Would you risk spamming your audience to get a few sales?

Online book marketing is a rough and tumble environment these days. Let's face it, bad behavior is rampant among authors, just like any other group -- it's easy to be rude and underhanded when you don't have to face people.

In some cases, the offending authors think they've done nothing wrong. In a Wall Street Journal column, author Mick Hager whines that many of his unsolicited e-mails weren't delivered for his Amazon Bestseller Campaign. As a result, the book reached an Amazon Sales Rank of only 5,000, and now his book is sliding right back to where it began, at the bottom of the barrel.

Mr. Hager calls his messages legitimate marketing, but I'm confident most of the recipients considered them spam. He admits he harvested the addresses from Web sites and claims this is legal.

Is it worth selling one or two dozen books if you gain a reputation as a spammer in the process? I don't think so.

E-mail isn't the only way authors are gaming the system, especially on Amazon.com, says author/publisher Aaron Shepard. "It's getting to be a real jungle on there," says Shepard, author of the self-publishing guide Aiming at Amazon. "Authors are spamming Amazon in a desperate effort to get their books noticed. Many don't even realize their behavior is inappropriate, because they have no experience in business. Others know but do it anyway, just because they can get away with it."

Here's the most common spamming techniques employed by authors, Shepard says:

• Writing positive customer reviews of their own books under false names.

• Soliciting positive reviews from friends and relatives who have no real interest in the book's subject and pretend to be objective.

• Writing positive reviews of competitors' books but mentioning the reviewer's book to draw off sales.

• Creating dozens of Listmania lists so that Amazon will display a book's cover whether or not it's relevant.

Authors face few consequences for spamming Amazon because the company doesn't outlaw many of the techniques, Shepard says. "In most cases, Amazon doesn't clearly prohibit them. Yes, the spirit of Amazon's guidelines does oppose these practices -- which is why Amazon can deal with them when reported. But Amazon could discourage such things much more effectively by just saying, 'Don't do this.'"

Instead, Amazon sometimes seems to actually encourage spam. Recently, for instance, it started allowing customer reviewers to link to other products from inside the reviews. "I don't know what they could be thinking," says Shepard. "You know just how this will be used. Authors will not only mention their own books, they'll link to them!"

If Amazon won't vigorously police its site, what's the answer? Well, Shepard has an idea: He's proposed a code of conduct for authors on the Internet.