Oh, my goodness, I don’t want to be talking about this. I want to be positive, to be a cheerleader for everything and everyone books, and I work hard to be exactly that guy here, on YouTube , on GoodReads , and on social media like X and LinkedIn . But this one… I feel it requires my two cents, at least briefly, and I promise I will be brief today.
Sam Eades, reporting on Orion’s eight-week online course for their debut authors, wrote in “ How to help debut writers fly ”:
There is no doubt that social media amplifies transparency in publishing, but it can also lead to feelings of envy and anxiety for debut writers, a sense of competition rather than camaraderie.
This is the publishing landscape debut author Cait Corrain entered into when she signed with Del Rey to publish her SF novel Crown of Starlight . But not having, apparently, the added wisdom of advice like that given to Orion’s debut authors, she let that “sense of competition rather than camaraderie” get the better of her.
By now you know the story. Ms. Corrain set up a string of dummy GoodReads accounts and dragged her fellow debut authors, adding them to lists of terrible books (which should not exist on GoodReads in any case) and in general trying to torpedo other authors in an entirely mistaken belief that it would help the sales of her book.
Well, of course that all came out and blew up in her face. This nonsense played out over the past week or so, resulting in yesterday’s decision by Del Rey to drop Cait Corrain and Crown of Starlight .
According to the NBC News website she has also been dropped by her agent.
To say that Cait Corrain’s efforts on GoodReads ended up having the opposite effect of what she was going for is an understatement. Her efforts to torpedo other authors’ careers only ended up torpedoing her own.
Now we’re all forced to ask, “Is she the only one?” The only author, debut or otherwise, to pull some version of this crap? Also from that NBC article:
The controversy, which has been discussed by book lovers across platforms, has put a fresh spotlight on the book industry’s ongoing challenges with Goodreads, which has taken on outsize importance in the publishing world for its ability to make or break new authors. Its importance has been complicated by the prevalence of review-bombing, a problem the website has struggled to contain, even going as far as to ask its users in October to report the “authenticity of ratings and reviews” on the platform.
Do I even have to say…?
Don’t do this.
Whether you’re a debut authors, an indie author, a best-selling author… at any point in your career, don’t do this, or anything like this. Ever.
Here’s the thing, y’all, that you absolutely must hear and remember—breathe this in and keep it with you always:
Writing is not a competition.
Period. There is room for everyone. And I mean literally anyone and everyone. Other authors are not your competition or your enemy in any way. Your career will get off to a better start and please believe me it will be a happier and more successful journey for you if you keep whatever negative opinions of other people’s books to yourself. Of course, no one has to like everything they read. I don’t, even though I give every book I read five stars on GoodReads . But you have to dig deep— deep —to find a book I’ve “dragged” in any way.
And to show that this is in no way new, please go back to this post from way way back in April 2015 and always remember that though you absolutely, even as an author, have the right to your own opinion, you also have the right to remain silent, and a gentleman exercises the latter far more often that the former.
—Philip Athans
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