Well, as you all probably know by now, PG published a post informing his readers of Jane Litte’s Finding a Replacement for Goodreads, a mockery of an article fraught with Jane’s verbal indigestion on the Goodreads policy change and how to find a replacement. Just like her troll friends, Jane erroneously believes that the trolls are the majority and that they are somehow hurting GR by picking up and leaving. They don’t realize that they are doing GR and its members a favor.
For this post, we thought PG’s response would be entertaining for our readers as well as some of the comments below it:
Here’s the link if you’d like to read more.
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I find it absolutely mind blowing that Jane, who is supposed to be a lawyer, doesn’t understand the English language. She (like the rest of them) think this is about censorship, one star ratings and bad reviews. It’s not!
It’s about book shelves attacking authors and reviews attacking authors and carpet bombing. (Fake ratings and reviews) Although, mostly about attacks.
I don’t see GR deleting their conversations in groups where they can talk about authors, love or hate. That would be what censorship is. Unless what you said was libelous, then free speech and censorship argument would not apply. So why can’t these people talk about authors in their group discussions? Why do they have to do it through BOOK reviews?
I think we already know the answer to that. It’s not about “free speech” but rather, to hurt certain authors book sales and image etc.
Of all people, I would think Jane would know this. You know, since she seems to think she is a lawyer and everything. Maybe she is. And maybe the reason why she has so much time on her hands to read and blog is because she doesn’t have a lot of clients. And if that were the case, maybe she doesn’t have a lot of clients because she isn’t a very good lawyer. (I say this because I know a few lawyers and they hardly have time to go to the bathroom much less, start reading, join multiple book sites, start a blog, etc) They spend all of their time on cases.
Regardless, for GR having rules and finally getting around to enforcing them isn’t censorship. If you don’t want your shelves and or reviews deleted …. don’t break the rules.
How much more simple can that be?
Here’s the truth about freedom of speech from a real lawyer:
Free speech means you have the right to:
· Not speak (i.e., you have the right to remain silent);
· To engage in passive protests to protest a war (such as to wear a black armband to school);
· To use certain offensive words and phrases to convey a political* message;
· To advertise products (with some restrictions);
· To engage in some symbolic speech (such as burning a flag during a protest) but not others (such as burning your draft card).
*Note the word political. Political means relating to the laws and policies of the government.
Free speech does not include the right to:
· Incite actions that would harm others.
A lawyer? Yeah I’ll bet….
To clarify, I’ll bet that Jane’s no lawyer. Her grammar is poor, for one. I wouldn’t want her to be my lawyer. I’d be innocent and wind up in jail.
Where’s the “Like” button on this thing? *giggle*
The Kindleboards thread below relating to this reflects how uninformed or duped some authors and editors are on this. And the poster by the moniker “Atunah” is a known troll who spreads misinformation on writers forums like KB. These writers are uninformed and gullible — until they wake up one morning and find their books hit with a bunch of 1-star reviews by multiple trolls for no reason other than that they’re authors.
http://www.kboards.com/index.php/topic,163540.0.html
You’re right. Some of them are pretty clueless. But then there are some with brains in their heads like Quiss, Hugh Howey, and Vaalingrade. Kboards isn’t as bad as the Amazon fora, but you still have to be careful who you talk to.
Yes, ABSOLUTELY CLUELESS…after reading this blog about how they recently attacked someone in law enforcement!
This truly made me laugh out loud..
http://onestoryslinger.wordpress.com/2013/09/28/were-on-to-those-people-trolls/
What I find absolutely hilarious about this is that Jane Litte and her gang of gremlins probably thought last year that STGRB would fade away into nothingness after a few months. Now, Jane’s not even on Goodreads anymore thanks to the efforts of this site. And she’s whining about what’s happened on her blog, trying to create a media storm to get others to join her and her pals over at BookLikes. Sorry Jane, but you’ve lost your credibility, if you even had any to begin with. You are no longer the mob boss you think you are.
I wonder if she lost some viewers because of this. I stopped liking DA years ago when one of her reviewers tore into a Susan Grant book, saying the heroine made her want to throw up. When Susan commented, the whole gang attacked her, Jane among them. How is it a site that is reputable can allow one of their reviewers to say something like that in a review? It was done to incite not only the author but also the mob. I love Susan’s books and I hated what was done to her over there. What they did to Susan made me want to throw up.. To me they are no better than the scum I clean off my tub. Shows exactly how they were brought up. No class whatsoever. Oh, and Litte being an attorney, well, she may have gotten a law degree but that doesn’t mean she uses it. Sounds more like she got it, found out it wasn’t what she wanted to do and (if her husband mades good money and you know she does with that blog) decided to do nothing but read and do that blog.
They are really not happy people. Look at DebbieR page on GR. She listed all these censorship books she reading so she can spout off about how GR is censoring them. Guess what? It’s not censorship if you don’t own the place. If you can my home or my space and did/do what you they did/done, I would kick them out. That is not censorship, that is asserting ownership rights and what you allow and don’t allow in your home/business. These people have no frigging clue.
I just hope GR can clean up all the 1stars so those books and authors aren’t hurt.
The irony is that they’re not actually hurting authors in any way, they just THINK they are. I got hit so hard by their trolololololing that I haven’t got a single book left over 3.5stars, down from an average rating of 4.8ish. But, you know what? I just did my end-of-month accounting, and I’ve experienced a 31.4% sales INCREASE! So, whatever they think they’re doing, they’re either having no effect or the opposite of what they wanted.
I can’t tell you how much this pleases me, and not just because of the extra bucks in my pocket. ;D
I read Jane’s post, too, and I tried to be unbiased while reading it, which wasn’t easy. The thing that surprised me the most was how Jane and many of the people who commented on her post seemed to feel that Goodreads is falling apart as a result of all this. How presumptuous is that?
If anything, GR is only going to attract more readers (authors are readers, too) as a result. I have seen people talking about this all over the web, and the one main theme that remains consistent is that up until recently GR was a scary place to go and most people avoided it for that reason. And people felt this way long before STGRB even existed.
Jane also made it seem as if it’s authors against readers, which is NOT the case. She spun that around completely. Many of the bullies ARE authors…disgruntled authors who didn’t get their way or are jealous of authors who actually sell books. So to make a specific point of stating this is authors against readers is nothing more than a tacitcal move on her part to sway the discussion in her favor. It’s an old debate trick a lot of us learned in college, especially law school. And in order to understand how Jane puts these arguments out there, you have to understand that she knows what she’s doing with each post she writes, and the main objective is to sway the jury…so to speak.
Defamed reviewers-blah blah blah blah, doxxed blah blah blah blah….
blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah-someone CALLED HER AT HOME-blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah….
::yawn::
Lol! Tumblr is blocking BookLikes:
http://neniacampbell.booklikes.com/post/508865/booklikes-banned-on-tumblr
These trolls really are trying to start a media storm. Too bad no one’s listening.
LMAO!