For the past couple of months, I’ve been following the controversy around Cait Corrain. Her debut fantasy novel, Crown of Starlight, was set to release in May of this year, but she was dropped by her publisher and agent after it was found that she created several fake Goodreads accounts to review bomb fellow debut authors, mainly those who are people of color. This has been huge on TikTok and Instagram as some of the authors who were review bombed by Corrain spoke out. Author Xiran Jay Zhao exposed Corrain in December of 2023 showing the fake accounts giving one-star reviews to debut authors and high ratings and positive reviews for her own book. Corrain initially provided screenshots from a chat with a friend that did this to help promote their book, but in their apology stated that they made up this friend and made fake screenshots. Corrain said that they suffer from depression which is why they did this. The controversy has added to an ongoing conversation of review bombing and artificially decreasing or increasing a rating on Goodreads.
While this controversy hasn’t affected me personally, I think the ongoing conversation about Goodreads review bombing affects me personally and professionally. I’ve said in the past that I love using Goodreads for myself and I often use it at work in Readers’ Advisory, too. While I don’t tend to look at an overall rating on a book, I do look at reviews. Goodreads has a problem with people posting reviews before books are even published or if someone hasn’t even read the book at all. This situation has really left me wondering if Goodreads is a truly helpful platform for some things. While I still enjoy using it for myself, I’m wary about using ratings on Goodreads for Reader’s Advisory.
For those who are interested in more about this controversy, the Wikipedia article does a great job of summing up the situation and provides great source content. Also, I would highly recommend watching the TikToks posted by Xiran Jay Zhao. They do a wonderful job of explaining what happened and why this was so harmful.
I also remember seeing this on my TikTok for you page! I didn't realize Cait Corrain was dropped by her publisher. It was definitely a tough lesson for her to learn, but I feel that, if you are going to put your work out there, you should do so with integrity and knowledge that you put the best that you can offer. Her actions tell me that she feels these other authors wrote better stories than her and that she felt she had to do something to prevent them from stealing the spotlight from her book.
ReplyDeleteI totally agree with you on the issue with ratings on goodreads. I almost never rely on them for myself or just read over them for a good laugh (there's a two-star review by Katrina Lumsden of Silvia Day's Bared to You that I found at work when setting up our "Blind Date with a Book" display that had me cackling; here's the link to it if you're interested: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13570651-bared-to-you) They are almost useless, especially when people rate a book that doesn't even have a title yet.
I think I remember seeing this on TikTok as well! It's interesting to see what different avenues a disingenuous author (or really anyone with a grudge) might take to sabotage other authors as book-related social media and sites continue to evolve. I have had similar thoughts regarding the ratings on sites like goodreads - while I may look to them on occasion to get a general feel for a book, I know there are no real checks to confirm the legitimacy of reviews (like a confirmed purchase on Amazon, or something similar).
ReplyDeleteI had totally forgotten about this! I am so glad you brought it up to discuss. Review bombing is the worst and Goodreads "sometimes" is on the ball about stopping fake reviews - but it seems to be a pretty big issue. Great response!
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