We were just recently tipped off to a Twitter conversation between Jane Litte and a group of authors who took offense to readers’ reactions to Veronica Roth’s final installment of the Divergent trilogy. Apparently, there are fans so unhappy with the outcome of the story, they have taken to leaving threats of violence upon Veronica’s person.
In the conversation, Jane defends these readers and their threats of violence by calling them “passionate”. Jane is of the mind that since there are so many threats being passed around the web lately anyway, making a big deal about this is “hyperbolic”. (Her argument. Not ours.) But as Andrew Shaffer points out, if these kinds of threats were directed at Jane or her readers, she would be shrieking foul play from the rooftops. After all, wasn’t it Jane who said that STGRB “put her readers in danger” because we published screenshots of their despicable behavior and stated our disapproval of it? Ooh, that’s horrible isn’t it? That’s worse than telling someone you want to punch them in the throat or cut them up, huh? *sarcasm* Jane also seems to think that because Veronica is making money off her readers, they have a right to threaten her.
Unbelievable, isn’t it? But really, this is just Jane being herself. This is who she is.
I’ll tell you something. My brother has his own landscaping business and if any of his clients threatened physical harm on him, he not only would NOT provide landscaping services for them, he would probably also report their threat(s) to the police. Just because you are making money doing something does not give clients or customers the right to threaten physical harm on you. And making a big deal of this IS NOT “hyperbolic”.
What’s amazing is that this is what the bullies really believe. Threatening an author is acceptable behavior according to these people. No wonder TinaNicole and the others who threatened Lauren Pippa thought they had a right to do it. This is their mindset.
To see what we’re talking about, all you have to do is read the following Twitter conversation. It’s the perfect example of Jane showing her true colors. Dan Krokos eventually got so disgusted with her, he ended up blocking her. Fair play to Dan!
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Jane is an idiot. Fans that are “passionate” are the ones who threaten you when they’re mad and stalk you when they’re happy. Either way, it’s dangerous for the author and completely unacceptable.
Exactly! Annie Wilkes, anyone? “I’m your biggest fan!”
Mark David Chapman
Incredible! Aren’t these the same people who attacked author Sarah Luddington when she said she said she wanted to hang a one star reviewer? Oh, the irony!
You know… when I read what was, at the time, the last book of The Dark Tower Series by Stephen King and I got to the end, I was livid with how it ended. Rather than contacting Mr. King himself and venting my rage, I decided I was never reading the series again. I’m a re-reader, but that last book irritated me so badly that I vowed never to re-read it. I didn’t feel the need to threaten him because I was unhappy. That just seems stupid. He or any other author are allowed to finish books any way they want.
This whole mess is reminding me of another Stephen King book. Misery. Is everyone familiar with Annie Wilkes?
I couldn’t have said it any better Carroll, thanks for enlightening. I’ve spent quite a bit of time studying the attacks, and I am of the opinion that what you say is just the tip of the iceberg because there are other issues going on with these deranged individuals.
There is a violence within these people that’s deep, and since I am not a doctor I can only give my opinion as an observer.
When I first observed Janis Hinkle the grade school teacher bully over at BBA Amazon forum, I was shocked at how any teacher of children could brag on being a person that ridicules and mocks authors. Well, it seems she has a thing for only self published authors because she feels their work is unfit for anyone to read. She has generalized about all self published authors really, from what I’ve read in her posts..
Lately she’s been telling authors to take classes, become better writers, blah,blah, but in a way that isn’t really genuine or real. Her tone still smells of mock and ridicule, and I have to ask now HOW DOES A TEACHER DO THIS?
I went to school. I had teachers. I never had one that mocked and ridiculed a child that was a slow learner for instance, nor did I have any teachers that wouldn’t sit with a child and teach them, if they wanted to learn. That’s why this woman’s behavior is so shocking to me. She hangs on that public forum like it’s her life’s blood, and probably really believes she’s contributing something to others. She isn’t. She’s sad and repulsive to me.
What I’m saying about these disgruntled people is there is not only a lack of compassion, but there’s a serious lack of interest in anything but their bullying. This part I don’t get at all, but they’d probably try to spin it anyhow and tell people they have other lives other than what they do online….I do not believe them.
These people are dangerous. I am not joking. They are dangerous, and in need of serious help before they go postal on someone.
Carroll is not exaggerating at all.
Jane is REALLY pretty far gone at this point. I mean as in mentally ill and not as an insult just to keep that in mind it’s not worth getting angry with her because she incapable of seeing how ridiculous she comes across. She’s the perfect villain, she believes she means well but she is really just sick in the head.
Jane is mean-spirited and petty. Defending verbal threats toward authors fits right into her ugly online personality. I love that those authors called her out on this.
It’s too bad Jane doesn’t realize she’s becoming the worst cliche of bad blogging and she’s making herself irrelevant.
She should read the Peter Principle:
“The Peter Principle is a proposition that states that the members of an organization where promotion is based on achievement, success, and merit will eventually be promoted beyond their level of ability. The principle is commonly phrased, “Employees tend to rise to their level of incompetence.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Principle
I read a post Jane wrote sometime back. She made the comment that an author commented on her blog that the reviewer made her want to throw up. What Jane didn’t say was in that review that same reviewer repeated said the author’s MC made her want to throw up then when the author responded about this deliberated baiting by the reviewer then the author was horrible and not worth reading. I was there I read every posts and I know the author and she would never have just told a reviewer something like that without justification. Yet the way Jane talks, it was all the author’s fault. Uh, no. If you deliberately provoke someone then it’s not wrong for that person to respond. That’s the drama Jane lives for. She’s not happy unless she can instigate some type of drama. Anything I hear that woman say isn’t worth the time nor effort to believe it cause she twists things the way she wants them to be and anyone who disagrees with her is the wrong one. No talking to her either. She won’t listen.
And yet Jane sounds like such a deary when she does those podcasts with Sarah Wendel. You would think she was The Reverend Mother Jane Litte about to be sainted in all her glory. Now those podcasts are interesting. They can induce vomit better than Ipecac syrup.
Not to mention, boring. Jane’s slow-witted banter is excruciating. I can’t imagine who can listen to the whole thing. BBF’s only.
*BBF’s*
I just started catching up on this whole kerfuffle over bullying when I saw a reader state that she wanted to “burn Veronica Roth’s house down” over the Allegiant ending. I still love Neil Gaiman’s article on the author’s right to do whatever they want with their book. In this case, “Veronica Roth is not your bitch.”
I’ve read several of the articles on this blog and am glad to see the opposing side represented. I find myself solidly in the middle of the debate. While I am 100% against verbally attacking anyone online (or in person), I am totally fine with attacking a bad book or even a book that hasn’t been released yet. I am not an author and can’t even imagine how hard it is for them to put their work out there for people, but I also don’t like having my time wasted either. I think GR should remove all reviews that attack the author or reviewer in a personal matter, but leave all reviews attacking a book (carpet-bombing aside). We all know that the author community inflates ratings for their friends. A little of the reverse is not out of the question.
I run a medium-large book website (not at all social, thankfully) and use the Goodreads reviews widget. I don’t feel in any way that I am misleading my visitors by showing those reviews. It’s really obvious to see who has actually read the book when scrolling through GR reviews. Also, reviews are completely subjective. My 5-star read is any book I finish in one sitting, but then I’m an easy grader. Someone else will only give 5 stars to a book that is life-altering. Anyone with an ounce of sense knows that reviews are always biased. I believe most people get recommendations by finding a few reviewers they like and who they believe have the same taste in books.
The bullies are only making themselves look stupid and petty in this whole situation. Frankly, good riddance to them. And, hopefully, good riddance to the authors who attack reviewers over negative reviews. If I see an author attack a reader, no matter what the justification, I will never read another book they write. The second you charge for your work, you’re a business professional and had better start behaving like one.
Everyone is entitled to their opinion, but civility should still be the order of the day.
Thanks for all the good information you have provided on this very divisive issue.
I’m in total agreement with you. As an author, my work is put out into the public to be judged by the readers as they see it. I have never, and will never, attack a reader for not liking my book. I’ve also not responded to the obvious carpet bombs and malicious lists they’ve been added to. However, threats of violence, etc are NOT something I or any other author should have to tolerate. Say you want to burn my book and dance around it with glee. Fine. Say you want to cut my throat or burn my house down and that’s crossing a boundary that I can’t ignore.
How do you rationalize attacking a “bad book” when it hasn’t been released? Because how do you even know it’s a bad book if you haven’t read it?
I don’t agree with that policy either. Discussions/comments about a to-be released book, yes, but ratings and reviews (unless from actual advanced copy readers) should not be allowed.
GoodReads isn’t a professional review site. If it were, obviously rating a book without reading it would be wrong. On GoodReads, those ratings indicate the excitement of the fanbase for the forthcoming book. I read a book last year that I absolutely detested. I would definitely give its sequel 1 star on GoodReads.
I understand that authors get upset because they try to use GoodReads as a promotional vehicle. But for us readers, we couldn’t care less about whether or not authors are trying to protect their book’s ratings. We only care about finding the best books to read.
I understand that GoodReads is trying to sell services to authors and that conflicts with the desires of the readers. GoodReads will have to figure this out somehow — probably from a direct command from Amazon.
On the contrary, it is very much a professional review site. Goodreads and Amazon are making money with their “critical mass of book reviews” by using the data in their database to market books. It is just like the Amazon review site. By allowing this open review policy, they are deceiving consumers. In the future this will eventually change but it will take a lawsuit to do it.
I believe there is a big difference between crowd-sourced reviews and professional reviews. There may be a few professional reviewers on Goodreads, but I see very few of them. Just because Goodreads is attempting to sell their metadata (and that’s all I believe these reviews to be), does not make every member a “professional” reviewer who writes quality reviews. “Loved it – xoxoxoxoxo – a gagillion stars” just doesn’t qualify.
To say that Goodreads is fraudulently deceiving customers just seems like overstating the case to me. Like I mentioned previously, reviews are always subjective. Goodreads is first and foremost a community of readers. It would be absolutely impossible, not to mention wrong, to attempt to police all the reviews to ensure the book was actually read. There are millions of books out there because everyone has different tastes. My 5-star is your 1-star. There is bias inherently built into the system. If you’re an author, then write a good book. The correct ratings will come if you did your job. Of all the millions of readers on Goodreads, a few trolls can’t bring down a good book’s rating.
I attended my monthly book club on Saturday night and we discussed this issue at length. There was a very obvious split between pure readers and readers who are also trying to get published. I take the pure readers perspective since I don’t write books, blogs, or reviews. A pure reader really doesn’t expect Goodreads data to be completely accurate. It’s just one source out of many that are available.
It is a site for readers and authors. I think we disagree on that fundamental axiom. Also, it would be perfectly possible for GR to police their reviews, just like Amazon does. If it can be shown clearly that a rating or a review is false, that can be policed easily. GR/Amazon is deceiving consumers who are seeing these false rating/reviews through the API or through the integration with the new kindle and assuming that they were made in good faith when they weren’t. Many of the carpet bombs we’ve documented on our site were placed on books simply because users were angry about the new policy change. This can be proven easily in a court of law. Also, individual readers and reviewers are not necessarily professional, but the content they provide is used in a professional setting. Therefore, laws that protect consumers still apply.
Wow. Just wow. I have to wonder if Jane backed herself into a corner here and tried to brazen it out. Because how could anyone possibly think it’s okay to make death threats to anyone, or confuse that with passion?
And if she knows the people involved and anything happened to the author, she could be potentially named as an accessory to the crime, with statements like these. I don’t understand why the bullies don’t realize they are leaving a written documentation trail that will last forever???? Are they nuts??
What also confuses me is why the author doesn’t report those threats to the police. I have to tell you, if anyone threatened my life on-line, I’d immediately be searching for IP addresses and filing a report. That day. As in pronto.
A lot of people don’t realize they can do this…report it to the police. And the police, in most cases, will do the searching themselves. Almost every police department nowadays has either a division…or at least one person…that knows Internet crime. And if the local police don’t have it people can contact the state police where they definitely have Internet crime divisions.
A lot of these bullies don’t realize that they are going to wind up with criminal charges filed against them in the near future…not to mention civil suits.
Litte’s derange-o mindset reminds me of the old Mel Brooks quote:
“Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you fall into an open sewer and die.”
Getting that upset over a books ending? Seriously that reader(s) need to get a life. It’s a book!
I’d read many a book and haven’t liked the ending, but I got over it right quick! I would certainly never entertain threatening anyone over it or even contacting the author. What would be the point?
Wow, Pam sounds amazing in this conversation.
Well I say Amazing, but really who would condone threatening authors? O_o OK, who would who is of sound mind.