Definition:

1. A person who has no life.

2. A censor whose only goal is a bash any book that may contain content that they disprove of.

3. A grammar Nazi.

4. Generally gives 1 star reviews.

5. Works for or has written a book similar to the one they are bashing in order to lower the books rankings.

6. To make themselves feel as if they have control over something.

7. Uses aliases.

8. Has not read the book they are bashing with the one star review.

9. Uses the same review for all their reviews. Cut and paste, (These are actual one star reviews on books with dozens of great reviews including more then 10 – 5 star reviews. Typo’s and punctuation not altered).

there are too many misspellings in this book to enjoy it. it seems like it was never read before being uploaded to ****** and that’s a shame because I liked the idea behind the story. Unfortunately I don’t think I managed to read more than 10-15 pages before I had to quit out of disgust for the authors lack of understanding of how the English language is used!

Or

I should have figured that I wouldn’t like it from the awkward title. But I gave it a chance; didn’t get very far into it and had to quit. First of all, it was written in the present tense, which to me sounds juvenile. Then I couldn’t get past the need for editing. It was so full of errors in sentence structure, punctuaton, grammar and spelling that it was hard to get past these distractions.

Or

This very short book is full of typos and wrong words. Plus it doesn’t tell a story that makes sense. Skip this one.

These same reviews, word for word, can be found on two of my books.

10. Trolls turn to stone when the light shines on them.

I guess you could look at these Trolls in two different ways.

1. They are called Trolls, because like their dim-witted cousins, they are dim-witted, cause panic, and raise the stress levels of the authors they review.

2. They are like fisherman trolling about and when they catch a book who is ranked higher than theirs, or one they fear may out sale or out produce their own they bash it.

What can be done?

Nothing really…they use aliases. They set up false accounts and then bash away.

In all fairness to these Trolls…they do a service, sort of. In my case, it made me look a lot closer at how I edit, although I disagree with their techniques. Before I found out these were Troll reviews I panicked. I had a couple of three star reviews that indicated editing issues, so I figured these 1 star reviews were just part of the learning curve. I hired an editor. Believe me I needed one. My books are looking much better, but you know, they really were not bad before and my editor concurred.

So what do I do about those reviews, nothing. What can you do? I pray for better reviews to offset the bad ones.

In Daewoo, Vincent – the Main Character, is a Customer Service Agent who kills angry callers. Maybe I should write a squeal along the same lines, Daewoo – Night of the Trolls. A simple story about Killing Trolls…Hmmm, I’ll have to give that some thought.

The Pic is courtesy of http://www.comicvine.com/images/1300-2879775