Anne Rice talks about her life, her writing, and Prince Lestat in an interview with Q on CBC. If you scroll to the 12:50 position of the interview, you will hear her thoughts on the Amazon bullies.
Well said, Anne!
Note: for all the bullies reading this and watching the video, pay close attention to where she says she ISN’T against honest reviewing. But of course we all know you will willfully ignore this and continue to tell people that she is against negative reviews, which is a complete lie.
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It’s amazing how she has taken this on with such courage. I admired her before, but there are no words for how I feel now.
Anne Rice is such an amazing woman. Not only is she beautiful on the inside, but she is beautiful on the outside too. Ms Rice is an absolutely stunning looking woman, and a fantastic author too. What a lady! <3
This is a wonderful interview. It's so great to see Ms Rice supporting young authors. I'm hoping the publicity encourages Amazon to wake up, and ban all the nasty cyber-bullies.
Since Amazon took over Goodreads, they have done a good job of banning many of the nastiest trolls. Now they need to ban the same gang of trolls from Amazon forums, and review spaces too.
Ms Rice is right, Amazon is a great place. But the trolls are trying to ruin the reviewing system, with all their revenge reviews, and then getting their troll friends to "up" vote those same nasty revenge reviews. Hopefully Amazon will clean house soon. I see big changes happening in the not to distant future.
I wasn’t even aware it was a small group of people.
I haven’t published precisely because of this gaming the system problem.
Side note: Prediction correct, just by saying I don’t consider these reviews reviews on some writing boards, they cabal comes after me like wild hyenas.
Good on Ann for getting this information out.
I look forward to buying your book Ann, I might also lend it out to some friends that are thinking of publishing.
Thanks so much for posting this, and I appreciate the kind comments. —- I think it’s very important, when we report bully conduct on Amazon, to stress to the management that we are doing this as customers and on behalf of other customers. Amazon is the greatest online bookstore in the world, and it has always put the customer first. Amazon states clearly that they do not appreciate those who seek to manipulate and mislead customers. And that is precisely what bullies do. —- Amazon invites their customers to report violations of their guidelines. —– If we work together, honestly and diplomatically, reporting the abuses on Amazon, I think we can accomplish something good with the help and blessing of the management. STGRB does an outstanding job on our behalf in this regard, in tracking and exposing bully conduct. But we must do our part. We must report. —- The way I see it, the book world is a bright and beautiful place, filled with people who love to read, and people who love to write, and people who love to browse and search for new and exciting books on sites like Amazon. The book world does not deserve this dark destructive bully element. Customers don’t deserve it. I’m optimistic. I think much progress has been made since STGRB began their work on researching and calling out bullies. But there is much more that needs to be done. —- Again, Amazon is about the customer, and we as customers can help Amazon to continue to be the greatest online bookstore in the world.
I love this site and everything you do. I cannot say anything more, under fear that something important I am working on could be threatened by those bullies out there. But as a huge Anne Rice fan, I am deeply grateful, from the bottom of my heart, for what you do in the name of standing against bullies.
She is one classy lady! I love how she articulates that this isn’t about negative reviews, it is about gaming the system and mobbing for the soul purpose of abusing someone.
Well said, Anne Rice!
It’s always great seeing a big name do the right thing. I’ve actually never really understood the purpose of book review sites anyway. It just seems like a really bad set up for meanness.
This one board I won’t seriously suggested that reviews don’t have to be in literary journals or payed columns. As if that’s what I were saying when I say I don’t consider Amazon or Goodreads reviews to really be reviews in the strict sense. (You’ll notice those bullies don’t have negative reviews anywhere near in sight. I wonder why.)
Evidently lol cat memes count as reviews to these people.
Oh, and there have been editors I’ve outright boycotted because of their negative contribution to the bully culture on Amazon (like pirating work, whose young actors weren’t responsible for this one authors petty politics. I don’t care how the author tries to keep me from being gay, preventing this child actors from getting revenue is just scummy). She even libeled herself on Twitter.
All this to say, I fear for the writing world future.
‘Oh, the depths these review bullies will go.
In a whirlwind, they toss the overboard,
Into the shore of the snow.
Beyond the sea, beyond the sea.
Also lol to Rich Carufel. Does he not realize the irony of cow towing with the bullies, and labelling STGRB stalkers? And he didn’t even address Ann’s points.
You have to keep in mind, Rick’s not dealing with a full deck. Most people just ignore him.
Better watch out. You’re going to be named in the lawsuit.
I thought it wasn’t the nineties anymore.:D
Ms. Rice has a lot of class in addition to being an excellent writer. What a great interview! She has the confidence and courage to stand up for her beliefs. Very admirable! Great lady!
Anne is a true advocate of the indie author. She’s always been so. Great post, great site here, and very salient video. It will do all of us good to have a review system that is honest. Negative reviews are not a bane to authors – they can be very useful. But predatory reviewing and gaming the system stands apart as a cowardly pursuit that has no place in the book experience.
There is a reason authors in the 19th century published anonymously. Now I’m left wondering if that’s even possible anymore with recent reviews revealing private information.
Like it used to be a book could be published anonymously in the nineteenth century, people could enjoy the book on it’s own merits. That was why this was done. Who cared whether they might–might–disagree with the reader.
Can we seriously imagine a world where every author that exists agreed with every reader that exists? That has that weird cookie cutter 1950s housing feeling. And also technically impossible especially now that literacy is common place now.
Now obviously an argument could be made more of their philosophy seeps through in fantasy and science fiction (what I usually see reviews), but the evidence for this is anecdotal at best.
My two cents.
Actually maybe the bullies have come up with the most terrifying plot for a dystopian novel. I’d be interested in reading it!