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.
« Dear Harper Collins, Carl Ashmore Would Like His Book Back Stephanie Humiliates Reviewer »
Okay let me guess, they are now shelving this poor author’s books under “fuck that shit”, “BBA”, “something, something spooge oil or some shit like that” … You know, these bee-atches need to get original. What a bunch of nit-nannies!
Damn, they all buzzed around that “reviewer” like flies on shit. Un-friggin-believable!
This is so sad
you are right this is hypocritical. No offense to anyone but reviews can be wrong or racist sometimes someone’s opinion contradicts fact. If I review a book about spaceships an say its a book about bananas well I’d be wrong! And what of one reviewer who says a book is 5 stars an another who say its 1 star? Who should be attached for thinking differently from the other? They make no sense.
You’re right, Peter. On our blog, we’ve never subscribed to the bullies’ bullshit rules. Reviews can be wrong. They can gets facts wrong, the can libel someone, they can be racist, or contain hate speech. It would appear as well that Amazon and GR agree with us on that, at least, in their TOS. Whether or not they enforce that, well, that’s another story.
It continues to amaze me how Goodreads reviewers can have such complete meltdowns over a book, as if every other book they pick up is the most brain-hemorrhaging outrage against readers ever.
“An opinion of a book is NEVER wrong. Telling a reviewer how to review though, is.”
Sure, Holy Demon, but what do you think of us laughing our asses off at your and other Goodreads reviewers’ over-the-top histrionics?
It’s easy to attack someone when you have six ass kissers to back you up. I hope that publisher shoots a very angry letter to Goodreads about how their employee was harassed. These people are drama-whores! Fuck those HOs!
When is someone going to point out to these morons, just how yawn-worthy their childish outbursts are. You know they have absolutely no creditability when they are reduced to using foul language. Which begs the simple question, why doesn’t GR censure them for swearing online? Oh no wait a minute, I forgot. They run GR, not the sites admin…
This is such a classic example of why the author shouldn’t bother apologizing. Did you all see Grimlock’s blather about how the apology was ‘insincere’? What bug crawled up her ass?
And look at what Mahala wrote on her blog:
http://thedisgruntledbear.blogspot.com/2013/07/the-frightening-side-of-book-reviews.html?showComment=1374676386869#c2470328702541257804
This is what she says at the end of her comment:
Yes, Kate, you were really, really stupid. And seemingly want to continue being that way because this blog isn’t a really good idea either.
Because you knew better, you did it anyway, you exhibited behavior that I hope your publisher will reprimand you for, and now you have written this blog post which sounds like you are seeking sympathy and approval for your bad judgment.
Sorry, for your bad judgment.
Totally uncalled for! You’re right, Goronwy, people shouldn’t even bother apologizing to these hateful jerks.
Osman Kaynak is Kate’s husband, who owns the publishing site. Kate Kaynak is co-owner of the publishing company Spencer Hill Press.
The information is at the bottom of this page http://www.site.spencerhillpress.com/Our_People.html
The bullies were atrocious, BUT Kate’s actions were questionable as well. She wasn’t altogether honest in her posts on GR. She did not mention being the owner of the publishing company, just that she was an editor.
I saw other weird things on Amazon.com, for instance someone rated the POD book 5 stars, while giving another author FROM THE SAME PUBLISHER only 1 star. These two reviews were the only reviews the person had on their profile page. And the 5 star review sounded like an author pimping their own book, like an annoying ad or whatever. It sounded fake. The 1 star review was on the nasty side. Sounds like rival authors.
Something’s going on here.
Well, we know that authors can’t create accounts on Amazon and leave reviews of their own books. We asked some people to research it. There is an algorithm that detects the IP address and any IP addresses linked to the author. If a person is using that IP, the algorithm won’t allow them to leave a review. The review just disappears.
Although we don’t condone leaving nasty reviews on books just to get revenge or for any other reason than stating what you think about a book, we don’t subscribe to the bullies’ bullshit rules either. We agree with people like Barry Eisler and Joe Konrath. Anyone who reads a book and wants to write a review stating their opinion on it should be allowed to do that.
I think all of us agree, though, that Kate shouldn’t have stepped in. If anything, just because it wasn’t worth her time. She isn’t going to change them and there is no talking sense to these people. They’re too stupid. It’s really a losing battle trying to get them to see reason.
There is no law or ROC by Goodreads that states Kate could not make a post on the review. The Goodreads Book Rage Trolls made that up. It was very obvious to me that the OP Khanh left a very biased review to please her followers on Goodreads. I read over several other OP reviews and there were dozens others that read the same. The OP treats her reviews like BLOG POSTS as if she had a following, it’s disgusting.
Kate’s post was not rude. What is unsettling is how these trolls treated her and what they did and said. They easily could have been polite and asked her not to take part in the discussion, however, they chose to blast and curse her out. They then boosted the post so that it became her ‘top’ review. It is THEM who game the system, not authors. THEY link to her website and use the post as a ‘marketing’ tool to hurt Kate, the author, and the publisher. I feel bad for Kate and the author of PODs that they had to put up with those trolls.
Goodreads should remove their post because there TOS DOES state what they did IS wrong:
“You agree not to post User Content that: (i) may create a risk of harm, loss, physical or mental injury, emotional distress, death, disability, disfigurement, or physical or mental illness to you, to any other person, or to any animal; (ii) may create a risk of any other loss or damage to any person or property; (iii) seeks to harm or exploit children by exposing them to inappropriate content, asking for personally identifiable details or otherwise; (iv) may constitute or contribute to a crime or tort; (v) contains any information or content that we deem to be unlawful, harmful, abusive, racially or ethnically offensive, defamatory, infringing, invasive of personal privacy or publicity rights, harassing, humiliating to other people (publicly or otherwise), libelous, threatening, profane, or otherwise objectionable…”
That is taken straight from Goodreads TOS, and I can assure you, they don’t follow them nor will they take down the review. That’s why Goodreads is a site everyone should block and stay away from.
This is true. She had a right to make a comment and what they did to her was outrageous. I think we all agree here that it shouldn’t be allowed because as you say, it’s written in their TOS. But GR is never going to enforce that. We’ve all seen that by now, so you’re right. If more authors and publishing companies start to avoid GR altogether, GR might sit up and take note.
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.
This is so true!
Here’s my latest post about badreads. They don’t yet realize that they are going to pull my content. They will do it to make me go away. If I have to go to SanFran and hire a dozen homeless people to picket their office with signs that say assorted anti-badreads slogans. the Chronicle and the Sun will be all over this. I am also seeking an injunction to close the site till they comply with copyright and cyber-stalking laws. But they are taking my content from their site one way or the other. Once I get it done, it will show others they ain’t nothin’ but a forum ruined by trolls and corrupt mods. Seen it a hundred times. The forum always closes.
.
You can actually, easily write and publish your own reviews on Amazon through the authors page. It’s done all the time. They just are not listed as buyer/reader reviews but from the publisher. So basically this kid didn’t write her own reviews through the approved method.
Good for you, Rick! Let us know how it goes. Hopefully, some of blog readers will help you. I know Carroll would be interested.
We know of another author who is getting ready to file suit against them for the same thing. He forced a takedown using DMCA.com and initially they removed his content. But now it’s back up and they are refusing to remove it. So, he’s been talking with his lawyer.
Looks like Nenia Campbell is back into the BRT (Book Rage Troll) business. I don’t recall hearing her name much, but she’s been pretty active the past few weeks. I always tend to question the authors who run around trashing other authors. Makes me wonder, does she think she’s better than the rest? Hrm… Maybe its a tactic to hurt her competition? May need to keep a closer eye on this one.
Yeah, she’s a nasty one, too. We’ll keep her on our radar.