Archive for July, 2013
This just in:
Okay, so this is going to amaze all of you, but Stephanie, one of the notorious GR bullies, just wrote a showing the world how she and her friends humiliated another blogger/reviewer and then created a major shitstorm, blaming an author for everything. She actually believes that an author went to the trouble of creating a bunch of fake profiles to trick her and her pals into reviewing her book.
Sorry, Steph, but you got that backwards. Your blog isn’t badass. It’s just ass bad. Delusions of grandeur are clouding your judgment here. How do we know this? Because no one is going to be this desperate to get their book reviewed on your crap blog.
Okay, so… how did this all start? It’s a long story, but it boils down to this: a reviewer befriended Steph on GR. It appears that this reviewer was doing her best to make friends, innocently assuming the people (i.e. GR bully trolls) were honest and trustworthy. (Cough! Cough! If only we’d been there to set her straight, poor thing.)
Then, Steph set her up:
The scene in the book that Steph mentions was a fabrication:
Melody didn’t know that she was being set up. She was just trying to fit in. I think many of our blog readers who’ve once been friends with these jerks can relate.
And then… and then… Steph doesn’t stop there. She accuses an author of being this blogger/reviewer who is trying to befriend her just so she can get her book noticed by the trolls at Cuddlebuggery. I know, OMG, right? In fact, she accuses the author of making multiple fake accounts (hmm, gee, where have we heard about this before? Oh, I don’t know, maybe from every single bully attack we’ve ever documented on our blog). And she makes these accusations based on… nothing. She notes a few reviews, likes and comments, but there is no solid evidence that this reviewer is an author pretending to be a reviewer. It’s absolutely insane.
So, you’re probably wondering, why is there no evidence? Because Melody is not an author. She is someone completely different.
So then, the accused author calls her out and Steph says:
She’s right about only one thing here:
“After all, everyone knows Goodreads is full of meanies who are out to get authors.”
Wow, you’ve come along way, Steph! We’re glad you could finally admit that.
Anyhow, we checked this author’s page on GR and it appears as if she’s no longer there. We’ve heard from a few people that she deleted her account and left, like so many authors do when they’ve been attacked for some stupid-ass reason that the bullies make up.
Moral of the story:
You don’t have to do ANYTHING at all to get targeted and attacked by the GR bullies. You just simply have to be a GR member.
It’s because of shit like this that so many people are fleeing Goodreads. As one our blog readers said:
Just another reminder to all publishers, authors and everyone else. Don’t create Goodreads accounts. Don’t use Goodreads. Don’t invest in Goodreads. Don’t advertise with Goodreads. Don’t give them your money or time and don’t give the website any credit what-so-ever. It’s a sewer site that breeds trolls and promotes harassment with an accepted, negative atmosphere. You don’t want your books or name associated with any of that.
Facebook and Twitter is a much better source of advertising and social interaction to connect with readers and authors. Time spent on those social networks will grow your brand and expand your audience. Time spent on Goodreads is a risk, let me emphasize that, A RISK, not a reward. People need to understand that.
Amen.
Why are we calling this Bully Hypocrisy, Part Five Million? Because at this point, we have completely lost track of how many times the bullies have either broken , contradicted themselves, or flat out created such bullshit double standards, it is almost unfathomable that they still show their faces in public. And whose faces are we talking about? A LOT of them, some we haven’t seen in a while.
It all started when we received this message by Lost:
Saw this, didn’t know if you had yet or not.
To which I said:
Wow, we haven’t seen a nest of trolls that big in a long time. It’s so interesting that the drama on GR always seems to revolve around them. And they never get it, do they?
And then Anony:
Yeah, it’s because they’re a bunch of hateful little bitches. That’s all that really needs to be said. Furthermore, the hypocrisy of these people astounds me. They can harass this reviewer on Amazon for stating his opinion, but when it happens to them, oh no, it’s a crime.
SO hypocritical!
So, what can you find when you click the link above? Well, you find a review written by a GR member named Khanh (okay, we know that name evokes images of Star Trek, but please don’t go there, you’ll only ruin the movie for yourself 
). And of course, Khanh’s review is your typical one-star, scathing, spiteful, this-book-is-worse-than-dog-shit review. You know, the norm on GR for any book that is popular and actually worth reading.
Okay, so, you with us so far? Good.
Now, the reason Anony calls the bullies hypocrites (and he’s right btw) is because of our post Amazon Fora Trolls Harass Reviewer where we show you an example of the bully trolls (who all belong to the same ), harassing a reviewer on Amazon.
If you read through Khanh’s review and the attached comments (if you can bear losing a few brain cells), you will see that at first everything goes rather smoothly with Khanh’s friends gushing all over her “great” review, congratulating her, thanking her, and patting her on the back. *eyeroll*
Then, someone named Rose comes along and rains on their joyous parade:
And what do the trolls automatically assume?
And… the onslaught begins. You all know by now what that means for this author who probably doesn’t even know what’s happening. But do you notice a pattern here? On Bookman’s Amazon , they jump in and criticize him for his review. Then, they start making claims that he’s an author under a sock-puppet account. Now, on Khanh’s review, they immediately jump on the person who criticized her review and do the exact same thing — start making claims that it’s a sock puppet of the author.
You see that? It’s always the evil author whether it’s an actual reviewer or an author. Hmm… *scratches chin* This is like author-paranoia.
Then, sadly, another person (who is an author) steps in and makes a brave attempt to talk some reason to the psycho trolls who by now are having a party smearing Michelle Pickett and her book:
After this, the trollnado truly goes wild. If you choose to read the whole thing, you better get a nice big bag of popcorn and sit back to enjoy the show. But for your reading enjoyment, we decided to get a snapshot of a few quotable pearls (disclaimer: the idiocy of the following comments may cause the reader either dizziness, convulsions or seizures, so proceed at your own risk; we cannot be held responsible ):
And then, guess who comes crawling out from under her rock:
Wow! We haven’t seen her nasty mug since last year when she went into hiding and became Mistress Owlpoo, who inevitably got slapped on the hand by Wikipedia for trying to libel Dougie Brimson on his Wiki page. Y’all remember that?
But you notice how she says:
An opinion of a book is NEVER wrong. Telling a reviewer how to review though, is.
Well, okay then. You got that Mahala, Anna K. and company? So maybe you all should go back over to Bookman’s review that you criticized/attacked and apologize to him. If you’ve forgotten where it is, here’s the , girls.
Anyhow, back to the bully attack…
So after this, what do they do?
What they do best. They blacklist Kate and start trashing her books.
Sorry, Kate. We know you were just trying to put things right, but morons like these will never see reason, even if it falls out of the sky and does an interpretive dance on their face. The fact is that they are just too stupid. Plain and simple.
Anyhow, for Kate’s side of the story, read The Frightening Side of Book Reviews, where she says:
But then I did something really, really stupid. I engaged.
For the record, NEVER respond to negative reviews of your own work. I don’t. No author should. But this *wasn’t* my book, and I just wanted to mention that the character who doesn’t speak English at first learns fast, and the fact that she didn’t speak it from the start made sense. I also asked people not to post profane personal attacks. And I mentioned my connection to SHP, since that’s the disclosure policy when any SHP editor, publicist, etc. posts on a review site.
*face palm*
Yeah, I know.
As you might expect, everyone then turned on me. They decided to mark all or her books–as well as all of my books–“not-for-me.”
They called me several unflattering things. One even tweeted a link to the let’s-call-Kate-several-unflattering-things thread to Twitter.
*sigh*
We’ve seen this way too many times. But in the end, Kate is right. DO NOT engage with these people. It is a MASSIVE waste of time. These trolls are psychotic. They are well known in the book community for spewing hatred wherever they go and imposing ridiculous rules on everyone else who is not part of their online gang, while at the same time breaking these so called rules whenever they see fit. Their hypocrisy knows no bounds. So stay very, very far away from them. Please, pass the word around. We hate seeing bully gang attacks like this.
Yesterday, we received this comment from Goronwy:
Has anyone seen this?
http://www.amazon.co.uk/forum/meet%20our%20authors/ref=cm_cd_tfp_ef_tft_tp?_encoding=UTF8&cdForum=Fx3ETKKJQSTRPGM&cdThread=Tx2MVCHWF2NKP84
Apparently, Harper Collins has published a book already written by Carl Ashmore and he is a little less than thrilled. PG posted about it here. On Amazon, Carl says:
Hi guys,I thought I’d make you aware of a recent situation I’ve found myself in.
In July 2010, I gained a gold star for my children’s book The Time Hunters (Book 1 of the acclaimed series for children of all ages) on the Harper Collins website ‘Authonomy’, and a highly positive review from a Harper Collins editor. Here is a passage from that review:
‘I really enjoyed reading THE TIME HUNTERS. You start off the action with a bang, drawing the reader in right away. Your writing is strong, and in places has a classic feel…. It has terrific potential.’
In October 2010, I decided to independently publish `The Time Hunters’ and made it available as print and eBook. Pretty quickly, the book gained a number of very positive reviews and began to sell well, generating a solid and loyal fan base. Since then, the book has gained 128 five star reviews across Amazon.co.uk and .com. I have also published two sequels, The Time Hunters and the Box of Eternity (Book 2 in the acclaimed series for children of all ages …) and The Time Hunters and the Spear of Fate (Book 3 in the acclaimed series for children of all ages) . I have also sold the foreign rights to a Brazillian major publisher, Bertrand Brasil, and `The Time Hunters’ is due to be published in that territory at some point in 2013.
To sum up the plot, `The Time Hunters’ is about a young girl, Becky, and her brother, Joe, who, along with their time-travelling uncle and Will Scarlet, embark on a series of fast-paced adventures in a treasure hunt for powerful ancient relics.
Anyway, this month saw the publication of a new children’s series by Harper Collins. It’s called (I’m sure you can see where this is going) ‘Time Hunters’ . And the plot – well, it’s about a boy and girl who embark on a series of fast-paced adventures in a treasure hunt through time for powerful ancient relics. Now, in many ways, that is where the similarities appear to end, but they don’t. In Book 5 of their Time Hunters they encounter `Blackbeard’ (I meet him in `The Time Hunters and the Box of Eternity’ (2011)). In Book 4 of their series, they visit Ancient Greece, I do it in `The Time Hunters’ (2010). In Book 6 of their series they visit Ancient Egypt and battle mummies, I do that in `The Time Hunters and the Spear of Fate’ (2013).
I know full well you cannot copyright a title or idea, but this seems more than that. My series has been exceedingly visible across the Internet since 2010, so why on earth would anyone publish a new series under the same name, particularly when the general premise, some storylines and target audience are identical?
Like many writers, when preparing a new book, I spend countless hours considering titles, trying to find the most suitable one to reflect the tone, storyline, target audience and genre of the book. Upon crafting a list of candidates, I’ll google what already exists. This is where I’m incensed by the actions of Harper Collins. `The Time Hunters’ (yeah, I know they dropped the `The’) is extremely visible whichever search engine you use. I also understand that some titles are common and will have multiple books attached to them. As an experiment, I googled the term `Killing Time’ and found there were over twenty books from different authors with that title on Amazon alone. However, `The Time Hunters’ is a much less generic title. Plus, it is indelibly linked with an established and popular series that already exists … my series.
Furthermore, my frustrations are compounded by the fact the new `Time Hunters’ is published by Harper Collins – the very same company who said my book had `terrific potential.’
I have contacted the author and she (Chris Baker is a pseudonym) has pointed out she was working for a book packaging company, Hothouse Fiction, and that the name, concept, copyright etc. all belong to Harper Collins and Hothouse. She said she was merely a `hired pen’, that this kind of thing `no doubt happens a lot’ and I must find it `frustrating’. Well, in truth, there are other `f’ words I could use to more accurately describe my feelings about this.
And, in this case, I’m not sure this situation does happen as often as she suggests. As I said earlier, this is not merely the duplication of a title, or the similarity of the concept, this is a combination of the two that damages a brand (I hate that term) I have worked on since 2005. Clearly, if I approached another major publisher and pitched them a children’s time travel series about a boy and a girl that travel through time on a treasure hunt, then surely their response would be `Well, hang on, Carl, a series like yours already exists and is published by Harper Collins.’
Let me just say I bear no ill feelings toward the author of the new TH series, whatsoever. She seems very personable and is just a writer trying to eke an income in a difficult publishing world. And I wholeheartedly believe her when she says she hasn’t seen my work. However, someone would have seen it, they HAD to have seen it – someone at Hothouse or at Harper Collins – and they still pressed ahead with their `Time Hunters’ series.
I’m just the little guy and they’re a major corporation. I write from my kitchen in a terraced house in Crewe, my four-year old daughter doing everything she can to stop me writing a word, whilst the people that have created this situation probably swan around Soho quaffing goblets of Viognier. The two stories are probably different enough for them to argue there has been no plagiarism, but I can’t deny this situation smarts, somewhat – no, as a matter of fact, it stinks…
Furthermore, as using the same title and concept of an existing series is clearly not an issue, then the next time I write a children’s series I’ll make sure it’s about young wizards and call it `Harry Potter’. No better still, I’ll call it `Ziggy Waggabobble and the Mosphorous Flagdulaters’, a story about heroin-addicted frogs that pepper their conversations with swear words. Let’s see if the Viognier quaffers want to nick that, too …
Anyway, I just thought I’d let you know.
Cheers,
Carl
You all remember the bully “” as outlined by Looney, right? If not, here it is:
These are essentially the “rules” according to the Amazon Fora Trolls (also known as the Amazon Review Mafia or ARM). Oh, and btw, if you remember, Looney broke these “rules” twice, here and here.
Okay so, get this. We just recently received a link to a review where the other trolls broke the code, too. Here’s the :
In the comments that follow the review, you will notice a few familiar names. At first, Mayhem and Anna K. jump in to harass the reviewer, calling him names and reprimanding him for several “offenses” (offenses the bullies have been guilty of for years, that is, reviewing a book they haven’t fully read). Then, the trolls start accusing the reviewer of being an author until Coaxial jumps in and calls that theory into question. The whole thing is quite ridiculous, but we thought we’d include it for everyone’s amusement:
Notice the comment by Coaxial (the self-appointed grammar police): “haven read some of his work”? We about died laughing at that.
Now, do we agree with this review? No, we don’t. Those of us here at STGRB who have read Flat Out Love (i.e. Athena and Stitch) say that it is a fantastic book. In fact, it’s so good, even Jeff Bezos recommended it. However, does this guy have the right to state his opinion? Yes, he does. Although we don’t agree with the manner in which he does it, he still has a right to state his opinion without being harassed.
Have we seen the trolls harass reviewers before? Yep! You all remember Chris who left a review of Katherine Ashe’s book in Reviewer Subterfuge? Well, the trolls harassed Chris to the point where he eventually just asked Amazon to remove his account altogether. This is precisely the reason we started . To keep the trolls from harassing not just authors, but also other reviewers. It needs to stop. (If you haven’t already signed, please click the link above.)
So beware when you’re roaming the fora. The trolls are a nasty lot. For all their self-professed sainthood, they really have earned their name.
Just recently, a blog reader sent us this story titled How Bully Trolls Are Born. It contains a good lesson for all authors and gives some valuable insight into the mind of the literary bully troll.
MY PERSONAL STORY
This story will stick with me forever, but lately I’ve realized that this is really how bully trolls are born.
Late last summer when my first manuscript was finished and I was handing it out to select friends for opinions, I had forgotten one casual acquaintance of mine named Mary. She had pestered me for months to read it, but this woman really wasn’t a close friend, so I forgot about her. Her husband had been friends with my husband for many years, but I never really became close to this woman, she seemed phony to me. Her and her husband had money, owned their own business and had recently bought an old church to remodel into their home, a project that was costing tens of thousands of dollars.
Mary had often mentioned she was writing a book. Anytime I would run into Mary she would be on her way to another very expensive writer’s retreat some where exotic, or she was ‘meeting up’ with groups of other aspiring authors. The next thing I knew Mary was decorating her new renovated church home with statues of mystical creatures, all enclosed in expensive glass cases, as the main great room was quite magnificent in this old church. Then came the magnificent winding staircase up to the ceiling, all custom carved woodwork, which arrived at the top of a beautiful custom created library loft at the top of the ceiling….it was quite impressive. This was going to be Mary’s writing space.
One evening while my husband was visiting with her husband, drinking some beers and hanging out in the man shed in the back of the church, Mary invited me in to show me her progress. She also pulled out huge custom art drawings that she had hired an artist to do for her. Everything looked so expensive. As I was perusing the stack of art characters, all looking like something out of a Harry Potter movie, I casually said, “Mary, how long you been working on your book?” She proceeded to tell me fifteen years! Then I asked what the story was about. She did not answer, so I just shut up.
Then she asked me again to email her my manuscript, saying she was excited to read it and give her opinion. I obliged later that week.
A few days later, I started receiving emails from Mary, who was re-writing my book for me, all with red line edits included.
At first I didn’t get it, but then realized that Mary had no intention of reading my manuscript. Mary, in her mind had developed some sort of I’M A LEGEND IN MY OWN MIND attitude, because of all the expensive retreats, conventions and travels around the world.
I also realized that in fifteen years, Mary probably hadn’t WRITTEN anything! Her fantasyland world that she built for herself with winding staircases and statues, was all there really was for her.
Needless to say, I no longer speak to this idiot woman, and my husband does not speak to her husband either, simply because I had WORDS with Mary that were….well….BLUNT.
THIS, MY FRIENDS, IS A BULLY TROLL WAITING TO ATTACK ANYONE WHO PUBLISHES A BOOK
WHY?
BECAUSE SHE WILL NEVER WRITE OR PUBLISH ANYTHING.
Gosh, does this sound familiar? Kind of like, oh I dunno, Kat and this book of hers she’s been talking about for so long? Or how about Anna K. and her nonexistent book that she keeps raving on and on about on the Amazon discussion threads?
The story above is EXACTLY how these kinds of trolls are born. What is sad is that we’ve heard so many stories just like this, only worse. For example, we received one from an author who gave her manuscript to absolutely the wrong person and has regretted it ever since. This woman (the troll) not only thrashed it with red ink, but left a scathing Amazon review after it was published and then asked all of her friends to do the same. When the author came to us for help, we noticed that some of the Amazon reviews were actually sock-puppet reviews (which were very easy to spot just by looking at the account and the account’s review history). So we reported the reviews to Amazon. They were removed the next day.
Moral of the story:
Beware to whom you give your manuscript. Make sure it is someone you absolutely trust. Don’t get sucked into the black hole known as the literary bully troll.
We were going to put this as an addendum to our post, Author Hatred Growing at an Alarming Rate, but instead we thought we’d write about it in a separate post altogether. After sharing our views regarding the extreme hatred directed toward authors for the books they write, we were tipped off to a story about outright violence against one:
The article our blog reader mentions above is about an author who suffered violent attacks against her person because of a book she wrote:
Then, it goes on to say:
The local New Port Richey Patch also published an article about these incidents on April 2nd, and another news update today shows escalating forms of violence including a plastic bottle chemical bomb that exploded in her front yard on the evening of April 15th. Interestingly, this ‘bombing’ happened just a few hours after the Boston Marathon attacks had begun to fill media headlines. Kyrja’s stepdaughter Heather inhaled fumes from the explosion and is under medical treatment for damage to her respiratory tract.
Local police are currently investigating these incidents. Kyrja is offering a $200 reward for any information about the perpetrators of the shootings and the chemical bottle explosion. Tips leading to the arrest and conviction of whoever is behind the incidents can be emailed to Kyrja at and the police department can be called at . You can visit her to send along messages of support, or visit her book fan website at www.friends-of-rupert.webs.com.
Her Pagan children’s book, “Rupert’s Tales: The Wheel of the Year” follows the adventures of Rupert the Rabbit who discovers the different Pagan holidays. A short biography of Ms. Withers’ spiritual journey from a devout Roman Catholic to a practicing Pagan, and her inspiration for writing “Rupert Tales”, was .
Please stay tuned to PNC Florida and The Wild Hunt for developing updates to this story. Our thoughts and prayers are with Ms. Withers, her family, her neighbors and community.
This is frightening — to write a book and then be physically attacked for it. Hatred is a poison, indeed.
This isn’t an isolated incident either. Here’s another similar story shared with us by Goronwy:
I don’t know if you’ve read that something similar happened to Charlaine Harris:
A group of readers formed the “Annie Wilkes Brigade” and threatened the life of Charlaine Harris, author of Sookie Stackhouse, promising to destroy her and her career:
In a comment on our last post, Karig describes this kind of behavior perfectly:
Well, we have the phrases “road rage” and “nerd rage”; I guess in this case “book rage” would be appropriate for “‘That’s All’ Ash” above.
Carroll also has some apt descriptors for it:
Book-rage, reader-rage, review-rage, all would aptly apply. I still call it hate though.
Above, Karig is talking about That’s All Ash’s review that we featured on our previous post. In it, she takes out her anger from reading the author’s book on the author herself. Something that should never be done and yet happens all the time on GR. In the past, we’ve given numerous examples of hatred directed toward authors because of harmless books they’ve written. For example, in our post Bully Wank, we shared a few reviews that show just how unhinged readers can get over books:
Here’s one from our post, Bully Attacks This Week:
And here, we show Mahala threatening an author, saying she has a loaded gun:
But our classic example of author hatred can be shown quite concisely in our post, Authors, I Will Destroy You, where crazy Ridley threatens to “destroy” any author that approaches her:
There are many, many more examples. Too many to put into one blog post and unlike what the bullies believe, this kind of hatred toward people who write books is not harmless. We strongly beg to differ on that opinion. It’s not only unhealthy, it’s dangerous and potentially lethal. This book rage — this is the kind of hatred that leads to stalking and violence, violence like the kind directed toward authors such as Charlaine Harris and Kyrja Withers. This hatred runs rampant on GR and it’s irresponsible of Amazon to let it continue. If they don’t put a check on it sooner or later, it’s only a matter of time before an author is killed.
Just recently we received a link from Torqueen to a disturbing article called When Readers Become Stalkers:
The article talks about how author hatred by obsessed readers can lead to stories that could rival a Stephen King novel. One example they give is what happened to author Val McDermid, who was assaulted by a fan at a book signing:
The peculiar ritual of the book signing – where authors surface into the public realm at a pre-announced time and venue, where the barrier of the page is briefly removed to allow writer/reader contact to become face-to-face – has plenty of potential for humiliation. Janice Galloway, for example, has written of someone who queued for over an hour to tell her that “he hated my stuff and … my fucking earrings as well”. But the experience rarely gets as nasty as it did for Val McDermid at Sunderland University last December.
Disguised by a blond wig, trilby and glasses, Sandra Botham queued up after McDermid’s talk, asked her to sign a copy of her 1994 non-fiction book about female PIs, A Suitable Job for a Woman, and dedicate it to “Michelin Man San”, and then threw ink all over her. Botham had apparently held a grudge against McDermid for almost 20 years, having interpreted a passage in the book as a derogatory reference to her. She was convicted this week of common assault.
Other authors who’ve been targeted have been J.K. Rowling and Patricia Cornwell:
Other obsessives have confined themselves to emails or letters. Paul Lomax, who was convinced he and JK Rowling had met on a train before she wrote the Harry Potter books and had a special connection, was banned from contacting her in 2007 after bombarding her with letters, culminating in a death threat comparing her to the murdered playwright Joe Orton.
In the same year, Patricia Cornwell went to court to seek an injunction against her “cyberstalker”, a writer called Leslie Sachs who had accused her online, inter alia, of plagiarism and antisemitism. More recently, James Lasdun devoted a book, Give Me Everything You Have, to being cyberstalked by someone he’d taught.
Writers have been the objects of stalking, one-off harassment or warped erotic pursuit since the beginnings of literary fame – Byron was stalked by his ex-lover Lady Caroline Lamb, Edward Bulwer-Lytton by his estranged wife Rosina – but these ordeals seem to be becoming more common, partly, perhaps, because authors are on show more often (continuously, if on Twitter), and partly because the internet gives disturbed readers another, potentially unmediated way of connecting with them.
We’ve seen this kind of cyberstalking before, haven’t we? (see More Bully Reviews) In fact, just recently on Amazon, we were alerted to an author being cyber stalked and wrongly accused of not just plagiarism (like Patricia Cornwell), but also of sock-puppetry and pedophilia:
If you wish to read about it, the Amazon BBA thread is so tactfully titled BBA (a.k.a Cows full of Ink). Keep in mind that the last time we checked, there were 51 pages of comments left by all the usual suspects (i.e. the Amazon Fora Trolls). And this isn’t even the first BBA thread they’ve started. This one is like the third or the fourth. The others were shut down and retired by Amazon.
So yeah, these trolls are on the fora 24/7 leaving comments about who they consider to be misbehaving authors. Why? Well, mostly because they have nothing better to do with their lives, but there are some who believe that a few of the trolls are getting paid. Whether or not that’s true, remains to be proven. Nonetheless, we recommend that our readers avoid these people at all costs. They are toxic and engaging with them is a complete waste of time. To see who they are, check out our sidebar under Amazon Fora Trolls. You will notice we’ve added a new name to our list: Brent Butler. Why? Because of a comment we recently received on our blog:
Note: the list of Amazon discussion threads he’s referring to at the beginning of his comment is our new page called Amazon Fora Threads to Avoid. This list was sent to us by a site visitor. We posted it on our blog to warn our readers and recommend that they avoid these threads for one simple reason. Because they are infested with trolls.
Now, as for Brent’s comment, it sounds very convincing, doesn’t it? The problem is that we looked into his claims and did a little digging into his relationship with this particular author. What we found out is rather interesting. The reason this author contacted the girl mentioned is the same reason this author contacted Amazon at the same time. Because of :
You see, Brent told this young girl to lie about her age when she asked about joining an adult-only Goodreads group. Isa Pohl, the young girl he mentions, is a new poster we’ve seen on the fora who has become the trolls’ “team pet”. Yeah, we know, creepy, isn’t it? Btw, if you ever see something like this on the fora, do as this author did and report it to Amazon immediately.
Now, as soon as it was pointed out to Brent that what he said to this girl was a criminal offense, he immediately went back and added “ETA: I changed my mind. Don’t lie about your DOB year” in order to cover his ass:
The reason he didn’t remove the comment altogether is because he knew that it had already been screengrabbed and thus didn’t want to make a fool of himself as Anna K. did in The Many Faces of Anna Karenina, when she was caught in a lie and then went back to cover her tracks (which was caught as well).
Of course, we’ve never accused these people of being exceptionally bright, have we?
Anyhow, after all of this went down, the trolls began a smear campaign against this author. As we said, he was wrongly accused of pedophilia, sock-puppetry, and plagiarism as well as being called a few names:
Again, if you see things like this, report them. We’ve seen Amazon remove abusive comments in the past, such as one by Michael McKinney:
Now, after reading through 51 pages of complete crap written by the trolls, what almost made us choke on our wine was Brent’s ironic comment about the author they smeared having an “utterly empty life”:
Jon has an empty life, huh? You sure about that, Brent? Well, you know what. We’ll get around to reporting your abusive comments to Amazon as soon as we stop laughing.
So… how does all this author hatred relate to Goodreads? Well, by now our readers should know the answer to that one. But we’ll give you an example and explain what we mean.
First, we want to show you an email from a visitor who asked us what we consider to be a bully review:
And Athena responded with:
Thank you for the email! Yes, in order to get named on this site, the person has to participate in a personal attack against either an author or another reader/reviewer, which we’ve seen quite often. Any review that talks about the book, good or bad, is not considered bullying. But one that personally attacks the author or anyone else is.
I hope this answers your question!
Just recently, we’ve had two people email us about a wanting to know if it was considered a bully review or if it violated GR policy:
Here’s the review, with a few comments below it:
To answer their questions, no, technically this wouldn’t be a violation of GR policy because it is talking about the author in relation to the book, but according to Patrick, a review like this would be given “lower priority” which is why we told both of these people to flag the review anyway.
Now… is it a bully review? Well, it’s very, very close. Why do we say that? For two reasons. The first one being that just because this author wrote a book that this person didn’t like, doesn’t mean that she won’t write a book in the future that the reader will like, or even love for that matter. And yet this reviewer immediately talks about the author in the review to warn her followers to “avoid all of her books in the future”. This is wrong.
The second thing that bothers us about this review, and others we’ve seen, is the extreme anger that these reviewers direct toward authors for writing books. Books! As far as we’re concerned, they’re just books and yet authors become these targets of vicious hatred. It’s unfathomable.
It is this kind of hatred that leads to the stalking and abuse talked about in the article we mention above, When Readers Become Stalkers. And it is this kind of hatred that seems to permeate Goodreads. Yet Goodreads doesn’t really seem to care about the danger of this author-hatred at all. In fact, what we’ve found in our observations is that instead of doing their best to discourage this kind of behavior, the Goodreads managers have actually fostered and encouraged it. We are hoping at some point that Amazon will change this, but until then, we’re not going to hold our breath.
Okay, we already know what you’re thinking: “Which one?” And you would be right. There are so many, it’s hard to keep track of them all. So, Kat, the infamous blogger (and one of our Biggest Offenders) whose known for twisting the truth, giving half the story, and even telling blatant lies just to smear other people’s reputations, has done it again.
(Note: we want to apologize. We’ve been meaning to post about this for a while. We just didn’t have the time. We’re really sorry!)
Now, if any of you haven’t already noticed, Kat’s changed her Buzz Worthy News, Scandalous Scandals posts to what is now called Controversy or Controversies. And not surprisingly, here are a couple examples (links) where you can see her smearing authors we know, who’ve been victims of the GR bullies abuse in the past: and . You have to scroll down a bit to read her smear campaign, but trust us, it’s there. What’s interesting is what Kat says in regards to the headache Amazon’s erroneous email gave Jamie McGuire:
You see, they were reveling in Jamie’s misery when all of this happened. And why do they hate her so much? Because she succeeded despite them. She was one of the authors who was viciously attacked last year and yet her book still became a huge success. Quite a slap in the face for the bullies. Kudos to Jamie.
For more information, read Beautiful Blunder: Dear Author Strikes Again!
Anyhow, moving on to we wanted to address this time. This one was regarding Eve Thomas and what happened to her back in May. Here is Kat’s version of the story (try not to vomit):
Kat’s right about only one thing here. They do need to leave Eve alone. And Darkwriter is John G., another well-known bully.
Now, if you read Kat’s entire post (and this is not the entire post), it makes it sound like some unknown reviewer, who has no history with Eve whatsoever, gave the book a bad review and Eve suddenly, out of nowhere, freaked out and contacted the police.
Doesn’t it make it sound like that? And we all know that this is not the case.
What Kat fails to mention is that that review came from a person (Coaxial or All Hail Grimlock, a bookseller whose real name is Shoshana B.) who has been part of a gang (Angela and company) who have been harassing Eve for months. There is a whole history there (of the attacks on Eve by these people) that Kat just conveniently ignores.
You see, everyone, it all started back in February when Eve tried to apologize for promoting her book on GR and was attacked for her apology. Then Coaxial threatened to leave scathing reviews of her books without even reading them. The bullies didn’t stop there. They crossed the line when they contacted Eve’s charity to try and discredit her and then later began leaving all kinds of psychotic comments on her book page.
So, if Eve went a little crazy this time and freaked out, it was because of this. It was because these bullies isolated her, cornered her, made her feel paranoid and alone, like an animal caught in a trap, being harried by its captors (just like what Kat did to Rebecca Hamilton and so many others).
So, what did Eve do? She lashed out. Then, the GR bullies (with their weapons of choice: the GR fora and their blogs) jumped in with another character assassination saying:
Oh, look, everyone! This author freaked out over a bad review and contacted the police. How crazy is that?!
We’ve seen this kind of thing happen to so many people. It happens far too often and we’re getting sick of it.
Furthermore, Kat makes it sound from the GR email above that Eve was warned several times in the past before her account was deleted. We know for a fact that she wasn’t and that her account being deleted from GR came totally from left field and had everything to do with what went down with Angela and the Asshat group. It happened at the exact same time and Angela, being as paranoid as she is, was convinced Eve was behind the info leak that led to her conversation being posted in Asshats Will Be Asshats. The fact is, Eve had NOTHING to do with that, but Angela was convinced it was her. THIS is why Eve’s account was removed. (For more information, see our posts Asshats Will Be Asshats and Something Rotten at the Core of GR). So, you see, there was something very dirty with what went down that week and it wasn’t because of Eve’s behavior.
Now, we haven’t researched into the . For all we know, this could be true or it could be completely fabricated. In any case, it is irrelevant to what happened to her months ago and what happened to her just recently in May. As far as the book itself is concerned, we won’t make any comment simply due to lack of knowledge, but we will say that how she was treated was wrong and unjust. It makes us wonder, when all of this was going down, how come none of these self-righteous people (who think so highly of themselves and their “high morals”, i.e. Kat, ., etc.) reached out to Eve with love to try and understand why she was melting down? If these people are really the good, pious people they think they are, how come they didn’t stop to help another human being who was obviously going through a crisis?
We’ll tell you why. Because they are bullies. Plain and simple.
