Tag Archive: Abuse


Books Online: A Book Pirating Website

Filed Under: Abuse, Pirating by Johnny Be Good — 8 Comments
April 16, 2015

We received an email today about this book pirating website.  Several authors told us they were able to remove their books successfully without anything affecting their computers.  Others, who tried to download free books to test the site told us that this is a phishing website.  Therefore we have removed the link.  We want everyone to be aware that there are many sites like these on the internet and to be extremely careful when you find one.

Our original post is below.

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Authors beware!  Unfortunately, with the huge success of indie-publishing comes websites like this that spring up and pirate authors’ books.  Books Online is one of them:

BookOnlineBut don’t fret!  It is easy to have your book removed.  Just do a search for your book’s title and click it when it appears.  In the top right, there is a black flag that you can click to remove your book.  When finished, it will be removed instantly.

Thank you, Anon, for the tip on this site.  If any of our readers find sites similar to this one, please contact us and let us know.

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Charlotte’s Law

Filed Under: Abuse, News by Johnny Be Good — 8 Comments
February 25, 2014

In response to the tragic death of Australian celebrity, Charlotte Dawson, friends of the celebrity have created a petition called Charlotte’s Law — Tougher Cyber Bully Legislation that calls on the Australian government to pass tougher laws that will crack down on cyber bullying:

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We extend our sympathies to anyone who suffers from depression the way Charlotte did.  For those in Australia, there is help.  From the article, we screen grabbed information about a suicide prevention hotline:

LifelineAustralia

For Americans, you will want to go here:

LifelineAmerica

If any of our readers have information for hotlines in other countries, please feel free to leave that information in the comments section of this post.

Before we go, we’d like to share this fantastic article Jaq D. Hawkins wrote on this issue of depression and cyber bullying called .

We’d like to end with an image we found that best describes STGRB’s stance on how to deal with trolls and bullies online:

WalkAway

As one of our blog readers put it:

Walk away. Don’t feed the troll. Don’t interact. Don’t let them infect you with their disease.

Don’t let their hatred into your hearts.  Walk away and report them.  If we all work together to put pressure on governments and online social media companies, we may just see a change for the better.

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RIP Charlotte Dawson

Filed Under: Abuse, Amazon, Amazon Fora Trolls, Goodreads, GR Bullies by Johnny Be Good — 15 Comments
February 23, 2014

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:

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

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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.

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How to Stay Safe in Cyberia

Filed Under: Abuse, Amazon, Goodreads by Johnny Be Good — 3 Comments
February 19, 2014

A while ago, we posted a link on our sidebar to Anne R. Allen’s Laws of the Amazon Jungle.  Just recently she has revised it and renamed it, Laws of the Cyberian Jungle, so that it incorporates not just the dangers of Amazon, but all dangerous venues in “Cyberia”.

We feel that ALL authors should read her post as it provides invaluable advice that will save many authors from falling victim to the same dangers as others have in the past:

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Also, hiring blog tour companies or other third party organizations that distribute your books to readers is okay, too.  Many independent authors do this and it is an acceptable part of the business.

Rule #4 below is very important.  We’ve seen too many authors get baited into responding to nasty reviews and when that happens, it only gets worse for the author.  The trolls attack and the author ends up fighting back and it usually turns into a public lynching.  Please read The Bully MO for more information.

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If you don’t believe that trolls are drunk with their own rage, please read up on the New Study on Trolling.

Rule #7 is also very important.  Anne tells us what places online to avoid.  We think she is spot on.

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And finally:

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New Attack on Hugh Howey

Filed Under: Abuse, Amazon by Johnny Be Good — 7 Comments
February 15, 2014

Why do we say new attack on Hugh?  Because back in April, Hugh was attacked by a throng of bully reviewers for something he wrote about on his blog.  This time, he is being targeted by the same troll who was banned from Goodreads and who attacked Melissa Foster on his blog called ZoneAlert, claiming that she bought reviews to boost her sales.  Now, the same thing is being said of Hugh:

HughHoweyAlert

We want all of our readers to know that this is FALSE INFORMATION.  The person who writes this blog makes outrageous claims against very successful authors and provides absolutely no evidence to validate them.  We want to warn our readers about this person and let everyone know that he is a fraud.  Please pass the word on.

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Addendum

We now know that the person who is behind this fraudulent website is an author who was kicked off of Goodreads for faking reviews.  He is a failed author who is taking his revenge out on other authors who are more successful than he is.  We learned this information from the authors who were targeted.

Here is a screenshot of Hugh and his thoughts on this fraudulent website:

Hugh

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Amazon Abuses Employees

Filed Under: Abuse, Amazon by Johnny Be Good — Leave a comment
August 17, 2013

Quite frankly, the way Amazon appears to be conducting its business abroad is embarrassing to those of us who live in America, where the company was founded.  It doesn’t shed a good light on our country’s businesses to be associated with abuse like this:

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GR Silences Authors, Part 2

Filed Under: Abuse, Bully Hypocrisy, Bully Lies, Goodreads by Johnny Be Good — 18 Comments
June 15, 2013

Before we begin with our post today, we want to share with you a new development on GR.  Apparently, GR wants to know how customers rate them:

RateGROne of our visitors already filled out the form and had this to say:

I received a GR “survey” today and was happy to tell them my low opinion of their pathetic, anti-writer site.  They’ve done nothing less than create a stalking and trolling playground for sociopaths.  It’s beyond me what the point of all this mass hatred of writers is.  I don’t know if it is fueled by other authors, or just the usual conspiracy of dunces.

Anyway, it’s good to know you guys are here.  I think the best way to influence Goodreads is to stop using their site completely.  Those of us who do well with Amazon may want to see if we can influence things on that side of the great divide.  Beyond that, I think GR is a lost cause.

If any of our readers want to join in and let GR know what you think, just click on this link.  We’ve also posted a link to the survey on our sidebar.

Now, on to business…

In our last post, GR Silences Authors, Part 1, we showed you the story of an author who spoke out against the abuse on GR and was banned for it.  Now we want to show you the whiny feedback discussion started by , one of the bullies on our BBG list.

As you read, please take note of a couple points.  One, everything these bullies accuse authors of doing (i.e. stalking and harassing, getting their friends to stalk and harass, etc.) is absolutely false.  We never see authors doing this.  But!  We’ve seen on countless occasions the bullies doing it not just to authors, but to anyone who stands against them.  Two, these dumb asses still seem to think the reaction to them is about negative reviews.  It’s not.  It’s about their vicious and ceaseless personal attacks against others.  This is a point they never seem to get.  Finally, we have honestly lost track of how many times we’ve caught the bullies in their pious hypocrisy, not to mention their incessant lying.  In the from the GR feedback forum, you will see this come out glaringly in their words:

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Then Kara responds with this:

Kara

We’d like to draw your attention to where she says:

Blog posts on Goodreads that seek to harass or intimidate individual reviewers do violate our Terms of Service and the appropriate action will be taken.

Gosh, that’s funny, Kara, because that’s exactly what Angela did in  and yet strangely enough, nothing happened to her post or her account.

Oh, but wait!  That’s right!  I forgot.  She’s one of you, isn’t she?  So she can harass anyone she wants and get away with it.  Silly me.  I should have known.

Anyhow, back to the whiners:

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Now at this point, we would tell you why all of this whiny bullshit is so hypocritical, but we don’t have to because Annabeth took the words right out of our mouths:

Annabeth

Well said, Annabeth!

And then the whining continues.  Notice how Jim says something very insightful here.  Apparently, he gets it — there’s a reason these bullies end up on troll alert lists.

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Oh no!  He said our name!  What are we going to do?  We’re supposed to be the blog that shall not be named!  😀

After this ultimate faux pas by Jim, the bullies truly go crazy.  Guess he really hit a nerve:

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STGRB is vile trash?  Why?  Because we tell the truth about you?

You notice the outright lies these people tell when our site is mentioned?  That we do all of this shit that we’ve never done (also referring to Lucy’s phantom phone caller).  This is their usual MO.  They’ve been trying to discredit our site ever since we started.  By this time, their lies have gotten old.

Finally, after the discussion degenerates into an I-hate-STGRB frenzy, Emily ends the conversation because it has become “unproductive”:

Emily

And that’s it!

Whiny, whiny, whiny bullies!  They will never grow up.

But in all seriousness, we believe that this is just the beginning to a bigger issue that we see evolving on GR.  That is the growing hatred of authors and the silencing of their voices when they try to speak out against the abuse and injustice that is done to them.

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GR Silences Authors, Part 1

Filed Under: Abuse, Bullied Author, Bully Attacks, Bully Crime, Bully Hypocrisy, Goodreads by Johnny Be Good — 21 Comments
June 14, 2013

A lot has been happening on GR recently, not the least of which a campaign being launched by the bullies to silence authors who speak up about the abuse on the site.  And not surprisingly, the GR mods are playing along.  But before we get into this, we have some news for you, some good, some not so good:

1. It appears as though our Twitter stalker (remember her – the one who stood in line to get concert tickets while she furiously sent us insane tweets one after the other?  Yeah, her!) has finally gotten her just desserts.  We were contacted by one of our sources who told us that she and her husband are being investigated by the police for crimes against an author (i.e. death threats, etc.):

AmandaWellingGone

AmandaWellingInvestigated

It’s true, if you check her blog and , they’re completely gone.  This isn’t the first time the bullies have physically threatened someone.  Just take a look at our post Bully Threats and you’ll see a few there.

2. An author (and her husband) who was attacked last year, with whom we have had contact ever since, has just recently reported to us that someone has been consistenly hacking her Facebook and email accounts.  She and her husband have the FBI looking into it:

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FBI

And again, this isn’t the first time the bullies have tried to hack into accounts (this time succeeding).  We’ve shown that they tried it on our hosting account in Bully Crime.

3. We were informed just recently that another author we know has had her books banned from Dear Author because she “associates with that site.”  Apparently Jane Litte seems to think that authors who are affiliated with our site are too much of a danger to her reviewers.  We died laughing when we heard that.  She doesn’t realize that they are a danger to themselves because of the way they behave, like harassing and baiting authors for instance (click here and scroll down to view screenshots of this).

Give it up, Janey!  Everyone knows about you and your reviewers.  They can see right through you.

4. We were given a link by a site visitor to an article written by Tamara Ward about a Q&A session between authors and GR staff.  Tamara’s post starts with this:

Hello, WG2E-land! Last week, Goodreads staff held office hours, an online session where both the Goodreads author marketing coordinator, Cynthia Shannon, and director, Patrick Brown, answered questions from writers. Writers could ask questions live or post them beforehand on the discussion thread.

I’ve tried to hit the highlights of the office hours in this post, but if you want to read the blow-by-blow, visit the group discussion on Goodreads at . Better yet, join the group at ! Though discussion on last week’s office hours has been frozen, perhaps, in the future, Goodreads staff will have another session.

If you scroll down a bit on the page, you will see that a few authors who know what’s really going on chimed in with their concerns:

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If you read the Q&A session by clicking the links Tamara gives, you will notice how they conveniently avoid talking about the real problem that plagues GR, namely the GR bullies and their consistently vicious attacks on authors.

And this brings us to the point of our post.  Look at the link Rick left to a Goodreads feedback discussion called .  You’ll see some familiar names.  This is just the beginning of what appears to be a growing campaign on GR to silence authors.

Once such author, , was silenced by the GR staff when the trolls began an attack on him and then reported to him the GR mods on trumped up charges:

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Why was he reported and banned?  Because he wrote blog posts (on his own blog!) speaking out about the GR/Amazon trolls:

Accused Of Spamming

The Trolls Arrive!

And the attack ensued:

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And then:

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And there you have it!  GR does not allow authors freedom of speech.  If they speak up about the abuse happening on the site, they are silenced.

For tomorrow’s post, GR Silences Authors, Part 2, we will be talking more about the GR feedback discussion mentioned above called .

Stay tuned!

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Why Do Bullies Bully?

Filed Under: Abuse, Amazon Fora Trolls, Bully Attacks, Goodreads, GR Bully, GR Bully Culture, News by Johnny Be Good — 28 Comments
April 20, 2013

Just recently we have been alerted to two very disturbing bullying stories in the news.  One of Rehtaeh Parsons and the other of Audrie Pott.  What do these two girls have in common?  They were raped and then photos of their attack were either circulated around their school and/or posted online.  Because the humiliation was too much, they both committed suicide.

(Side note: if you wish to support independent inquiry into police investigation of Rehtaeh’s attackers, sign this petition.)

These kinds of stories are horrific and lead us to the question: why do bullies bully?

To answer this question, we did a little research and found .  A few paragraphs in this article struck a chord with our experience:

“It provides these kids with a sense of power,” said Catherine Bradshaw, a developmental psychologist who studies bullying at the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore. “It’s a way of pulling your core group closer and putting someone else out of it.”

“The simple reason is it shows that they have power over others,” agreed Marlene Snyder, Development Director for the Olweus Bullying Prevention Program in the United States, based in Clemson, S.C. “The reason that they do it repeatedly is that they are getting away with it. Nobody is calling them on their bad behavior. When they aren’t called on it they think, ‘Well, it must be O.K.'”

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“For the longest time we thought for sure that these ringleader bullies were , that there was no way that you could establish dominance and control by humiliating other kids or tormenting them,” said bullying expert Dorothy Espelage, a psychologist at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. “But now we’ve shown that there is a peer socialization process — that bullies tend to have more friends.”

Indeed, experts agree that peer influence is crucial in accounting for . “If your peer group says that pushing and shoving and spitting on people or spreading lies is O.K., even though you may have been taught differently in your home, you lose your moral compass,” Snyder said.

As for our blog, we wonder what makes people do things like this:

IveHeardBadThings

Or this:
WantToReadJustToRip

Or this: cyber stalking, harassing, libeling, hacking into private accounts, personally attacking, threatening (click both here and here), leaving psychotic comments, and contacting their charities.

In each of these cases, Gyruleine’s recent comment makes a world of sense:

It doesn’t surprise me that the bully reviewers are quick to sympathize with a woman who essentially bullied and abused Hugh Howey and to resent his ridiculing her to the public. These people are abusive themselves and most abusive types prefer not to be recognized (by themselves or by others) as abusers. Most abusers actively deny abusing their victims and their enablers are equally quick to deny it or attempt to justify it.

That’s why STGRB has hit the bully reviewer community so hard.

So, bullying gives them a sense of power and since they are encouraged by their peers to continue, they assume it’s okay.

Or…

Could it be in some cases that they are  who are either getting paid to or have a vested interesting in stamping out their competition?

 

 

ShoshanaBickLinkedIn

And who is ?

CoaxialOnAmazon

 

Name look familiar?

*cough cough*

A few examples:

Coaxial’s Threat

Bully Attacks This Week

Apology Not Accepted

Psychotic Comments

And is another:

GoodLaugh

There are many more.

Note: Coaxial Creature is known as All Hail Grimlock on BookLikes.

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Amazon Reviews As Attack Weapons

Filed Under: Abuse, Bully Attacks, News by Johnny Be Good — 28 Comments
February 25, 2013

Sorry all!  We’ve been a little busy lately and haven’t been able to post everything we wanted to this week.  But before we get into Amazon Reviews As Attack Weapons, we want to share with you a little piece of information.

You all remember our twitter stalker , right?  You know the one who sent us about a million crazy twitter messages while she was waiting in line for concert tickets?

Yeah, that one.

Well, we just received this screenshot from Carroll that he found on GenX’s blog.  It’s a shot Gen took of her 10 cent donation to the STGRB treasury.

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Athena informed me that out of all the donations we’ve received so far, only one was a ten cent donation (which Athena declined) sent from a Jonathan Welling (look at the dates on both shots – January 11th):

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So, it appears that Amanda Welling (aka GenX) used her husband’s paypal account to waste 10 cents.

Carroll was right.  Amanda is GenX.  Good call, Carroll!

Oh, by the way, Athena wants all the trolls to know that any donation under a dollar will automatically be declined.  We’re not going to waste our time with mentally unstable trolls who obsess over us while waiting in concert lines.  Time to get a life, girls.

Anyhow, moving on…

Our post for today is about how reviewers have been using Amazon reviews to attack books and/or the authors that write them.  And in some cases, to attack other reviews/reviewers.  Here is an exchange in one our recent blog posts, between Anon-a-bus, Another Anon, and Athena.

Anon-a-bus:

If there is something brewing here you might want to check out. A relatively unknown author in m/m romance released a book about a week ago and now has like 40 five star glowing reviews. That never happens. One person gave it a one star review and questioned the validity of the other reviews…and the honesty. Now his “fans” are beginning to rally around him. What I think is interesting is that the reviewer is getting bullied…or might be getting bullied this time. I’m not sure yet. And the overall picture any way you look at it is amazon still promotes this kind of corruption.

Another Anon:

Hmmn, maybe not bullying as such but something very close, which just reinforces what the reviewer said. There is no way all those other reviewers would know about the 1-star review, especially all at once, unless they were told or they all checked the book’s reviews daily. Who does that? There is no alert for reviews.

And Athena:

We know a ton of reviewers who are that obsessed. Wendy Darling for one. There are dozens more. Fans do check their reviews and they also check the books they’ve reviewed as well.  This is how review wars on Amazon get started all the time.

Athena is right about obsessive fans/reviewers.  As a result, it seems that Amazon reviews may be losing credibility, as Goronwy says here:

This article actually first appeared in the NYT, where it’s received almost two hundred comments. Check them out: it really looks like Amazon reviews are losing credibility, and not because of ‘badly behaving authors’

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/21/business/a-casualty-on-the-battlefield-of-amazons-partisan-book-reviews.html?_r=0

This was an article published on January 20, 2013 about a book written by Randall Sullivan, titled: Untouchable: The Strange Life and Tragic Death of Michael Jackson.  Apparently a group of Michael Jackson’s fans who call themselves Michael Jackson’s Rapid Response Team to Media Attacks organized a planned assault on the author and his book through the Amazon review system.  The article states:

In the biggest, most overt and most successful of these campaigns, a group of Michael Jackson fans used and to solicit negative reviews of a new biography of the singer. They bombarded Amazon with dozens of one-star takedowns, succeeded in getting several favorable notices erased and even took credit for Amazon’s briefly removing the book from sale.

“Books used to die by being ignored, but now they can be killed — and perhaps unjustly killed,” said Trevor Pinch, a Cornell sociologist who has studied Amazon reviews. “In theory, a very good book could be killed by a group of people for malicious reasons.”

The article then goes on to say:

But the book’s publisher, Grove Press, said the Amazon review system was being abused in an organized campaign. “We’re very reluctant to interfere with the free flow of discourse, but there should be transparency about people’s motivations,” said Morgan Entrekin, president of Grove/Atlantic, Grove’s parent company.

And how does Amazon respond?  Just as we thought they would:

Amazon said the fans’ reviews had not violated its guidelines but declined further comment.

What do we think?

We have addressed, over and over, this problem of people abusing the Amazon review system to attack others, a problem which has been largely ignored by Amazon.  Instead, they seem to think removing five-star reviews with no rhyme or reason is improving their review system.

What we think is that Amazon needs to change it’s book reviewing policy.  First of all, they should require that the reviewer has actually read the book, or part of it, before writing a review.  Secondly, they should also require that the review stay on topic, that is, discuss the book itself and its content.  Anything else (i.e. an attack on the author, or on another reviewer, or on another review, etc.) should be prohibited/deleted.

Book reviews should be about the book.  Period.

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