A recently published book, “Behind Bars” by NDTV journalist, Sunetra Choudhury has 31 reviews on Amazon India. Out of these, 20 have given it a one-star rating and written negative reviews. There is nothing unusual about a book getting negative reviews but a closer look reveals that 19 out of these 20 have not even purchased the book. What is going on? Welcome to the world of online trolling of authors and organized campaigns to manipulate of the ratings of their books. Product reviews on an online platform like Amazon are designed to help customers make purchase decisions. There has been a large scale misuse of this feature and negative reviews have appeared within hours of books being published, sometimes even before it is physically possible to download and read the book. Recent books by Indian journalists have seen two kinds of people leaving reviews: Those who have actually read the book and those who are only interested in trolling the author. Manipulation of ratings of a book to influence future purchase decisions is clearly a form of sabotage. Our review of some recent books has revealed that it is not a case of a one-off incident of someone leaving a negative review due to a grouse against the author. It is a well-organized troll industry that garners support through social media campaigns to systematically down-rate books of specific authors. It is a deliberate, well-planned and concerted online mob attack. Who are the targets of this sabotage? Clearly, the online hate brigade has targeted books by authors who are seen as critical of the BJP and its brand of politics. They are the journalists or liberal voices who are regular targets of abuse by the so-called nationalists on various social media platforms. Let us look at some books that have been victims of such attacks. Amazon has the functionality to filter reviews to see how many of them are based on verified purchases from the site. An analysis of one-star ratings and negative reviews and whether they are based on a verified purchase, reveals an interesting pattern. Barkha Dutt’s book is perhaps the best example of concerted efforts to down-rate a book. The book has a total of 446 reviews, out of which 327 are one-star. If we drill down into these one-star reviews, we find that only 20 are based on verified purchases and 307 (94%) have been posted by those who have not purchased the book. The large number of one-star ratings has brought down the overall rating for the book to 1.9 stars. If we remove the unverified purchases, the rating doubles to 3.8 stars. A former BJP volunteer, Sadhavi Khosla revealed in an interview that when Dutt’s book came out, the BJP-volunteers group was full of plans to ensure it flops. She said, “when Barkha Dutt’s book came [Dutt’s book, This Unquiet Land, was released in December 2015], the entire [WhatsApp] group was full of posts and plans to make sure that her book was a flop.” In her tweets Barkha Dutt expressed her frustration over the large number of negative reviews by those who have not purchased or read the book. She also tweeted about the misuse of the forum by abusive trolls. Rana Ayyub’s book has a large number of reviews but a similar pattern of one-star ratings based on unverified purchases can be seen here as well. Out of a total 725 reviews, 181 are one-star. Of these 181, 164 or 91% have been left by those who did not make a verified purchase. Ayyub’s book has a very high number of verified five-star ratings but as a result of the unverified one-stars, the overall Amazon rating is 3.8 stars. If we take the unverified purchases out, the rating goes up to 4.7 stars. Rana Ayyub too tweeted about the organized trolling of her book on different online platforms. The book on organized trolling by the BJP IT cell was a target of intense trolling when it was published in Dec 2016. One-star ratings started to appear as soon as the book was announced. With comments like “presstitute” or “the author herself is a troll”, the trolls targeted the author rather than the book. Out of a total of 296 ratings, the book has 129 one-star ratings, of which only 5 are after a verified purchase and the remaining 124 are ratings left by people without purchasing the book. The overall Amazon rating for the book is 3.1 whereas if you take out reviews based on unverified purchases, the rating goes up to 4.5 stars. A sudden spate of negative ratings for Prerna Bakshi’s book, “Burnt Rotis, with love” is a recent example of concerted efforts to down-rate a book. Though not a journalist, Bakshi is a vocal liberal voice on twitter. Her book is not available on Amazon but the trolls have hunted it down and left negative reviews.