Your Source for NPR News & Music

Author Caught Writing His Own Glowing Review

Your browser doesn’t support HTML5 audio

DAVID GREENE, HOST:

Today's last word in business is really written by Steve Inskeep.

STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

And really written by David Greene. We feel obliged to mention that because a British author is in trouble for writing under a pseudonym.

GREENE: Amazon, the bookselling site, allows people to write short reviews of books. And the best-selling novelist R.J. Ellroy was caught anonymously writing glowing reviews of his own work.

INSKEEP: Mr. Ellroy praised himself for his, quote, "magnificent genius."

GREENE: He even went on to write reviews of rival writers, deriding one book as "same old, same old."

INSKEEP: After being caught, Mr. Ellroy has apologized. And today, dozens of best-selling writers have placed a letter in Britain's Daily Telegraph denouncing the practice.

GREENE: They used their own names.

That's the business news on MORNING EDITION from NPR News, which is spectacular, according to the review I'm looking at. I'm David Greene.

INSKEEP: And I'm Steve Inskeep.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "MACK THE KNIFE") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn
  • Email
Related Stories
  1. Texas charging another large group of migrants with “riot participation”
  2. El Pasoans catch glimpse of solar eclipse
  3. Texas criminally charges more than 200 migrants involved in alleged “riot” at the border
  4. Lebanese migrant allegedly tied to terrorist group appears in federal court with a black eye