Speaker 1: There Are No Girls on the Internet. As a production
Speaker 1: of iHeartRadio and Unbossed Creative. I'm Bridget Toad and this
Speaker 1: is there Are No Girls on the Internet. Okay, So Mike,
Speaker 1: I desperately need to talk about what's going on with
Speaker 1: the Goodreads review bombing story. Honestly, this is like probably
Speaker 1: one of the more wild stories I've heard in a
Speaker 1: very long time. And if I'm saying that somebody who
Speaker 1: covers weird, wild stories on the Internet, if I'm saying this,
Speaker 1: you know it's truly wild.
Speaker 2: We were going to do this in this week's news.
Speaker 1: Roundup, but honestly, I had so much to say about
Speaker 1: it that I decided it needed to be its own thing.
Speaker 1: That's because it really involves a lot of stuff that
Speaker 1: I spend a ton of time thinking and talking about.
Speaker 1: First of all, book communities online. I don't know how
Speaker 1: tapped in you are to like online book communities like
Speaker 1: book Talk or books to Graham, but the drama is
Speaker 1: always very deep when it's online book drama. Like people
Speaker 1: who are voracious readers and connect about it on the Internet,
Speaker 1: their drama is very deep. I consider myself part of
Speaker 1: that community, by the way, So this is I can
Speaker 1: say that because I'm one of them.
Speaker 3: Okay, this is good context. I have. You often tell
Speaker 3: me about very intense internet drama, and it often involves
Speaker 3: book clubs. I didn't so I didn't realize that this
Speaker 3: was like a particularly common thing of book communities. But
Speaker 3: it makes sense.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, So that's part of why I'm so interested
Speaker 1: in this. But there's also issues of how platforms impact
Speaker 1: marginalized people, like a lot of issues mixed up with
Speaker 1: what it means to be a creative professional in this
Speaker 1: day and age, and how the internet experience has sort
Speaker 1: of complicated that, and also good old fashioned jealousy, something
Speaker 1: I know quite a bit about. So there's a lot
Speaker 1: going on here, so let's get into it. So this
Speaker 1: story really all starts with an author named Kate Corian.
Speaker 1: She's an author who had a highly anticipated book coming
Speaker 1: out called The Crown of Starlight, which was meant to
Speaker 1: be out in May of twenty twenty four. I also
Speaker 1: read that she might have had like this book deal
Speaker 1: and then like a subscription box deal from this book,
Speaker 1: and then like maybe even like a film publishing deal
Speaker 1: on the table. So Kate is a writer who had
Speaker 1: a lot of positive things going on, like she was
Speaker 1: really doing the damn thing very successful. But now Kate's
Speaker 1: book has been shelved after she admitted using Goodreads to
Speaker 1: review bomb a bunch of forthcoming books mostly by black,
Speaker 1: Asian and queer authors.
Speaker 2: Kate is white.
Speaker 1: It sounds like this had been going on for kind
Speaker 1: of a while and that it was something that the
Speaker 1: writing community was aware of and like knew what was happening,
Speaker 1: but was up until this point kind of hoping to
Speaker 1: deal with privately.
Speaker 3: They knew that She's in particular was doing it, or
Speaker 3: just that it was like a general problem in their community.
Speaker 1: Okay, so great question. I would say both. I think
Speaker 1: that writers knew that this specific writer, Kate, was doing this,
Speaker 1: and I think that writers were generally aware that good
Speaker 1: Reads and good Reads bombing, like like submitting tons and
Speaker 1: tons of bad reviews for a book even if you
Speaker 1: haven't read it, is an ongoing problem in the space.
Speaker 1: So I think I would say both if I had
Speaker 1: to say so. The first time that this came on
Speaker 1: my radar was when Canadian author Saran jays Wow first
Speaker 1: tweeted about it, and that's when it really got more
Speaker 1: wide attention online. So they first noticed that Kate's book
Speaker 1: Crown of Starlight was getting good reviews from the same
Speaker 1: accounts that were also trashing other books. Some of those
Speaker 1: books were not even out yet, so Zerin tweeted, if you,
Speaker 1: as a debut author, are going to make a bunch
Speaker 1: of fake goodbeats accounts one star bombing fellow debuts that
Speaker 1: you're threatened by, can you at least not make it
Speaker 1: so obvious by uploading your own book on a bajillion
Speaker 1: different lists with those same accounts. So they then posted
Speaker 1: a thirty one page Google document, which we'll link to
Speaker 1: in the show notes of receipts screenshots showing the good
Speaker 1: Reads activity of a number of accounts with user names,
Speaker 1: including names like chantal b and O C. Young that
Speaker 1: they suspected were actually Kate leaving good reviews for her
Speaker 1: own book and bad reviews for other people's debut books.
Speaker 1: So the books that she left bad reviews for were
Speaker 1: mostly written by people of color, including So Let Them
Speaker 1: Learn by Camilla Cole, which was meant to be released
Speaker 1: in January of next year, and To Gaze Upon Wicked
Speaker 1: Guds by Molly X Chang, whose book is actually being
Speaker 1: put out by the same publisher del Rey as Kate's book.
Speaker 1: So this is the same like trashing a fellow writer
Speaker 1: whose book is being published by the same company. Pretty bad, But.
Speaker 3: It's also like not surprising at all, right that like
Speaker 3: this sort of petty jealousy would be happening within a
Speaker 3: single publishing house. I bet these women know each other,
Speaker 3: and have you been in the same circles for a while.
Speaker 1: Notably, the authors of these books say that in some
Speaker 1: cases their books weren't even available yet, they hadn't been published,
Speaker 1: and in some cases they had not even sent out
Speaker 1: like advanced copies or galley So like, how could someone
Speaker 1: be reviewing it if there's like there's no way to
Speaker 1: actually read the book, it's not out yet, they have
Speaker 1: not sent out any kind of advanced copies. How is
Speaker 1: someone leaving bad reviews already on Goodreads? Something else to
Speaker 1: note here is that these reviews are not just negative.
Speaker 1: In some cases, they're like down right mean. In one review,
Speaker 1: Kate writes, I can't believe Dell race but half a
Speaker 1: million dollars on this when they could have spent half
Speaker 1: a million dollars on anything else. Sorry, not sorry, Like
Speaker 1: that's not even that, that's just like a mean review.
Speaker 1: You don't deserve the money that you were paid to
Speaker 1: write this book, and literally anything else would have been
Speaker 1: a better way to spend that money.
Speaker 2: That it's not a.
Speaker 1: Criticism of the book or the text, it is like
Speaker 1: just a mean insult.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and it just drips with that same petty jealousy,
Speaker 3: like they could have spent it on anything else, like
Speaker 3: one of my books. Yes, that should have that money
Speaker 3: should have been my money.
Speaker 1: Hold that thought because yes, a million times yet, and
Speaker 1: that's going to come up very soon. So we also
Speaker 1: need to talk about the fact that there is a
Speaker 1: very real, like identity aspect to this, like a very
Speaker 1: real racial aspect to this.
Speaker 2: I want to come back to that in just a moment.
Speaker 1: But some of the names that Kate chose are clearly
Speaker 1: meant to sell like they could belong to people of color.
Speaker 1: Names like oh Cee Young were some of the fake
Speaker 1: names that Kate used to leave me in reviews on
Speaker 1: other people's work. And then like using a fake name
Speaker 1: that is clearly meant to sound like it is the
Speaker 1: fake name of a person of color to trash authors
Speaker 1: of color while also praising her own work as a
Speaker 1: white woman.
Speaker 2: Is like so diabolically like messed up.
Speaker 1: That's just so, that's like there's layers to how fucked
Speaker 1: up that is so.
Speaker 2: Using the fake name O. C.
Speaker 1: Young Kate left this review on her own book, I
Speaker 1: love this book so much that I regret reading it
Speaker 1: because now nothing on my to be read sounds as
Speaker 1: interesting by comparison, So like, clearly that's not just hyping
Speaker 1: up her own book, it is a way to trash
Speaker 1: other authors of color in the process. Zal, that Canadian
Speaker 1: author who was the first person that I saw tweeting
Speaker 1: about this, really summed it up. They say, there's something
Speaker 1: extra despicable about using clearly people of color names in
Speaker 1: fake accounts to upvote every negative review on people of
Speaker 1: color books, So the top ones are all one and
Speaker 1: two star, like what in the Yellow Face. What's also
Speaker 1: funny about that is that if anybody has read the
Speaker 1: novel Yellow Face, which was probably one of my favorite
Speaker 1: novels of this year, it's like a plot point from
Speaker 1: that novel of a white writer being kind of like
Speaker 1: pretending to be a person of color because they are
Speaker 1: so jealous of writers of color. It's so interesting how
Speaker 1: this whole situation mirrors the plot line of a very
Speaker 1: popular novel that everybody should read it with the best
Speaker 1: novel where I read this year. So this is already
Speaker 1: like a really awful messed up thing to have done.
Speaker 1: But when Kate was called out on it, rather than
Speaker 1: just messing up and coming clean and being like, yep,
Speaker 1: I did this, jealousy got the better of me. She
Speaker 1: made things so much worse by inventing a fake friend
Speaker 1: to take the fall. So a bunch of these debut authors,
Speaker 1: including authors whose books were targeted by Kate, were all
Speaker 1: in a slack channel for debut writers, and of course
Speaker 1: they were discussing what happened and starting to suspect Kate.
Speaker 1: Meredith Mooring, who it sounds like was friends with Kate,
Speaker 1: told them all like, oh, listen, Kate did not do this.
Speaker 1: She could not have done this, and Kate has proof
Speaker 1: that she didn't do this. It was a friend of
Speaker 1: hers who did this. Meredith told the writers in this
Speaker 1: debut writer slack channel, hold tight, Kate will pop in
Speaker 1: to explain. And eventually Kate does pop into this slack channel,
Speaker 1: explains she writes, I did not capital letters review bomb anyone.
Speaker 2: I did not positively review.
Speaker 1: My own book with false accounts, So basically this is
Speaker 1: Kate's explanation.
Speaker 2: She says that somebody.
Speaker 1: Named Lily in the Ray Low fandom community, which is
Speaker 1: a particularly like dedicated on online fan community that centers
Speaker 1: on the romantic relationship between two Star Wars characters, Ray
Speaker 1: and Kylo Wren. And she said that this person Lily,
Speaker 1: she had met this person through this like particularly dedicated
Speaker 1: online fan base, and that in this fan base, you
Speaker 1: like would she would like pick up people like this
Speaker 1: who were just like very very dedicated, and that that
Speaker 1: was the person who was behind these reviews. This person
Speaker 1: Lily was just like a friend of hers, believed so
Speaker 1: much in her writing, wanted to make her writing a success,
Speaker 1: and that's why she was She was the one who
Speaker 1: was behind these reviews. Kate wrote in the slack channel.
Speaker 1: This person is someone I knew from a time in
Speaker 1: Star Wars fandom, where I was a well known fan
Speaker 1: fiction author and a lightning rod for unhinged behavior, the
Speaker 1: type of behavior that anyone else who was well known
Speaker 1: in the fandom at the time still sees online.
Speaker 2: I have no further details. I haven't heard anything else
Speaker 2: from them.
Speaker 1: I never responded, so I gotta give a you know
Speaker 1: how we usually do like warnings when we're gonna talk
Speaker 1: about something that is like really bad on the podcast.
Speaker 1: I have to give a cringe alert for this because,
Speaker 1: oh my god, is it cringey.
Speaker 2: So the proof in quotes that Kate shares that.
Speaker 1: She didn't do this and that Lily did is these
Speaker 1: screenshots of faked back and forth conversations between Kate and Lily. Mike,
Speaker 1: are you down to do a dramatic reading of these
Speaker 1: conversations with me?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Should I be Kate or should I be Lily?
Speaker 2: You be Lily, I'll be Kate.
Speaker 3: Okay. It seems like the reviews were positive, but I
Speaker 3: didn't do anything. Question Mark Reading books high is against
Speaker 3: the rules question mark no.
Speaker 1: But making fake accounts to rate them high is. It's
Speaker 1: artificially inflating a book's reviews. That's against the rules.
Speaker 3: Grimacing emoji. Oh, I didn't realize you could get in trouble.
Speaker 3: What please don't get mad. I made a couple accounts.
Speaker 3: I think that was me?
Speaker 1: What?
Speaker 4: Why?
Speaker 3: The other night you were worrying that your book would
Speaker 3: get overshown by bigger books at your publisher. I wanted
Speaker 3: to help, so I made a couple accounts to rate
Speaker 3: your book high. I'm sorry. I really didn't think it
Speaker 3: would be a problem.
Speaker 1: What the fuck Why I don't need fake reviews to
Speaker 1: help me?
Speaker 3: Jesus Christ, I'm sorry. I really didn't think it would
Speaker 3: hurt exclamation point. I was trying to be nice.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, I don't even know what to say.
Speaker 1: I don't need you to step in and try to
Speaker 1: be nice with this. Do you have any idea how
Speaker 1: patronizing that is, how humiliating Svelden correctly, how much damage
Speaker 1: you could have done.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna be sick, literally going to please tell.
Speaker 1: Me that, for the love of God, you weren't actually
Speaker 1: stupid enough to use the same accounts that you made
Speaker 1: to boost me to bomb other people.
Speaker 3: Well, I didn't think anyone would notice.
Speaker 1: I'm literally going to be sick. I need to email
Speaker 1: my agent. This could literally cost me my fucking career.
Speaker 1: I don't even know what to say. This is such
Speaker 1: a violation of my trust and of our friendship.
Speaker 3: I'm so so sorry, Kate, I'm really sorry. I didn't
Speaker 3: think it would hurt Booh, she.
Speaker 1: Just types a bunch of letters like random letters.
Speaker 2: How could it not hurt? Who the fuck did you
Speaker 2: go after.
Speaker 3: It was just the books you said you were worried
Speaker 3: would bury yours on social media? Wicked gods and faint
Speaker 3: inked and blood.
Speaker 1: You went after people in my imprint, in my debut group.
Speaker 2: Do you have any.
Speaker 1: Idea how much this could have cost me? I could
Speaker 1: lose my deal, I could lose everything all caps. If
Speaker 1: this is what Zarin was talking about, I'm going to
Speaker 1: kill you all day. I've been sitting here worried that
Speaker 1: someone was review bombing me, only to find out that
Speaker 1: I wasn't the victim of a review bombing campaign, but
Speaker 1: instead someone I trusted and considered a friend really thought
Speaker 1: I was so insecure and helpless that I needed you
Speaker 1: to fuck step in and level the playing field.
Speaker 3: I'm so sorry. I didn't think people would think it
Speaker 3: was you. I tried to make the accounts look real.
Speaker 1: I don't even know what to say. That somehow makes
Speaker 1: it even worse. Seriously, what the fuck, dude? I trusted you,
Speaker 1: I told you about stuff I was insecure about, and
Speaker 1: you literally turned right back around and pulled this shit.
Speaker 1: You understand that we're done here, right and scene? Oh
Speaker 1: my god?
Speaker 2: So, first of all, I have.
Speaker 1: To say it just sounds so fake, Like when you
Speaker 1: read it out loud, knowing this is a conversation between
Speaker 1: one person, like someone's faking a like someone is playing.
Speaker 2: Both parts of this, it just sounds so fake.
Speaker 3: There's like a long part of just straight exposition in there.
Speaker 3: I've been sitting here worried that someone was review bombing me,
Speaker 3: only to find out that I wasn't the victim of
Speaker 3: a review bombing campaign, but instead someone I trusted and
Speaker 3: considered a friend really thought I was so insecure, Like
Speaker 3: nobody taught.
Speaker 1: Nobody explains, like conveniently explains what is happening in their
Speaker 1: life in such clear and explicit terms. It's like when
Speaker 1: you watch a movie and the main character is like, oh, well,
Speaker 1: a convenient explanation of what's going.
Speaker 3: On in the plot, yeah, or like right when they've
Speaker 3: got James Bond captured and the villain is explaining his
Speaker 3: master plan.
Speaker 1: So I cannot believe that this is what she published
Speaker 1: on the Slack channel to prove in heavy quotes that
Speaker 1: she was not the person behind this review bombing. And
Speaker 1: I really got to give it to the authors of color,
Speaker 1: some of who weren't even targeted, who just like cared
Speaker 1: about this enough to stay on it.
Speaker 2: Who really stayed on Kate.
Speaker 1: Even after she dropped this very compelling proof to get
Speaker 1: to the truth. So people were asking, like, can you
Speaker 1: show us earlier conversations between you and Lily so that
Speaker 1: we can actually verify this person exists? Like, very convenient.
Speaker 1: That's the only conversations that you're able to show are
Speaker 1: conversations where you're talking about this specific incident and not
Speaker 1: any other conversations from somebody that you said that you've
Speaker 1: had an online friendship with that was so deep that
Speaker 1: they that it led them to do this.
Speaker 2: Pretty weird, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, pretty weird. Pretty weak evidence.
Speaker 1: Very weak evidence, Like, I honestly can't believe that she
Speaker 1: posted this.
Speaker 3: She's a novelist, right, Like, yeah, she's supposed to make
Speaker 3: up stories that presumably sound plausible. Yeah.
Speaker 2: It really.
Speaker 1: Kind of makes you think, like, like, oh, maybe this
Speaker 1: is why she felt like she had to do this
Speaker 1: review bombing scheme because she didn't think she was going
Speaker 1: to be successful on her own. Maybe if this is
Speaker 1: the caliber of writing that she puts out, it's pretty
Speaker 1: weak writing.
Speaker 4: Let's take a quick break at her back.
Speaker 1: So after she released this proof, and writers were like, no,
Speaker 1: can you give us some more proof? She eventually did
Speaker 1: admit the truth that there was no Lily and that
Speaker 1: she was the one who had done the review bombing.
Speaker 1: Here is her apology slash explanation that she posted. Apology
Speaker 1: maybe is too strong. You tell me you be the judge,
Speaker 1: she wrote. Since June twenty twenty two, I've been fighting
Speaker 1: a losing battle against depression, alcoholism, and substance abuse, the
Speaker 1: full scope of which I've hidden from everyone in my
Speaker 1: life out of shame and a misguided belief that with
Speaker 1: the right medicine and therapy I could beat it. In
Speaker 1: late November twenty twenty three, I started a new medication,
Speaker 1: and on December second, twenty twenty three, I suffered a
Speaker 1: complete psychological breakdown. During this time, I created roughly six
Speaker 1: profiles on good Reads, and along with two profiles I
Speaker 1: made during a similar but shorter breakdown in twenty twenty two,
Speaker 1: I boosted the rating of my book, bombed the ratings
Speaker 1: of several fellow debut authors, and left reviews that ranged
Speaker 1: from kind of me to downright abusive. Two of those authors,
Speaker 1: Molly X. Chang and Danielle Jensen, are fellow del Rey authors.
Speaker 1: Camilla Cole and Bethany Baptiste just happened to be on
Speaker 1: the wrong Goodreads list at the wrong time. I felt
Speaker 1: no ill will toward any of them. It was just
Speaker 1: my fear about how my book would be received, running
Speaker 1: out of control. My memories of this are extremely fuzzy,
Speaker 1: so it's possible there are a couple of other authors.
Speaker 1: If so, I take full ownership of what I did,
Speaker 1: and I as well. I'm sorrier that you'll ever know
Speaker 1: there's something I can say to erase what I did
Speaker 1: to you. When I was slapped on the wrist by
Speaker 1: Goodreads and vague tweeted by a handful of people, I
Speaker 1: panicked that my secret was about to get out. Rather
Speaker 1: than taking responsibility for my actions, I tried to cover
Speaker 1: my tracks. Still in the middle of my breakdown, I
Speaker 1: made up the world's sloppiest chat with a non existent
Speaker 1: friend who was supposedly to blame, sent fake apologies for
Speaker 1: the action of said friend, which only made things worse.
Speaker 1: I betrayed the confidence of my agent, my pub team,
Speaker 1: my readers, my friends. I betrayed my own deeply held values.
Speaker 1: I dragged one of my dearest friends and fellow debut
Speaker 1: authors into the mud with me. When she came to
Speaker 1: my defense, I'll leave her name out of this so
Speaker 1: as not to pull her in even deeper. However, if
Speaker 1: she wishes to come forward, I'll apologize to her publicly
Speaker 1: as well. Let me be extremely clear, while I might
Speaker 1: not have been sober or of sound mind during this time,
Speaker 1: I accept responsibility for the pain and suffering I caused,
Speaker 1: and my delay in posting this is due to the
Speaker 1: spending the last few days offline while going through withdraw
Speaker 1: as I sobered up enough to be brutally honest with
Speaker 1: you and myself. I know some of you won't forgive me.
Speaker 1: I'd recognize that you're not required to. No one ever
Speaker 1: wants to be judged by their worst actions, so it's
Speaker 1: not always up to us. I'll be reaching out to
Speaker 1: everyone directly impacted, though that may take time since I'm
Speaker 1: checking into an intensive psychiatric care and rehab facility, which
Speaker 1: means I'll be mostly off social media as I need
Speaker 1: to give one hundred percent of the program if I
Speaker 1: want it to stick. All I can do going forward
Speaker 1: is try to live my life in a way that
Speaker 1: shows you that these are not empty words.
Speaker 3: Wow, what a redemption arc for her. She was struggling
Speaker 3: with addiction, a secret addiction that no one knew about,
Speaker 3: but now she's over it.
Speaker 2: So yeah, I mean, I will say this.
Speaker 1: I don't want to get too deep into this because, like,
Speaker 1: she may very well be suffering from genuine mental health
Speaker 1: and substance abuse issues. However, I really do take issue
Speaker 1: with how she uses her mental and substance abuse issues
Speaker 1: as a defense, Like it is the very first sentence
Speaker 1: of this explanation, even And I just don't know that
Speaker 1: I would agree that mental health issues or substance issues
Speaker 1: would cause you to do something that is like so
Speaker 1: clearly racially motivated, you know, I don't. I don't think
Speaker 1: that is a defense. And I take issue with how
Speaker 1: she is framing it of like, oh, I was suffering
Speaker 1: from some kind of a mental breakdown. I know plenty
Speaker 1: of people who suffer with addiction issues and suffer with
Speaker 1: mental health issues, and I don't know that this is
Speaker 1: something that I would say is a typical result of
Speaker 1: dealing with mental or substance abuse issues.
Speaker 2: I'll put it that way.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a really good way to put it. Please,
Speaker 3: really mean racial behavior not a typical result of dealing
Speaker 3: with mental health issues.
Speaker 1: So after all of this, Kate's agent dropped, her publisher
Speaker 1: dropped her.
Speaker 2: It does seem like that.
Speaker 1: At first, her publisher, del Rey, was like, oh, we're
Speaker 1: gonna puld her book launch. We're not going to launch
Speaker 1: it until later, like maybe we'll launch it when the
Speaker 1: heat dies down. But then they said recently that they
Speaker 1: are just going to drop her permanently.
Speaker 2: Her friend who.
Speaker 1: Stuck up for her in that slack channel for debut authors,
Speaker 1: Meredith Mooring, has publicly said that she felt lied to
Speaker 1: and that she is you know, saying like, I'm not
Speaker 1: going to talk to Kate ever again, that she lied
Speaker 1: to me.
Speaker 2: I don't trust her, honestly. Here is the thing.
Speaker 1: It sounds like Kate really truly had an amazing thing going,
Speaker 1: a well regarded book deal, a subscription, a subscription, box deal,
Speaker 1: maybe movie rights, and she threw it all away because
Speaker 1: of her decision to do this, Like this is on her,
Speaker 1: Like she lost it because of her own choices.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and we can take her at her word that
Speaker 3: she did this out of you know, fear of her
Speaker 3: own success, but or you know, lack of success jealousy,
Speaker 3: I guess. But even if that's true, and that's what
Speaker 3: motivated her, Like doesn't remotely make it okay. And like
Speaker 3: you said that, like that fear drove her to do
Speaker 3: this thing that threw it all away.
Speaker 1: So I absolutely want to get into that because I
Speaker 1: do think this is a story about what happens when
Speaker 1: you don't check some of your more destructive impulses and jealousy,
Speaker 1: Like dealing with jealousy is certainly something I know a
Speaker 1: little bit about. But like, yes, I agree.
Speaker 2: So there is so much going on here.
Speaker 1: First, I think there is a really clear platform piece
Speaker 1: happening here. It is not surprising to me that this
Speaker 1: is all happening on Goodreads. Good Reads, which is owned
Speaker 1: by Amazon, does say that they have rules against review bombing.
Speaker 1: Their rules say artificially inflating or deflating a book's ratings
Speaker 1: or reputation violates our rules. This includes activity like creating
Speaker 1: fake accounts to manipulate book ratings, purchasing reviews, and incentivizing votes, likes,
Speaker 1: or other actions on Goodreads.
Speaker 2: They have that as their policy.
Speaker 1: However, this is far from the first time that review
Speaker 1: bombing campaigns have happened done Goodreads, and also this is
Speaker 1: not even the first time that they have been racially motivated.
Speaker 1: Back in the summer, The New York Times published a
Speaker 1: piece called how review bombing can tank a book before
Speaker 1: it's published. In it, they described how the same things
Speaker 1: that make good Reads work and like a platform that
Speaker 1: people want to show up to to talk about books,
Speaker 1: you know, excitement and passion around books also makes it
Speaker 1: an effective tool to sabota, and like most online attacks,
Speaker 1: it is more marginalized people who bear the brunt of it.
Speaker 1: The New York Times talked to Cecilia Rabbis, a black
Speaker 1: woman and a former data scientist at Google who left
Speaker 1: tech to write her debut novel called Everything's Fine, which
Speaker 1: is about a young black woman working at Goldman Sex
Speaker 1: who falls in love with a conservative white co worker
Speaker 1: with bigoted views. Her book was the target of coordinated
Speaker 1: review bombing campaigns. Cecilia says, it may look like a
Speaker 1: bunch of one star reviews on Goodreads, but these are
Speaker 1: broader campaigns of harassment. People were very keen to not
Speaker 1: just attack the work, but to attack me as well.
Speaker 1: Some of the reviews actually say like, I didn't read
Speaker 1: this book, I've never read this book, but I feel
Speaker 1: inclined to leave this review anyway, and Cecilia says that
Speaker 1: it's not just like somebody leaving a mean review, that
Speaker 1: this can actually impact how the book is received. She says,
Speaker 1: I was concerned about the risk of contagion and that
Speaker 1: readers and reviewers would dismiss the work without really engaging it.
Speaker 1: I felt particularly vulnerable as a debut author, but also
Speaker 1: as a black woman author. So you're probably not surprised
Speaker 1: to hear how much Amazon has taken over the book
Speaker 1: publishing space. We actually did an episode about it a
Speaker 1: while back with Jane Friedman after somebody on Amazon was
Speaker 1: selling Ai dupes of her books using her name. But
Speaker 1: since Amazon has purchased Goodreads, Amazon has basically dominated the
Speaker 1: book publishing space, and Goodreads is an incredibly powerful tool
Speaker 1: for authors to get their work discovered. So review bombing
Speaker 1: can actually have a meaningful impact on writers getting their
Speaker 1: books read, and it can make or break whether or
Speaker 1: not an author is able to successfully launch their work.
Speaker 1: So on Amazon, like the Amazon Shopping apparatus, it actually
Speaker 1: tells you if the person who is leaving a review
Speaker 1: on Amazon has actually purchased the book or not through Amazon.
Speaker 1: And Amazon's like shopping platform does not allow anybody to
Speaker 1: leave reviews.
Speaker 2: On books that are not yet out.
Speaker 1: However, that is not the case on Goodreads, which leaves
Speaker 1: it uniquely open to coordinated attacks on books that aren't
Speaker 1: even out yet.
Speaker 2: I don't mean books that.
Speaker 1: Aren't out yet in the like, oh, there's a specific
Speaker 1: release date further in the future sense. I mean books
Speaker 1: that aren't out yet in the like this is still
Speaker 1: an idea in the author's head sense, you know, like
Speaker 1: George R. R. Martin's long awaited The Winds of the Winter,
Speaker 1: which is the next installment in his Song of Fire
Speaker 1: and Ice series, does not even have an official release date, like,
Speaker 1: as far as we know, it has not been written. However,
Speaker 1: that has not stopped it from amassing more than ten
Speaker 1: eight hundred ratings and five hundred reviews on Goodreads. As
Speaker 1: far as we know, this book is not even on paper.
Speaker 1: It is like still in George R. R. Martin's head.
Speaker 3: That's pretty wild. I wonder what its rating is.
Speaker 1: It's four point four to h He's got four and
Speaker 1: a half stars.
Speaker 3: I can see someone doing this because they love George R. R. Martin,
Speaker 3: and so they'd want to like give it a five
Speaker 3: to give him a boost or something. Or you could
Speaker 3: see people panning it because they really hate George or
Speaker 3: Martin and giving him a one. How does it get
Speaker 3: like foreign change who's coming in here and being like, yeah,
Speaker 3: it'll probably be all right.
Speaker 1: So it's a lot of people just using this space.
Speaker 1: I'm looking at it now. They're just like using this
Speaker 1: space to be like when is this book coming out?
Speaker 2: Somebody who has been.
Speaker 1: Updating their review for years. Here's the top review. I
Speaker 1: have this plan that when this comes out in twenty fifteen,
Speaker 1: I'm going to drop my child by then age four,
Speaker 1: at off at grandma and Grandpa's house, get myself a
Speaker 1: hotel room, and do nothing but read this for three
Speaker 1: days straight.
Speaker 2: Then an update.
Speaker 1: Alas as twenty fifteen begins to fade, I have come
Speaker 1: to the realization that my plan will never come to frumission.
Speaker 1: It was a good plan. I'll miss the plan maybe
Speaker 1: twenty sixteen. Update of the update twenty sixteen is half over.
Speaker 1: At this point, I'm pretty sure when I purchase this book,
Speaker 1: it's going to be a page that says just watch
Speaker 1: the show, followed by six hundred blank pages. New update
Speaker 1: it's twenty seventeen. I give up another update. It's twenty twenty,
Speaker 1: and I returned to this hopeful snapshot of my optimistic
Speaker 1: youth from time to time to wonder what it must
Speaker 1: have been like to be so innocent. Alas last update,
Speaker 1: Oh my sweet summer child, do you remember what it
Speaker 1: was like to have such hope, such confidence? Twenty fifteen,
Speaker 1: it was going to be your year. But as summer
Speaker 1: of twenty twenty two, phades and leaves began to fall.
Speaker 1: It is clear that no one will be reading this
Speaker 1: book even now, some seven years later, in twenty twenty two,
Speaker 1: what could have been?
Speaker 3: Wow, George R. Martin Lake ruining this guy's life, taking
Speaker 3: away his childhood.
Speaker 2: He's been leaving these reviews for years more.
Speaker 4: After a quick break, let's get right back into it.
Speaker 1: So beyond this being like a tech and platform story,
Speaker 1: I do think there is something to the fact that
Speaker 1: Kate was review bombing and targeting marginalized writers, queer authors,
Speaker 1: authors of color, and that these specific authors were the
Speaker 1: ones that she was concerned were going to outshine her
Speaker 1: own debut. I do think that there's this attitude that
Speaker 1: people of color are like the golden children of publishing
Speaker 1: right now last year, James Patterson, who is this ridiculously
Speaker 1: successful writer said that older white men like him basically
Speaker 1: cannot get writing jobs right now, saying, can you get
Speaker 1: a job, yes? Is it harder, Yes, it's even harder
Speaker 1: for older writers. You don't meet many fifty two year
Speaker 1: old white males, he insisted. Now keep in mind, this
Speaker 1: is somebody that has sold more than four hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty million books during his storied thirty year career, where
Speaker 1: his books have been turned into blockbuster movies.
Speaker 2: Joyce Carol Oates, who.
Speaker 1: I have to say, is kind of my like forever
Speaker 1: problematic save Joyce Carol Oates. She's like the Azalea Banks
Speaker 1: of the book industry.
Speaker 2: Like she like.
Speaker 1: Nine times out of ten she's super wrong, but when
Speaker 1: she is right, she is so right. That's how I
Speaker 1: would describe her. I cannot quit Joyce Carol Oates, she
Speaker 1: is my forever problematic fave. Well, she said the very
Speaker 1: same thing.
Speaker 2: She said.
Speaker 1: A friend who was a literary agent told me that
Speaker 1: he cannot even get editors to read first novels by
Speaker 1: young white male writers, no matter how good. They're just
Speaker 1: not interested. This is heartbreaking for writers who may in
Speaker 1: fact be brilliant and critical of their own privilege.
Speaker 2: So there is this attitude that the only.
Speaker 1: People who find success in the book world are people
Speaker 1: who are traditionally marginalized. But it's so laughably and frustratingly untrue,
Speaker 1: and the data could not demonstrate how clearly untrue. This
Speaker 1: is more clearly that it is white people who still
Speaker 1: and always have been the majority of the book publishing space.
Speaker 1: Penguin Random House did an audit where they found that
Speaker 1: white contributors accounted for seventy six percent of books released
Speaker 1: between twenty nineteen and twenty twenty one. Thirty four percent
Speaker 1: of those writers were male. A twenty twenty analysis by
Speaker 1: New York Times surveyed more than seven thousand popular novels
Speaker 1: published by the largest publishing houses Simon and Schuster, Penguin,
Speaker 1: Random House, Double Day, HarperCollins, and McMillan of the Book
Speaker 1: surveyed ninety five percent of them were written by white people.
Speaker 1: In twenty eighteen alone, non Hispanic white people wrote a
Speaker 1: whopping eighty nine percent of the books sampled.
Speaker 2: So it's white people.
Speaker 1: Like white people are the ones who are dominating the
Speaker 1: industry and always have. I do think there is this
Speaker 1: very assistant attitude that, oh, you have to be like
Speaker 1: a person of color or like somehow marginalized to get
Speaker 1: a foothold in the publishing space. But that just betrays
Speaker 1: the reality that that that like the people who are
Speaker 1: succeeding in the space are white people. It's just is
Speaker 1: this just the truth?
Speaker 3: Yeah, those statue just read, We're pretty overwhelming that in
Speaker 3: that analysis of authors of the books, what were they?
Speaker 3: It was the New York Times studying. Yeah, were written
Speaker 3: by white people. That's like way over the proportion of
Speaker 3: the population that is white.
Speaker 1: And I also think it mirrors this conversation that's sort
Speaker 1: of bubbling up now around does diversity and inclusion efforts.
Speaker 1: We'll have an episode diving into some of this next
Speaker 1: week about that wild situation happening at Harvard. But I
Speaker 1: do think that people will sit here with a straight
Speaker 1: face and say that they believe that black and brown
Speaker 1: folks are being handed like cushy gigs or cushy contracts
Speaker 1: in spaces that have mostly been dominated by white people,
Speaker 1: when the reality is that they don't give us shit
Speaker 1: if a black person or a brown person has wound
Speaker 1: up in a space where there are not a lot
Speaker 1: of black and brown people, best believe that is because
Speaker 1: that person earned that shit.
Speaker 2: They don't give us anything.
Speaker 1: People are out here thinking that, like, oh, they're just
Speaker 1: handing out book deals and cushy reviews and like praise
Speaker 1: to black people.
Speaker 2: I would like some of that, please.
Speaker 1: If they're handing that out, I would love to be
Speaker 1: the first in line that gets them, because that has
Speaker 1: not been my experience. And even beyond the racial dynamics
Speaker 1: at play, I think that Kate's story really is like
Speaker 1: what you were talking about before, Mike, that it is
Speaker 1: one of what happens when you are, as my father
Speaker 1: used to say, when you're so busy looking at everybody
Speaker 1: else's plate that your own food gets cold, right, Like,
Speaker 1: you are so focused on the comparison game and looking
Speaker 1: at what other people have and obsessing about it and
Speaker 1: like really internalizing what's going on with others that you
Speaker 1: can't even focus on what you have, which, in Kate's situation,
Speaker 1: was a lot. Kate had a lot of success, and
Speaker 1: she ruined that because of her own inability to stop
Speaker 1: being jealous and stop obsessing and fantasizing about what other
Speaker 1: people might get.
Speaker 3: Yeah, jealousy is so destructive.
Speaker 1: It's true, And like this is the reason why I
Speaker 1: know this like I'm speaking from experience, is that I mean,
Speaker 1: like I have definitely had to struggle to deal with jealousy.
Speaker 1: I wasn't handling it through review bombing my colleagues, thank god,
Speaker 1: but you when you make something, particularly when you're in
Speaker 1: a creative field. But I'm sure anybody who is in
Speaker 1: any kind of feel can relate to this. You really
Speaker 1: have to work to learn to not let things like
Speaker 1: jealousy and comparison get to you if you're going to
Speaker 1: make anything right like, especially right now this time of
Speaker 1: year where all of my very very talented friends and
Speaker 1: colleagues are making like best of lists and getting awards
Speaker 1: and things like that, it can be hard. Like I
Speaker 1: don't want to negate the fact that Kate probably was
Speaker 1: dealing with very real feelings that are tough to grapple with.
Speaker 1: I've had to do a ton of work to keep
Speaker 1: that kind of comparison and jealousy from making me spin
Speaker 1: out or making me like second guess my own work.
Speaker 1: If this is something that sounds familiar, I will give you.
Speaker 1: I will give folks a tip like the way that
Speaker 1: I have learned to sort of reprogram jealousy in my
Speaker 1: own mind is by kind of flipping the dynamic a
Speaker 1: little bit and so training myself to see the winds
Speaker 1: of people in my circle, the winds of people that
Speaker 1: I know as my own wins, and so like when
Speaker 1: a friend of mine gets on a best of list,
Speaker 1: telling myself like, wow, how great for me that I
Speaker 1: am connected to such a dynamic network of creators that
Speaker 1: I know somebody like this, Like what a win for me?
Speaker 1: You know, this is wow, this is somebody that maybe
Speaker 1: I can collaborate with, Like, what a great thing for me. Like,
Speaker 1: really seeing the wins of other people as wins for
Speaker 1: yourself has really helped me sort of reframe the game
Speaker 1: a little bit and like not be like salty when
Speaker 1: someone gets something that I want, it could be helpful.
Speaker 2: So that's a little tip for folks.
Speaker 1: But I also think it's about remembering that success is
Speaker 1: not finite. Something good happening to somebody else does not
Speaker 1: mean that something is being taken away from you.
Speaker 2: They're like, it is such a white.
Speaker 1: Supremacist and also like patriarchal lie that there could only
Speaker 1: be one there's only enough room for one person to
Speaker 1: be successful.
Speaker 2: Capitalism and white supremacy and all of.
Speaker 1: Those other other forces want us to think that there
Speaker 1: is only enough room for one, but that is a lie.
Speaker 2: There truly is enough for all of us.
Speaker 1: There is enough room for all of us to be
Speaker 1: at the table, There is enough room for all of
Speaker 1: us to be successful, for all of us to have
Speaker 1: what we need. You do not need the voice in
Speaker 1: your head that says that other people doing similar work
Speaker 1: are your competitors and not your collaborators. That voice is
Speaker 1: a liar. There is truly enough room for all of us,
Speaker 1: and honestly, we can all be successful. We can all win.
Speaker 1: And Kate, that's the thing is Kate really was successful.
Speaker 1: It sounds like, but she spoiled it all. And you
Speaker 1: know what, it wasn't authors of color who blocked her bag.
Speaker 2: It was her own behavior, like it was herself in
Speaker 2: the end. That is the main, your main hater, yourself.
Speaker 3: Yeah, what an arc to the story.
Speaker 2: Huh, it's true.
Speaker 1: So we'll add a link in the show notes to
Speaker 1: the different authors who were impacted if you want to
Speaker 1: get their books.
Speaker 2: Show them some love. Yeah, a wild story.
Speaker 1: At the end of the day, remember, don't let jealousy
Speaker 1: let you spin out and block your own bag.
Speaker 2: You truly are enough.
Speaker 1: Don't leave fake reviews, don't make up fake conversations with
Speaker 1: people who don't exist. Just do your best. That's all
Speaker 1: we can do.
Speaker 3: Well, Thanks, Bridget, I really enjoyed that. That was a
Speaker 3: wild story.
Speaker 2: I told you it was wild.
Speaker 1: Got a story about an interesting thing in tech, or
Speaker 1: just want to say hi? You can reach us at
Speaker 1: Hello at tangody dot com. You can also find transcripts
Speaker 1: for today's episode at tengody dot com. There Are No
Speaker 1: Girls on the Internet was created by me Bridget Todd.
Speaker 1: It's a production of iHeartRadio, an unbossed creative Jonathan Strickland
Speaker 1: as our executive producer. Tari Harrison is our producer and
Speaker 1: sound engineer. Michael Amado is our contributing producer. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Bridget Todd. If you want to help us grow, rate
Speaker 1: and review.
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