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.
