Category: GR Bullies


Well, well.  It appears as though the bullies are growing tired of being called out for their behavior.  What is interesting, though, is how they describe their feelings on the issue.  We were just recently tipped off to this post written by Barks & Bites on BookLikes:

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In today’s post, we’re not going to talk about why their bullying-fatigue is a good thing.  We all know why it is.  What we are going to talk about is the keen insight into the bully mentality the article provides — the erroneous assumptions the bullies make and the myths that they create with their propaganda.  We’ll start by dissecting the text bit by bit.

 

“I think I have reached my limit. I am tired of the hypocritical thin skinned authors and their hysterics. I am tired of their ridiculous and uninformed kiss ass supporters. I am tired of reading shitty books. I am tired of it all and I don’t see any of this going away any time soon.”

Erroneous assumption #1:  All authors are hypocritical and thin-skinned who write shitty books and who fly into hysterics at the slightest criticism.

Our response:  Nothing could be further from the truth.

 

“New authors and ancient authors alike refuse to accept that their writing is a PRODUCT the moment they charge me for it. It’s not an effing baby.”

Erroneous assumption #2:  All authors view their books as babies and all the bully attacks on these authors are the result of these authors complaining about legitimate book reviews criticizing their babies.

Our response:  This assumption is one that the bullies continue to make and promote over and over  In fact, 99.9% of the attacks that we’ve seen have had nothing to do with reviews (i.e. legit critical reviews).  As one of our blog readers commented here:

All together now, and once more: THIS IS NOT ENTIRELY ABOUT THE REVIEWS. And you seem to be trying to make this all about self-published authors.

Anne Rice is not self-published. I’m sure many of the authors on the Horror Writers Assoc. Facebook page who support this petition are not-self published. But it’s easier to think of things in black-and-white, isn’t it?  i.e. “Self-published authors write shitty books that are unreadable, they can’t take criticism, therefore they are the ones having the tantrums and causing the problems.  The end.”

This type of thinking paints every self-published author with the same brush–which is patently unfair. And It’s so much more complex than that. You did touch on this issue being the fault of both sides, and I commend you for that.

I cringe inside when I see any author going off the rails in a tantrum about anything.  It’s unprofessional and gives us all a bad name. It never helps the situation.  It usually results in their blacklisting, which may or may not be appropriate. Maybe they aren’t mature enough to handle the criticism that comes with publishing and should retire until they grow a spine. I don’t know and won’t speak to that. I don’t think there’s anything that can be done about it.  I only know that when my children were small, ignoring the tantrums was the best course of action.

And yes, many self-published books are crap.  I downloaded two yesterday, read a page or two, and deleted them.  But here’s the new reality: You might as well settle in and get comfortable or stop reading altogether.  Self-publishing is not going away.

Just this past week, Kristy [redacted] was bullied off of her own Facebook page before the release of her third book, [redacted]. It wasn’t about a bad review. It appears to be a vendetta about something personal from her past. The book bloggers over there were outraged and passed around graphics and headers that said “I hate bullies. I support K. Bromberg” and somesuch. Ironically, the brouhaha may have gotten her so much attention, she hit the New York Times bestseller’s list (though maybe she would’ve hit it anyway). Go, Kristy!  You deserve it. I support you fully.

Elle [redacted] attempted to have a dialogue about bullying on her own Goodreads blog this month. Again, this wasn’t about a review.  She was swarmed, shouted down, and one-starred as a result. She made some beautiful points ( i believe she said she was a lawyer, and I could tell), but in the end, it didn’t matter. The thread is still there, though closed.  They twisted her words and drove her off HER OWN SPACE. You may or may not have agreed with what she said, but do you at least agree that she has a right to HER OWN OPINION and she has a right to talk about that opinion on her own blog without being bashed for it?  It was a fabulous opportunity for dialogue, but some of these people don’t want dialogue.  They want uniform consent. And they want to fight.

What’s really amusing is that it’s the same hardcore bully names every time.  Every single time.  There are maybe 20? 30? When I see their names next to a one-star rating, I automatically discount it, because I know it’s more than likely a revenge rating. They have zero credibility. They don’t appear to read much.  They wield the one star like a weapon because it’s the only power these pathetic little people have.

And eeally, fellow authors: It’s just a star. One little star. And they may say something mean, but you can always have a primal scream in your closet.  Not everything needs to come to the internetz.  If your book is good, you’ll bounce back.  I promise.

It’s true that the worst of the worst have been thrown off of Goodreads and are now marginalized on a forum in an obscure book catalogue website. But last summer I watched these a-holes go after authors with torches and pitchforks, howling for blood, and it wasn’t always about an author tantrum over a review. Sometimes the authors were  baited to respond.  The thrill of the hunt. I don’t know, maybe it makes them feel relevant or something.  And the delicious irony about all of this is that the bully ringleader is a self-published author.

Then there was poor Lauren [redacted], who simply asked “How can someone one-star a book that isn’t even released yet?” She was hounded off of Goodreads, then CHASED her to her Twitter page, where she had the most vile of things said to her.  To be fair, at that point, Lauren should’ve just shut up. I kept thinking “God Lauren, close your page and go away for a couple of days!” You can’t reason with this mob and you can’t talk to them. She tried to do both, and failed miserably, giving them ammunition to fire back in the process.  In the end, they made it entirely her fault, but I was there from the beginning and saw what happened.  It started with an innocent, perfectly reasonable question, not a review.

The bullies will deny that anyone ever physically threatened an author, but I saw a post for Veronica R.’s last book where the reviewer threatened to throat-punch her if they ever saw her. I don’t know- maybe that isn’t a threat of physical violence in their book. It is in mine. Veronica tried to soothe the animals, but was shouted down. All this over an ending they didn’t like. Same thing with Laurel H..

There are just some psychotic, nasty, ugly little people out there who hide behind the anonymity of the internet, but I don’t think requiring real names on Amazon is going to help very much.  The only thing that’s going to help is when some of these people start getting prosecuted for the things they do–both reviewers AND authors if appropriate– and I think we can see that starting to happen.  I have hope.

 

“And it might even be ugly as hell and not at all ready for public consumption. I’m not here to coddle and promote. I’m not here to worry about an authors debt, their sick family or their tender feelings.”

Erroneous assumption #3:  All authors expect reviewers to coddle them because their lives are so hard.

Our response:  Again, nothing could be further from the truth.

 

“We all have shit to deal with but most of us have to deal with careers that dole out criticism when we do what they perceive as a crappy job and we take it because that’s how the world works.”

Erroneous assumption #4:  Everyone in the world has a crappy job where they are verbally abused by their bosses and just have to take it because that’s life.

Our response:  If you have a job like this, QUIT!  This is not the way the world works and life is WAY too short to deal with crap like this.  Quit this job and find another one.

 

“I want to go back to the days when we could share our thoughts about books with each other any way we damn well pleased. But now that can only happen face to face. Thank the gods for my local reading group.”

Erroneous assumption #5:  The bullies only ever shared their thoughts about books and nothing else.

Our response:  This makes us laugh every time they say it.  How many times did they say this when GR announced their anti-bullying policy stating that the bullies could no longer talk about author behavior?  Also, we have shown more than enough evidence that the bullies were never interested in talking about books.  Their main agenda was to search out, hunt down, and destroy the people they labeled BBA.  It was (and still is for some) their crusade to perpetuate this BBA myth and root out all those who are evil in their eyes.

 

“I just wasted too much time reading the Amazon Authors Who Do Not Want Anonymous Reviews thread and I am still in disbelief over some of the things I read there. I then did something I’ve never been infuriated enough to do. I deleted three five star reviews for books by [redacted] who seems to forget that she’s written under an alias. One of those books, [redacted], only had three reviews which included mine.”

Our response:  This is EXACTLY what we are talking about.  B&B just got done whining about how this is all about book reviews and then punishes an author for signing a petition, which has nothing to do with the author whining about one of her reviews.

 

“This made me sad and angry.  I loved those effing books and recommended them to friends often but those days are done. I can no longer separate the person from the work. I can no longer be a part of this petty bullshit.”

Erroneous assumption #5 & #6:  The bullies at one point could separate the author from the book.  The bullies at one point were never part of petty bullshit.

Our response:  This whole thing started on Amazon and Goodreads BECAUSE the bullies could never separate the author from the book.  They are the ones who started the petty bullshit to begin with.

 

“I can no longer support an author who thinks so little of her readers that she’d expose them to potential danger by forcing them to review using their real name in some misguided attempt to further her career and to keep herself safe from “threats and bullies”.  If you can make  sense out of this line of reasoning please let me know because I can’t seem to wrap my head around it.”

Erroneous assumption #7 & #8:  Reviewers will be in danger if they have to review under their real names.  Removing anonymity won’t keep authors from being bullied.

Our response to #7:  We’ve published posts covering attacks on reviewers, but they were very mild.  We have never seen an attack on a reviewer to the degree and severity of attacks we’ve seen on authors.  Not even close.  One of our blog readers said it better than we ever could:

“Another salient point in this blog was the assumption that authors who want the reviewer to reveal her true name want her to be the victim of harm. The assumption being apparently that authors harm people who review under their real names which of course is totally false — a myth perpetrated by the bullies, that authors are “bad” people who must be policed by anonymous gangs. There were ridiculous assumptions like that throughout the blog and the responses. These people have created the myth of “the badly behaved author” to justify their unwholesome hobby and their absurd and relentless bullying. No one signing the petition has shown disrespect for anonymous reviewers. We all know that thousands of authentic reviews have been posted on Amazon by anonymous customers. This is about the ABUSE of anonymity in recent years by obsessive hobbyists with a low opinion of authors and a need to abuse authors, to bully them.”

Our response to #8:  Then why are the bullies so against it?  There’s a reason they don’t want to review under their real names and it’s not because they fear being in danger.  What they fear is being held accountable for their actions.

 

“They may think they’re winning but if most of us stop sharing our thoughts, our 1 star as well as our five star reviews, who the hell will be left to review besides their family and their sycophants? And none of us are dumb enough to fall for that shit more than once.  Who will get the word out about their books?”

Erroneous assumption #9:  The bullies are the only reviewers in the world and if they stop reviewing, there won’t be anyone else who will be able get the word out about authors’ books.

Our response:  I don’t think we even need to respond to this.  It would be an insult to our readers’ intelligence.

 

“Honestly at this point I don’t even care.”

Our response:  Right.  She cares so little about it that she wrote an entire blog rant on the subject.

 

“I feel really lame for wasting so much energy on this reviewing hobby and might just start focusing my energy on something else. Another hobby that won’t shit all over me.”

Erroneous assumption #10:  The bullies aren’t the problem.  The problem is all these whiny authors who can’t just sit there and take all of the bullies’ personal attacks and abuse.  If the bullies start another hobby, then the problem will go away and they won’t ever experience anything like this again.

Our response:  Again, no need to comment.

 

“I realize some authors are cool, [redacted] you get it and there are many others, but it seems as if every time I open my email another author is spewing their crazy ass shit all over the internet. Right now It all seems like such a complete waste of my time.”

Our response:  Then it’s probably a good idea to pack up and move on.  Once you start experiencing the backlash from your actions in other areas of your life, you will begin to understand that the problem is not the world.  The problem is you.

 

Now, if you have the time (and the patience) to read some of the comments on B&B’s post, the bullies seem to be complaining about the “poison in the water” these days, but what they don’t understand is that they are the ones who put the poison there in the first place.  There are, however, a couple of them like Grim who’ve realized that by letting go of the whole BBA crusade, their lives are much happier (a fact we’ve been trying to get across to them ever since we started our blog):

Grim

But the rest are growing more unhappy and appear to be blaming Anne Rice and Todd’s petition:

AnneRiceBlownUp

For the record, this didn’t start with Anne or Todd.  This whole online bully vs. the world conflict was a time bomb waiting to go off.  In the past few years, much to the dismay of the bullies, it has gotten a lot of media attention and if the bullies keep it up, it will continue to get more.  In fact, just this week, we checked Todd’s petition and it’s still going strong.  It is now up to 7,522 signatures:

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This alone makes a very strong statement about how deep-rooted this problem is.  Lets hope Amazon listens and puts an end to it.

It appears that some of the bullies think that Goodreads is now blocking them:

NaughtyList

We can’t verify whether or not this is true, but if it is, it wouldn’t surprise us.  It’s about time they did.

Oh Linda

Oh Linda, Linda, Linda.

What am I gonna do with you?

Let me give readers a short summary of what I’m talking about:

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This is your own account, taken from your blog. And this has you feeling angry, discouraged, demoralized and helpless. You’re also having trouble sleeping.

My response to you is:

Why all this drama llama, when so many worse things haven’t bothered you at all?

Take the recent events surrounding young author Gavin Who?

I noticed you kept your mouth firmly shut during that debacle.

Let me summarize said debacle for anyone who’s missed it: a young indie author, Gavin H., introduced himself to the gang of marauding reviewers that run wild on Goodreads and Booklikes (and sometimes, still, Amazon) by attacking another author deemed a BBA. For this he was praised and feted, until a bad fairy pointed out that Gavin had a ton (okay, twenty-two) obvious sock-puppet reviews, and another ton of very suspicious Twitter followers. Gavin went through the charade of contacting Goodreads to have them ‘look into’ the ‘fishy’ reviews, which he claimed had nothing to do with him. And Goodreads removed them. He also wrote a huge post explaining that the reason he had so many Twitter followers was because he does a lot of charity work.

So what did all the scourges of the BBAs – you know, Spare Ammo (Mahala), Grimlock, TinaNicole, Nemo Moonlight Library, Shelby, Barbara Lindt Ninja, etc. – do? They ACTUALLY PRETENDED TO BELIEVE HIM when he said he had nothing to do with those sock-puppet reviews! They COMMENDED him for doing the right thing in having Goodreads ‘look into’ them! They believed all that twaddle about his charity work!

To be fair (I don’t know if that’s really the word, but I’ll leave it for now) you were one of the few who stayed silent during all this. I have to congratulate you for not dignifying this appalling farce by joining the chorus of Gavin believers.

But if you can stay silent during the Gavin H. debacle, then you have to allow others the same privilege. You can’t demand that anyone else ‘speak out’ when something you consider wrong is being done. That means that nobody, not The Girl Who Loves Books, not any other blogger, should feel obligated to out the author you’ve been talking about in your last three posts.

For anyone who wants to read all about it, here are the posts I’m referring to:

BookLikes post

Whoever you are, I think you’re a chickenshit coward

Sucker Punched

You ask:

Has the credibility of every single review everywhere now been called into question?

Oh, please.

The credibility of reviews was called into question a long time ago, when you and your friends started 1 starring and fake reviewing authors who you’d taken a weird dislike to for whatever bullshit reason, or just because you were in a shitty mood that day. Or maybe because they wrote in the same genre as you, but were more successful, so you decided to one star them, just because. The credibility was totally destroyed when you and your friends defended the right of people to rate and review books you hadn’t read. In fact, credibility probably went out the window when Stacia Kane wrote her memorable blog post which you and your friends love to defend:

Readers have the right to say whatever the fuck they want about a book. Period. They have that right. If they hate the book because the MC says the word “delicious” and the reader believes it’s the Devil’s word and only evil people use it, they can shout from the rooftops “This book is shit and don’t read it” if they want. If they want to write a review entirely about how much they hate the cover, they can if they want. If they want to make their review all about how their dog Foot Foot especially loved to pee on that particular book, they can.

So don’t get your knickers in a twist over the credibility of reviews. They never had any, but it’s not for the reasons you think.

You say:

No author can call out a reviewer and say, “You’re dishonest; you protected a scammer,” without risking retaliation. And yet every author out there has been harmed by this, the good as well as the bad.

Oh, please. Nobody with any sense was harmed by the little incident in question. But you, on the other hand, are harmed when you let the hypocrites who defended Gavin make their hypocritical comments about honesty all over your blog post. Or you would be harmed, if you still had a shred of credibility.

I guess this is as good a place as any to call out these commenters, such as Spare Ammo, Grimlock, Barbara Lindt Ninja, and others, and say to them:

You’re dishonest. You protected a scammer.

What else is there to say?

We are very sad to report that Charlotte Dawson, a victim of online Twitter bullying has passed away.  In , it says:

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In another article in the Sydney Morning Herald, Twitter came under fire for not taking necessary measures to eradicate bullying on their site:

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They are right to criticize Twitter for not signing up to the federal governement’s complaint handling scheme.  We feel that this requirement should extend not only to Twitter, but also to Goodreads, Amazon, and any other online social networking site where trolls and bullies roam free.  We feel that our government needs to start taking more action against the people who bully others online for the sheer pleasure of it (see New Study on Trolling).

And if you don’t believe that there is bullying of this magnitude on Goodreads and Amazon, just take a look at our posts on the Amazon Fora Trolls or our post covering the attack on Lauren P.  Or better yet, just read the screenshots below that we took from GR.

In this one, a reviewer tells Jamie McGuire to “kindly kill” herself:

AnushkaShelf1

And in this one, a GR member says that the “only good author is a dead author”:

GoodAuthorDeadAuthor1

Online bullying is real and it affects thousands of people everyday, whether they’re authors, celebrities, or kids in school.  It needs to be stopped.

DramaLlama

Despite the recent banning of Angela, Miranda, and All Hail Grimlock, the drama llamas are out to play, folks!  It’s been almost four whole months and they are STILL whining about the “horrible injustice” done to them by the GR staff.

(For more information on the policy change at Goodreads, please read GR Now Deleting Author-Bashing Reviews).

If you take a look at some of the GR feedback threads, the llamas are still going at it.  In , Emily tries in vain to reason with them.  Do you think she was successful?

Right.

The thread starts of with… guess who?  Our favorite llama of them all!  Ridley:

Ridley

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If you read the thread, there are several more whiny comments, but for the sake of keeping our post short, we’ll let you go to and read them yourself.

A little farther down Emily steps in and makes a valiant attempt at communication.

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And then:

Linda2

Thalia

LexxieMissJessie

Lexxie2

MoonlightReader

Stefani

Sandra

Why, yes, Sandra.  It does only apply to abusive content.  That’s why it’s called an anti-bullying policy.

And they wonder why they get ignored by the staff:

Linda3

Hmm…

Then Batgrl says:

Batgrl

Politely-and-earnestly-worded?  Is she serious?

If you want to see how polite and earnest they were, just check out the original announcement thread.  You won’t be surprised that GR stopped communicating with them.  But you know, it does our hearts good to see the Goodreads staff having to deal with these llamas.  Now at least the they are getting a taste of what others on the site have had to deal with for years while they sat back and did nothing, or worse, actually supported them.

And speaking of that, here’s that will warm your heart.  It’s between Reyna’s Mom, Emily, and KarlynP on page 2:

ReynasMom

Emily

KarlynP

Shelley

What’s telling here is the fact that the llamas still don’t get it.  Even after Emily explains to them that deletions will only occur if activity/content violates their rules, they are still wallowing in their own self-pity and whining about the “unfair treatment”.  You see, because the llamas suffer from acute martyr syndrome, they believe they are being singled out and discriminated against.  They are still not seeing that it’s THEIR BEHAVIOR that’s the problem.  They also fail to see that they are the only ones who are still complaining on the GR feedback threads ever since the anti-bullying policy went into effect.  If they wonder why they are being noticed more than others by the staff, all they have to do is put two and two together.  But apparently, they seem to be incapable of careful, reasoned thought.  Here’s what’s happening.  Anti-troll GR members are seeing their names in the threads, then they are clicking on their profiles and examining their reviews and shelves, and finally, they are flagging them.  And then?

Bye-bye content.

Not too hard for a person with an average intelligence to figure out, but then again, we are talking about the GR bullies here.  There’s really not a lot going on between their ears.

Anyhow, that’s it for today.  If we get any more news from our Twitter and Facebook followers or from our blog readers, we’ll post it as soon as we can.

Peace out and stay safe.

Merry Christmas, all!

It appears as though the environment on Goodreads is getting safer.  We have just heard that Miranda and All Hail Grimlock (aka Coaxial Creature, real name Shoshana B.) were kicked off of Goodreads just recently.  If you check their profiles below, you will see they have been removed:

Congratulations to all those who reported these two for their constant harassment and abuse of other people on the site!  Good work!

We’ve been meaning to write about Jenn Fall’s article on the difference bullying and critiquing.  In general, her assessement is very fair and well-balanced and we agree with her view on what constitutes bullying and what is generally an acceptable way of reviewing books.  Jenn has stated very eloquently in her post what we’ve been saying for a long time.  There was, however, a section of her post that we wanted to address:

Jenn1

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We understand Jenn’s request and want to thank her for the recommendation.  We will be placing a paragraph on our BBG page that explains the criteria that must be met in order for a person to earn a spot on our lists.  And there is a criteria.  We don’t just randomly place people there and we didn’t create it for the same reason the bullies create the BBA lists or why HuffPo created their 14 Badly Behaving Authors list.  As we said in that post:

This is exactly the kind of behavior we would expect from the GR bullies and Amazon trolls.  And when we show our readers (with screenshots and links) the bullies’ despicable behavior toward others, particularly authors, and when we put them on lists, we’re not doing it for the same reason in mind as the author of this HuffPo article.  We’re not saying, “Look everyone!  Look at what these people are doing!  Don’t you hate them?  Don’t you want to go out and attack them?”

When we do what we do, we are WARNING our readers about the danger of bullies out there in the cyber world.  When we show our readers what the bullies do, it’s to show them what could happen to them if they cross the wrong people.  And we list the bullies on our site so our readers will know who to STAY AWAY FROM so they can avoid the same pitfalls that other people have fallen into when they were attacked.  We ALWAYS tell our readers to STAY AWAY and to NOT ENGAGE.

Jenn, if you are reading this, we want to let you know that we did not create our lists (BBG and Amazon Fora Trolls) to chastise the bullies or try to get them to change their behavior (although it would be nice) because we already know that that would be a complete waste of time.  They would never listen.  They believe it is their right to be as nasty as they want to others.  They believe that “freedom of speech” gives them the right to stalk, libel, threaten, etc.  Basically, to behave anyway they want.  We think you can clearly see that from some of the commenters on your blog post who tried to pressure you into changing it and who are ALL listed on our site… and also whom you had to scold into behaving properly (no surprise there):

JennScolds

You see, there is a reason that these people are listed on our site.  Every single one of them has earned a spot on our blog either by participating in an organized attack on an author (or another reader/reviewer), by leaving a bully review, and/or by leaving derogatory shelving against the author on an author’s book.  If the people who are leaving these comments on your post tell you they’re innocent, they are either lying or they don’t remember.  It is very easy for them to join a mob attack and then return to their lives, forgetting about what they did.  But guess who doesn’t forget?  The victim doesn’t forget.  And guess what doesn’t lie?  Screenshots don’t lie.

Just to give you an example of the kind of people who commented on your post, John Green and his friends stalked an author’s personal identifiable information (an author they blamed for our site) and published it (her address and phone number) on their blog.  Shortly after that, this author received a nasty phone call and was threatened in her own home.  She felt so threatened, she had to go to the police and ask her neighbors to watch her house at night.  Not only that, these people spread rumors around about her that aren’t true.  They libeled her to deliberately damage her reputation and ruin her career, just as they did to Melissa Douthit, MT Dismuke, and countless other authors.  They think it is their right to do this.

In fact, some of them take it to the next level and wear it as a badge of honor, proud of being internet terrorists, like the Holy Terror (a GR LIBRARIAN) who jokes here with her friend, Lyn the Heartless, about being too sick to terrorize authors on GR and ruin their careers:

HTRuinCareers

Here is another bully who is singing a song about cyber-stalking people as if it’s all a big game:

AnnaCyberStalking

The bullies have one purpose when they are on the attack — destroy an author’s career.  For example, you will see them , celebrating an author’s setback.  We’ve seen them celebrate when authors have had enough of the bullying on GR and have left.  We’ve also seen them in on how to bash an author in their reviews without getting their reviews hidden.

These people do these things and cop these attitudes because they think it makes them “badass” or in other words, they think it makes them look cool.  But it doesn’t make them look cool.  It just makes them look like foolish, little children.  Foolish children who stomp their feet and whine when they can’t get their way, just as Jane Litte does here to Nathan Bransford.  Even their reviews (the ones that aren’t bully reviews) are still mean-spirited and offensive as Nathan points out.  Although technically not considered bully reviews because they focus on the book, they are still poisoning the relationship between authors and reviewers on GR, contributing to the bad blood and bitter hatred between them.

And contrary to what many of bullies say, GR is NOT just for readers, as Otis says :

“We’re in the media business today.  We’re in the business of helping authors and publishers market their books to readers.  And that’s where we make our money.  We sell book launch packages to authors and publishers and really help accelerate, build that early buzz that a book needs to succeed when it launches and accelerate that growth through ads on the site.”

So, in conclusion, we hope this gives you a good idea of why we create our lists and why we update them and keep them published all the time.  Our lists are NOT for the sake of the bullies.  Our lists are for the sake of those who are not bullies.  They are there to warn and protect them.  Period.

Hidden Reviews Club

One of our blog readers sent us a link to  that was created in reaction to GR’s policy of hiding author-bashing reviews, a policy they began enforcing after our site brought national attention to the problem of author abuse on Goodreads:

HRC

We thought our readers would be interested to see  where a nice little nest of bullies are discussing how to get around the review filter so they can continue to bash authors without getting their reviews hidden:

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ChitChat2

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Only 10, Holy Terror?  You’re losing your touch.

*sigh*

You see why we call them bullies?

Just recently, a blog reader sent us a link to an article in the Huffington Post calling out 14 authors as Badly Behaving Authors:

Article1

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What bothers us about this article is that the Huffington Post, which is supposed to be a highly respected website, has lowered itself to the level of the Goodreads bullies, putting these 14 authors (regardless of what they have done) out there for everyone to see, calling out their behavior as if they are saying: “Look everyone!  Look at these badly behaving authors!  Don’t you just hate them?  Doesn’t this just make you want to stalk and attack them?”  If you don’t believe us on that, take a look at some of the comments below the article.  It’s disgusting!

It is also particularly disturbing when you consider today’s atmosphere where author hatred is growing at an alarming rate, especially with the existence of Goodreads and the bully culture Otis and his team have cultivated on their site.

We here at STGRB have been blogging for a year to stop this kind of — putting authors out there as targets so they can be stalked, harassed, and threatened.  We know of several authors who’ve had death threats laid against them and who’ve even had people call them on the phone and threaten them in their own home.  And here is HuffPo encouraging this behavior.

What’s even worse is some of their reasons for labeling an author as badly behaving are so asinine, we don’t even know how to express our disdain for it.  For example, this is what the article says about JK Rowling:

Look, we hate to add her to this list. Her books are awesome. But we have to separate the person from his/her work, and after looking at the evidence, it’s all there. In 2007, she and Warner Bros. filed a lawsuit against a small publishing house that was publishing a school librarian’s encyclopedia of Harry Potter lexicon. But what makes her a jerk mostly is the way she reacted to the lawsuit. She said that she had stopped work on a new novel because the suit “decimated [her] creative work.” (um, then maybe don’t file a lawsuit? Lots of people who aren’t the original authors write guides to famous fantasy worlds. It’s not unheard of.) “I really don’t want to cry,” she stated during the trial. She called the encyclopedia “an act of betrayal.” Wow, this sounds like a soap opera. Then, this year, when her pseudonym was exposed, she put out a statement about how betrayed she felt by the law firm who released the information, and she made a super big deal about it. Yeah, we realize the situation wasn’t what she wanted. But guess what? She made a ton of money off it. When exposure means you’re suddenly on the bestseller list and making you millions more dollars, it looks really ungrateful and horrible to complain about it (see Jonathan Franzen and Oprah).

First of all, HuffPo has no right to call JK Rowling a badly behaving author for trying to protect her copyright.  Secondly, she had every right to say she felt betrayed by the law firm that exposed her pseudonym.  They are professionals that she hired.  She was holding them in confidence.  It was THEIR JOB to keep that information from leaking.  To call her a BBA for saying they betrayed her is ludicrous!

But this isn’t really the part that bothered us the most.  If you take a look at this article in The Guardian called, When Readers Become Stalkers, that tells the horror stories of authors who’ve been stalked and attacked IN PERSON, it says:

Other obsessives have confined themselves to emails or letters. Paul Lomax, who was convinced he and JK Rowling had met on a train before she wrote the Harry Potter books and had a special connection, was banned from contacting her in 2007 after bombarding her with letters, culminating in a death threat comparing her to the murdered playwright Joe Orton.

In the same year, Patricia Cornwell went to court to seek an injunction against her “cyberstalker”, a writer called Leslie Sachs who had accused her online, inter alia, of plagiarism and antisemitism. More recently, James Lasdun devoted a book, Give Me Everything You Have, to being cyberstalked by someone he’d taught.

Writers have been the objects of stalking, one-off harassment or warped erotic pursuit since the beginnings of literary fame – Byron was stalked by his ex-lover Lady Caroline Lamb, Edward Bulwer-Lytton by his estranged wife Rosina – but these ordeals seem to be becoming more common, partly, perhaps, because authors are on show more often (continuously, if on Twitter), and partly because the internet gives disturbed readers another, potentially unmediated way of connecting with them.

You see that?

“The internet gives disturbed readers another, potentially unmediated way of connecting with them.”

And here is the Huffington Post listing authors like JK Rowling as Badly Behaving, stirring up readers’ anger at her, when she has ALREADY BEEN STALKED AND THREATENED!

This is exactly the kind of behavior we would expect from the GR bullies and Amazon trolls.  And when we show our readers (with screenshots and links) the bullies’ despicable behavior toward others, particularly authors, and when we put them on lists, we’re not doing it for the same reason in mind as the author of this HuffPo article.  We’re not saying, “Look everyone!  Look at what these people are doing!  Don’t you hate them?  Don’t you want to go out and attack them?”

When we do what we do, we are WARNING our readers about the danger of bullies out there in the cyber world.  When we show our readers what the bullies do, it’s to show them what could happen to them if they cross the wrong people.  And we list the bullies on our site so our readers will know who to STAY AWAY FROM so they can avoid the same pitfalls that other people have fallen into when they were attacked.  We ALWAYS tell our readers to STAY AWAY and to NOT ENGAGE.

But this article in HuffPo is not only mean-spirited, it is no better than the they don’t like as targets and start hate campaigns against them, stalking, libeling, threatening, etc.

Poorly done, HuffPo.  Very poorly done!

Socks In Action

Did you ever wonder how Generous Jen and My Avatar Is A Horse sock-puppets were deleted?  Below is a story we received recently from a woman who was a victim of the bullies, ETA:soon and Linda Hilton.

Now, remember, Linda Hilton is the bully author who frequents Dear Author and who parades around as Tansy Gold on Amazon, writing 5-star reviews of her own books.  At the same time, she attacks other authors’ books and leads witch hunts against them (old posts on her to come).  One of her victims was Jerry Hines and below are two more who will remain anonymous for their protection.  Linda HIlton is one of the nastiest bullies on our list, so beware.  Watch out for this one.

Anyhoo… moving onto the message we received, Linda Hilton and ETA were the ones behind the socks on GR that were deleted:

Msg1

Msg2

Msg3

Msg4

Msg5

Interesting story, isn’t it?  But we all knew the bullies were the ones creating socks in the first place, which is why they are so quick to accuse others of doing it.

If you ever see a new bully on block who you think is a sock, report it immediately to GR or Amazon.  Then sit back and watch it disappear into the wind.

Johnny out.

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