Tag Archive: Bully Reviews


If any of you haven’t been following the brouhaha regarding Ryan T. Anderson’s marriage book, here’s a link and some screenshots describing what happened to it in the Amazon bookstore (and yes, as you’ve probably already guessed, it has to do with trolls swarming on a book and leaving nasty one-star reviews without even having read the material):

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The good news?  Amazon has finally removed the offending reviews.

AmazonPullsNegReviews

Excerpt

Now, STGRB doesn’t take a public stance on current marriage laws.  We consider that to be a personal and private decision.  What we are against is bully reviews that are meant to attack the author and that are posted online in ignorance (meaning that the reviewer isn’t informed on the book because she or he never read it.)  We feel this was a good decision on Amazon’s part and a step in the right direction.

In this post, we want to address something that the bullies have been preaching ever since we started this blog and that’s that we are against negative, critical reviews. Back in mid-2012, when STGRB first went live, the bullies did their best to get us shut down. When they couldn’t, they did everything they could to discredit our site with accusations of bullying, threatening, or harming others. We were accused of doxxing – of publishing people’s address, phone numbers, etc. And we were also accused of being a group of authors who were getting revenge on reviewers who wrote critical reviews of our books. Here is a post we wrote that explains in more detail what happened when we first started our blog.

None of this nonsense was true. It still isn’t.

An example of what we mean is clear as day in an article (a very ill-informed article) written by John Scalzi back in 2012. Without doing any research of our blog or who we really are and what we’re about, John wrote this masterpiece.  Here are some screenshots of it.

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So, let’s see exactly what John considers to be negative reviews or criticism of books. These are just a few of the many examples we’ve published on our blog

GinmarBullyReview

RandisBullyReview

TheBunnyReview1

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You see, this is what John and the bullies would have you believe – that all of this is criticism of BOOKS, when it is something else, something much worse.  These examples we’ve shown are, in fact, deliberate, premeditated, vicious attacks on people. Not books.

John doesn’t just stop at drinking and preaching the bully Kool-Aid, he is probably one of the bigger bullies we know, whose rants have lead to vicious attacks on authors.

JohnScalziAnneRiceLHamilton

If you want to see what happened to Laurell, just check our her books on and .

John’s abuse doesn’t stop there. We’ve heard from several big name authors that it is truly bad form (as an author) to attack or criticize another author, and yet John, just like Jenny Trout, does this quite often:

Larry

You will note here that Larry declined the Hugo nomination. So that should tell you how well John researches subjects before he goes off on his ill-informed, pious diatribes.

But he doesn’t stop at authors either. He’s been known to be a bully to people in other arenas, outside of the book world:

JohnScalzibashingGamerGate

We don’t want to get involved in the Sad Puppies or GamerGate fight. We simply want to show how John treats other authors and other people.  And when you read his words, you have to ask yourself these questions:

Do they contribute anything to the literary community or any community for that matter?

No.

Are they productive?

No.

Do they help anyone?

No.

All they are are cruel jabs at other authors and other people, and yet John sits there in his ivory tower and preaches on his blog about how righteous he is.

Shame on you, John!

People like John and the rest of the bullies are described very well in the words of one of our loyal blog readers:

“These people…[the bullies]… they contribute nothing to the literary community, to the book world, to the world of those of us who love to read and write books. They’re just in it, parasites, treating it all like a video game! Heaping vulgarity, ugliness and meanness on authors and saying “Take it, or we’ll blacklist and libel you!””

John writes at the end of his article (he is talking to us here, implying that we are going to attack someone on his behalf):

“When I need your help with a negative review, I will ask for it.
If I don’t ask for it, I don’t need your help.
If I do ask for it, you should consider me temporarily out of my head and ignore me.
If you decide to attack someone in my name without consulting me, you make me look bad. That will annoy me, and I may take it out on you, possibly publicly.”

Well, guess what. You don’t have to worry about us trying to help you, because that will never happen. You are a bully, my friend. We would never attack people like you do, especially not on your behalf. And as far as anyone making you look bad, well, that’s already been done.

YOU make you look bad.

And that’s all we’re going to say.

Another bully who has made her way into the book world thanks to her friend, Ginmar, has recently had one of her bully reviews pulled from Amazon.  Here’s a shot we got of the review before it was pulled:

RandisBullyReview

It appears that Amazon is doing the right thing and taking steps to make sure customer reviews “constructive and useful to other customers.”

rharperSo, please, whenever you see a review that is a personal attack on an author, report it immediately to Amazon.  The best way to report a bully review is by calling Amazon (), or by using their  or page.

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We just received a few interesting tweets of Randi Harper, the author of the book, and a friend of the author.  We’re not even going to comment on it.  We think Randi’s words speak for themselves.

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We just received this screenshot from a blog reader.  It’s a Goodreads review of an author Ginmar has been tormenting recently.  This is the kind of review that is absolutely unacceptable and should be flagged and reported to Goodreads management.

GinmarBullyReview

Ginmar is a notorious bully who frequents Goodreads, Amazon, and many other cyber hangouts.  She has been trolling and tormenting others on the internet for over 12 years.  Should any of our readers have any cause to bring legal action against her for her abuse, please contact us via our email or Contact Us page.  We can help you identify and locate her for purposes of serving papers.

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An Addendum

Here is a screenshot of the people who liked Ginmar’s review, many of whom we recognize.  You may want to keep a sharp eye out for these GR members, too.

Likedby9

The following is a post that we published on July 26, 2012, of Ridley whining about her review getting hidden.  In her original GR post, she even admits to considering authors to be “fair game”.  The post ends with some real examples of bullying.  Unfortunately for Ridley or anyone else who considers authors fair game, this is no longer allowed on GR (according to their rules) and is not allowed online in general according to the police who busted Amanda Welling for death threats against an author.

So, next time you think someone is “fair game”, bullies, think again.

As for our readers, enjoy the post!

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Remember Ridley?  Well, Stitch just informed us of something he found on Goodreads Follies.  We don’t agree with everything GF says but we do like their commentary on the bullies and this one we just couldn’t pass up:

We went in search of other snark-worthy events on GR tonight and found this juicy tidbit. GR reviewer  apparently posted of “The Vampire of Vigil’s Sorrow” by , only to find out shortly thereafter that . (Note that if you are on Ridley’s friends list you might be able to see the original review . Our link above is to someone else’s quote of it.)

When we read this, we headed over to this link and took a few screenshots to show you.  is Ridley’s original question:

Why

Followed by Patrick Brown’s response (notice he says her review was hidden because it is “not a review of the book, but rather of the author”):

ReviewOfAuthor

So she says:

Whine1

And:

Whine2

And:

Whine4

And this one stunned us.  She says here that she thinks authors should be “fair game”:

Whine3FairGame

So, it seems as thought Patrick Brown does understand that author reviews are not book reviews.  This is a step in the right direction.  So, then, tell us Mr. Brown, have you hid these reviews yet?  Because we flagged them!

We find it strange that we bought these bully reviews to light – the ones Patrick Brown is referring to – and yet we end up being the bad guys for showing it to the public.  How does that work exactly?  Please, tell us, because we really want to know.  Because we think it’s a bunch of bullshit!

We are the ones who originally brought everyone’s attention to reviews that are not book reviews but actually defamatory author reviews and somehow we get vilified.  And somehow, according to the reputation-ruiners out there, we are not actually who we say we are but instead are secretly authors who are disgruntled about bad reviews, so we started a website to retaliate against those who wronged us.

What a load of horse manure!  We are bloggers and readers who are FED UP with the behavior of these people and want it to STOP!  We brought everyone’s attention to this problem because something needed to be done!

What blows our minds is that some people say that what the bullies do isn’t bullying, even when we have provided examples of it and screenshots to prove it.  Like this:

ArchersResponse

An 8th grade teacher and a 20-something grown man saying this to a 14-year-old girl is bullying!  We consider that to be bullying!

And this too:

RuiningCareer

This is the example we gave of The Holy Terror and Ridley destroying an author’s career for their own personal fun because Ridley thinks that they should be “fair game.”  Authors depend on their income to survive and feed their families and these people try to destroy that either for fun or for vengeance.  We even had an anonymous author tell us that she couldn’t sleep at night and had nightmares because of what these people did to her.  We definitely think this constitutes bullying.

If there is anyone out there who thinks these examples are just people having a good time and that it is simple mockery, snark, and lighthearted fun, then you seriously need to get your priorities straight.  Shame on you for saying that this in not bullying!  SHAME ON YOU!  This is not lighthearted fun!  This is sick, twisted, disgusting behavior!  And it needs to be stopped!

Fueling STGRB

Well, it looks as if one of the bullies :

FuelingSTGRB1

FuelingSTGRB2

And what do we have to say about this?  Well, we agree with her.  Of course there are a few points we’d like emphasize/convey.

“Does that sound like a fair, unbiased, objective review to you? Doesn’t to me. I know that most SPA books are, in fact, quite atrocious, to the point that everyone’s talking about how horrible they are as a rule. But to go into a book deliberately looking for things to criticize is not ‘reading a book’.”

True.  Although, we disagree about most SPA books being atrocious.  Some are.  Some aren’t.  In fact, many of us here have found that the majority of SPA books we’ve read are actually quite good.  So, for us it’s the opposite.

And we don’t agree that the authors she mentions at the end are loathsome.  These are authors we hold in high esteem because they had the courage to speak out against the bullies and what they do.

“I’m sure someone will argue that a reviewer has no obligation to write a fair, unbiased, objective review, but what value does the review have, then? It’s just one person throwing rocks at another, screaming, “You’re such a doodie head! I’m going to try to sabotage your career now because you’re personally such a loathsome douche nozzle!”

Aren’t reviews supposed to be about the BOOKS?”

Uh… how long have we been saying this?  It’s good to know you’re finally getting it, though, Ederyn.

“As for the fake reviews, we have to trust that an actual customer will eventually buy that book, be totally disgusted with it and leave an honest, untainted review of said work, questioning the legitimacy of all the gushing 5-star reviews. So leave it to the real customers. ”

Or how ’bout this?  We have to trust that actual customers will eventually buy the book, love it and leave honest, untainted reviews of said work, questioning the legitimacy of all the nasty, vitriolic one-star reviews that are posted because your troll friends hate the author.  So, let’s leave it to the real customers, shall we?

“I hate to be in the position of defending BBAs. I mean, errrgh…I seriously HATE being in the position of defending BBAs, but the ATWR is exactly the kind of crap that gives STGRB credence.”

Bingo!  If the trolls didn’t behave the way they do, we wouldn’t have even started our blog.  But you have to remember, we didn’t just start our blog because of bully reviews.  That was just part of it.  We started our blog because of the blatantly vicious attacks on authors who just tried to make things right.  A few examples:

  1. The hate campaign against Kiera Cass started by Wendy Darling when Kiera tried to apologize for her agent’s behavior, but Wendy ignored her and stalked Kiera’s Twitter, taking screenshots back to the “hive.”  Then, she went to Publisher’s Weekly and had them write up an article on it.
  2. The attack on an author led by Kat when said author tried to explain her position.
  3. The attack on Eve Thomas when she tried to apologize.  Story in Apology Not Accepted.

I mean, the list goes on: libeling, stalking, threatening, harassing, breaking into private accounts, outing their PII, et cetera, et cetera.  THIS is what fuels our blog and the more they do it, the more we have to write about.

“So what’s an honest review? A review that comes from a customer off the street who stumbles across a book, discovers it’s horrible, and leaves a scathing review. It doesn’t have to be constructive, polite, or helpful to the author in any way, for reviews, as we all know, are for the customers. A simple “OMG THIS SUCKS!!” is a perfectly objective review…IF it comes from someone with no prior experience with this book or this author. If you read the book BEFORE the train wreck and hated it, but never posted your review, then of course your review is perfectly legitimate, and there’s no reason you shouldn’t post it now. Just don’t give me that shit that you “…don’t hate the author. I have no feelings about the author whatsoever. This is entirely about the work.” Oh, badger shit.”

Again, here’s another example: a review that comes from a customer off the street who stumbles across a book, discovers it’s great, and leaves a favorable review.

It’s very telling that even Ederyn, who seems to get the whole bully review thing, automatically assumes that the review is going to be a bad one.  This is really a fundamental axiom on which the bully mindset is based.

Now, what happened to  after this post went up?

EderynsBook1

Trolls2 EderynsBook2

EderynsBook3

You see, the snakes are eating each other again.  We’ve seen this several times before.  In fact, Ederyn was booted out of the Asshat group because of this post.  If you pay close attention to the Asshat group’s member number, it is rapidly dwindling, which is certainly due to the bullies’ erratic behavior.

Again, snakes eating each other.

Really, if you want to know how stupid these people are, we know of several authors (who shall not be named here) who’ve posted fake books on GR just to see what the trolls would do.  And of course, the one-star fly-bys, the revenge reviews and the derogatory shelving began as soon as the books went up.

That’s right!  On FAKE books.  It’s like catching a bunch of stupid piranha’s with fake bait.  Hilarious!

And speaking of stupid piranha’s, we’ve had confirmation from one of our site visitors that Angela is indeed operating behind multiple socks on GR and Amazon.  More on that to come.

Now, we want to end with this, Coaxial’s confession.  It’s hilarious.  As you read, notice the gross grammatical, spelling, and punctuational errors in her comment:

Coaxial

Now, is this someone who is really qualified to line edit anything?

Oh, irony at its best!

The post below we published on October 27, 2012.  It illustrates “the kill” as described on our Bully MO page.  This is how they attempt to destroy the author’s books, reputation, and career.  In this case, M.T. was again the victim.

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We’ve been meaning to post these for the last couple days and because we’ve been so busy, are just now getting to it.  But before we get to the bully reviews on M.T.’s books, Athena wanted me to clarify to everyone our policy regarding how authors should deal with the bullies.  We’ve NEVER advised authors to argue with them.  As Athena said, this is counterproductive.  Don’t ever try to reason with these idiots.  Don’t ever try to explain yourself.  All that will happen is that they’ll twist your words around and anything you say will be held against you.

Our advice is:

  1. Ignore
  2. Take screenshots
  3. Report
  4. Block

This is the best approach.  Here is an example of an author who ignored them and as it turned out, this was the best thing he could have done.

Now, in response to our last post, our site visitor Deltaforce had this to say:

Complaining to Amazon and Goodreads hasn’t been effective, so the next step is to contact local and state government representatives, making them aware of the problem. There needs to be an official investigation to implicate Amazon and GR, and hold them responsible for allowing and enabling cyberharassment and other crimes to flourish on their sites.

Deltaforce is right.  In our experience, both Amazon and GR have proven very unhelpful when it comes to bully attacks.  So, if you don’t get a positive response from them after reporting what’s happening to you, the best recourse is either getting your attorney involved or soliciting the help of a government authority.

Now, there are those people who believe (and they have very good reason for believing this) that some of the bullies are operating under the employment of competing organizations in order to sabotage the success of certain authors.  If this is true, then that is a cyber crime and if you report it to the FBI, they will investigate.  Fortunately, Anon left this comment in response to Deltaforce’s comment:

Here is the fbi website for cyber crime:

This is where people can go to file and complaint and request an investigation. I think with all of the proof people have collected about the fishy activity on Amazon and GR, it shouldn’t be hard to get the fbi to investigate.

If you are one of those people who believes Amazon and GR are letting cyber crimes happen on their site, please don’t hesitate to contact the FBI through the website provided.

Now, on with the bully reviews…  M.T. brought these reviews to our attention and our team is currently flagging them for abuse as the violate GR’s reviewing policy of “review the book, not the author.”  We encourage our readers to flag them as well.

is one from Coaxial:

Coaxial1

And also from Rose Summers:

Rose

These next two violate TOS by trying to get around the reviewing policy, as Patrick says here:

PatrickSeeComments2

The reviews are:

from Coaxial:

Coaxial2

And from Amara:

Amara

If any of you spot reviews like this that either libel or personally attack the author, please let us know so that we can get our team on it right away.

And finally, for the last part, “the kill”, here are the shelves on which they placed his books:

GRBookAttack1

GRBookAttack2

GRBookAttack3

GRBookAttack4GRBookAttack5

HJ’s Bully Review

On our post, Beautiful Blunder, Goronwy left a link that takes you to a review of Beautiful Disaster written by HJ Leonard:

Just saw the unbelievable comments here:

http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/275847843

Here is the review itself:

HJReview

First of all, if you check out our post Beautiful Blunder, you’ll see that unlike what Jane Litte has led people to believe, the problem with the ebook had nothing to do with anything that Jamie did.  It was a mistake made by Amazon and Amazon only.

Secondly, as for HJ’s review, we consider it to be a bully review not for what’s written in the review itself, but for the comments that follow it:

FuckJM

HJAuthorInsult

You all see that?

“FUCK Jamie McGuire.”

Does this remind you of another bully?  One of our Biggest Offenders when she was talking about Julie Leto in a comment on :

Lucy1

“Fuck her and her career.”

Nice!  One thing you will notice about all the bullies is that in their reviews, their comments, their blogs, etc., they can never seem to stop talking about authors or anything related to authors.  They are OBSESSED with them.  The difference, always, between one of their bully reviews and a normal review is that you will see something in it that is either a personal attack on an author or something that is damaging to the author’s reputation.  Always.  This is the mark of the bully.

More examples:

MoreAuthorInsults

KarlynP

CarolineMrsJoseph

Now, in this case, HJ’s review is slightly different.  It is more like Stephanie Sinclair’s review of  in that she puts “see comments” in the review.  (If the link no longer works, go to our post More Bully Reviews.)  And when you take a look at the comments on HJ’s review, it says, “FUCK Jamie McGuire.”

This is a violation of GR TOS according to Patrick:

PatrickSeeComments

So… our team is currently flagging this review.  If anyone wants to join in, feel free.

As for Beautiful Disaster, a couple of our members have read it and let’s just say that they know exactly why it has sold so well and will soon be a movie.  It’s an awesome story.

And Jamie McGuire – you’re probably wondering why they are so hard on her.  It’s because about a year ago she stood up for herself when she was harassed by a group of bullies and of course this is just unheard of according to their ridiculous, Draconian “code of honor” for authors, so they laid a full-on onslaught against her.  Ironically, it didn’t work.  More like backfired.  Her book became a best-seller and got picked up by a major publisher.  This was a huge slap in the face.  At this point, the bullies will say anything about her to make her look bad.  That includes talking about what a horrible author she is and how much her book sucks.

Well, guess what.  It doesn’t.

And guess what bullies.  Jealousy is really an ugly emotion and right now, you reek of it.

Bully Reviews

Below is a post we published on July 17, 2012 to show our readers exactly what we meant by personal attacks on authors in reviews.  It was because of these reviews and the attention our blog received from our HuffPo article (post to come) that GR was forced to act and publicly publish their Terms of Service clarifying their reviewing policies.

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For today’s post, we want to show you some screencaps of reviews we deem inappropriate, or bully reviews.  Please note, the purpose of this site is not to fight against critical reviews.  It is to fight against bullying.  We are presenting these to you because we have had a few requests for what we consider inappropriate.  Why do we consider them inappropriate?  A book review is, strangely enough, a review of a BOOK and yet these “reviewers” just cannot seem to stop talking about authors.  So instead of telling you about bully reviews, we will show you.

TrollBook

ecock

Rude

JordynsReview

FuckingTrolls

BiggestBitch

HypocriticalStalkingBitch

But we saved the best for last.  This review was written by a GR bully named Blythe who attacked and harassed a 14 year old girl for taking offense to Blythe’s language because, get this, Blythe is an 8th grade English teacher.  Below are couple excerpts from Blythe’s review:

BlythesReview1

BlythesReview2

Michelle, the 14 year old, wrote in her review:

MichellesReview

To which Blythe responded in her own review at the bottom:

BlythesEdits

Then Blythe rallied the bullies and attacked Michelle on the comment thread of Michelle’s review.  Archer, one of the three ringleaders, left this comment to Michelle:

ArchersResponse

Okay, so, breathe slowly and let’s recap.  Lady Blythe is an 8th grade English teacher who lives in California.  Archer is a 20-something man who lives in Australia.  And this is how they treat a 14 year old girl.

Are you disgusted yet?

Wait!  There’s more.  Let’s check out Goodreads terms of service where it specifically talks about children and inappropriate content.  If a person creates an account on Goodreads, he or she has to agree to these terms:

You agree not to post User Content that: (i) may create a risk of harm, loss, physical or mental injury, emotional distress, death, disability, disfigurement, or physical or mental illness to you, to any other person, or to any animal; (ii) may create a risk of any other loss or damage to any person or property; (iii) seeks to harm or exploit children by exposing them to inappropriate content, asking for personally identifiable details or otherwise; (iv) may constitute or contribute to a crime or tort; (v) contains any information or content that we deem to be unlawful, harmful, abusive, racially or ethnically offensive, defamatory, infringing, invasive of personal privacy or publicity rights, harassing, humiliating to other people (publicly or otherwise), libelous, threatening, profane, or otherwise objectionable; (vi) contains any information or content that is illegal (including, without limitation, the disclosure of insider information under securities law or of another party’s trade secrets); or (vii) contains any information or content that you do not have a right to make available under any law or under contractual or fiduciary relationships; or (viii) contains any information or content that you know is not correct and current.

So, do you think Goodreads is enforcing its TOS?  From the evidence above, I’d say not.

Per a site visitor’s request, we set up a twitter account for STGRB where we will be broadcasting new posts and anything else that comes along.  Our “Follow Us” button is located on the left hand side of our blog for all those who are interested.  The account is set up under “protected” so that non-friends cannot see our tweets, nor who is following us (some people have created anonymous twitter accounts, as an extra precaution, just to follow our twitter feed.  We recommend this if you are concerned about them stalking you.)  Funny thing is, the moment the twitter account went live, Athena discovered some rather hilarious tweets.

Tweet #1:

Disappear

Well, that’s it!  We’re gone from twitter now because Tammy can’t see us anymore.  *snort*  I suppose no one can really credit these people for being overly bright.

Tweet #2:

NothingBetterToDo

Within hours of our twitter account being set up, Amanda has “nothing better to do” than find out we’re on twitter, stalk us, and then tweet about it.  Oh, the irony!

We checked out both of these individuals and *surprise, surprise* guess who their friends are.  Yep, you know it.

Now, onto the Amazon bully reviews.  Just recently we received this comment from Anon-a-bus:

Link to an interesting bully review on Amazon someone told me about. At least this time two people commented and argued the point with the reviewer. I wish everyone would do this when they see bully reviews.

Here are screenshots of the review and the comments:

Review1

CommentsForReview1

We agree with Anon-a-bus.  More people should step in and let reviewers know in a polite way (well, as polite as they can be) that these types of reviews are inappropriate.  Any review that is not specifically about the book’s content and the reviewer’s opinion of it, is not an appropriate review.  Rating and reviewing a book you haven’t read, or bashing the author in the review, or writing anything other than a review of the book itself, for us, is considered bully reviewing.  However, not all people who write these kinds of reviews are bullies.  Some simply just don’t know.  Take , for example, that was found by Goronwy:

Review2

Comment1ForReview2

Comments2ForReview2

In this case, Nicole simply didn’t realize what she was doing until it was brought to her attention.  We want to make it clear that we don’t consider her a bully, only that what she wrote we consider bully reviewing.  Hurting an author’s book without any good reason.  It’s one thing if you read the book and don’t like it.  It’s another if you slam a book for no reason, or worse, to get revenge on an author whom either you or your “friends” don’t like.  This is what we hope to show our readers.  And in turn, we hope that they will educate others about what is acceptable and what is not acceptable.

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