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.
As a warning for all: if you are someone with special needs, or suffer from any kind of medical, mental, or psychological disorder (i.e. dyslexia, any learning disabilities, etc.), then please keep off the Amazon fora (edit: in particular, the Meet Our Authors and Top Reviewers forums). You will be antagonized for it.
Example:
Well, well, well. Wouldn’t you just know it. The Godmother of the bullies, well-known for being much too free with her tongue and libeling authors and publishers alike on her blog, in fact libeling them to the point of pushing them into lawsuits against her, Jane Litte, or in real life known as Jennifer Gerrish-Lampe:
has yet another pen name, as she reveals in her latest DA post, A Letter to the DA Readership:
We know that many of you, as you read the words above, will hear, “Bullshit, bullshit,” going through your mind and you are exactly right to think it. Jane’s explanation is in a word, hogwash. First, the reason she is revealing this information is because Jaid Black, whom Jane doxxed on her blog:
was going to go public with this information anyway, so Jane had to have the first jump and give everyone a bullshit explanation for her despicable actions. Second, Jane wrote under a pen name for one obvious reason, because she feared retaliation from enemies: enemies she’s made from libeling people and enemies she made during #RomFail (See Why Jane Little Was Banned From RWA, in fact, just read our whole collection on Jane here. You can read about how she defended violent readers and then attacked Nathan Bransford on Twitter and a lot more!) Finally, Jane has been using her blog to deceitfully promote her own work WITHOUT telling readers that she was the author or one of the authors. Notice where she says:
I wanted any success I had with the fiction to be built on the merits of the work, not on the blogging platform. I had a couple of awkward moments where I had to keep one of my books from being reviewed on Dear Author, but somehow I managed to keep them completely separate.
This is a blatant lie and it’s easily provable. For example, here, on a blog post written by her, she promotes her book, Unspoken:
And here, her blog is promoting her book, Last Hit:
And again, here, her blog is promoting another one of her books, The Charlotte Chronicles:
We’d say we’re surprised, but for someone like Jane, we’re really not. She’s vicious and capable of resorting to anything to put forward her own interests.
Okay, so, for all the bullies out there who are celebrating Jane’s big reveal, you are probably unaware of the implications of it. Please, read on. We’ll enlighten you. In fact, one of our blog readers will enlighten you. In recent emails, this blog reader said:
I find this shocking and not surprising. I wonder how many of the Amazon Bullies are in fact authors… who basically use their bully persona to pile on other authors. There we have malicious gossips essentially hiding the fact that they are authors as they pile on other authors from behind their pseudonyms, pretending to be “readers” protecting “readers” from authors. Can you imagine if a major author took a job reviewing books and lecturing authors for the New York Times under a pseudonym? And suddenly you discovered that Columnist X who reviewed books all the time snidely and nastily was in fact a major author hiding behind that pseudonym? When professional book reviewers write books, the books are non fiction generally and are under their real names, the names they use as “critics.” But imagine discovering that a major author was behind constant criticism of authors… The point is…. this is major. A major bully entity who is in fact an author! And the question is how many others are authors? I think STGRB has already outed some on Goodreads. But I hope the significance is played up. These bullies have, in my estimation, put themselves forward as “readers” and “non professionals” and bragged that “authors are paid but we’re not!” as they justify their malice and pettiness and dirty tricks and constant high toned attacks. And now we find out they are actually authors selling a competing product!!!! Authors pretending to be high toned amateur critics trying to protect the public from authors’ bad behavior. How bad can some one’s behavior get? It makes the entire bully bible a lie —- the entire “argument” that this is a war of readers against authors. It calls into question everything. It should be enough to discredit the bully culture and the bully cliques forever. So now we see what is really happening: a clique of lying, cheating authors has been behind this war against honest authors all along. Now we see the desperation to maintain pseudonyms on Amazon! They can’t keep peddling their lies without those pseudonyms! I say it’s time to ask outright: which of you is an author!!! Come clean now!! Enough of the lies and the dirty tricks.
AND NOW WE KNOW this is all a lie. They were authors all along, many of them. Willing to malign “authors” as they hide behind pseudonyms. That this woman would continue with her blog, given that she is an author and a successful one and promote her own work… makes her despicable. After all it is “promotion” by authors that so angers this “reader bully” population. And she has done it for her own book!!!! I think the question has to be asked now of everyone of these people: What is your real name and are you an author?
I think these people must be exposed for what they’ve done:
1) Essentially try to convince the public that they are vigilant readers, generous with their time and love of books, who are trying to save other readers from “badly behaved authors.”
2)Try to convince the public that authors are irresponsible and childish and need to be policed by “readers.”
3) That there is war on between these “readers” and bad authors.
The headline here is “The bullies have been lying for years. They are actually authors punching down from behind pseudonyms against fellow authors! The whole idea of the vigilant reader asserting her rights is a sham!”
So all the foolishness about “big bad authors” who might hurt reviewers is a lie. They’re authors!!!!!! All the foolishness about reviewers needing pseudonyms to protect them from authors is a lie. They’re authors! In ruthlessly policing what they call “badly behaved authors,” accusing them of fake five star reviews and self promotion, they have lied, lied, lied, about the fact that they themselves are authors! And this Jane person has actually discussed her own work! The entire bully credo is a lie!
Thank you for your words. We couldn’t have said it better ourselves.
For some comedy relief from the never-ending shenanigans of the bullies, we highly recommend checking out a new site called . The pointing commentary from an author of biting humor and sharp wit will certainly give you a reason to smile. Here are a few of our favorites.
First, AA’s review of Fionna Free Man’s book:
Then, AA’s thoughts on the “Blogger Blackout”:
AA’s message to Blythe Harris and all the hatemongers:
And finally, AA on the recent Jenny Trout train wreck:
Whoever you are AA, keep it up! Your blog says it well.
You all remember our post The Many Faces of Anna Karenina, right? Well now, we have one more face to show you. She is also Sock Puppet at Play on BookLikes.
You may find these two posts by SPAP on BL and very interesting.
Is it a coincidence that these two posts are talking about the exact same thing and using the exact same wording? We think not.
So, beware next time you’re on BL. Sock Puppet at Play is AK.
We’d like to report that Jenny Trout and her band of miscreants were successful in their attempt to get Fionna Free Man’s book (a fictional story about Thomas Jefferson’s Mistress) pulled from Amazon:
For proof, here’s a comment from Jenny’s blog:
If you go back and read why Jenny started this take-down campaign against this author’s book, you’ll see it was because she was just appalled at the “rape” in it and how “racist” the book was that it demeaned a WoC (woman of color.)
Now, why are we telling you this? Because Jenny completely got it wrong about both the author and the book. Not only is the author a WoC and a black rights activist, her book has NO rape in it! None!
Really, there is so much stupid in this Jenny Trout story, we’re not sure where to begin. I guess we’ll start with Jenny’s tweets on the subject. Here, she asks how she was supposed to know the author was a PoC (Person of Color):
Well, Jenny, if you’d taken the time to do your research on the author and her book, just like our blog reader did, you’d have known. It isn’t rocket science.
Furthermore, in this tweet, Jenny tells someone that she is known for taking down authors whom she judges to be unworthy (and we all know how good her judgement and efforts to inform herself are):
Now, because of all this nonsense, we have idiots like this re-blogging a post that is misinformed and that gets the facts wrong on all levels:
First of all, Jenny was wrong about the author and her book because she didn’t do her research. Secondly, Anne Rice didn’t tell any of her fans to complain to Jenny’s publisher. All our post, Jenny Trout Sabotages Another Author’s Book, Encourages Fans to Pirate it.
So, Anne had nothing to do with Jenny’s publisher deciding to dump her. The problem started when one of the authors on the project was uncomfortable having her story published alongside Jenny’s, which she clearly states on her blog:
Now, at the very end of Idiot’s re-blog, it says:
This is a really hostile environment for WoC …
And we’d have to agree with that, but not on the part of the “racist fuckheads”. It is on the part of Jenny and her band of bullies. Unwittingly, while trying to exercise her self-granted power of author take-downs and punish a “racist” and her book, she did irreparable damage to a WoC and made herself look like a fool in the process.
Good job, Jenny.
First there was Jenny Trout, who attempted to sabotage this author’s book and encouraged her fans to pirate it in a recent blog post (for which she was dumped by her publisher.)
Now, there is Amy Strickland. another author and one of Jenny’s friends/followers, who is using her connections with people at Smashwords to have the same book removed from their site:
According to Amy, what we do (and what everyone who supports us does) is just a vindictive campaign to fight against critical reviews. The bullies will often say this knowing very well that it couldn’t be farther from the truth. They make this argument, willfully lying to others and also lying to themselves. Our blog and our mission has NEVER been about fighting against critical reviews. It has ALWAYS been about fighting against bullying. The bullies know this. And the kind of bullying we’re talking about is epitomized in the recent actions of Jenny Trout and now Amy Strickland. If a book is bad, then leaving a review that you didn’t like it or even hated it is perfectly fine. But trying to sabotage the author’s book and thus her career, and telling people to pirate the book if they must read it to see how bad it is, is completely unacceptable. And if you doubt what we’re saying here, if you doubt our message or our mission, all you have to do is call up Jenny’s publisher and ask them why they dumped her. You may be surprised by their answer.
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An Addendum
We just received this screenshot of a Twitter post by Jenny Trout:
The irony? We now know that Fionna Free Man, the author of the book that disgusted Jenny and her followers because they thought it was racist, is a woman of color:
Did you know that Fionna Free Man is black? She is a WoC.
Irony! Irony!
Jenny tried to get this woman’s book pulled because she was disgusted by the concept of it (she didn’t even read it), but in the end, it was Jenny’s book that got pulled.
There is just way too much irony in this story.
Good news, everyone! Notorious bully, Mahala (aka Spare Ammo and 38 Calibre Reviews), has gotten booted off GR! If you click the link below, you will see she’s completely gone:
We’ve published several posts that included news of her bullying. Here, we will show you what she’s done recently to someone in the Amazon fora, doxxing his mother’s phone number (we left the first number to prove she actually posted it):
And here she threatens to call her:
Oh also, she admits to targeting self-published authors in particular as you can see in the title of her blog:
So, now all Goodreads members can now breathe a sigh of relief knowing this bully is gone.
Just when we thought Jenny had turned over a new leaf. Sigh. Alas, she has not. She’s on another rampage. We feel as though we really don’t have to sum up what Jenny’s done this time. The title of our post says it all.
We found out about this from a link to an FB article sent to us from a blog reader:
Stunned, we went to Jenny’s blog to find out for ourselves. We won’t link to it here, but we will show you the shots we took.
It starts with:
And ends with:
We would say we’re shocked, but everything coming from the bullies these days seems to get worse and worse. When the author on FB brought it to people’s attention, do you think Jenny was ashamed of her behavior and apologized for it?
Uh… no.
She sent this to the FB author:
Way to go, Jenny! You’ve shown your true colors once again!
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An Addendum
The author (who we know is definitely NOT racist or a rapist) who originally called Jenny out for her bullying was recently attacked on Twitter by her and her fans/friends. We wanted to show you what these bullies do when you stand up against them (we’ve whited out the author’s identifying information to protect him):
We just received this letter from Anne Rice addressing the growing problem of trolling in the Amazon jungle… I… I mean fora. Thanks to Anne’s help, awareness of author bullying by internet trolls is growing. More and more people are starting to understand what it is and why it is harmful. In the letter below, Anne describes the troll problem on Amazon with such clarity and precision, we couldn’t have expressed it better ourselves.
Thank you, Anne, for all you do!
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To STGRB:
From Anne Rice:
As you know I am deeply disturbed with bullying on Amazon and have been studying the problem for some time. And I appreciate the work your site does.
Brief update:
The above links are to a few of the books I’ve been studying on internet bullying. I’ve been having quite a fruitful experience reading about this entire area. And the similarities between bullying on Amazon, and bullying on the net in general, are more remarkable than I expected.
Apparently these patterns occur everywhere. Bullies mark a target —- on Amazon it’s an author — and then they seek to objectify and dehumanize the target by characterizing the target as “defective.” On Amazon, the authors in question are presented as “badly behaving” or “needing a thick skin,” or “needing to grow a pair.” Language is used to infantilize them and denigrate them. There is also considerable talk to reduce the author to a function and one of very little value. “You think too highly of yourself. What you do is just make a product. It’s no better than manual labor.” The idea of course is that the author is less than, common, seen entirely in terms of the function, disposable and even interchangeable. “There’s more where you came from. You’re blacklisted.” —— This target in the view of the bully ceases to be human, is not worthy of common courtesy, honest dealings, or decency. Again, the target is “defective.”
If the target speaks out as to the injustice of this, then comes the backlash “Because you spoke out we will destroy you.” “You should never have spoken out. How dare you?” A new wave of persecution soon follows the speaking out, and bullies warn other “authors” to heed what “can happen” to them if they dare to speak out.
The books I’m reading tend to describe these bullies as motivated not by fun and games as I thought, but essentially by powerlessness.
There is much talk in these books of how these bullies hide behind pseudonyms the world over, and experience almost a new personality behind the pseudonym which is often nothing like their personalities in private life.
That might explain the coarseness here, the rampant vulgarity, the abrasive and and ugly talk that runs all through this thread as it is directed against authors.
The books also talk of remedies, solutions, and obstacles to solutions.
It’s very interesting reading.
This thread is a goldmine I think for anyone research internet bullying.
STGRB responsibly shames these bullies. It draws attention to their patterns of behavior. It documents their conduct which violates our social and ethical norms. Of course it’s going to make the bullies furious. They strive for power over their targets and their victims. They are necessarily outraged that a website would take them to task. Again, it’s about power. They maintain the illusion that they have the power. STGRB shows them that they do not necessarily have the power that they believe they have.
Anyone coming here to this thread on Amazon ——
can read the list of Amazon bullies (on STGRB), and just study the posts here. The bullies “out themselves.” The thread is a resource to be read along with the list of “Amazon Fora Trolls” on STGRB.
Thanks,
Anne Rice.
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