard to build up. I’ll be blogging more about this on Sunday.

Related posts:

1. The Author/Reader Disconnect or Why Can’t We Just All Get Along?
2. Amazon Reader Purportedly Better Than Sony’s But Also More Expensive
3. Amazon.Com Offers Exclusive Look at Kite Runner Author’s Sophomore Effort