We’ve been getting a lot of email lately from new and aspiring authors about what they should do when they go to publish their books. Many of them tell us they’ve read our blog and are terrified. So, Athena decided that we should put together some recommendations for new authors. We put our heads together and came up with the following. If our readers have valuable information/opinions/experience to add, please feel free to leave a comment.
Guideline #1: Don’t be afraid to publish your books. If you follow certain guidelines, trolls can be avoided.
Guideline #2: Stay off of Goodreads, BookLikes, and Leafmarks. Also stay off of kindle boards, the Amazon fora and Absolute Write. These are all breeding grounds for trolls.
We have all the known trolls listed on our site: on our Badly Behaving Goodreaders, Badly Behaving Booklikers, and Amazon Fora Trolls page. We recommend to also be wary of anyone who is friends with these people. Birds of a feather tend to flock together.
Guideline #3: Don’t do giveaways on GR. That attracts trolls. Trolls like free things and they are usually the harshest and many times the most unfair critics. For example, take a look at this screenshot where a troll says: “It was free and I’ve heard bad things. I’m so excited!” This particular troll was trying to get her friends to do a buddy read so they could trash a book they got for free. (Note: not all free-e-book readers are trolls, but many of them are.) You won’t be able to keep people from putting your books up on GR unless you hire an attorney, but let them be paying customers who want to read your book, not people who are reading it just because they got it for free — that usually doesn’t end well.
Guideline #4: Putting your books up on Amazon is fine — you want all the exposure you can get for your books. But don’t join KDP Select or make your books free on Amazon, unless you have a series and want to make the first book free. We’ve seen authors do this and it works well in getting readers interested in the story. It also helps the reader in that if the reader doesn’t like the story, then he/she hasn’t wasted any money. But again, remember, this still runs the risk of attracting trolls to the first book.
Guideline #5: Make sure you put your books up on all the online bookstores for maximum exposure: Amazon, Kobo, Apple, Smashwords (use their premium catalog to distribute your books to other sites), and B&N. Smashwords is great. You can use Smashwords to make a first book in a series free by price-matching on Amazon.
Guideline #6: NEVER respond negatively to a book review of your own book (author-bashing reviews are different, those you will want to flag for abuse). Responding positively to a book review of your book is fine, such as thanking the reviewer. If a reviewer makes a factual mistake, feel free to politely point it out ONLY if the reviewer is comfortable with it. Ask them.
Guideline #7: Keep in mind that no matter what you do to avoid trolls, some may slip through the net and review your book (on Amazon or on their blogs). Trolls tend to pirate books, but if you follow certain steps and are careful with your manuscripts, you can minimize this. Also keep in mind that on Goodreads, the GR trolls will rate and review your book even if they haven’t read it or before it’s even been published. GR is famous for one-star flybys, so don’t panic if you see that. Many people already know that GR ratings are not reliable for this reason.
Guideline #8: Don’t panic if you get a bad review. This happens and not all bad reviews are from trolls. Bad reviews can actually help you. First, they weed out anyone who is like-minded with the reviewer who left the review in the first place. So, he/she usually won’t buy it and leave another bad review (unless he/she is a troll who relishes in hatred, but if you don’t make your book free, more than likely the troll will skip your book.) Second, one or two bad reviews are a sign that your book is legit. Book buyers are wary of books that have all glowing reviews. If they see a book with a normal distribution of reviews ranging from 1 through 5 stars, with the distribution skewed toward the five stars, they will feel like the book is safe and worth buying.
Guideline #9: In the event that you are the victim of a bully troll attack, and it can happen through no fault of your own, DO NOT panic. DO NOT engage with the trolls. Let the storm blow over and the trolls will move on to the next thing they can hate on. They will forget all about you. We’ve seen this over and over again. They thrive on drama and hatred. One of our readers compared them to the Black Wind of WoT. This is a good comparison. They will think that they are killing your career, but that is impossible. Nothing can kill your career but you. The only thing that can kill your career is if you stop writing. So keep writing! Never stop.
Guideline #10: Use other social networking sites (other than GR) to promote yourself and your work: Facebook, Twitter, your blog, Tumblr, StumbleUpon, Google+, etc., but don’t spam people. Don’t go overboard on promotion. Use these platforms to meet people who have similar interests as you and occasionally mention events about your novels: release dates, blog tours, excerpts, promotional contests, etc. For example, take a look at how . He’s a great guy and has been very successful. He also handles trolls very well. He was attacked by them for something really petty and because he ignored them, they went away.
Guideline #11: Be very careful what you write on your social networking sites. Don’t write anything negative about reviews or reviewers. Don’t call anyone a derogatory name (example: what happened to Hugh Howey.) The trolls go looking for this stuff. They stalk authors and wait for them to say something on these topics just so they can pounce and attack (see Bully MO). Don’t be a victim of this.
Guideline #12: As for promoting your work, we’ve heard good things about Premier Virtual Author Book Tours, World Literary Cafe, Bookrooster.com, Microcerpt, and Bookbub. We’ve heard that these are all troll-free. There are more and we are currently researching them. If our readers have recommendations, feel free to leave a comment.
Guideline #13: Always remember that readers are good people. Trolls are not.
Please pass the word around quietly about this. The more authors that know this, the more we can save from bully troll attacks.
ALL true! Good job, STGRB!
I wish you guys had been here when I first started. I made all the stupid mistakes.
The best book promotion there is?
Michael Connelly: You know what I did after I wrote my first novel? I shut up and I wrote twenty-three more.
(Castle – The Dead Pool episode)
So, get your ultimate revenge. Put your head down and keep writing and releasing.
That’s right!
Good comment. We don’t entirely agree with everything in it, but good comment all the same. The trolls should definitely be reported.
AWESOME post! And I wholeheartedly agree about the free books. One of my books is free, and boy, is it a troll magnet!
As an author, I think this is great advice. You start out with such high expectations of finally pursuing your dream and are often shocked at the cruelty of readers when first experiencing it in a nasty review.
I’ve had my own troll attack over the first in a series of three books. The first one received the brunt only because it was best selling #1 free for nearly four days straight. Talk about magnet! I had shotguns pointed at me from everywhere with scathing reviews and multiple thumbs up agrees all happening within two days. However, over time, the trolls were overshadowed by true readers who loved the book and have since given it more than twice as many positive reviews. Of course, there was a small firestorm between reader vs. reader that came about too, when the good guys started to defend me. You can imagine how the trolls had new targets, and target them they did.
Nevertheless, the book consistently sells every month. It does much better in the UK, which I think is more troll-free. I have since put other books up for free and have managed somewhat to dodge the bullet so far. I learned to stay under the radar, keep my mouth shut online, stay away from places. However, I do curse the hell out of them from my safe place in front of my computer. Feels so good to get it out!
In any event, becoming an author has done two things to me (1) allowed me to see my dreams come true as a best selling, award-winning author, and (2) made me deathly afraid of the very readers that I write stories for. It’s a sad state of affairs.
Great information for newbies. I wish I would have known about the “dark side” of writing before I took to releasing my first book. I don’t know if that would have stopped me, but at least I would have been much wiser and informed.
Thank you for the comment! And good on you for being a best-seller! Keep up the good work!
This is a great list, and thanks for posting it. A lot of new authors…even with publishers…don’t know how all this works and they wind up getting shocked in the beginning.
This is very true: “Trolls like free things and they are usually the harshest and many times the most unfair critics.”
Jane Litte and the dearauthor crowd are particularly good at finding free reads so they can rip them to shreds, out of context, and roast new authors. Mean girl tactics.
No, don’t ever call the trolls out openly yourself. Report it to us and let us do it. That’s why we’re here. Also report it to the site involved. Goodreads has been less than helpful, but Amazon does listen. If the troll behavior is very criminal, either contact the police or hire an attorney. Or both if the situation calls for it.
I don’t think it’s fair to say that “birds of a feather tend to flock together.” For the time being, I still have my Goodreads account. I mostly use it to keep track of what I’m reading–virtual bookmarks, if you will–in case my paper bookmark falls out. I rarely interact socially with other GR members, though today I had some messages on there I was a bit reluctant to respond to, but did so anyway.
On GR, I have over eight hundred friends. I have maybe a handful marked to pop up in my feed when I happen to be on the site. I don’t send friend requests anymore, but I’m happy to accept them if the person sending it looks like someone who has similar reading tastes. I’m sure other people are in the same situation–they send and accept friend requests without really looking at who they are adding. If they don’t know about your site and just quietly read and review books, they probably have no idea who they are friends with.
That’s a good point. We’re not saying that anyone who has a GR account is a troll. And if you do have trolls in your friends list, that doesn’t mean you’re one of them. But we do want to tell people to be wary of someone who has a known troll or two on their friends list visible from the first page of their profile. Why? Because those are the friends with whom they have the most interaction. Especially be wary if you see the person interacting with them on status updates, reviews, etc. And again, we’re not saying that GR members who interact with the trolls are trolls themselves. We’re just saying, be wary.
Great advice.
I think the secret is knowing about all the things in this post, so you can be informed. So many new authors, self-published and traditionally published, don’t really understand the ways of the Internet, the creeps and trolls, and the bullies who lurk in the dark corners for sport. They don’t understand that there are conspiracies that go on behind the scenes, too. One man on social media recently asked about goodreads and three dozen readers and authors jumped on his comment and they all said basically the same thing: watch out, because it’s a killer environment and “they” will eat you alive. The poor man was in shock. And it’s actually kind of sad that rest of us have become so used to this kind of behavior. It’s become a way of life, thanks to the looney’s and Jane Litte’s of the Internet. And it’s not just the people who read, follow, and comment on this blog. Almost everyone who is familiar with GR knows how dangerous it can be. And those who are not familiar with it should be warned in advance.
Here is a good link:
http://www.cyberinvestigationservices.com/
Cyber Investigation Services is a highly experienced internet defamation & libel group that helps Corporations, Small Businesses, and Individuals with complex internet issues. CIS is a leading cyber investigation & litigation support firm that receives thousands of requests for help each year. Our unique solutions allow us to act quickly to rapidly evolving cyber defamation cases and achieve the desired resolutions.
As a Cyber Investigation group, supplemented by top attorneys, we have tools not available to others. For example, we often have techniques to stop anonymous defaming attackers without the costly expense and time required of obtaining court orders and subpoenas. Our philosophy is simple. We use our wealth of experience to provide our clients with the quickest and most cost efficient solutions possible, but we surround ourselves with top legal experts if the next level response is needed.
Listen to these whiners:
And the Butthurt Troll Award goes to….. *drumroll*
All of them!
They’re just pissed because 1) all of their names are on your troll lists, and 2) every guideline in this post is absolutely, 100 percent true. They don’t know how to deal with that. They can’t look in the mirror and see what they really are.
LMAO! They still think we’re all a bunch of socks. Hilarious!
Btw, they’ll never find the mole hidden among them, muahahaha!
You know what really cracks me up about these morons? They’re saying that STGRB finally gets it. Funny, I seem to remember STGRB saying these things ever since the blog started. The stupidity of these people is just infinite.
This is true. We’ve always said this on our blog, much of which has been written in our Learn More pages. The bullies have just been too stupid to see it. They’ve been too busy trying to discredit our site with their lies to actually hear what we were saying the entire time.
I also seem to remember their scape goat LEAVING Goodreads, not getting banned. I can always tell when STGRB has really gotten to them. That’s when her name seems to appear all over their comments. She should be proud. I would be. 😀
Have you guys seen the latest meltdown on the Goodreads whiner-thread (link above)? A rational woman named Robin posted, saying she didn’t like the way the thread had degenerated into a mud-slinging fest against the STGRB community’s children. Can you guess what happened next? Yep, the bully trolls jumped all over her until she finally left. When these losers show their true colors, more and more people are realizing who they are… and STGRB is getting all the more validation and respect. Funny how the trolls are their own worst enemy and prove us right time and again, but it’s not surprising to any of us who have had to deal with them.
I’ve been reading their idiot comments. What I find particularly amusing is that they labor under the delusion that they have some kind of effect on an author’s career. I was labeled BBA a long time ago and it had absolutely NO negative effect on my career. Quite the opposite, in fact. Just goes to show you that the real readers out there know exactly who the trolls are and which books to choose because of it. When I need to find my next TBR book, I look to see who the trolls are bashing and then I go buy that book.
Seems I’m not the only one.
Right. We’ve known this for a while. The true readers out there (i.e. the true goodreaders) do know who the trolls are. Over the past year, we’ve literally talked to hundreds of them, both readers and authors combined.
The trolls’ problem is that they delude themselves into thinking they are the gatekeepers to authors’ success. They’re not. They’re just trolls who guard a bridge that goes to nowhere. A bridge they created. If you look at the “authors” (and I use the term lightly here) who are part of their group, you’ll see that they are all wannabe authors who keep claiming they have a book to publish or they are failed writers. The authors they target in their attacks, however, are the successful ones (i.e. Jamie McGuire, Jessica Park, Kiera Cass, etc.) Notice a pattern? Jealousy is such an ugly emotion.
“Jealousy is such an ugly emotion.”
And really, this is what it all boils down to.
Well said! There’s also that saying that there’s no such thing as bad publicity when it comes to book sales. So thanks, trolls! Because of you, my books are selling like hotcakes. *Tee-heeing* all the way to the bank!
You guys have them so riled up over there, lol! I’m just sitting back with my popcorn enjoying the show.
They’re putting all their energy into rambling comments on a Goodreads page, while authors are writing. I wrote 2500 words today. (Pats self on back). Checking this blog will take ten minutes of my time, but for the non-writer wannabes on GR, it seems to be a full-time job. Writers write. Trolls spew hate, lurk on sites, waste time, and produce nothing . 😉
This is truly great advice but I am sad that it’s necessary.
I’m glad you guys posted this. As an author who suffered block because of the negativity around GR, Amazon, and bully readers, I had to step back from writing and get all the critics out of my head until I could dip back into the waters again. Hopefully this helps new authors and vet authors to keep going no matter what and keep in mind why they are writing in the first place. Staying off the forums definitely helps, too!
I’ve seen some good advice for authors, but this is the best so far. I’ve been on Goodreads for a long time and each year it gets progressively worse. I’ve done a few giveaways, stupid or not, well, mostly stupid because all that came from them were lousy reviews from the usual trolls, not to mention the one-star drive-bys. The giveaways generated NO sales. I finally wised up and stopped giving my books away. My sales came from other promotions like blog tours and contests. Facebook and twitter have also been very good friends of mine through the years. But the best promotion came from always writing my next book. Writing is the best promotion an author can get. What I find incredible is that the customers who paid for my books are the ones who gave me the best reviews. Not the bottom feeders on Goodreads. The trolls who infest Goodreads are there for the free books. The advice above is great. Don’t give them your books. Period.
Yes, I agree with you about KarlynP. She’s a menace with no life. *waves* Yes, you have too much time on your hands if you’re spending all your time reading this blog (that you propose to hate), then spewing your idiocy on GR. Get a life, woman.
They got me very recently, too. So glad I found this site. I put out a free book and received lots of attention… I’m just wondering, do any of them have jobs? Or, do they just patrol Amazon because they have nothing better to do with their lives? I’m just floored at this level of immaturity from adults.
Sorry to hear about that, but you’ve observed correctly. The Amazon fora trolls are there 24/7. At this point, the general consensus is that they either don’t have jobs or trolling the Amazon fora is their job. Both theories have merit.
That makes sense. These people must live pretty pitiful lives themselves if this is what excites them. Some of these people spend all day writing a snarky review or trolling for victims and it’s all they have in life. Abuse others because my life sucks. I guess it makes me appreciate mine even more. Thanks for sharing this information. I’ve been spreading the word all over town with other authors who have no idea these people exist.
Yes, RECENTLY TROLLED AUTHOR….I remember when I first encountered these bullies. I had absolutely no clue what was going on. I found it very hard to believe that anyone had this kind of time on their hands to obsessively monitor everything that was going on, and then flip out over any response you give them. The behavior was so shocking to me, my first impression was that it was young teenage children, and I kid you not.
Studying these bully trolls has been interesting, but not on an adult level because there is nothing mature or adult about them. My one long time (PHD) psych professor said this when he took a look at their comments….”They are obviously emotionally stunted”
Very well said.
I know they read these comments and my advice to the authors who associate with this Goodreads gang of misfits- run like hell before you sabotage your writing career further. Focus on writing books, not on bashing other authors because things are going slow for you or you’re just bitter. The word is spreading about these bullies, and having anything to do with them, is poison for your career. You know, it’s one thing to preach about allowing negative reviews, real reviews not orchestrated ones, but to try and sabotage an author’s career just for spite is completely, and utterly pathetic. If I were you, I’d block every one of the other trolls, and make a new start. It’s not too late to save your reputation and some of your dignity, so run like hell while you still can. Seriously.
And to the followers/trolls – Just… why? Would your family really be proud to know that this is what you’ve lowered yourself to? That you take pleasure in screwing with people because you’re bitter with your own lives? I bet you’re so disillusioned that you don’t even understand that you ARE the person your kids are warned about in school. Cyberbullies. You should really be ashamed.
Good message, DA! And yes, please pass the word around quietly about these trolls. The more people know about them, the better.
Oh, I have and I will keep doing it. Thanks for this great site, by the way. You guys rock.
Don’t do giveaways on GR. That attracts trolls. Trolls like free things and they are usually the harshest and many times the most unfair critics.
Or in the words of Christ in Matthew 7:6:
Do not give what is holy to the dogs; nor cast your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn and tear you in pieces.
Good quote, ARC! That’s right. Jesus knew this wisdom over 2000 years ago — never cast your pearls before swine. That’s exactly what authors do when they hold giveaways on GR.
I just want to say thank you for this.
I started to write as a child and wrote off and on until my early thirties. When I recently heard about self publishing I was thrilled and gave serious thought to starting up again. (I’d stopped for 10 years). But when I started to read about these trolls and bullies I said, forget it. You’ve restored my faith and thank you.
You’re welcome, Jen!
Trolls like to use the adj. ‘troll’ too
It can be used as a rejection Q rather than it’s intended meaning ~
w/ cults or cliques ~
~ esp ~ when certain ‘nervous-middle-classman’ leaders decide to exert
themselves w/ certain targets
I find attack-artist a better term (e.g. violetkitty411)