The First Five Days on Goodreads

I just fell down the rabbit hole clicking through your post. I loved it. Is it wrong that the pic of the drama llama is priceless to me?

lol. Ive just written some less thancomplimentary (but fair reviews) both on Cass' work (the siren) and on Fallon's carrier of the mark. Oops. I did get attacked about the siren, but as yet nothing on COTM.....

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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?

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.

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 :D April @ My Shelf Confessions

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 :P

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.

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

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

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.)

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.

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

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!

Pretty hot drama llama you got there.

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.

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?

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!

Excellent summary, I'll link it when askedLucy

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

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

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

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!

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.

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!

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.]

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.

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!

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. :/

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. :]

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.

I like you. Too.

I like you.

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." ;)

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?

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.

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