Daily Archives: December 12, 2023

Goodreads Fake Review Bombing Drama | What’s The Tea?

 in Books / Interesting by

If you in any of the book communities either on X/Twitter or Instagram, you have probably been hearing some of the drama. Allegedly, an author negatively review bombing books and positively reviewing her own with fake accounts. First time author Cait Corrain has been accused of doing this and because of the allegations has had her book deal removed.

Here is part one of the drama as shared by author Xiran Jay Zhao. Visit their Instagram to see all 4 parts to understand the situation. That will give you a nice run down!

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by Xiran Jay Zhao (@xiranjayzhao)

If you want receipts, then you can go here!

Now me being curious me decided to go to Twitter to see what the author has been tweeting. And well…she has released a very lame and horrible apology. I’d recommend giving it a read and having a good little laugh. It’s very….”oh poor me” kind of writing.


So you have a young author:

  • making fake accounts to leave false reviews
  • targeting BIPOC authors
  • targeting books of a similar genre/theme to hers
  • throwing a “friend” under a bus
  • connected to the point above, trying to falsify an explanation with photocopying and fake convos
  • a really embarrassingly bad apology

The other good thing out of this was seeing the level of organization a fanfiction community, specifically the Reylo community, had to band together to say “um no, these are lies.”

So some of you who ended up here may be asking “well so what? they’re just reviews, this kind of stuff happens on Amazon all the time.” And I would say you are right to that point but there are a few reasons why this is so bad.

First and foremost, the author ultimately has lied once being caught. That’s a pretty bad thing to do and not something you want an author to be doing. Kind of raises a lot of questions about their ethics and morals as a writer.

Next, small authors who either self publish, don’t have a massive marketing budget, or just enter the market at a competitive time really rely on those reviews to have sales. They work hard to send our ARCs, work hard to have bloggers read the books and write a well crafted review and rely on reviews on sites like Goodreads to have people pick up their book. It’s difficult to get genuine reviews. But then having one person use fake accounts to just drop a 1 star is wrong. I am not saying don’t give a book 1 stars if you don’t like it, but have a genuine reason. You don’t just start a book you haven’t read because you don’t like the person or, worse yet, know nothing about them but just want their book to look bad.

Then, the author used these fake accounts to support her own book. So gave herself fake positive reviews. Based on my understanding, she had a good book already with positive reviews and a good deal for publishing. So there really was no need for this. It was the icing on the cake.

Finally, there does appear to be some racism involved here as well. Reportedly quite a lot of the authors were BIPOC or the books had those kind of characters in them and negative and nasty reviews were left. In the apology, the author seems to blame medications for what she did. Although as a lot of the comments point out, since when do medications make you racist?

Ultimately, these actions have had consequences. She has been dropped by her publisher and her book is no longer slated to be released in 2024.

I do hope this young woman gets the help that she needs if she is truly struggling with something. But using that as an excuse – when many others battle their own things and exist just find – sounds like a cop out to me. She made a mistake and has not truly owned up to it and if she wants to be an author she will have to work hard to repair the damage.

The internet never forgets and when it spreads this far, this can be career ending before it begins.

So advice to young/new authors out there. Don’t use fake accounts. It can be so tempting to have friends help you by giving reviews. And sure, have your friends read your book and review, but having them just boost you isn’t good. It can also be tempting to make fake accounts to help yourself. But when it comes to this, this is not the way. And of course it goes without saying (although clearly it needs to be said) don’t be racist.

It’s amazing what can be traced back to you when you least expect it. Be safe out there y’all!

Update 12/12 @ 4:30pm: It appears that the author has now turned off commenting on her apology post and may be blocking various individuals as well that are calling her out. While I don’t condone bullying for payback, if you can’t take what you dish out…maybe should have thought a little about this before?

Also you can read a bit more at themarsue.com as well!

Update 12/15 @ 7 am: A few other small pieces of information have come out which you have probably seen going around. As you probably heard, the author crafted a fake conversation with themselves to try and play off the entire situation. You can see this convo below.

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Additionally, as Xiran also added on twitter: