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url 2019-01-05 21:52
Obsidian Blue: Authors and Readers

Signal boost for a great post by OB -- everyone should read this.

 

And while you're at it, why not go the whole hog and also read Moonlight's The Shaming of Blythe Harris?

 

To Kathleen Hale and her ilk:

Ever.

And for the record:

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text 2016-07-31 19:08
Another butt hurt best-selling author wanks online

@AuthorAvaMiles has posted her "Love Letter to Mean Readers" on Facebook, whining that

 

When I put a book in the world, it’s like sending my child off to kindergarten.

 

 

And

 

But I’m deeply concerned how you as a collective contribute to other people not writing or doing something great because they see how people like you treat people like me.

 

 

And

 

Your words hurt. They’re another kind of bullying.

 

 

 

No, they are not bullying.  They may hurt, but they are not bullying.  Getting stood up for the prom hurts, too.  Are you going to write a "Love Letter to Mean Teen-aged Boys" over it?

 

Your books are not your children.  They just aren't.

 

Author Ava Miles is a best seller.  She has numerous books in print, with literally thousands of glowing reviews on Amazon.  (I didn't look anywhere else.)  She's good enough that Saint Nora Roberts allowed Miles to use her name in the title of Miles's best-selling Nora Roberts Land,  of which the Kindle edition is currently free and currently has 3,450 reviews, 84% of which are 4-5 stars, for an average of 4.3.

 

She has over 9,000 "likes" on her Facebook page.

 

But it's not enough.  It's just not enough, because someone out there, some handful of people, dared to criticize her books. They found grammatical errors, even though she's sure she didn't make as many as other people.  They didn't like the sex in her books or the curse words or whatever.

 

Oh.  My.  Fucking.  Goddess.  The inhumanity of it all.

I wish I had 3,450 reviews.  I wish I had 3,450 copies sold.  I wish, I wish, I wish.

 

I wish every author who self-published took the time to proofread.  I wish every author who self-published took the time to research.  I wish every author who self-published took the time to put out good product.

 

The reality is that they don't.  And some of them are going to get bad reviews.

 

Why am I writing this yet again?  Why am I not able to shut up and be nice/kind/gentle/silent?  I know perfectly well that my outspokenness has had a price.  I know that there are people who probably hate my guts, would never even look at one of my books, and would gladly block me on Facebook with the same glee that Goodreads banned me, and I don't care.

 

I don't care, because I value my integrity more than I value book sales.  (Thank you, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.)

 

I can't afford a professional editor; I have to rely on myself.  I can't afford a professional proofreader; I don't trust them anyway.  My cover art is digital, legally licensed from a fellow seller on Etsy; I added the text myself via Photoshop.  All that said, I wrote for my own sheer joy in writing and if someone wants to find fault, well, they have that right.  I hope they'll buy it and enjoy it and like it, but if not, well, them's the breaks.

 

"You takes our money, you gets our comments," as Ridley so famously said.  (Or maybe it was opinions, or reviews, but whatever; I'm close.)

 

When a best selling author whines about negative comments, however, I see red.  I think of the late Liberace's famous line about crying all the way to the bank.  If you don't like negative comments, don't put yourself out there in public.  Shut down your social media presence and shut your mouth.  People do indeed, as you yourself said, Ava Miles, have a right to their opinions.  And when you have a public Facebook page, when you let your private email address be known, you had better be prepared for the bad as well as the good, because you've had a very healthy dose of the good.  As in good money.

 

And remember when you post your whiny little wankfests that there are other writers who would give their first-born novel to have what you have.

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text 2016-07-31 18:13
Another butt hurt best-selling author wanks online

@AuthorAvaMiles has posted her "Love Letter to Mean Readers" on Facebook, whining that

 

When I put a book in the world, it’s like sending my child off to kindergarten.

 

 

And

 

But I’m deeply concerned how you as a collective contribute to other people not writing or doing something great because they see how people like you treat people like me.

 

 

And

 

Your words hurt. They’re another kind of bullying.

 

 

 

No, they are not bullying.  They may hurt, but they are not bullying.  Getting stood up for the prom hurts, too.  Are you going to write a "Love Letter to Mean Teen-aged Boys" over it?

 

Your books are not your children.  They just aren't.

 

Author Ava Miles is a best seller.  She has numerous books in print, with literally thousands of glowing reviews on Amazon.  (I didn't look anywhere else.)  She's good enough that Saint Nora Roberts allowed Miles to use her name in the title of Miles's best-selling Nora Roberts Land,  of which the Kindle edition is currently free and currently has 3,450 reviews, 84% of which are 4-5 stars, for an average of 4.3.

 

She has over 9,000 "likes" on her Facebook page.

 

But it's not enough.  It's just not enough, because someone out there, some handful of people, dared to criticize her books. They found grammatical errors, even though she's sure she didn't make as many as other people.  They didn't like the sex in her books or the curse words or whatever.

 

Oh.  My.  Fucking.  Goddess.  The inhumanity of it all.

I wish I had 3,450 reviews.  I wish I had 3,450 copies sold.  I wish, I wish, I wish.

 

I wish every author who self-published took the time to proofread.  I wish every author who self-published took the time to research.  I wish every author who self-published took the time to put out good product.

 

The reality is that they don't.  And some of them are going to get bad reviews.

 

Why am I writing this yet again?  Why am I not able to shut up and be nice/kind/gentle/silent?  I know perfectly well that my outspokenness has had a price.  I know that there are people who probably hate my guts, would never even look at one of my books, and would gladly block me on Facebook with the same glee that Goodreads banned me, and I don't care.

 

I don't care, because I value my integrity more than I value book sales.  (Thank you, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.)

 

I can't afford a professional editor; I have to rely on myself.  I can't afford a professional proofreader; I don't trust them anyway.  My cover art is digital, legally licensed from a fellow seller on Etsy; I added the text myself via Photoshop.  All that said, I wrote for my own sheer joy in writing and if someone wants to find fault, well, they have that right.  I hope they'll buy it and enjoy it and like it, but if not, well, them's the breaks.

 

"You takes our money, you gets our comments," as Ridley so famously said.  (Or maybe it was opinions, or reviews, but whatever; I'm close.)

 

When a best selling author whines about negative comments, however, I see red.  I think of the late Liberace's famous line about crying all the way to the bank.  If you don't like negative comments, don't put yourself out there in public.  Shut down your social media presence and shut your mouth.  People do indeed, as you yourself said, Ava Miles, have a right to their opinions.  And when you have a public Facebook page, when you let your private email address be known, you had better be prepared for the bad as well as the good, because you've had a very healthy dose of the good.  As in good money.

 

And remember when you post your whiny little wankfests that there are other writers who would give their first-born novel to have what you have.

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text 2014-08-16 17:35
Somewhere along the way, the whole game changed [What the Kool-Aid Man said.]

Once again, I can't post this on my regular blog, because it feeds to Goodreads, and I'm pretty sure this would get me kicked off there.

 

Fortunately, you're free to skip this TL/DR rant and I'll never know.  ;-)

 

So, here's what happened:

 

Irate author Greg Strandberg posted on his blog on Goodreads a screed against one particular reviewer there who goes by the name Humdinger C. Eggnoggin.  'Dinger, as I sometimes call him, writes mostly brief but often scathing negative reviews, and as far as I know all are based on a perusal of just the Kindle sample.  Strandberg took issue with this, with 'Dinger's overall low average rating, and posted this:

 

https://www.goodreads.com/author_blog_posts/6794001-reviewing-only-the-look-inside

 

(If it has disappeared, never fear; I have a screen shot.) (Update: Yes, it has disappeared.)

 

 

 

 

Strandberg, unlike 'Dinger, was less than fully forthcoming:  He failed to disclose that Humdinger C. Eggnoggin had reviewed his book,

 

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1020246999?book_show_action=true&page=1

 

based on the free sample, and found it lacking.

 

The book 'Dinger reviewed is The Hirelings. Apparently it's a sequel to something, but I'm not sure what.  Nothing in the book's official description mentions a previous book, though the reviewer does. 

 

'Dinger's 2-star Goodreads review is the only one the book had at that time; it has one rating on Amazon, a brief and not very enthusiastic 3-star comment.  I have since added my Goodreads review as well.

 

Strandberg, who indulges the book's listing on Amazon with his own glowing, and some might say overbearing, praises, is apparently disappointed.  By "disappointed," of course, I really mean butt hurt.  So he wrote his nasty little blog post, put it up on Goodreads, and sat back to watch what he expected to be a roast of 'Dinger.

 

It didn't happen.  Oh, someone came to Strandberg's defense, but more people pointed out that 'Dinger was doing nothing wrong . . . and that in fact Strandberg was in the wrong for calling out a Goodreads member.

 

Though both Strandberg and at least one of his defenders insisted the blog was nothing more than an opinion piece and did not attack (or, as one wrote, "attach"), and that no one had been called names, several people flagged the blog for violating Terms of Service's prohibitions against calling out other members/authors/reviewers.  The post was subsequently removed either by or on the order of Goodreads.

 

In fact it was Strandberg who wrote -- and bolded himself for emphasis -- the following:

 

That’s why I’m glad we have people like Humdinger C Eggnoggin – dipshits that can make us all feel 10 times smarter!

 

And yes, Mr. Strandberg, just to repeat what I've already said:  I took a screenshot so that when the blogpost disappears, you won't be able to claim you didn't write it.

 

It was Sunday night when all of this happened, and I was exhausted.  I'd been at the computer all day.  Instead of enjoying my week-end as a time of relaxation, I was trying to catch up on some personal work that had been neglected during the week.  My eyes were dry and itchy, my back was tired, and my fingers were at their wit's end.  When a GR friend alerted me to Strandberg's post, I read it and saw red.  Fortunately, I'm old enough to know not to post in the heat of anger -- or butthurt -- so I wrote my piece and posted it somewhere safe.

 

After a brief night's sleep, I lay in bed this morning still thinking about what Strandberg had posted and what I had written in reply.  And I realized there was much more to the story than what appeared on the surface.

 

And so here is my response to Greg Strandberg, greatly expanded from what a few of you saw last night:

 

 

 

 

 


Josh Olson still said it best.

 

http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/2009/09/i_will_not_read.php

 


Those of us who have been reading for a very long time, and especially those of us who have been reading unpublished and hitherto unpublishable manuscripts for a long time, don't need to read more than a couple of pages (at most!) to know the rest of the book is crap.

 

And some of us are brave enough to risk the bullshit comments from you butthurt "authors" who just can't bear the thought that your precious baby isn't going to be the next superstar.

 

None of you ever bitch about the thousands upon thousands upon thousands upon thousands of fake, bought, sockpuppetted 5-star reviews.  Shall I link you to a few of the fiverr accounts of your own fellow authors who offer, for five fucking bucks, to post your own review of your own book under their account?  Where's the outcry about that?

Where's the outcry about the hundreds and hundreds of review swap reviews, every effing one of 'em five effing stars, from authors reviewing each other because no one else will touch their pieces of garbage?  They haven't read those books.  Maybe they bought them, but they didn't read them.

 

Someone has to get out there and tell readers the goddess blessed truth -- There are a lot of crappy books out there.  I'm one of those someones, and yes, I frequently review on the basis of a sample.  And most of the time I don't give very many stars.

 

But I am so damned sick and fucking tired of being called a bully or a meanie or a troll or a liar or now a dipshit because I didn't read the whole piece of shit.

 

It's still a piece of shit.  Humdinger -- whom I don't know, though we follow each other's reviews -- knows a piece of shit when he/she sees it.  So do I.  There are a lot of other people who do, too, but they've been bullied into silence by the likes of . . . Greg Strandberg . . . because the truth is so hard to take.

 

I can't call out the fake reviewers by name, but I know who they are.  I've watched their accounts disappear from Goodreads (but not Amazon!) day by day by day by day, because they've been identified as paid shills, as PR professionals, as sock puppets.  I can't call them out, but you, Greg Strandberg, you blithely ignore the Goodreads Terms of Service to complain about someone who hasn't done anything wrong at all, save tell the honest truth.

 

That's what Goodreads has come to, and that's damn fucking sad.

 

That's where last night's rant ended.  And where today's begins.

 

It's more, of course, than just Goodreads.  Or Amazon for that matter.  Or Kindle or Smashwords or fiverr or anything else.

 

The whole art of writing and the whole business of publishing has been turned into a really stupid game of some sort, where the object is not to write a good book nor even to sell a lot of copies.  Instead, it's all about "winning" this game, in which "winning" has come to be defined as gathering the most reviews, the most five-star reviews, the most Listopia votes, the most Facebook likes, the most Twitter retweets.  In other words, it's about putting on the trappings of literary success without the success. 

 

I want to go back to that Josh Olson essay and post the core comment, which I've quoted many, many times before because it's so spot on:

 

It rarely takes more than a page to recognize that you're in the presence of someone who can write, but it only takes a sentence to know you're dealing with someone who can't.

 

(By the way, here's a simple way to find out if you're a writer. If you disagree with that statement, you're not a writer. Because, you see, writers are also readers.)

 

There are plenty of anecdotes about editors, agents, critics, reviewers, and their techniques for letting writers know their writing isn't up to par.  Damon Knight allegedly stuck a 3 x 5 card into the manuscript at the point he stopped reading, for example.  I've heard stories of writers who attended prestigious workshops and had their work read by noted author-instructors who drew a big bold red line at the point they felt the manuscript would have been rejected by most editors, and more often than not the red line was on the first page.  This, remember, was in the days when a hard-copy manuscript started one-third to one-half of the way down the page.  That red line often appeared in the first paragraph.

 

How do we know, based on a small sample, that the book isn't going to pan out?  Or at least not pan out for us?  It would be easy to say, "We just do," but that's not fair, even though it's true.

 

First of all, the important thing to keep in mind is that the review is subjective.  Whether it's by Humdinger C. Eggnoggin or by the acquiring editor at HarperCollins, it's one person's opinion.  Even the most successful editors can be wrong in their assessment of the marketability of a given book.  Reviewers aren't "wrong," as such, though they may get some facts wrong.  It's still just an opinion.

 

Second of all, those of us who reject a book on the basis of a very short sample read are doing so because we don't think we are going to enjoy the rest of it.  We may suggest that readers who share our tastes probably won't enjoy it either, and we may even opine that the book is so bad no one will enjoy it, but even at that, the opinion stated is based on what we believe our own prospects for reading pleasure in the book are.

 

I know, for example, that if I open a Kindle edition on my K4PC app on my computer and the pages are filled with excessive white space because the text is double-spaced with block paragraphs, I'm not going to like it.  I don't have to read even the first paragraph.  It would be the same way if the book came from HarperCollins or was a printed hard copy; my personal reading pleasure is facilitated by single spacing and indented paragraphs.

 

But it's not just a matter of those double-spaced block paragraphs by themselves.  The poor formatting strongly suggests that the person who formatted the digital edition and/or the author who approved the formatting doesn't know what a book is supposed to look like.  That in turn strongly suggests that the person isn't a voracious reader who is familiar with books.  And almost every time, people who don't read don't know how to write.

 

Again, see the Josh Olson quote.

 

I don't care how many five-star ratings and gushing, multi-paragraph reviews a book has: If I look at the sample and there are punctuation errors in the first paragraph, I'm pretty sure there will continue to be punctuation errors throughout.  I can't get lost in a story that's laced with bad punctuation.  That's just the kind of reader I am.  I was taught how to punctuate, and when I see commas where there should be periods and apostrophes that aren't there at all or are there when they shouldn't be, I can't read the text.  I don't care how great the story is, I can't see it.

 

There's a corollary to that assessment, though.  If the story is really terrific, the punctuation and grammar and other errors will disappear

 

They will.  Even to the most persnickety of grammar dragon eyes, the errors vanish if the story is good enough. 

 

It never is. 

 

And those of us who have read enough know it.  We know that there are elements present in maybe the first 100-250 words of any novel that will make it or break it for us.  It's not just the punctuation or the paragraph indents or the line spacing.  It's the word choices.  It's the point of view switches.  It's the descriptive narrative.  It's a lot of subtle and not so subtle little things that are either present when they shouldn't be or aren't present when they should be that prove instant turn-offs.

 

Writing a book is hard work.  Writing a good book is almost impossible work.  If the actual writing takes six weeks or six years, there is also the time spent learning the craft, all the books that have been read and reread and digested and analyzed.  There's the editing and critiquing, the rewriting and rereading.  There's the agonizing and dreaming and determining which key scene is going to be enhanced and which beloved but extraneous scene cut. 

 

It's the understanding of character motivation and internal plot consistency.  It's the recognition of what names work and what names don't work.  (Hello?  Greg Strandberg, are you listening?)  It's the careful construction of multiple character arcs so that they all come together with seamless perfection at the end.  It's the planning and foreshadowing, it's the backstory and set-up.

 

People who don't know how to do that, who don't even know that they are supposed to know how to do that, are people who write lousy opening paragraphs.  Their friends won't recognize it, and their paid reviewers won't tell them.  These writers are so afraid of criticism that they simply don't want to hear about it.  Why?  Because if they acknowledge the criticism it means they have to do it all over again the right way, the hard way. 

 

And that's not what they want to do.  They don't want to write; they want to have written.  They want the Wizard of Oz trappings of success, the medals and the certificates, the diplomas and badges, but they don't really want to write.

 

There's a huge disconnect here.  It's not the same game any more.  Writers are no longer writing for readers, creating stories that they truly want readers to love and enjoy and remember.  I always felt that writers had been given a Gift, a very special Gift that allowed them not just to Imagine in ways other people couldn't but also to share that Imagine with others.  To share the Gift, because that sharing, that ability to share, was part of the Gift.  It didn't work if you didn't share.  Does that make sense?

 

And so I was in awe of those writers who had the Gift and who so generously and wondrously shared it with me.  Walter Farley and Jim Kjelgaard and all the Carolyn Keenes and Jackson Scholz and John R. Tunis and Rider Haggard and Conan Doyle and so on.  I hoped that maybe I had a little bit of the Gift and hoped that if I tried hard enough and worked diligently, I, too, could share it with readers out there.  But even if I couldn't, even if no one else ever read anything I wrote or never liked it if they did, I knew that the Gift was never going to be mine to keep unless I shared it.

 

What seems to have happened now is that there are a lot of people who have an entirely different concept of the Imagination.  It's not something they are inspired to share but rather something they use to justify the opposite.  They don't owe their readers anything at all.  Not good writing, not good stories, not honesty.  They feel no obligation to learn the craft, to pay their dues, so to speak.  All of the Gift seems to be something they feel entitled to receive rather than give. 

 

They pay for glowing reviews and know that it's wrong, yet they do it because they find some justification.  They need to do it because others are doing it?  Because without reviews they can't sell their books?  But their books aren't good enough to sell!  No one is buying them!  Even with the glowing reviews, even with the sockpuppet upvotes and the Listopia spam, the books don't sell.

 

And the writers of these books cannot bear to be reminded of that reality.

 

Nor do they understand how this hurts the other writers, the ones who don't spam and who don't buy reviews from fiverr and from social media promotion companies.  They don't understand how it hurts readers, probably because they've never been readers.  It's all a very circular thing.  They don't read so they don't know how to write and so they don't understand the Magic and the Gift that writing is.  They aren't writing to give the reader pleasure, because they don't know what that pleasure is.

 

It's a whole different game, with very different rules that seem to change far too often.

 

Greg Strandberg, the butthurt author whose blog post prompted this rant of mine, provides some of the evidence for what looks more and more like a true paradigm shift in the whole writer/book/reader relationship.

 

In an earlier post on his personal blog, he mocked an author who threatened to sue a reviewer over a negative review.  Defending the reviewer, Strandberg reiterated his own policy of ignoring and not responding or reacting to negative reviews.  When the reviewer came to the blog, however, Strandberg turned on him like a rabid dog.  Any credibility Strandberg might have had was destroyed; no one knew which side he was on, or even if he was on any side.  Was there any contact with reality?  or was this merely a case of an author who was going to milk a situation for all the self-promotion he could get?

 

Did he, in fact, need to be on the "wrong" side because it made him a martyr?  Was it easier to be a martyr, to gain sympathy and support, than to do the right thing?

 

Is that what he was doing with his blog post this past week-end?  Was it more about what readers owed him, and less about what he as a writer owed readers?

 

Has the game changed to the point where the writers are the fans in the stands, booing or applauding the performance of the readers?  As often as we, writers and readers, talk about the audience for certain books, the shift in attitudes actually suggests that readers in fact are no longer the audience at all.  Readers in many cases have become irrelevant, with writers now creating a kind of theater of the absurd, where the audience is ordered to perform for the benefit of the actors.  It's all pretense and show, with fake reviews and claims of sales that don't exist, refusal to admit the sales don't exist or even some kind of weird validation in nonexistent sales.  The failure to sell is never the writer's fault, but always the readers', because readers exist to perform that service for the writers.

 

There are badges of mutual admiration for jobs not well done.  There are toddleresque meltdowns because readers failed to correct the writer's mistakes, failed to provide the writer with editorial guidance, failed to be kind enough, failed to do this, failed to do that.  Readers fail, in a brave new world where writers don't by definition can't?

 

Dafuq?

 

I truly feel as if I'm the only person who cares about this, or at least the only one who cares enough to do anything.  Because it's always been my belief that if you care, if you really care about something, you have to be willing to act.  Otherwise it's just so much hot air, so much posturing and lip service and all that other good shit.

 

The game has changed.  Those of us who care about good books have to change, too.  Or else we just have to shut the fuck up.

 

 

 

 

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text 2014-08-13 16:55
My Problem(s) With Goodreads

 

I finished this post today and wrote it in two days. I have decided to post it for many reasons. The first part is a special sort of ramble. I apologize for this. The second part consists of all the reasons I have grown to hate Goodreads. There are no gifs or pictures in this post, because I didn’t think it needed any.

 

This post took me two hours to tranfer from Word to here and format. If you see a mistake in the formatting or something strange, please comment and I'll try to fix it.

 

***********************************************

 

8/12/14

 

I am writing this on Word on my laptop just in case it could get saved to my Booklikes blog right now, since I’m not sure I will ever put it up. 

 

If I do it will be because Goodreads has gotten even worse. 

 

I created my Booklikes account way, way back in March 2013, and I didn't actually set it up until August 62014, and I truly think it was one of the best decisions I've ever made. 

 

Booklikes is a wonderful community of people who love to read books and who interact with each other on a daily basis. It’s a place where book bloggers can breathe a fresh creative air, and have excessive control over their posts; we don’t worry we’ll step a toe out of line, or hurt someone’s feelings over something silly. And it isn’t just a place for books, and half my posts are about different things because I prefer a variety, and I like the fact that many of the people I’m following do too.

 

Goodreads is the opposite of everything Booklikes is.

 

When I first started Goodreads in February 2012 I felt like I had found the holy grail of websites. I was so excited to have found a website for people like me because I felt like no one else in my life truly shared my love of books. I felt like there weren’t people who I could get in an hour long discussion with over a character’s purpose or a certain passage in a book and I hated that, because I love books and they will always be my favorite medium of entertainment for many reasons:

 

  1. Reading is a supremely private experience. No one is going to but in when you are in the middle of a good book and ask you to recap what’s going on like you would have to do when viewing a film with a relative.
  2. I just love holding that book in my hands.
  3. There are fucking tons of them and tons of good ones, and I could spend my whole day (and all my money) in a bookstore.
  4. You can learn more about a character in a book than in a film.
  5. Those few people you do meet and who you become friends with who also share your love of similar books are usually fucking awesome.

 

I got so distracted right then. Reasons I love books wasn’t the point of this post.

 

The point in this post is to write about my falling out with Goodreads, and why I might delete my account there.

 

When I found Goodreads I found those people who would have those lovely hour long discussions with me and people who shared my almost obsessive enthusiasm with books. And I am eternally grateful to all of them.

 

And I loved Goodreads for my first year. It was just an amazing place to talk about books. But then in early 2013 I started feeling Goodreads had become an almost hostile environment. I blame this on the whole author-reader controversies that went on in 2012 and Amazon’s acquisition of Goodreads. It upset many readers including me. 

 

****************************************************

 

8/13/14

 

I’m going to try this again and just list reasons why I might be deleting my Goodreads account.

 

  • The Goodreads Be-Nice-To-The-Authors Policy

 

To tell you that this pissed me off like all the other readers when it happened is an understatement. I felt that the whole Goodreads community had been degraded and reprimanded like badly behaved children.

 

I agree that no one should be personally berating authors in reviews, but if that author has done some of the things that “writers” like Maggie Spence, Kiera Cass, or Leigh Bardugo have done, I hope that reviewers take notice and make them look ignorant; god knows they’re already doing a fine job of it themselves.

 

  • Friend/Follower Snobs

I’ve only had one friend/follower snob in my two years on Goodreads and that was in the last month. If you don’t understand what I mean by a friend/follower snob, it’s a Goodreads user who sets down excessive and sometimes silly guidelines if you want to friend them, and won’t accept your friend request based on these.

 

Trust me darling, no one wants to be your fucking friend if they have to meet all of those qualifications.

 

  • Clunky Software

Goodreads hasn’t changed the design of their software once since I began. It also frequently crashes, and I have no patience for that.

 

  • Trolls/YA Reader Trolls/Fandom Trolls

 

There are fucking trolls on Goodreads, with the worst kind being the YA trolls. They read these awful long YA series about romantic insert paranormal creature here and if anyone disagrees with them they throw a little fucking hissy fit.

 

I’m sick of that. It’s obnoxious and it shows your immaturity.

 

  • Friend Collectors

 

Don’t get me fucking started.

 

  • Writers Who Friend Readers And Push Their Terribly Written Indy Books On Us

 

I don’t want your crummily written book. I read what I want.

 

  • Excessive Unfrienders

 

The people who will unfriend you if you read a kind of book they don’t fancy, or if you won’t comment on every single one of their fucking statuses. I’ve had this happen to me once and I don’t know why. Oh well, I have friends who I like better than that person.

 

  • PEOPLE WHO SEND OUT HUNDREDS OF GROUP INVITES

 

I have only unfriended one person in all my time on Goodreads and it was because they would send me 30 or so group invites a day. The worst part was that these were all silly groups with like three members that this person would create on a daily basis. At this point she probably moderates a thousand groups.

 

  • Negative Reviews At The Top

 

I find it annoying that if I want to look at reviews of a book I never get to look at a variety of opinions on the book, all I see at the top of the book’s community reviews section are extremely negative reviews. These may have inadvertently turned me off from reading a book I might have loved since the positive reviews were buried under the negative ones.

 

  • Authors Promoting Their Indy Books In A Best Books Discussion

 

This happened a few months ago in the Horror Aficionados group. The discussion was about readers discussing what the scariest book they had ever read was. One truly obnoxious “writer” got into the discussion and started promoting his books left and right. The other users in the discussion weren’t having it.

 

The link to this discussion is here.

 

This kind of stuff happens all the time and I hate it.

 

  • Goodreads Going Through And Deleting Users’ Content

 

This happened to me in 2013. I had a badly- behaving-writers shelf and it got deleted. I replaced it with a the-authors-an-asshole shelf. 

 

*******************************************************

 

I really don’t know if I’ll delete my account because I have put a lot of work into making it what it is, but it’s a serious possibility at this point. 

 

Goodreads needs to change, be more innovative, and respect its users. If it doesn’t soon I hope more readers move to Shelfari or Booklikes. They’ll be doing something right.

 

My Goodreads Account is here.

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