Oh it's true and I didn't mean to demean every self-published author. Getting published through the conventional pathway of getting an agent and a publisher is hard work (I'm learning the hard way, heh heh, I have three and I'm starting on a fourth) – the literary (and I use that loosely) world is rather incestuous and it helps to know someone who knows someone. And not everyone knows someone who knows someone.
Of course everyone has a great novel inside and it would often be better if they stayed inside. *cough*
That said, the one I read was awful in ways Dan Brown couldn't even comprehend. Kudos for writing it and getting to the end, but really, it was awful. Not everyone can write – and even if you can, you still need a good editor. At least DB can string together a pacy story and a semblance of characters. But anyway, you can buy reviews en masse, a practice Amazon doesn't seem to have stopped, presumably because they have a percentage off anything they distribute, so it's all good.