The First Five Days on Goodreads

47 Comments

1. 

   Stephanie - January 5, 2012

   There needs to be a "love" but­ton. I demand it, dammit!

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2. 

   CuddleBug - January 5, 2012

   I'm so glad you're not mad! I kept think­ing, "I know Stephanie just wants this to go away but… damnit, peo­ple need to know what hap­pened here!"I tried to keep it brief and not go into it too much though and I put it in the mid­dle of the arti­cle so it all didn't flare up too much.

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3. 

   Anonymous - January 5, 2012

   Wow, I just can't believe these peo­ple. Is there any decent YA writ­ers left in the world? Or are they all prissy lit­tle princesses who can't take a hit?

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4. 

   Maggie - January 5, 2012

   The five days of the unspeak­able… until Melina Mar­che­tta and Gayle For­man put all oth­ers to shame with their awe­some Twit­ter convo! http://www.goodreads.com/user_status/show/1028495… Thanks for the great recap, Kat. And Rachel Hart­man puts the HOT in "hot new way to destroy a pub­lish­ing career."

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5. 

   hannah moskowitz - January 5, 2012

   I like you.

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6. 

   CuddleBug - January 5, 2012

   I like you. Too.

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7. 

   Becca Christiansen - January 5, 2012

   I can't believe all this hap­pened. I'm so embar­rassed for the way some of these writ­ers behaved. But I'm so proud of my fel­low read­ers and review­ers for not back­ing down.

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8. 

   Julianna Helms - January 5, 2012

   Wow, I actu­ally missed Flannery's dis­pute. Thanks for recapping–it hurts to go back down that mem­ory lane, but I really hope authors and every­one else learned some­thing use­ful from this. :]

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9. 

   Stephanie - January 5, 2012

   Kat,I totally believe peo­ple need to know what hap­pen! That is why I went pub­lic with it. I'm just sur­prised at the huge reac­tion it caused and I admitt to feel­ing a tad bit gui–…what the hell am I say­ing? LOL. Nope, don't feel bad at all!Well, I do feel bad for killing everyone's feed yes­ter­day. That seemed to annoy some peo­ple. That's the main rea­son why I wanted it to die. :/

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10. 

    Patricia - January 5, 2012

    How is this even pos­si­ble? I miss the days when I was igno­rant about shit like that. I didn't even know about the whole tweet thing, although I actu­ally fol­low some of the authors and have seen two of the "If you behave asshol­ish bla" tweets. o.ô (Guess I didn't care back then)Thanks for the recap!

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11. 

    Lauren DeStefano - January 5, 2012

    Hey. Lau­ren DeSte­fano here. I posted this on GR as well but I'll say it again here. The authors who responded to Dan's rather cryp­tic and now deleted GR tweet had NO idea about the Tem­pest drama. as I said here: <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/show.html?id=248683171&page;=5#comment_42890096http://www.goodreads.com/review/show.html?id=2486… />When we responded to Dan, we had no idea about the Tem­pest review, and actu­ally I had no idea what was going on until I had a bunch of less-than-savory emails and replies to a blog I wrote about a year ago: http://www.goodreads.com/author_blog_posts/870544… I deleted most of them because I saw the dis­cus­sion tak­ing an ugly turn and I didn't want to turn what was meant to be an inspi­ra­tional post into some­thing ugly, which is where it was headed. I think my com­ment about Goodreads and 4chan was taken out of con­text. It had NOTHING TO DO WITH THIS REVIEW. I have never par­tic­i­pated in a com­ment thread on a neg­a­tive review, directly or indi­rectly or passive-aggressively.I kept mostly silent for the past few days because I thought any­thing I said would just make mat­ters worse, but given what I'm see­ing here, maybe speak­ing up wouldn't hurt. If you saw my tweet and took offense, my inten­tion was NOT to take part in the ongo­ing drama. I am cool with peo­ple dis­lik­ing me because of, I dunno, my hair­cut or my last name, or flat out hat­ing my book. But please don't think I hate review­ers, read­ers, or peo­ple who use this site. I love the crap out of read­ers. I spend most of every day tweet­ing, face­book­ing, blog­ging, answer­ing ques­tions and inter­act­ing with read­ers and my life would be heather gray with­out them.Over and out.

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12. 

    Andrea K Höst - January 5, 2012

    I snarl and grum­ble at the com­puter, and make up inven­tive insults when I read my neg­a­tive reviews. And then I…well, go play "Star Wars: The Old Repub­lic" or some­thing which will make me feel far bet­ter than I would get­ting drawn into an argu­ment on the internet.[assumed link to xkcd]For me this was a reminder that a pub­lic per­sona might not match a pri­vate per­sona. Not to men­tion that Twit­ter, blog posts, and email should not be used for any­thing you might not want to have pub­licly dis­sected. It's strange (or per­haps not so strange) that the reviews attract­ing these neg­a­tive com­ments have gen­er­ally been well-expressed, clearly explain­ing just why the reader didn't like it (which is so much bet­ter, in my opin­ion, than a mute one star, no mat­ter the level of snark).And sev­eral peo­ple have made the very good point that these kinds of responses would be more than dis­tress­ing for a young teen ven­tur­ing into review-land.[PS. The day I see Goatse on Goodreads is the day I start com­par­ing it to 4chan. It's got a long long way to go.]

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13. 

    Vinaya - January 5, 2012

    THANK YOU! I get so annoyed when I've slept/worked/just gen­er­ally missed an inter­net brouhaha, and everyone's talk­ing about it, but they're being all PC and no-one wants to give you the details on what really went down and you feel like the unpop­u­lar kid in school that no-one will tell any­thing to! This post is awe­some, I hope you do this every time some­thing like this hap­pens so that a) we have a writ­ten record and peo­ple don't con­ve­niently for­get that they were douchebags, and b) so that poor sods like me can get back in the loop with­out hav­ing to hunt it all up them­selves. I heart you Kat!

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14. 

    CuddleBug - January 6, 2012

    Lau­ren DeStephano,I did actu­ally men­tion in this arti­cle that:a) Your­self and most of the com­menters apol­o­gized and claimed to not know about the source thread of the drama.I didn't actu­ally spec­u­late in this area. For the most part, whether oth­ers believe it or not, I think it's true that most of you guys were just respond­ing to a hash­tag. You can't be expected to inves­ti­gate every sin­gle tweet to find out if it has a deeper connection.On the other hand, and this is my prob­lem, most of the tweets do show a dis­mis­sive or out­right hos­tile atti­tude towards Goodreads. If it were a site that had mul­ti­ple func­tions then I could under­stand that there would be a myr­iad of rea­sons for this. But the only pur­pose of Goodreads is to talk about and review books. A dis­sent­ing atti­tude to do this isn't indica­tive of a pos­i­tive atti­tude to review­ers. But I guess that's a dis­cus­sion for another day.I under­stand that you want to put this all behind you. As a Goodreader, so do I. I'm absolutely sick of the drama. I only wrote this blog­post – first of all to make light of the sit­u­a­tions because we could all use some humour after the week we've had, and sec­ondly so that I do not have to reply to the 100th ques­tion of, "What hap­pened here? I've seen all these sta­tus updates…"I'm pretty sure in the link I pro­vided to your blog, the link goes straight to new your com­ment since I wanted peo­ple to be able to see it with­out draw­ing fur­ther atten­tion by address­ing it in the main body of this article.I hope that clears up that this arti­cle was not me tak­ing a fur­ther pot­shot at you.

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15. 

    CuddleBug - January 6, 2012

    Andrea – You're hilar­i­ous. Goatse… ah, the Goatse!Vinaya. You are most def­i­nitely wel­come. That's exactly why I wrote this. So many peo­ple were so con­fused and had missed out – where as, I am a gigan­tic loser and seemed to have been in on almost every debacle!

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16. 

    Elizabeth May - January 6, 2012

    Hah! I love Rachel's scan­dal. Which reminds me that IIIII want to do belly dancing.Good roundup, Kat!

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17. 

    Melanie - January 6, 2012

    Wow, I com­pletely missed all this drama. I'm kind of glad I did. Still, it's all rather interesting.

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18. 

    Ari (Reading After Midnight) - January 6, 2012

    Oh, that's a lot hap­pen­ing in only 5 days. Such a start for the new year..

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19. 

    Anonymous - January 6, 2012

    Excel­lent sum­mary, I'll link it when askedLucy

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20. 

    Kaethe - January 6, 2012

    As another one who missed all the orig­i­nal brouhaha, I thank you. It's vitally impor­tant to know who what when where and why there are inter­net snits/scandals, and I salute you.Appropriately, my ver­i­fi­ca­tion word is "re-vent". Ha!

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21. 

    P.E. - January 6, 2012

    I'm so shocked at all this… even me, in my lit­tle bub­ble of igno­rance heard there was drama. It's really mak­ing me uncom­fort­able about review­ing and authors and reading.Thank you for this post, I'm glad to know every­thing that hap­pened. Knowl­edge is power, right?

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22. 

    lavi - January 6, 2012

    Sad, very fuck­ing sad. I am new to Goodreads and have there­fore skipped the drama while try­ing to fig­ure out how to add shelves and books to my pro­file. But all this is extremely famil­iar. I can­not crit­i­cize GR, and I will not, because I do not know it, but the rea­son why I turned my back on other art/culture sites such as Deviant Art and Allpo­etry was the fact that no one can take crit­i­cism any­more. So what if a reviewer uses pro­fan­ity? I am so sick of this obses­sion with fake kind­ness and cen­sor­ship. If a book makes a reader so angry, or if that is sim­ply their way of speak­ing, they are free to curse and express them­selves. But you always find prissy lit­tle bitches who fix­ate on your every lit­tle curse world, instead of actu­ally read­ing and under­stand­ing your com­ments and your point of view. They judge you and gather their masses against you, using sad faux argu­ments such as "Why can't peo­ple men­tion what they liked?" or "Look at them using those words/phrases/pics?" WTF. And look, I under­stand that it hurts when your book gets torn a new ass­hole, but maybe it deserved it. Maybe it pushed the wrong but­tons, maybe peo­ple are sick of read­ing about the same weak hero­ines, the same abu­sive ass­hole love inter­ests. Or maybe we are all wrong and you, the indi­vid­ual who envi­sions such absurd rela­tion­ships are absolutely right. Does that instantly elim­i­nate our right to com­ment? To dis­cuss? To vent? Lastly, let us be hon­est here. These books that are so crit­i­cized (and for good rea­son) are noth­ing soci­ety can­not do with­out. They are not clas­sics, not even to this gen­er­a­tion, they have lit­tle value over-all. They are okay as escapism, or as a trend, but in the long run, they fail to make an impact because they are uno­rig­i­nal, dumb, silly and most are badly writ­ten. And yet, dis­cus­sions about them ignite cat­a­strophic reac­tions, con­flicts, etc. Very sad. I do not know how I might react if I wrote some­thing or did some­thing and that thing were to obtain bad reviews. I would like to think I have reached an age and a level of matu­rity high enough to cry it out or punch it out or what­ever, and then either write a defense as well as I can, or sim­ply move the fuck on. I would not send my friends to hate-rape the fuck out of my READER, who invested money, or at least time in my shit.

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23. 

    KB/KT Grant - January 6, 2012

    Pretty hot drama llama you got there.

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24. 

    Sandra - January 6, 2012

    I saw much of this drama on Goodreads and was appalled with the crap that went down. Thanks for putting a cohe­sive recap of it all up in this blog. And to Lavi – Amen!

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25. 

    Cory - January 6, 2012

    Gonna have to turn this into the first "six" days on GR, Kat. It won't stop, sadly.

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26. 

    Jeyn Roberts - January 6, 2012

    I take my reviews with a grain of salt. Not every­one is going to like my book. I'm ok with that. Bad reviews do not keep peo­ple from read­ing your book. Bad behav­iour does. Authors are in the pub­lic eye. Peo­ple in the pub­lic eye get crit­i­cized all the time. A truly good artist doesn't let crit­i­cism rule them.

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27. 

    Becky - January 6, 2012

    For the authors that stepped up and apol­o­gized for their com­ments: I'm glad. I'm main­tain­ing my deci­sion to NOT read or pur­chase their work any­more, but for the sake of the review­ers who were being tar­geted (like Stephanie!), I'm glad there was some clo­sure. That being said, I'm appalled at the enti­tled atti­tude being dis­played by some of these writ­ers. It takes hard work and ded­i­ca­tion to write a book. But that hard work does not auto­mat­i­cally guar­an­tee (or enti­tle any­one to) our praise or our money. A reader pays for a prod­uct. It's within a reader's rights to dis­cuss and crit­i­cize what they have paid for, and choose to stop pay­ing for their work in the future. If the writer is unhappy with that, writ­ing is not the pro­fes­sion for them. (Obvi­ously, I'm talk­ing about actual crit­i­cisms of the book, and not per­sonal bash­ing of the author themselves.)

    Reply
28. 

    roro - January 6, 2012

    this was the 2nd time i've encoun­tered a gr fias­co­hope it is over

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29. 

    Misty - January 6, 2012

    Pretty sure this is going to be The Year of the Troll…

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30. 

    CuddleBug - January 7, 2012

    Lavi, I agree that all this drama is really ridicu­lous. But I want to make it clear that book blog­gers tend to be there for each other and sup­port each other.I have a pas­sion for ensur­ing that nobody feels their free­dom of speech is impinged upon or that they need to mon­i­tor their words when it comes to review­ing books. I think what we can all take away from these issues is that, at the end of the day, there is a lot of sup­port out there.

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31. 

    Ebola - January 7, 2012

    So much facepalm. Kind of makes me gig­gle about how much back ped­dling has been done by peo­ple because their douchey­ness has become pub­lic and they've been outed as unpro­fes­sional. My do-not-read list just got fat­ter

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32. 

    Fireflywishes - January 7, 2012

    Wow, I saw the goodreads hash­tag tweets the other day but had no idea they were con­nected to all that drama on the Tem­pest review. After read­ing all those com­ments on Goodreads on the Tem­pest review and then on the sub­se­quent scan­dals – I feel like my head is going to explode. I also feel quite igno­rant LOL peo­ple almost always send me links to drama and I almost never see it unfold first hand (well, I guess I never KNOW it's drama, case in point the tweets I saw) but I also think maybe that's good for my san­ity. Thanks for fill­ing those of us in the non-know in April @ My Shelf Con­fes­sions

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33. 

    Dhympna - January 7, 2012

    Thank you for men­tion­ing the Goodreads hash­tag. Even though many of the par­tic­i­pants were not aware of the bruhaha going on sur­round­ing *Tem­pest*, the hash­tag was still a lit­tle mali­cious and not good natured. Not know­ing the cause of the hash­tag does not absolve the par­tic­i­pants from their actions and state­ments. I found many of the state­ments to be juve­nile and mali­cious. If you don't like Goodreads, then delete your account.

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34. 

    Kate - January 7, 2012

    GAWD. First of all, a big shout out to McGuire for mak­ing us indies look like SOOOO GOOOOD. *sigh*Secondly, why in the world can't review­ers just be review­ers? Isn't that what goodreads is for?? Maybe I'm con­fus­ing it with the "every book is per­fect and won­der­ful" web­site for review­ing books?

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35. 

    Nimue - January 8, 2012

    Thanks for post­ing this. I heard here and there a bit about the *shit* going on o n goodreads but hadn't real­izes what was going on completely.I guess we shouldn't be sur­prised but another ideal goes down the drain. I'm actu­ally still shocked about Leigh Fallon's email and Jamie McGuire's open let­ter. More so about the lat­ter where she imple­ments that not every­one is able to per­ceive her novel (which I actu­ally read and liked) the right way. Are you kid­ding me? The right way?It's good to openly speak about this and to make other read­ers, review­ers and blog­gers aware of it! Thanks.

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36. 

    Anonymous - January 11, 2012

    I don't sup­pose you have a screen­grab of Jamie McGuire's blog post? Because she's deleted it.

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37. 

    Michael Offutt, Tebow Cult Initiate - January 11, 2012

    I think it's funny when author egos are so huge that they feel com­pelled to try and change the opin­ion or right a wrong in a review. Agent Suzie Townsend and oth­ers like her have ENORMOUS egos. I'm sure Krokos and com­pany do as well.

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38. 

    CuddleBug - January 11, 2012

    Oh come now, Anony­mous com­menter. Of course I have captions!

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39. 

    clairewriteswords - January 15, 2012

    What is going on with writ­ers at the minute. Every­one seems to have gone boogaloo.Honestly though, if those writ­ers are that thin skinned then they prob­a­bly aren't in the right job.

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40. 

    Anonymous - January 16, 2012

    Wow, great post. I started read­ing com­ments and when I read DeSteFano's com­ment I wanted spit on my com­puter screen. She is no prize princess, as far as accept­ing neg­a­tive reviews goes. In fact, she sends out a link to review­ers that links to a blog post she wrote – in which she basi­cally says (and I'm para­phras­ing here) all review­ers suck, review because they can't WRITE, and should get a life. What a cow. I will NEVER buy another of her books. Ever.

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41. 

    Lianne - January 18, 2012

    Wow. I've been very lucky on Goodreads, it appears. I've been post­ing reviews for a cou­ple of years now, run­ning the gamut from scathing 1 star reviews (well, rarely scathing, except in one case, but def­i­nitely mul­ti­ple 1 stars) to 5 star raves. I've never got­ten any flack for it, and a cou­ple of times I've had peo­ple 'like' my reviews. I guess I just don't review books with sen­si­tive writ­ers or read­ers who are on Goodreads.

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42. 

    Vinaya - January 19, 2012

    Th-th-there's a link to this post on The Guardian. THE GUARDIAN! :O Kat, you are play­ing in the big leagues now!

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43. 

    CuddleBug - January 19, 2012

    Vinaya, I actu­ally think a mis­take has been made. The link is for a quite fromThe Book­wu­urm and doesn't exist on my blog, so I don't know why I've been linked to, really.

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44. 

    CuddleBug - January 19, 2012

    Anony­mous, do you have any links clar­i­fy­ing your claim that DeSte­fano wrote this blog post or has been refer­ring peo­ple to it?Overall, I've seen her make a video and write two blog­posts defend­ing reviewer's rights to write what they like. She's also been very vocal in her apolo­gies over this incident.If what you're say­ing is true, that would be a big depar­ture from her behav­iour that I've seen and doc­u­mented for myself.

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45. 

    Anonymous - January 23, 2012

    This is why I swore off of books in '03.

    Reply
46. 

    rahul - January 30, 2012

    I love your blog, you should add an RSS feed fea­ture so I can get auto­matic noti­fi­ca­tions of new blogs. If you set one up please email me! i will book­mark you for now. Again Excel­lent Blog!Cheap Flights to Amrit­sar

    Reply
47. 

    Desiree - April 2, 2012

    Thank you for putting this all in one eas­ily acces­si­ble place!

    Reply

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