Well, apparently, the notorious online social manipulator and self-appointed author policewoman, Jane Litte, has struck again. We just received this email from Anon:
As for J.S. Cooper’s FB post, it can be found :
And Jane’s original email :
To read Dear Author’s twitter, go .
So, Anon says further:
“Let the badly behaving Goodreaders and the troll bloggers
of the world keep themselves busy discussing how important their
opinions are. The rest of us will spend our time selling books.”
Very well said!
On a side note, we wanted to share a couple other messages we received from visitors regarding the Badly Behaving Goodreaders, troll bloggers and the Amazon fora trolls:
And Jane and her ilk are right there among the worst of the worst. Here is an example of one of them on DA saying how she actually approached an author to solicit a response from her about a nasty book review one of the DA reviewers wrote. She did it just to bait the author into a fight:
So keep a sharp eye when you’re out there in cyberspace. These trolls are usually lurking in the shadows somewhere just waiting to pounce.
Now, as for the dust-up between Jane and J.S. Cooper, Anon is absolutely right and this isn’t the first time Jane has crossed the line with her audacious behavior, believing she is some kind of authority with jurisdiction all over the publishing world. There is a reason she has been blocked on Goodreads, Twitter, and Facebook by so many authors. It’s the same reason she is on our Biggest Offenders list. She is a very well-known cyber-bully.
And we’ve given plenty of examples of this. Here’s another one. You all remember Amazon’s Beautiful Disaster emails that were sent out back in March and how Jane started the false rumor (by publishing it on her Dear Author blog) that Jamie McGuire used song lyrics without the band’s permission? If you don’t remember that, see our post Beautiful Blunder: Dear Author Strikes Again. You can also visit The Passive Voice where PG covers the incident as well. If you take a look at some of the comments on PG’s post, you will see that a few of his visitors were able to see through Jane’s smoke and mirrors right to her malicious agenda of character assassination on an author she doesn’t like. Here is one:
So, J.S. Cooper, if you’re reading this. You’re not alone. Not by far. You are actually in very good company, right up there with other best-selling authors of whom Jane has been jealous for quite some time.
So, don’t sweat it, girl, and just keep on rockin’ with your awesome books!
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Anon said:
“The book is already selling gobs. Ugh.” I laughed when I read that, because it seemed like the most likely scenario was Jane Litte thinking, “Is there still time to sabotage the sales of this book? Because that kind of sabotage works better if only a few people have bought the book. OMG I can’t believe one of those creepy authors is going to get away from me!”
LMAO! That’s exactly what I was thinking.
Just when I thought Jane was being so unusually delightful with her helpful posts and all the down home sugary content she uses to balance all the vicious things she does. Most of her readership doesn’t know how she works, or how she has spent years studying blogging as a means of master manipulation. This J S Cooper was just a sacrifice for pure sport…unfortunately.
What is amusing me is that they all mix up plagiarism with copyright infringement. There’s no law against plagiarism in fiction or art. Nowhere on this planet! It quite simply is no crime.
Old Shakespeare plagiarized the ancient Greek playwrights, ‘My Fair Lady’ plagiarized Shaw’s ‘Pygmalion’, who himself plagiarized Gilbert and his ‘Pygmalion and Galatea’. And there are at least over a hundred plagiarized versions of ‘Fifty Shades of Grey’ available, perfectly legal and on sale everywhere. After Lucas’ ‘Star Wars IV’ dozens of movies were produced plagiarizing those concepts and even whole chunks of the story line.
So no, plagiarism is no crime. It’s not exactly the nice way when publishing non-fiction or scientific works, but while it is considered academic dishonesty it can’t be officially prosecuted there either.
Copyright infringements are something else altogether. These are something you can go to court over. However:
‘…The idea–expression divide or idea–expression dichotomy limits the scope of copyright protection by differentiating an idea from the expression or manifestation of that idea….’
Which means that copyright laws expressly ALLOW plagiarism. Ideas and titles can’t be under copyright, which is why all those many ‘Fifty Shades’ (or other) plagiarisms exist and can be legally sold.
Very few discussing that topic on DA grasp that fine point.
That lot really hates successful authors. If anyone is looking for a great book to read, just look at the books this group has attacked. They are attacking for a reason, and the reason isn’t the author’s behavior. What they all really have in common is success. Think about it: Otherwise, how are they finding out these authors even exist? To get on their radar, they first have to know these authors exist and you know how hard that is for an indie author.
That’s true. The person who went to Jane with “suspicions” about J.S. had to have known about J.S. in the first place. Jealousy abounds.
Yes, it’s jealousy, pure and simple.
I hope J.S. Cooper has continued success with her books. Really, the best way to deal with the trolls is to ignore them. If any of them email you, don’t even bother emailing a reply. If any of them give you a fake bad review, ignore it. Ignore them. They’re not worth it, and not worth getting upset over.
Pretend they don’t exist. Never take the bait. Go on your merry way and keep writing your books.
Just look at the trail of authors these toads have gone after. All of them are successful. PP’s theory makes sense.
Personally, I can’t stand Jane Litte. Ever since she was banned from RWA, she appears to have this need to lord power over other people which I’m sure is why she started her blog.
Too bad it’s not really working out the way she planned it, huh?
She was banned? Why?
She was banned for several reasons, one of which was something she did on Twitter a few years ago. For some reason she took a personal dislike to one new small publisher and she started a vicious twitter feed on Friday nights with a name that went something like #RRTheater. She lead a group of people/minions bashing the publisher and authors. Then she expanded and continued bashing and laughing at all erotic romance she didn’t like with another group called #Romfail. Once again, she went on Twitter with her bully minions and they ripped erotic romance books and authors to shreds in public in one of the most vicious ways most people have ever seen. You can do a search for #Romfail and there is information out there. There isn’t as much as there should be because the authors she ripped apart were very new and they didn’t know how to fight back or what to do. They were devastated by what she did, and RWA must have taken notice of it. They gave a specific reason why they were not renewing her membership, but the real reason was Romfail and the way she was creating bad feelings within the romance community.
She is truly one of the most vicious bloggers on this planet, and one of the most unprofessional. She is the bottom of publishing in this day and age. But what’s even more interesting is that she has the nerve to question an author’s identity and she’s not even using her real name as a blogger. No one’s named Jane Litte. She’s an ambulance chaser from Iowa who also has an online presence with her real name. That information is out there, too, with quick searches. I don’t think it’s considered doc-dropping when it’s mentioned in a NYT article.
If there is such a thing as Karma, Jane Litte will die with boils all over her body for the lives she’s ruined for absolutely no reason at all.
If more of us start making noise, Amazon and GR will be forced to listen. I have friends that are MODS in the two largest groups on GR, so I’ll draw up a petition and have it circulated.