Bibliofemme News

Canadian book industry members reacted with disbelief on Monday after learning that at least one U.S. author was mistakenly outed on Amazon.com's Canadian website as having written a review of his own work. The real names of thousands of people who had posted anonymous customer reviews under pseudonyms like "a reader from St. Louis" were revealed online for several days - a mistake that finally was corrected after reviewers, some of them authors themselves, complained.

The mistake, which came to light on 7th February, occurred as a result of a computer "glitch" which occurred when customer reviews from the United States were uploaded to the Canadian site, Patricia Smith, a spokeswoman for Amazon.com, said. "We received a few comments on our customer service line, and that's how we became aware of it," said Smith, adding: "The authors (who reviewed their own books) became aware of it because it involved their books."

Unfortunately for those who were 'exposed' some of them were authors rating their own books, among those outed was U.S. writer John Rechy, who confessed to the New York Times during the weekend that he wrote a five-star review (the highest rating, according to Amazon.com) of his book The Life and Adventures of Lyle Clemens under the pseudonym "a reader from Chicago."

"That anybody is allowed to come in and anonymously trash a book to me is absurd," Rechy told the Times in justifying his actions. "How to strike back? Just go in and rebut every single one of them."

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