Before we show you what happened over the weekend, we want to let our readers know that the message we want to convey with this story is:
DO NOT BLOG ON GOODREADS!
If you’re a Goodreads author, DO NOT create a blog on Goodreads or create a blog feed from your own personal website into your Goodreads author profile.
Why?
Keep reading.
Just recently, another Goodreads author became disgusted with some of the hateful reviews that litter the website so thoroughly. In fact, she became so disgusted, she left her thoughts on some of them, thinking she had every right to speak her mind.
Sigh.
If only she had come to us first.
So… what happened?
Can you guess?
Yes, of course, she was attacked and then her books were attacked with derogatory shelving and carpet bombs:
We’ve also discovered the trolls’ new way of getting around GR’s new anti-bullying policy that forbids author bashing: the dreaded “see-private-notes” shelf:
So… what did this author do?
She decided to write a Goodreads blog post about her experience:
And of course, as you all would expect, the trolls swarmed in on this, too, puffed up with their condescending, sanctimonious hypocrisy, preaching, “Do as we say, not as we do.”
Yes, please, by all means, if any of you use Khanh’s name, please don’t get it confused with Khan Noonien Singh, the iconic Star Trek character played so brilliantly by Ricardo Montalban and Benedict Cumberbatch. Getting her name confused like this is not only an insult to the character, but also to the very fine actors who portray him.
To add insult to injury, not only did the bullies attack her here, too, they reported the post and got it removed. Now if you , you get this:
Now, do you see why we say very loudly and clearly, DO NOT BLOG ON GOODREADS?
This is why.
On STGRB we don’t consider mean-spirited reviews to technically be bully reviews (although we’ve seen some that skirt the edge rather closely). Our definition of a bully review is one that personally attacks the author and/or is created specifically as a revenge review to hurt the author’s sales. BUT! We do believe that authors have the right to state their opinions and critique reviews. We believe that anything that is published is open for public critique, be it a book, an article, a blog post, a review, etc. We don’t believe that anyone should be silenced, attacked, or harassed for stating their opinion and we’ve seen several other authors who were attacked for doing just this. Nathan Bransford for one, who was attacked on his OWN BLOG (and then later attacked on Twitter by Jane Litte) for saying much the same thing that this author did, only he was criticizing reviews left by Stephanie Sinclair and her friends, not Khanh.
Oh, btw, if trolls come to your blog or FB page or other social media to harass you, don’t engage them. Just record, report, delete, and block. It’s the best way to deal with them.
Anyhow, this is why we recommend that authors steer clear of blogging on Goodreads. You are not allowed to speak your mind there and if you do, you will be subject to this kind of harassment as well as the fake one-star ratings, derogatory shelving, and harassment on your other social media. You will also have your posts removed by GR staff and in cases of repeat “offense” (“offense” meaning the crime of speaking your mind), they will ban you from the website. On GR, authors are still not allowed to have a voice about these things. We think GR has come a long way in the fight against bullying and we’ve agreed with several of their recent policies, but this most definitely isn’t one of them. Goodreads is still silencing authors and that needs to change.
