The Damned, and Fake Praise

Permuted Press is an independent publisher of zombie novels, a company that I thought would be great. If this makes you laugh - then the rest of this post is probably going to come as no surprise.
Zombies are big - the reasons for it are a little complicated, and tend toward the socio-political, but the long and short of the matter is that our culture is ripe for the genre once more (as is was in the 70's).
I was looking at lists of recommended books on Amazon, and seeing if I could find some well written zombie novels. I had found Steven King's The Cell a disappointment to the zombie purist who lives in my head (though not bad, it goes into some sci-fi elements that I don't think are SK's strong suit, and parts felt rehashed from the truly bad King book, Tommyknockers). There was lots of hype and excitement to be found over the books Plague of the Dead, by Z. A. Recht, and Dying To Live by Kim Paffenroth. By nearly all accounts - they were the greatest things since Dawn of the Dead. I bought them at 15, and 13 dollars a piece - plus shipping. I'm cheap, so this hurt - but I felt sure that I was in for a great read.
First I read Dying to Live. The author created the bastard love child of Romero (Night of the Living Dead) and LeHaye (Left Behind): Christian Horror fiction. The book was a mess - the good parts far outstripped by the quasi-prosthelytizing and every 4th page reference to God. A working class Joe discusses his uncanny understanding of the Tribulation - a guy is killed like Christ (down to nail holes, and spear in his side), a character is designed to be a zombie Jesus, a society is built on the Ten Commandments, scientists and english professors swear off their useless secular ways in order to try to figure out what God wants of them. It sounds like fun - if I had read this description, I still may have bought it to get a laugh and to satisfy my curiosity. Don't, though.
On Amazon, there are almost exclusively 5 star reviews for it (or were, at that time) - and nobody even mentioned the Christian Horror angle. It seemed suspicious.
Plague of the Dead was next - I held out high hope for it, and wanted to get the bizarre notion of zombie-novel-turned sunday-school-theme for hip youth groups (who dig blood) out of my head. Plague was even more of a disappointment - it reads like it was written during study hall time in high school. Plot, characters, pacing, and continuity were all a wreck. I have hard time believing that most readers would finish reading it. I have no doubt that the author will improve - he seems to know a little about the tools of writing, but his use of those tools is comically haphazard in PotD (to be fair, it was his first published effort).
What both of these books had in common was a loud spate of positive reviews surrounding their release - and a fair body of 5 star reviews from readers on Amazon. If Permuted Press does not have a staff of people with the job of sitting at the computer and seeding the internet with hype, I'd be very surprised. The only other possibility, to my way of thinking, is that the friends and family and fellow amateur writer peers of these guys felt it was doing the books and their authors good to post false praise and enthusiasm - down to getting on the case of anybody who posts a negative review in a public place.
The technique may have gotten them some sales - it got me to buy two books, but the dishonesty (or absolute lack of taste, experience reading other books, or fetishistic loyalty to a niche genre) has pretty much guaranteed that I won't be buying anything from Permuted again. Just that they allowed the books to be distributed with such a lack of editorial polish pretty much swears me off of the company.
My take on all of this can be dismissed - but I'm writing with sincerity (not bitterness), a love of horror (zombies, in particular), a long held habit of reading highly regarded books and popular books alike - so I ask that it not be dismissed lightly. Buyer beware - this may be a trend in independent publishing. These guys in particular seem all too eager to aim for the quick buck, when real profit is in long term sales of a good book.