Well, it appears as though Jane Litte of Dear Author has agreed to settle the case with Ellora’s Cave. In a recent post, she has come clean on the falsities that she published on September 14 (not 16), 2014. She says:
We’re glad to see her finally doing the right thing and hope that this will be a good lesson learned for her and others who relish in libeling others and/or smearing their reputations online for fun or personal gain.
We are happy to introduce a new website that has joined the fight against cyber-bullying and is lobbying to get anti-bullying legislation passed through Congress:
Charta Res Novae: Demand Change. Enact Laws. End Cyber-Abuse.
If you are against cyber-bullying, please visit their site and show support!
You all remember our story covering Randi Harper’s bully review and her subsequent fight against Amazon for removing it, right? Well, just recently, we received this email telling us about O’Reilly Media giving Randi the stage to talk about her “campaign against abuse and harassment.” Yes, we’re trying not to laugh, too. We’re posting this to get the word out so that O’Reilly Media might come to understand just who they are supporting.
Dear blog reader, we posted the tweets you requested. Hopefully O’Reilly Media will come to their senses.
When it comes to a story like Fifty Shades of Grey, it’s not unexpected that there will be a tremendous dividing line in terms of those who enjoy it and those who don’t. Regardless of how one may feel about the tale, the author, EL James, is a woman deserving of the same respect as any other person.
Recently, EL James hosted a twitter chat, #AskELJames, and guess who was leading the wolf pack that attacked her?
That’s right, folks! None other than Jenny Trout, the notorious bully who sabotaged an author’s book by telling her friends and fans to pirate it and get it taken down from online bookstores because she claimed it was racist and violent toward women of color, only to realize later on that the author was a woman of color herself.
Yeah, remember that? Well, now she and the known misogynist tabloid website The Mary Sue, have begun a harassment campaign on twitter to attack James.
Navigating to the Tweets in question reveals mostly personal attacks, body shaming, referring to the author as a “cunt,” etc.
Regardless of how you may feel about the books, the author is still a human being, and everyone has the option not to read them. Ultimately, if one fact should be noted above all others, it’s this: E.L. James is one of the few women to strike it rich off her writing and build her own empire in a male-dominated economy, and she is being singled out for ridicule. It’s appalling that whenever a woman rises up in this world, and people like Jenny Trout or the Mary Sue do their best to take them back down.
By promoting this harassment against her, the Mary Sue and Jenny Trout are explicitly endorsing the degradation of her as both a human being and a woman.
***************************************************************************
Edit: We just received from a blog reader. Apparently, there are many people out there in cyberspace who agree with us:
Well said, David!
The link to the article he is referring to is here.
This saddens us more than any other news we get on our site. When we see bullying online to this degree, it reminds us that bullying cannot be ignored. This mentality of “ignore the bully and he will go away.” Sorry, it just doesn’t work.
It appears as though Jenny Trout has made a good decision. She’s decided to stop bashing Anna Todd. In her latest post, she writes:
And of course, she wants everyone to know that we had *nothing* to do with her decision:
Whether or not this is true, whether or not we had anything to do with it, or anyone else did, or the fact that Jenny just joined Wattpad last April and doesn’t want Anna’s fans coming down hard on her, we don’t really care. In fact, Jenny can tell us to f*** off all she wants and call us all kinds of names if it makes her feel better, it doesn’t matter. What matters is the fact that Jenny made the right choice. She realized that Anna is a human being with feelings who also happens to be one of the sweetest people on the planet and doesn’t deserve to be bashed just because she’s successful. Writing an honest opinion about a book on your blog is one thing, but bashing the author and her book because you’re jealous of her success is another. And in the end, we’re glad Jenny came to see that.
Good for you, Jenny.
We wanted to let our readers know that Gavin Hetherington just recently contacted us to thank us for setting the record straight regarding the “Gavin the thief” fiasco. If you all remember, a blog reader left a link on our blog weeks ago about a Gavin Hetherington in the UK, living very near Gavin the author, who stole money from an old woman. Suspicious that it might be the same Gavin, we stated on our blog that we would do some digging to find out the truth. After a bit of research, we discovered that Gavin the author and Gavin the thief were two completely different people. Apparently, Gavin the author hadn’t seen our post on this when we published it. Gavin also apologized for any wrongs he may have done or any hurt he may have caused anyone. Because of this, we have removed from public view the two posts we published on him, here and here. We leave them as a record and will only allow viewing upon special request. We are, however, leaving up our four part series Once Upon a Time in the Land of BookLikes to show what the bullies did to him. This story we feel is important for illustrating to our readers how quickly the bullies will take a false claim, utterly destroy an author with it, and then blame other people (like us) when they find out they were mistaken. Gavin gave us permission to post his email to us: 
Thank you for contacting us, Gavin, and good luck.
*********************************************************************
An addendum
Below is a screenshot of a comment by KarlynP left on Gavin’s recent BL post explaining that he sent us the above email. We are posting it to show people how easily the bullies lie and end up believing their own lies much like the time they thought Google had blocked us. Remember that?
We have one word to describe your comment here, Karlyn: BULLSHIT. We are calling you on your bullshit. You need to get your facts straight, sweetheart. But of course that always seems to be too difficult for you, doesn’t it? There was no blood on our hands and you know it. We don’t know who left the link to the article on our blog nor on Shelby’s and we certainly didn’t call Gavin a thief. Nor did we “make” Shelby accuse him of thievery. She did that entirely on her own. What we said was that the two Gavins could be the same person and that we would do some digging to find the truth. Well, guess what. We found the truth and we posted it for the sole purpose of clearing Gavin’s name. Why did we do that? Because your friend, Shelby, and her minions smeared him throughout the ENTIRE blogosphere. They were wrong and they owe him an apology. And we have yet to see that apology given.
We were contacted just recently by an author (we will call Anon) who was bullied last year. She wanted us to pass along this message to those who bullied her:
This author also let us know that she will be releasing a new book this year. To this author, all we have to say is:
That’s the spirit, Anon! Don’t let the bullies tear you down or stop you! Keep making great art!
And to all those STGRB haters out there, we say:
Cheers! Be patient. So much more is coming.
😀
Over the years, STGRB has grown. What was once just an idea sparked by the oppression of others has grown to become a major player in the fight against online bullying. But with this growth comes an addition of new challenges. We now have more active members commenting on our articles than at any time since our operation began. And herein lies one of our new challenges: moderating these comments.
We would like to remind our readers that STGRB does not tolerate discriminatory comments against any individual on the basis of race, religion, country of origin, sexuality, gender, appearance, etc. We also do not tolerate aggressive and/or disrespectful comments directed toward any members or regular readers of our site. However we have recently been finding ourselves deleting comments from repeat violators.
Therefore, we’re implementing a new warning system. Those who leave comments against our guidelines will be given a warning. Repeat offenders will be given a second warning, and on the third warning, your IP will be banned from our blog. We’d like to remind everyone to keep their comments constructive: attack the behavior, not the characteristics of the individual.
Thank you for understanding.
All material on STGRB is the intellectual property of the owners of this site and is protected by DMCA. Any copying, quoting, or sharing of this material without our consent, beyond the terms of fair use, will be subject to DMCA takedown.
