Archive for April, 2013
We’ve had so many requests to post this, we decided just to go ahead and do it. Below is an excerpt from our password protected post GR & Copyright (leaving out the confidential information of course.) We’ve gotten literally hundreds of authors emailing us to ask us about how they can get their books removed from GR. One of those authors, who was the victim of a bully attack mentioned in Bully Attacks This Week, is now seeing posted and bashed BEFORE the book is even published. That’s right. The GR bullies are now rating and reviewing her book when it isn’t even done yet (you’ll notice a few familiar names):
I’d like to draw your attention for just a moment to . If you click on her name, you’ll notice that she has a brand new account. This is her THIRD account. To read more about Miranda, visit Miranda’s Request when she requested a reviewer remove her 5 star review of a book. Then Miranda staged a fake exit from GR in Miranda’s farewell by creating a new, private account. Now she has deleted both accounts and has created an entirely new one.
Uh… wow!
Anyhow, back to what I was saying… Authors who see this kind of thing happen to their books feel that since GR did not have their permission to post the books, they shouldn’t be allowed to. These authors are right to a certain degree. After doing quite a bit of research on the topic, we have discovered this:
- GR DOES NOT have the right to publish copyrighted material that they do not own.
- This material includes:
- Book cover images
- Book descriptions
- Author bio photo
- Author bio
- Book trailer videos or book promo videos
- GR does have the right to publish the following under fair use:
- Author name
- Book title
If you own this copyrighted material and want it removed from GR, the first step is to contact Patrick Brown and let him know in no uncertain terms that the material on his site is copyrighted, owned by you, and that Goodreads needs to remove it immediately:
Patrick Brown
Community Manager
Goodreads
Usually at this point, the material will be removed, but if it isn’t, the next step is to do a DMCA.com takedown. If you go to DMCA.com, you can do a takedown by yourself very cheaply or you can pay more and have them do it, but this will assuredly get your material removed from GR. If you do go through DMCA.com, you will need to provide links to where you have published this material and links to GR where the material was stolen. Hopefully it won’t come to this, but if DMCA does a takedown, GR will have no choice but to remove it.
If you know someone who wants their books removed from GR, please feel free to share this information with them.
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Addendum
Because of Amazon’s recent acquisition of Goodreads, if you attempt a takedown of your copyrighted material on Goodreads and your books are published on Amazon, Goodreads will respond with something like this:
Hello [author name],Unfortunately, we cannot comply with your request to remove the cover image and description from the book record, each of which are provided by Amazon. Under that license, we are able to display information about your book, including the cover image, for purposes of discussion, evaluation and analysis by Goodreads members.Best regards,The Goodreads Team
In KDP terms and conditions (and Createspace), there is a clause that states:
“5.5 Grant of Rights. You grant to each Amazon party, throughout the term of this Agreement, a nonexclusive, irrevocable, right and license to distribute Digital Books, directly and through third-party distributors, in all digital formats by all digital distribution means available. This right includes, without limitation, the right to: (a) reproduce, index and store Digital Books on one or more computer facilities, and reformat, convert and encode Digital Books; (b) display, market, transmit, distribute, sell and otherwise digitally make available all or any portion of Digital Books through Amazon Properties (as defined below), for customers and prospective customers to download, access, copy and paste, print, annotate and/or view online and offline, including on portable devices; (c) permit customers to “store” Digital Books that they have purchased from us on servers (“Virtual Storage”) and to access and re-download such Digital Books from Virtual Storage from time to time both during and after the term of this Agreement; (d) display and distribute (i) your trademarks and logos in the form you provide them to us or within Digital Books (with such modifications as are necessary to optimize their viewing), and (ii) portions of Digital Books, in each case solely for the purposes of marketing, soliciting and selling Digital Books and related Amazon offerings; (e) use, reproduce, adapt, modify, and distribute, as we determine appropriate, in our sole discretion, any metadata that you provide in connection with Digital Books; and (f) transmit, reproduce and otherwise use (or cause the reformatting, transmission, reproduction, and/or other use of) Digital Books as mere technological incidents to and for the limited purpose of technically enabling the foregoing (e.g., caching to enable display). In addition, you agree that we may permit our affiliates and independent contractors, and our affiliates’ independent contractors, to exercise the rights that you grant to us in this Agreement. “Amazon Properties” means any web site, application or online point of presence, on any platform, that is owned or operated by or under license by Amazon or co-branded with Amazon, and any web site, application, device or online point of presence through which any Amazon Properties or products available for sale on them are syndicated, offered, merchandised, advertised or described. You grant us the rights set forth in this Section 5.5 on a worldwide basis; however, if we make available to you a procedure for indicating that you do not have worldwide distribution rights to a Digital Book, then the territory for the sale of that Digital Book will be those territories for which you indicate, through the procedure we provide to you, that you have distribution rights.”
To get around this, you will need to remove your books from Amazon and then demand the takedown. Some find that it’s not worth the trouble. Others disagree. The decision is up to you.
Just recently we have been alerted to two very disturbing bullying stories in the news. One of Rehtaeh Parsons and the other of Audrie Pott. What do these two girls have in common? They were raped and then photos of their attack were either circulated around their school and/or posted online. Because the humiliation was too much, they both committed suicide.
(Side note: if you wish to support independent inquiry into police investigation of Rehtaeh’s attackers, sign this petition.)
These kinds of stories are horrific and lead us to the question: why do bullies bully?
To answer this question, we did a little research and found . A few paragraphs in this article struck a chord with our experience:
“It provides these kids with a sense of power,” said Catherine Bradshaw, a developmental psychologist who studies bullying at the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore. “It’s a way of pulling your core group closer and putting someone else out of it.”
“The simple reason is it shows that they have power over others,” agreed Marlene Snyder, Development Director for the Olweus Bullying Prevention Program in the United States, based in Clemson, S.C. “The reason that they do it repeatedly is that they are getting away with it. Nobody is calling them on their bad behavior. When they aren’t called on it they think, ‘Well, it must be O.K.'”
…
“For the longest time we thought for sure that these ringleader bullies were , that there was no way that you could establish dominance and control by humiliating other kids or tormenting them,” said bullying expert Dorothy Espelage, a psychologist at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. “But now we’ve shown that there is a peer socialization process — that bullies tend to have more friends.”
Indeed, experts agree that peer influence is crucial in accounting for . “If your peer group says that pushing and shoving and spitting on people or spreading lies is O.K., even though you may have been taught differently in your home, you lose your moral compass,” Snyder said.
As for our blog, we wonder what makes people do things like this:
Or this:
Or this: cyber stalking, harassing, libeling, hacking into private accounts, personally attacking, threatening (click both here and here), leaving psychotic comments, and contacting their charities.
In each of these cases, Gyruleine’s recent comment makes a world of sense:
It doesn’t surprise me that the bully reviewers are quick to sympathize with a woman who essentially bullied and abused Hugh Howey and to resent his ridiculing her to the public. These people are abusive themselves and most abusive types prefer not to be recognized (by themselves or by others) as abusers. Most abusers actively deny abusing their victims and their enablers are equally quick to deny it or attempt to justify it.
That’s why STGRB has hit the bully reviewer community so hard.
So, bullying gives them a sense of power and since they are encouraged by their peers to continue, they assume it’s okay.
Or…
Could it be in some cases that they are who are either getting paid to or have a vested interesting in stamping out their competition?
And who is ?
Name look familiar?
*cough cough*
A few examples:
And is another:
There are many more.
Note: Coaxial Creature is known as All Hail Grimlock on BookLikes.
We’re sorry this post has been a long time coming. We’ve been super busy lately with one of our members having gone on vacation and the others preoccupied with family/work/life matters, it’s been hard to post regularly. But we promised we’d get this out to you and finally have been able to get to it.
There’s a reason this post is password protected and that’s to make sure the authors we mention here and their books are not harmed any further. We also don’t want the trolls knowing the information we are about to give you. We’ve been working with several authors to get this information and we are hoping that it will help people.
First, we want to share this message we received from Alexandria Infante a few weeks ago:
This woman and her books were attacked by these jerks because her daughter and her daughter’s friends were doing a research project on trolling. Then the bullies contacted her daughter’s school to get them into trouble. Alexandria, on top of being a victim, had to contact the school to sort it all out. You can read about it on her blog here and here.
When Athena asked Alexandria for links she sent this, telling Athena she had contacted GR for help:
And their response:
Now before we get into Athena’s reply, we want to show you the messages we received from a friend of Kristin Michelle Adams who was a victim of an attack a few weeks ago (that we covered a little in Bully Attacks This Week.)
Links are here:
Now, it’s pointless to contact GR about these people. From what we’ve seen, GR doesn’t give a shit. If you ask them for help, you will continue to get the same bullshit response from them.
But…
We’ve learned some very important things from authors who have been working to get their books removed. This is what we have learned:
- GR DOES NOT have the right to publish copyrighted material that they do not own.
- This material includes:
- Book cover images
- Book descriptions
-
Author bio photo
-
Author bio
-
Book trailer videos or book promo videos
- GR does have the right to publish the following under fair use:
- Author name
- Book title
(Reviews are another matter. The copyright holder of the reviews are the review writers themselves, so we’re not going open that can of worms.)
If you own this copyrighted material and want it removed from GR, the first step is to contact Patrick Brown and let him know in no uncertain terms that the material on his site is copyrighted, owned by you, and that Goodreads needs to remove it immediately:
Patrick Brown
Community Manager
Goodreads
1444 9th Street, Suite B
Santa Monica, CA 90401
If he does not respond, let him know that you will file a civil suit against GR if it is not removed. Usually at this point, the material will be removed, but if it isn’t, the next step is to do a DMCA.com takedown.
If you go to DMCA.com, you can do a takedown by yourself very cheaply or you can pay more and have them do it, but this will assuredly get your material removed from GR. If you do go through DMCA.com, you will need to provide links to where you have published this material and links to GR where the material was stolen. Hopefully it won’t come to this, but if DMCA does a takedown, GR will have no choice but to remove it.
As soon as Athena received Alexandria’s message, she let her know about Goodreads and copyright infringement. We’re hoping it helped. We’re also hoping this post will help other victims get their material removed from GR as soon as possible.
Below is a post written by a site visitor who witnessed an attack and wrote about it in STGRB fashion. Since we have been so busy lately, we want to thank this visitor for taking the time to do this. If any of you witness something similar and want to write about it or if you just have something to say about the bullies, go for it. Send us your thoughts, ideas, experiences, etc., and we’ll post them for you.
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The recent attack on Hugh Howey (author of the amazingly successful Wool) glaringly illustrates a number of important lessons for independent authors.
Here is a timeline of the events:
April 3 2013
Hugh Howey makes a blog post entitled ‘The Bitch From WorldCon’.
In it, he talks about his encounter with a snake oil peddler at WorldCon. This woman was going around telling unknown writers that she could make them famous if they only listened to her. When Howey disagreed (without telling her who he was) she condescendingly dismissed him. He then proceeded to indulge in a passive aggressive fantasy about winning a Hugo and telling her to ‘suck it, bitch.’
This naturally drew a very critical response, most of it from certain, er, notorious Goodreaders, who poured onto the comments section of his Goodreads blog to attack him. The comments are fortunately (or un-) all gone now because on the 12th, Howey deleted his post and with it the comments. He replaced the offending post with an apology. That apology is now gone as well, replaced with this one.
Why? It seems the first apology was not satisfactory, and was predictably attacked by , , and .
There are doubtless many more, but these reviews and (especially) their comments will suffice. The brawl spilled over to the Amazon BBA thread, where guess who had this to say:
But wait! There’s more!
Things wouldn’t be complete if some publicity-hungry indie didn’t try to garner some publicity at Hugh’s expense.
So what are the lessons to be learned from this?
#1 Be careful what you post on social media.
You might think you’re expressing an opinion or harmlessly venting about an unpleasant incident in which you were clearly the injured party, but not everyone is going to think so. The online bully community is made up of self-appointed gatekeepers like the ‘bitch’ from WorldCon: unsuccessful publishing industry professionals and ‘experts.’ It’s natural that they would defend one of their own and past experience has shown that they never work alone.
Howey had some fans who tried to defend him (and were shouted down) but a less successful author is in real trouble. So be careful what you do or say on social media: ‘they’ are watching. Some things, like complaining about reviews, asking people to vote on reviews, or discussing possible lawsuits, should be done in private.
#2 Aggressive-aggresive is better than passive-aggressive.
It’s baffling why Howey didn’t take the easiest route and politely inform the woman at WorldCon of his identity right then and there. Not only would he have had the satisfaction of watching her squirm, but he would have provided an invaluable service to independent authors everywhere. The world of publishing is full of self-professed ‘experts’ and gatekeepers like this woman, and many unknown authors are too inexperienced to see through them. Those indies witnessing the scene would have had the lesson brought home to them: be careful who you trust. And the snake oil peddlers who heard about it would have learned to be a lot more careful in the future: after all, you never know who you might run into when you’re at one of these conventions, trying to bamboozle authors.
Instead, Howey’s passive-aggressive reaction completely obscured the lesson, and allowed this predator to be portrayed as a victim.
#3 If you find yourself at the center of one of these bully firestorms, don’t respond and, above all, DON’T APOLOGIZE.
This case is as glaring an example as any we’ve seen that apologies don’t work. Nine times out of ten, they are deemed insincere, and provoke further attacks. And some publicity hungry indie will always find a way to ride your coattails by dissecting your apology on their blog and wagging their finger at you.
Silence is golden.
We’re sorry we are so behind! We’ve had so many people contact us to share information and stories, requesting that we write posts on them. We want to let everyone know that we’re trying to get to all of them one by one. STGRB is our full-time job away from our already full-time lives – jobs, family, social lives, etc. So, we’re sorry if we’re a little slow.
Before we begin our post today, we have few news bulletins:
- If you haven’t already heard about it, Peter started a petition to request that Amazon implement user blocking on their site. The reason we decided to do this was because we’ve had so many people contacting us about harassing comments, either on their reviews or just on the fora in general. So, we thought it was about time Amazon put something in place to curb the abuse. If you are interested in signing, or see our sidebar section called Amazon User Blocking. If you want to sign, but are worried about your identity, you can sign using a pseudonym.
- We regret to inform everyone that Katherine Ashe’s health has taken a turn for the worse due to the continuing onslaught against her by Kathryn W.’s campaign (for information on the attack, see Reviewer Subterfuge part 1 and 2) And when we say worse, we mean in-the-hospital kind of worse. Our prayers and positive thoughts go out to her. Hang in there, Katherine!
- Well, apparently (and this is an educated guess on our site visitors’ part because there isn’t any evidence… yet) Anna-Zahara-Amelie-Peachbird has yet another sock! Our eyes and ears have spotted a new poster on the Amazon fora named (brand new account, no profile info) who acts and sounds just like Anna. Wow! What a surprise! And (yes, there’s more) if you take a look at Anna’s most current posts, they’re about as gushy and falsely sweet as a warm diet coke that’s been shaken up and popped open in your face. Check out this phony sweetness:
Anyone who knows Anna’s true colors will know exactly what she’s doing here. She’s changing her online persona, known as Anna, so that her employers will see one face (i.e. the good one) and then she’s created a sock, Sara, so that she can continue on with her other face, as she has for the past (how many years now?) without any repercussions. We’re not fooled, Anna-Zaraha-Amelia-Peachbird-Sara.
- We have some screenshots to show you of even more authors who have been experiencing the hatred and nastiness known as Goodreads. One of them decided to leave:
And the other we found on Kindleboards, telling her friends of her experience with a giveaway and a Goodreads librarian: 
We’re sorry to inform her that it isn’t bad luck on her part. That’s just GR. It’s a sewer. The armpit of the reviewing community as many have called it.
Okay, so that’s all for our news bulletins. On with our post…
Today we want to show you some screenshots of the Amazon trolls showing their true colors on when G. Faso, Dougie Brimson, and Siska Shadow point out the hard truths that these people just don’t want to see. Instead of being able to argue effectively, they resorted to lies, insults, name calling and downright viciousness. They accused Dougie of being a rapist as well as a sexist, homophobe, racist, liar, and fantasist. Some of their comments were so bad, they were pulled by Amazon, as you will see:
So, according to Mayhem, our evidence on The Many Faces of Anna Karenina is “speculation surrounded by conjecture based upon fanciful surmising.” Uh, okay. Redundancy anyone?
It is interesting to note that they never talk about the blatant lie Anna told when she said, “I am only me,” in the face of the screenshots and links we have that prove she is Zahara Cerise, Amelia Lucan, and peachbird. On top of that, we have proof that she went back and tried to cover her tracks to hide the evidence. And now, it seems she has another sock named Sara.
*sigh*
What lives these people must lead that their only joy in life is to troll the Amazon fora and harass anyone who crosses their path. Very, very sad.
In our post, Reviewer Subterfuge, we presented you with information and screenshots showing some rather suspicious activity on a certain book after the author was attacked on Facebook, namely some suspicious one-star reviews. More to the point, we showed you a comment outlining real (favorable) reviews left by notable reviewers like Kirkus and the Historical Novel Society. The comment also mentioned that several of the one-star reviews on this particular book all said the same thing and then directed readers to another author who writes books in the same genre.
As a reminder, here are the shots of those reviews:
After doing a little research through our contacts who are members of the Historical Novel Society (and who have asked to remain anonymous for their protection), we now know who the leader of the Facebook attack was. Her name is Kathryn W., who left this review on the book page (screenshot is only partial):
So… what do all four of these reviewers have in common?
They all know each other.
What else do they have in common?
They all know Sharon Kay P.
Gee, what a surprise.
In fact, Sharon Kay P. is one of the principal supporters of Kathryn’s campaign called Don’t Defame the Dead 1 and 2 that was created to condemn people who write books that they consider to “defame the dead.” Hmm… much like they claim Ashe’s Montfort does.
As for Sharon’s support of Kathryn’s campaign, you might want to take a look at this:
And this:
And this:
Is this all starting to become clearer now?
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An addendum:
Woah! I think we’ve got another Somerloon on our hands, folks! Why do I say that? Keep reading.
We just recently received this comment by Member of HNS:
Reading the comments on Kathryn’s review, I thought she was a teenager by the way she was acting, but then I looked at her Facebook page. She’s an old woman!
MoHNS isn’t kidding. When we started reading up on this woman, we thought she was in her teens, or maybe early 20’s because of her juvenile behavior. When we found out how old she is, we were floored. If you want to get a look at this lady, here’s a link to her . She looks to be about 50.
We’re certain this is her twitter because of this:
(Her friend is right. There is a mole in their little DDTD group and boy did we get some interesting information from this person!)
So… we’re vile, vicious, and thoroughly stupid and ignorant.
*snort*
Okay, Kathryn. If you say so.
Aw, what’s wrong? You angry because we exposed your dirty little scheme to discredit an author because she dared to have a different view of history than you? You pissed because we showed everyone your my-view-of-history-is-the-only-correct-view-or-else attitude? You want to know what our site visitors think of your attitude? Check out this comment from Anon:
This whole idea of “don’t defame the dead” is ludicrous. There are as many interpretations of the past as there are historical records of it. Just look at how many different interpretations of the Bible there are. Anyone who considers her view of the past as the “correct” view is fooling herself. There is no such thing.
You know what, Kathryn? Anon is right. If you think your interpretation of the past is the only true and correct one, you’re deluding yourself.
And you can say whatever you want about us, the facts will still remain the facts. And one of those facts is that Katherine Ashe has behaved with so much more integrity than you. It’s really unbelievable how childish you have been.
And if our readers think this is bad, they will want to take a look at this comment from a different Anon:
I don’t think she’s just acting like an adolescent. I think she’s a bit crazy. Have you seen the comments she’s been leaving on people’s reviews? Check out Chris’s review. She’s also obsessed with votes on her own review. This woman needs help.
This is what Anon is referring to – these comments left on Chris’s review, which were pulled by Amazon right after we reported them for abuse (screenshot sent to us by Chris):
We’re not sure how Melissa got dragged into this, but we think it has something to do with the Amazon trolls. They consistently blame her for our site no matter how many times we’ve said that we’re not authors. In this case, they think Chris is Melissa and again they’re getting it wrong. But Kathryn, not even knowing who Melissa is, or even who Chris is for that matter, called Melissa a “sad, tragic, pathetic loser.”
This. Is. Crazy!
And this is a woman whose buddy (one of the nasties whose comment got deleted from our blog) described Kathryn as having a “good name and excellent standing in the History community.”
Wow! I think I’m going to stay far away from the History community. And that’s assuming her buddy got it right and she wasn’t referring to the “Hysterical community” which would be much more fitting, I think. She fits right in with the rest of the Amazon trolls.
Watch out for this one, folks! She’s a nutter.
We were just recently sent screenshots of blog post written by an author about the bullying on GR that this particular author has just now begun to notice. In the post, she mentioned our website and also gave snippets of a conversation she had with Kara Erickson, one of GR’s moderators, about what she had learned. And of course, she was given the same bullshit answer that another of our site visitors received when she attempted to “alert” GR of the same thing (alert in quotes because GR knows full well about the problem and has done NOTHING to stop it). This letter and response was given to us by the other site visitor a year ago:
And here was Kara’s response:
Anyhow, before we even knew about the post and were able to warn the author about it, the bullies found it and descended upon her like a pack of wolves. Their usual MO. So now the post is gone and the author has learned to avoid the trolls. We wish she had come to us first before sending the email to Kara and writing the post. We could have saved her the time, energy, and heartache by showing her that she would just get GR’s classic bullshit response.
After receiving this comment from torqueen on our post, Jane Spanks Ridley:
Wow, Ridley is still going on about Jane on Twitter. RIP DA 2006-2012
We went over to and practically died laughing. Wow! She’s really going crazy! She seems to be taking this change in DA commenting policy rather personally, saying that it’s all targeted at her and what she did during the NA book giveaway.
Yes, Ridley, you are the center of the universe, aren’t you?
Not surprising for her. On her twitter, she goes on and on about how DA has lost their minds, that they’re just as bad as Cuddleboogery, that she’s so victimized, blah, blah, blah. It’s hilarious!
So now, that makes two blogs that have banned her: both DA and Cuddleboogery.
Hmm, are you starting to notice a pattern here, Ridley? Ya know, maybe just a small one?
After this latest episode, does she do any self-reflecting, admitting that maybe, just maybe, she crossed the line? That MAYBE she should say sorry and change her behavior?
Nope. It doesn’t even cross her mind. What does she do instead? She starts asking around for other book blogs to troll.
Watch out bloggers!
And… and… wait for it… she’s surprised that no one has any recommendations for her.
LMAO! You can’t make this shit up! It’s just too good.
We should all put out an internet alert to online bloggers everywhere:
Beware! Ridley on the loose! Your blog may be next!
If anyone wants to make a banner for that, we’ll post it here. 😀
Anyhow, we barely had time to put this post together because we’re all over here still laughing our rear ends off. But after wiping away our tears of hilarity and massaging the stitches out of our sides, we managed to grab a few choice screenshots.
Better get your popcorn ready, because these are hysterical.
But here’s the irony of all this, she doesn’t read what DA reviews anyway:
And apparently, she doesn’t even read books in general. One commenter on our blog said the last time she saw Ridley reading and reviewing a book was 8 years ago:
Yes. I found a review of a book she claimed to have read and ENJOYED with a high star rating from… umm, at least 7 or 8 years ago. I sent a screenshot to Athena some time ago before I realized how old it was. Last I heard (close to 9 months ago) she “hasn’t cracked a book in 6 months”.
Uh, okay? Why the hell does she want to know of any new book blogs then? Doesn’t make any sense and yet, she keeps asking around for blogs and insists that “good places for frank book discussion are getting harder to find”:
Here’s one where Looney is calling Jane a “fucking bitch”:
And Ridley calls her a “master of pseudo civility”:
Here’s a shot where one of her twitter friends equates Jane’s new commenting policy to the “negative reviews are mean!” way of thinking:
And then, in another conversation, another of her twitter friends whines about one-star flybys on GR:
Oh, the irony abounds!
But wait! There’s more! Here’s where she says that it’s all aimed at her. Such a martyr!
And that she needs a blog that’s run by northeasterners:
And here a few more shots of Ridley whining about DA:
And here’s where Shiloh tries to talk some sense into her:
So, there you go, folks! We hope you’ve enjoyed your daily blog entertainment on this episode of Ridley Goes Nuts.
Stay tuned. There may be a part II. 😀
