We’ve been watching Sarah Daltry for a while and now, fortunately, we have enough information about her to share with our readers. First off, Sarah Daltry is one of the many pen names or aliases or socks or whatever else this author uses as a means to gain publicity and promote her work. We first noticed her back in February when she wrote her pen name’s first blog post called Open Letter to Bullies:
When we checked to see where she had been bullied, we could find NOTHING to show that it had actually happened. We also knew by what we’ve heard from those who have experience with this author, what this was. An attempt to gain attention in a new political landscape that is sympathetic to bullied authors and when we say bullied authors here, we mean the real bullied authors. Not Sarah.
So, two months later, to no-one-at-STGRB’s surprise, she wrote another post, originally called Closing Time, talking about how horribly mistreated she has been and because of it, has decided to call it quits:
We already knew that Sarah had no intention of shutting down, but what sparked our interest in this post was her mention of the title and character of her book. This is a precursor of more “hooking the reader” to come. Keep reading.
Yesterday, we were alerted to an article by Mercy Pilkington (who has covered author bullying in the past and has done a very good job of it) that featured Nadine Christian (an author who has truly been bullied, post on her to come) and Sarah. The article is titled, The Bullies Win: Authors Abandoning Publishing Over Online Behaviors:
Unfortunately, Mercy was fooled, as have been so many others, by Sarah and included her with Nadine, who, again, is a truly bullied author. We’ve since informed Mercy of Sarah’s real intentions regarding her blog posts and Mercy invited us to leave comments on the article. Instead, we’ve chosen to let our readers know the truth with this post.
So, where is this leading?
Well, now that Sarah has caught the attention of Goodereader and their readers, her next blog post was — wait for it — an entire post on her book’s characters, including chapters from the book and the epilogue (complete reader hook), still claiming that she’s going to shut it all down. Gee, what a surprise.
This is what she is saying: “See what I have written? I’m going to throw it all away because I’ve been such a victim. Don’t you feel sorry for me? Don’t you want to support me and buy & read my book so that I don’t stop writing?” She also includes a brief explanation of why she hasn’t shut down by now, thus dragging it out.
You all see what she’s doing?
And :
Then, what next? Her next post is called Thank you and an Explanation, telling her readers that she’s actually not removing her books (giving some made up story as to why) and that she’s not shutting down, but “going off the grid” for a while:
Uh, okay… *sigh* If you haven’t figured it out by now, this is bullshit, everyone. There was no suicidal person who messaged her. No one called her an attention-seeking whore. No one has bullied her and we can guarantee that she never had any intention of shutting down her books or her social media. We know this for a fact because people have seen this author, under other names, do this before. Her next move will be to suddenly reappear and tell everyone that she has reconsidered and will continue writing and publishing for public consumption because all of the encouraging messages from readers have changed her mind.
Don’t be fooled by this.
Also, several people have had experience with this author in other social media before this whole episode and have told us about it. All we want to say to our readers regarding this is that whenever someone solicits funds online, be it in the form of cash, services or donations, exercise EXTREME caution. There is NO reason someone should be asking you for money online, unless you are making a legitimate purchase.
Now, why are we telling you about this?
Because we’ve seen other authors cry bully before. Last year, author Jac Wright attempted this by emailing us and claiming that he was the next Lauren P. When we checked out Jac’s books, there was NO sign of bullying whatsoever. Then, he confided in one of our blog readers that he was doing it to garner publicity to sell his books. When authors do this, they are abusing people’s sympathy and trust. They are crying wolf or more appropriately “crying bully” when the bullies have never touched them. This is incredibly unfair to those authors who have actually been bullied and whenever we see an author abusing people’s trust like this, we WILL call them out.
And we have called out Sarah.
Please, DO NOT feel to sorry for her. She is not a victim.
OMG!! I was one of those who believed her. This is just unreal and the extent these people will go is even more unreal. Thanks for posting it.
The really sad thing is that I first found out about her through other people who have been bullied…really bullied. And those people felt sorry, too.
You’re not alone. A lot of people have been fooled by her shenanigans.
This disgusts me. DISGUSTS. She claimed rape, poverty, mental illness and suicide in her original post. To mock those things in an effort to gain sales is just the most obscene gesture ever.
She claimed rape? How does rape have anything to do with her career? I don’t get it. No one should ever use the term “rape” for something so trivial.
If the claims about her are true, I find it obscene and disgusting too.
It’s just unbelievable. I never thought people would do this. Hate to say it, but it’s authors like this that trigger readers to lash out. And considering this whole fiasco, who can blame them?
It irritates us when authors do this. STGRB hasn’t been working our butts off to fight against real bullying only to see some authors abuse people’s trust like this. Luckily, we’ve only found a small number that have done this so far.
Me too. And I guess by claiming “rape”, the author meant she was “threatened” with rape thru an email??
WTF … another thing I despise is people who claim “rape” when it’s untrue (I know this is rare, I’m not being a “victim-blamer).
I can’t blame you for being pissed off, JBG. You are right, you’ve been busting ass for a long time trying to expose bullying in the publishing world, and you have accomplished so much good since you started. Authors should never EVER bullshit about things like this. It’s unconscionable to do it for money.
The thing is, do you know for a fact that she hasn’t been raped, or bullied? Do you know for a fact that she wasn’t messaged by someone who was suicidal? No you don’t know any of that…Honestly I debated posting this comment for fear of being attacked, but I feel she needs to be defended. You have no proof that those things didn’t happen. You claim to have no proof of bullying, but the thing is there are people out there that will go right to the author to make comments, just like the person who may or may not have wrote to her saying she “saved” their life isn’t going to post that in a public forum to be ridiculed for being weak. Because let’s be honest everyone has something to say about everything, obviously people are not very nice most of the time. If I were that person I would NOT have stated it publicly.
Karen, how exactly do you prove a negative? For example, how do you prove Santa Claus doesn’t exist? You can’t. It’s not logically possible. You can, however, prove a positive. Like if Santa Claus actually existed, you could say, “Here’s Santa! He does exist after all.” Same thing with Sarah’s alleged bullying. She could come out and say, “Here’s how I was bullied” and show evidence, but she NEVER has. And there is no, I repeat, NO evidence elsewhere online that shows this bullying ever took place. Add that in with the fact that Sarah has done this before to garner attention and what we have is a fictional scenario that she’s made up, much like the story of good ol’ Santa. So we can say with confidence that Sarah has not been bullied. She is crying bully and STGRB is calling bullshit.
I agree that you can’t prove a negative. But you say she has done this before, under other names. Can you show us that then? Show us where Sarah “pulled another publicity stunt” by crying bully. As one of the many people who read her blog post, I can’t in good conscience just abandon ship and call her a user, liar, or whatever. And if in fact she’s done that before, I’d be just as disgusted as the rest of the world. Rape, suicide, and depression are no joking matters and shouldn’t be tossed around lightly.
You need to talk to the people who were part of her street team before. They are the ones who got sucked into it the last time she did this. Use the contact us page to contact Athena. She can give you some links and more info.
Here are some people you might want to ask:
Again, contact Athena and she can give you more information.
And these people:
http://smbookobsessions.com/sarahdaltry/
Thanks for this info. It’s just what I was looking for.
G, I was a part of her street team, I was there when she was saying that she writes theses books and no one reads them. It was never about being bullied. She would say that book bub would no longer help her sell her book that they had refused to do any more advertising for her. Not understanding book bub or what it is I thought it was odd you’d think something in relation to book would be helpful to Authors.
I had spoken to her privately on several occasions and I for one was snookered, she said there was nothing she could do to promote her books. So I did, I promoted even did giveaways to get people interested into helping. All of this boggled my mind seeing at the time Sarah had over 10k fans on her Facebook. I mean 10k fans and no one was interested.
Seeing how she was manipulating people, saying she couldn’t afford to pay her heat or she was about to be homeless since she was their only source of income I watched as people went in droves and bought her book. A few days later she debuted brand new covers and that a new book was coming out.
It is not a coincidence that her books were re-released in Mid-March. It wasn’t a coincidence that she just published a book March 31st and all of a sudden this happened.
It also wasn’t a coincidence that she joined a book signing, used their resources and all their Authors to help pimp her books to pull out and join another and repeat the cycle.
I don’t know who Sarah’s other alter egos are but I from now on will trust my little circle and the people I’ve personally met.
Thanks for sharing that with me, Karma. I appreciate the information.
I am so glad I found this site. I too am a blogger and have worked with Sarah in the past. I too was duped onto her “poooor me” routine. “No one will buy my books. No one really helps me promote anymore”…..BLAH BLAH BLAH So I felt bad…helped her promote her books and held giveaways for her.
I ALMOST feel like… I HAVE BEEN BULLIED BY SARAH. however, I do know the definition of bullying. I know this isn’t the case.
I was just scammed!
Karen and G.
Can you show us evidence that proves that she has been bullied? If you can, I’d really like to see it. I challenge you to find that evidence and show everyone. Then you can prove us all wrong. Oh and it must be dated before April 10 when all this supposed bullying happened.
I’m not sure why you are challenging me for proof. I hadn’t ever heard of Sarah until her post was brought to my attention. The reason why I asked for some more info here is because I’m not one to jump into conclusions immediately. She made some serious remarks and I wanted to give her the benefit of the doubt. Since I had no previous knowledge of her and her shenanigans, you can understand my reticence to write her off ad a phony.
I will contact Athena to get the details. Thanks again for sharing this with the public.
Sorry. I’m just disgusted by what she did. I’m an author who has been bullied in the past and yet I didn’t draw public attention to it. I didn’t cry for sympathy. So it makes me angry to see someone do it when they haven’t even been bullied.
No need to apologize. I just wanted to make sure it was clear that I was not involved with Sarah at any time. Sorry to hear about your experiences with bullies. There’s no excuse for that behavior, and it is more reprehensible to fake abuse in order to gain favors.
If I may, I would like to share this video with everyone. It’s by Dr. Brené Brown and she talks about a few things that I think might help cope with bullying. The video is about 20 minutes long, but I assure you it’s worth watching. I guess it’s up to STGRB whether or not they allow it.
http://99u.com/videos/20052/brene-brown-stop-focusing-on-your-critics
sad part is that I called this as soon as I was alerted to it.
Sarah had pulled the exact same thing months ago but she did it to her street team, to the point she deleted it as her “good-bye”. The outcry of love and support yadda yadda she came back.
She got away with it before, so she thought she would do it again.
She republished her books mid March and then released her newest the 31st, sales weren’t all that so she pulled this publicity stunt.
It’s disgusting that you go this far to lie to people to sell your product.
Since it’s believed that Sarah has other “pen names” we don’t know who to trust.
but I have this sinking suspicion Sarah will suffer some sort of horrible outcome. which will be a lie. We don’t know what she looks like or her real name so she could be any one of you.
And I take offense that she throws around suicide like it’s nothing, as a person in which suicide has affected my family, how dare you.
Sarah, whatever your name is, I believe you’re reading this post. You’ve been busted. I do feel that you’re seriously fucked in the head and hope that every person who fell for your games will return your books on principle as you don’t deserve a penny, you phony.
I was on her street team. Come Jan there was no street team and she unfriended me on FB. I asked a few others who were on her ST if they knew what was going on. She deleted all of us from her FB. I just left it at that. Other ran to her and friended her again. This is just plain crazy. I live with someone who has PTSD and was suicidal at a point in his life.
We know who she is and her other pen names/socks. Contact Athena for that information.
Johnny, how come you can’t give us the information here?
Because we promised the people who are giving us this information that we’d share it in private. This author has a tendency to one-star other authors’ books using her online socks. If we published the information here, there might be a chance she could figure out who gave us the information, then she would go after their books. That’s why we are sharing it privately.
where can we get this information from? Who do we contact and how?
Contact Athena:
https://stopthegrbullies.com/contact-us/
I thought you might be interested in this comment thread. Some of the usual shit-disturbers show up, acting like they discovered Sarah all by themselves:
It’s very disheartening to read this. Shame on her for doing this. For taking a serious matter and using it to boost her sales.
Thank you for posting this! I first met “Sarah” almost a year ago during a release event on FB..she gave the same sob story, and out of sympathy I bought a couple of her books even though I hadn’t planned on reading them. At the time she wasnt’ talking about bullying. Just how her books never sell, people only want to buy crap, she’s so depressed its hard for her to promote, etc etc…they were .99 each so I was like, ok. sure.
She seemed quiet for a long time, at least to me. I’m sure she was still around. I write horror so don’t always follow the romance crowd unless its friends.
When I saw her blog going around, first thing I did was went to her amazon reviews and found the very few 1 or 2 star reviews she had were legitimate critical reviews. Nothing that i could tell constituted bullying. Unless she has such a thin skin, that “I don’t like your book” is considered bullying to her.
I asked a few other friends about it, but no one seemed to know exactly how she had been bullied or by whom. I’m glad you exposed her. I think it is horrible when authors get attacked the way some have. It pisses me off to see people trying to cash in on it.
Yeah she was suppose to be part of an author take over on my facebook page and then all of a sudden she disappeared. I had to search her out and found her Thanks for all the Fish message. It sounded a little too ‘poor me’ for my tastes and as a smart person. I read she had taken down all her books so i went to Amazon a couple days later and NOPE still there so I knew it was a cry for attention NOT help. I saw a few pages sharing her ‘poor me’ post and I just ignored it. Never talked about her, never mentioned the fact that she was suppose to be on my page that day and wasn’t. Didn’t share. Nothing. Couldn’t fool me.
I read her blog post the day she published it. At first I was tempted to reply to her post. As an aspiring author, I refuse to let bullies ever drive me away from my dream. As someone who deals with much worse than just depression, I refuse to give up on something that makes me happy – writing. I was ready to reply with as much. But, I stopped myself. I let it go even as I saw her story being shared around. I am glad that someone has stepped forward and exposing her. It makes it much harder for truly bullied authors to gain credibility with their claims. I have seen authors receive 1 star ratings on books that haven’t even finished with the editing process that didn’t complain publicly.
This is so sick and sad, it makes it harder on the authors who are actually being bullied. Those people who find it hard to believe in bullied authors will find it even harder to believe after stunts like this and the readers who supported her will be less likely to be supportive of an author who is being abused after being burned. She should be ashamed.
This is really sad. I fell for it too. What makes it sadder it, is that, there are people out there who are really bullied and when we hear this and believe it and it is just lies, we tend not to believe the next person. Do they realize what they LITTLE LIE did to the pain, and torment of real people who are being bullied? Do they even care???
“Do they even care???”
Nope. If they did, they never would’ve done this to begin with.
I read two of her books awhile back and while I cannot recall specifics I do recall thinking they weren’t very well written. I rated them poorly on goodreads but followed her blog. There is always room for improvement. To be honest I never read the blog until this past week when the controversy erupted. I felt bad. My heart strings were tugged upon. Here was someone trying desperately to have her voice heard & virtually being ignored. I ignored her. Daily her blog was delivered to my inbox and I never read it. I didn’t need proof of bullying. To me her posts were cries for help, regardless of bullying or not. I didn’t question the validity of her claims. I did recall not giving favourable ratings to her books. You could say I felt guilt and was suckered into buying her books on amazon but really I was sad for her. Buying her books was literally less than a latte at Starbucks. If she needed that money (false bullying or not) she could have it. If it made her smile or feel better too boost her sales then I could forgo my caffeine boost. I don’t care if her claims were valid or not there is a certain desperation someone must feel to cry wolf.
Well, I’m convinced.
Great job on the research, stgrb.
And Sarah, if you’re reading this, I’d like to thank you [sarcasm] for giving readers yet ANOTHER reason to steer clear of indie authors.
You are a greedy, self-serving, self-absorbed narcissistic bitch. 😉
Another thing, this bullshit is called “emotional exploitation”, meaning she’s exploiting her readers’ emotions by playing victim just so they’ll go buy her books and do her marketing for her. In other words she’s a manipulative little —-.
Just when I think I’ve seen it all in regards to shitty author behavior, it only gets worse.
Mark my words. More and more authors will be doing this exact thing in the coming months to get publicity and sales. 100% guaranteed. Meanwhile, those who really are bullied won’t be so easily believed, thanks to unconscionable faker bitches.
It’s shit like this that makes ME want to quit. It’s discouraging, depressing, and infuriating. I wish authors like this would crawl back under the rocks they came from. Sadly they won’t because they make too much money ripping off readers’ emotions and pocketbooks.
I have to say, I was one that “supported” Sarah. I’ve been bullied all my life – in *real* life. I suffer and struggle with depression every day. Some are better than others, I admit. Occasionally something happens during a day that can make me forget about it – IE: I write a *really* good line, someone smiles at me, someone holds open a door – and for a moment I can let light into the darkness.
Do I run around crying about it? Nope. I’ve been “out there” for almost a year now – Self-pubbed my first book in June 2013 – and I’ve never brought up the personal side of my life until yesterday when I posted to my blog as part of the A to Z April Challenge. And *I* posted from a personal perspective and never said anything about pulling my work. (I did mention there are times I wonder if I shouldn’t, on a “bad day”, but never said I was “going” too.) Cause I’m not. I do love writing. I do love sharing my work. And I do appreciate the fans and the readers that buy it, when they do…*laughs*
Am I on the NYT or USA lists? Nope. Do I hope to be? Sure, what Author doesn’t. Am I going to use a disease to get there? Hell no. The disease is *part* of me, not all of me…
Anyway, just my two cents worth. And thank you STGRB, for speaking out. Your honesty is much appreciated!
Here is a good lesson on how to NOT be suckered in by an author’s sob story. There’s a very good chance she’s playing on your emotions to get more sales and publicity. It’s sad that I even have to say that. Too bad some people are so inherently selfish and disingenuous, while others are too trusting.
I want to thank you for posting this story. I had not been aware that authors were pulling these kinds of charades to get attention (although I shouldn’t be surprised). As an author myself who has endured bullying and who has tried to help others who have been bullied – I commend you.
I,too, fell for her act. Not anymore, I am returning her books and hopefully never see her books again, TY.
Good for you! I”d be doing the same thing.
FYI, everyone, in case you’re wondering why we’re removing your last names and links to your websites, it’s because the GR/Amazon/BL trolls stalk our blog. So, we’re removing your identifying information for your protection.
I’m an indie author, and it makes me furious to see another author pull this sort of thing. AH and LH and all the other despicable me’s are bad enough, but this is disgusting.
If that’s what it takes to make money as an author, I don’t care if I never sell another book. I will never do this kind of thing. Authors like this teach me exactly what I don’t want to be!
As a self-pubbed author who has been struggling to find my audience for the past 7 months or so, this is beyond frustrating to read. Just yesterday, I reached out in private to a large book blog, requesting a review and asking for any advice on how to better connect with readers. I did admit to them that I’m stumped on networking ideas, but I would never never EVER put down other authors to make myself look better. I’m with “Disgusted” above me. Never will I resort to outright lies to sell my work. If my books can’t stand on their own merit, that’s my problem to sort out!
Keep hammering and thanks for having the stones to get out there and expose the assholes!
I had this weird feeling she was full of it when I also started to research what people were saying to her to make her want to quit. I kept saying no she didn’t make it up. There’s no way, but just like you I couldn’t find any evidence of her being bullied. But still I felt bad for her and actually prayed that she would find the strength to continue. I’m not mad that I actually bought her book because I wanted to support her. I’m mad because she made me actually worry about her and wanting to do something to change the way people leave negative reviews. I even cried for this author. She makes me sick and I hope more people find out what a liar she is.