Author Antics

[Anduin]

45 minutes ago, Cherpumple said:

I know of one case: in 2001 the estate of Margaret Mitchell sued the author (Alice Randall) and publisher (Houghton Mifflin) of a book called "The Wind Done Gone," which was a retelling of "Gone with the Wind" from the perspective of an enslaved woman on the Tara estate who was the daughter of Mr. O'Hara and Mammy (and was Scarlett's half-sister).

Interesting. Though that might not be veiled quite enough. Maybe Randall should have taken it a step or two further in changing things.

[Cherpumple]

Yeah, I'm really curious about how the lawsuit affected the final content of Randall's book. I wonder if she changed the proper names of people and places to create more distance, or if she thought, "screw it, they can't sue me twice" and doubled down on the similarities. Copyright is very confusing.

Speaking of this, I used to know someone who was writing her PhD thesis on "Jane Eyre" fan fiction (yes, really), and I was surprised to learn that many people consider Daphne du Maurier's novel "Rebecca" to be a "Jane Eyre" retelling (or derivative work, or whatever similar term). But the more I thought about it, the more parallels I see. Interesting. And BTW, a new film version of "Rebecca" is coming out next month on Netflix, starring Lily James and Armie Hammer, and Kristen Scott Thomas as the creepy Mrs. Danvers. I'll definitely watch it, but my initial reaction was that Hammer is too young to play Mr. De Winter.

Edited September 16, 2020 by Cherpumple

[Blergh]

I'm not sure this falls under 'author antics' but a few years back Shirley Jones wrote her autobio and claimed that her then-husband Jack Cassidy as well as Anthony Newley and his then-wife Joan Collins had some kind of multi-bond.  While both Mr. Cassidy and Mr. Newley had long since died, Miss Collins was still very much alive and furious over this particular claim. Miss Collins counterclaimed that said bond did NOT happen and SUED Miss Jones.  The court  appeared to have agreed with Miss Collins having a better claim than had Miss Jones and ordered Miss Jones's publisher to remove that particular claim from future printings of her autobio. One has to wonder if either Mr. Cassidy or Mr. Newley would have backed their former wives had they been living OR whether one or both would have attempted to abstain from the whole kerfluffle. 

[Guest]

On 9/6/2020 at 5:35 PM, Anduin said:

I don't know of any cases where authors or their estates have taken people to court over thinly veiled knockoffs. The Tolkien Estate didn't get into Robert Jordan, and Lucasfilm left Christopher Paolini alone. Maybe it's a case of if you change just enough, you can get away with it. 

George Lucas and Fox did sue Universal over Battlestar Galactica. 

[Ohiopirate02]

2 hours ago, Blergh said:

I'm not sure this falls under 'author antics' but a few years back Shirley Jones wrote her autobio and claimed that her then-husband Jack Cassidy as well as Anthony Newley and his then-wife Joan Collins had some kind of multi-bond.  While both Mr. Cassidy and Mr. Newley had long since died, Miss Collins was still very much alive and furious over this particular claim. Miss Collins counterclaimed that said bond did NOT happen and SUED Miss Jones.  The court  appeared to have agreed with Miss Collins having a better claim than had Miss Jones and ordered Miss Jones's publisher to remove that particular claim from future printings of her autobio. One has to wonder if either Mr. Cassidy or Mr. Newley would have backed their former wives had they been living OR whether one or both would have attempted to abstain from the whole kerfluffle. 

Autobiographies pretty much are memoirs, and the rules about what is permissible and what is not in that genre are always shifting.  Because memoirs are allowed to contain false information, it's in the definition.  That is not to say that the publisher did not have fact checkers go through the narrative to try to make sure some of the claims are true, or that names and other details are obscured to help protect the identities.  Publishers all do that, but some things will slip through the cracks and all the author has to do is say "well that is how I remembered it" with a shrug.  

[Guest]

8 hours ago, Blergh said:

I'm not sure this falls under 'author antics' but a few years back Shirley Jones wrote her autobio and claimed that her then-husband Jack Cassidy as well as Anthony Newley and his then-wife Joan Collins had some kind of multi-bond.  While both Mr. Cassidy and Mr. Newley had long since died, Miss Collins was still very much alive and furious over this particular claim. Miss Collins counterclaimed that said bond did NOT happen and SUED Miss Jones.  The court  appeared to have agreed with Miss Collins having a better claim than had Miss Jones and ordered Miss Jones's publisher to remove that particular claim from future printings of her autobio. One has to wonder if either Mr. Cassidy or Mr. Newley would have backed their former wives had they been living OR whether one or both would have attempted to abstain from the whole kerfluffle. 

There was no lawsuit or court ruling involved. Joan Collins sent a cease and desist before the book was officially released. Within a day the publisher agreed to change it in the ebook and future printings. 

Personally I though Collins overreacted and brought more attention to the story. The original story published was that Newley was clearly suggesting a foursome but Jones said no. 

[Blergh]

I thought there was a lawsuit and court ruling. Sorry, my bad. Still, it looks as thought Alexis won that round against Mrs. Partridge. 

[Anduin]

14 hours ago, Dani said:

George Lucas and Fox did sue Universal over Battlestar Galactica. 

Really? Well, you can't win 'em all. But my general gist is that even if you love something, you shouldn't fly too close to the sun. Of course, I rarely take my own advice. Ignore me.

[starri]

On 9/15/2020 at 11:59 AM, Blergh said:

So via Miss Rice's blackballing of Miss Trout, the whole enterprise collapsed. What a bummer!

I think Jenny ended up releasing her novella on her own.  The other authors may have done the same.

[Snow Apple]

I haven’t read anything by Anne Rice ever since her crazy rant on Amazon blasting bad reviews. Of course her current books doesn’t sound like they have the spark of her earlier works so I’m probably not missing much.

Now hearing what she did to Jenny doesn’t surprise me one little bit.

[starri]

In positive news, NK Jemisin got a MacArthur Genius Grant.

[surreysmum]

Not "antics", but I came across this article by/about Louise Penny, and thought it might be of interest since she seems to have a large readership here:

https://www.seepainmoreclearly.org/post/caregiver-s-story-4-louise-penny?fbclid=IwAR1Sp4tBhHRE5YdfkrounpJ6qxrbqer-3GFhWKsjasgdElKBaNir4Z0n3hE

[starri]

Continuing to demonstrate that she doesn't know how the Streisand Effect works, Addison Cain went after Lindsay Ellis after her video on the Omegaverse lawsuit.

I'm not even particularly a fan of Linsday, but, come on.

Also:  "Is there NO manager she won't complain to?"  Hee!

[krankydoodle]

Good for him, but I was sorry to hear that Bill Bryson is retiring. I think I've read all his travel books, but fell behind on his other stuff so at least I can still look forward to reading his history and science books.

Edited October 25, 2020 by krankydoodle

[Vanderboom]

Apparently, you should ONLY give books you like perfect ratings. Anything less is nerdy and pedantic. (Content warning: mentions of sexual assault)

 

[Katy M]

25 minutes ago, Vanderboom said:

Apparently, you should ONLY give books you like perfect ratings. Anything less is nerdy and pedantic. (Content warning: mentions of sexual assault)

 

First of all, I do think GR should have a 10 star rating or allow half stars, because there's just not enough nuance with 5 stars, especially when you can't give 0 stars.  But, 4 stars is good.  And if you have 50 people who want to give 4.5 stars, at least 10 of those are going to round up.

[DearEvette]

1 hour ago, Vanderboom said:

Apparently, you should ONLY give books you like perfect ratings. Anything less is nerdy and pedantic. (Content warning: mentions of sexual assault)

 

The sheer entitlement of that is appalling.  Not only that she screen shot the reviewers.   Sure Goodreads needs half stars (I'd love half stars there) but jeez a lot of people will put a half star right in the very first line.  But that is ridiculous. 

I always roll my eyes when authors show their asses this way by absolutely not understanding what Goodreads is and how it works.

[Ohiopirate02]

It gets worse with Lauren.  People saw those initial tweets and started giving her one-star reviews over on Goodreads, which always happens when authors go after reviewers.  Lauren deleted those tweets after giving a half-hearted apology where she said she was high when she wrote them.  A few days later she goes back on a Twitter rant about all the one-star reviews twisting it to make it look like she is the victim of a hate-filled campaign because she is a queer woman.  Her followers eat this up.  When others point out why those reviews happen, she attacks them.  And her followers somehow believe those initial tweets did not happen.  Then Lauren starts comparing her "attackers" to rapists and Nazis.  While all of this is going on in her mentions, she is also searching her name on Twitter to retweet anything negative about her to rile up her base even more.  

What kills me is that original review that sent her off the deep-end is a good review.  It is well-written and does what a good review does--it lays out the pros of the material and even compares it to other known works.  It's the kind of review that would make me want to pick up the book.  It's the kind of review that authors hope for.  Well, authors with some sense.

[GHScorpiosRule]

Holy Crap. This reminds me of the days before Twitter and I think FaceBook was in its infancy, when Lori Foster whined to the members in a Yahoo! group to go on Amazon and give her latest book good reviews, because there were a couple of bad ones.

Oh Boo, Freakin' Hoo! 

But like lemmings, they all went to drown out the "bad" review.

The bad review was very well deserved. I went through a phase where I was reading her books and wanted to get her backlist--and when I did-hoo boy. Some of the shit didn't make sense, and when I asked for clarification, her response to me was, and I quote: "[my name], you seem to have an issue with every one of my books. They're probably not for you since you dislike them so much."

I immediately left the group after responding with asking for clarification didn't equal issue or dislike. And then also left a snarky comment that I didn't realize this was a group where you had to only gush about every single book and couldn't criticize what you didn't like or say what didn't make sense character-wise or plot-wise.

I never read another Lori Foster again.

Edited April 21, 2021 by GHScorpiosRule

[surreysmum]

On 4/20/2021 at 7:51 PM, Vanderboom said:

Apparently, you should ONLY give books you like perfect ratings. Anything less is nerdy and pedantic. (Content warning: mentions of sexual assault)

 

And this, in a nutshell, is why I mostly read/review authors who are dead, or old/mature enough not to give a rat's ass about Goodreads.  I do try to review everything I read, and my standard star rating is 3, which means "no, I don't regret the time I spent.". If I really liked it, it's a 4. A 5 for me is a book that actually changed my life, and I think I've used it three times out of 1100+. So I'm a hard marker. Boo-hoo. 

But if some author were to take issue with me or my reviews, I'd give them exactly the amount of attention they deserve - none.  Revenge 1-star reviews are also childish as hell. 

But I'm perfectly willing to admit I may not be a totally typical Goodreads user. For me, it's basically convenient cloud storage for my reading diary. If other people read my conversation with myself about a book, I don't care. Don't care whether they smile, or hit "like", or storm off in a huff. Comments and notifications are disabled. 

Reading is better than drama. :)

[Ohiopirate02]

3 hours ago, surreysmum said:

And this, in a nutshell, is why I mostly read/review authors who are dead, or old/mature enough not to give a rat's ass about Goodreads.  I do try to review everything I read, and my standard star rating is 3, which means "no, I don't regret the time I spent.". If I really liked it, it's a 4. A 5 for me is a book that actually changed my life, and I think I've used it three times out of 1100+. So I'm a hard marker. Boo-hoo. 

But if some author were to take issue with me or my reviews, I'd give them exactly the amount of attention they deserve - none.  Revenge 1-star reviews are also childish as hell. 

But I'm perfectly willing to admit I may not be a totally typical Goodreads user. For me, it's basically convenient cloud storage for my reading diary. If other people read my conversation with myself about a book, I don't care. Don't care whether they smile, or hit "like", or storm off in a huff. Comments and notifications are disabled. 

Reading is better than drama. :)

The Goodreads's and Amazon's scale states that a 3 star review is a good review.   It literally states it means I like it.  But, Amazon retooled their algorithm a decade  ago, and now anything less than 5 stars is almost worthless to authors.   Authors especially indie authors and self-published ones need their books to be highly rated in order for their book to be seen by readers.  If you browse by genre on Amazon you see Amazon bestsellers and books rated 4 or higher.  The advice given to authors is to beg, borrow and steal to get the 5 star reviews necessary to get their book's average above 4.  Some authors take this too far.  And because Amazon owns Goodreads,  this shifted over there.  Through it all, neither one has changed how readers can leave reviews.   No 10 point scale or the ability to leave half stars.  Based on the stated scale on GR, most of the books I read get 3 stars.  I personally believe 5 stars are reserved for the best of the best.  I rarely read more than 5 a year.

 

Leaving that aside, Ms. Hough had the complete backing of her publisher.   She and her book have been everywhere.  The plan was in place for her book to reach the NYTIMES bestseller list,  and it did.  

Edited April 23, 2021 by Ohiopirate02

[WinnieWinkle]

On 4/21/2021 at 11:22 AM, GHScorpiosRule said:

Holy Crap. This reminds me of the days before Twitter and I think FaceBook was in its infancy, when Lori Foster whined to the members in a Yahoo! group to go on Amazon and give her latest book good reviews, because there were a couple of bad ones.

I had this happen on a FB group I belonged to.  The author in question was dead but her heirs had reissued many of her books and the woman running the FB page was connected to them in some way.  Anyway she would go nuts if anyone posted a negative review on Amazon and would urge all us of to go there and make sure to give highly starred positive reviews.  It got really annoying.  I loved many of the books, liked most of them but also felt a few were real stinkers.  I wasn't about to be bullied into giving good reviews for those!  

The last straw for me with that group though was when it became clear that were never supposed to criticize any of the books ever for any reason world without end amen.  It was so annoying because I think a lot of the reason many of us search out these groups for a favoured author is to talk about all aspects of their work - the good and the bad - with people who've actually read the books, often many times,

[Annber03]

2 minutes ago, WinnieWinkle said:

Anyway she would go nuts if anyone posted a negative review on Amazon and would urge all us of to go there and make sure to give highly starred positive reviews.  It got really annoying.

Note to self: if I'm ever lucky enough to get something published, make sure my family and friends know to never, ever do this once I'm gone (or while I'm still alive, for that matter). 

[Katy M]

3 hours ago, Annber03 said:

Note to self: if I'm ever lucky enough to get something published, make sure my family and friends know to never, ever do this once I'm gone (or while I'm still alive, for that matter). 

On a side note, i'm always coming up with in-case scenarios for my mom. She's always like, do you really think that's going to happen?  Years ago, I think one involved me pregnant and in a coma.  She was right.  Did not happen.

[Pickles Aplenty]

Apologies if this has already been mentioned, but has anyone heard about Gabbie Hanna going after Rachel Oates for critiquing her poetry?  It's a lot like the Lauren Hough thing.  Gabbie puts work out there, and throws a shitfit when someone gives it an honest, constructive critique and calls it "bullying".  Then she encourages her 3M fans to go after a much smaller YouTuber.  Crazy.

[scarynikki12]

I have sympathy for Lauren Hough in the same way I'm sympathetic to the people working at Target and similar stores. They have the policy where customer surveys that don't give a score of 100% result in the individual store and employees getting reprimanded. The store could always have what customers are looking for and the service could be top notch but a survey not leaving 100% means that the employees are screwing up and get pressured to improve. If Amazon/Goodreads also won't allow nuance in reader feedback then I get why she was anxious about getting everyone to leave 5/5 stars. She loses me after that but that one specific area has my sympathy.

[Mabinogia]

Most of my book reviews come from here or from actual RL friends. If I see something here that sounds interesting I'll go look to see what it's about. I will check out the reviews but tend to ignore any 1 star or 5 stars because I just don't trust them anymore. I tend to seek out the 3 star reviews and typically only read ones that really discuss why they liked or disliked the book rather than "OMG This book is AMAZING! The twist will blow your mind!" Those books, I just go find a spoiler that tells me what this supposedly mind blowing twist is and even without reading the actual book the twists are typically predictable. 

 

[Ohiopirate02]

3 hours ago, scarynikki12 said:

I have sympathy for Lauren Hough in the same way I'm sympathetic to the people working at Target and similar stores. They have the policy where customer surveys that don't give a score of 100% result in the individual store and employees getting reprimanded. The store could always have what customers are looking for and the service could be top notch but a survey not leaving 100% means that the employees are screwing up and get pressured to improve. If Amazon/Goodreads also won't allow nuance in reader feedback then I get why she was anxious about getting everyone to leave 5/5 stars. She loses me after that but that one specific area has my sympathy.

Nothing in Lauren's initial tweets looked like anxiety.   She knew her publisher was all in on her book, she got Cate Blanchett to do the audio, she had NPR lined up to do an interview,  and all her author friends were using their social media to promote her book.  She had the kind of support that 90% of authors dream of having. 

And the review she put on blast is a good review as well as being a positive review.   It does what good reviews do, lay out the pros of the book, compare the author to other known authors,  and give some criticism.   It's the kind of review that would make me want to pick up the book.  

[DearEvette]

4 hours ago, scarynikki12 said:

If Amazon/Goodreads also won't allow nuance in reader feedback then I get why she was anxious about getting everyone to leave 5/5 stars. She loses me after that but that one specific area has my sympathy.

The reviews are the nuance, tho.  And they even out.  I have been on GR for about 12 years and you can get ten people who love a book and want to rate it a 4.5 and 5 of them will round it down to 4 stars and five will round it up to five stars.  And most of the time if they do feel need to explain they do it in the review. 

And even though Amazon and Goodreads only allow whole stars, there is a calculation they use based on the number of ratings and percentage of people in each star rating where they obviously weight it, because when you look at a book's actual ranking on Goodreads it not only shows the stars but also a ranking from 0-5 in numerical form and the number is usually fractional.

I just grabbed the ranking detail of The Duke and I (the first book in the Bridgerton series so it is pretty darned popular right now).  It has a 3.88 average.  They have some metric that not only looks at the people who rated it but the people who marked it as read but also didn't rate it (notice the percentages don't add up to 100).

And I agree 100% with @Ohiopirate02 this author had the sort of backing most authors can only dream of.  A 4.5 star review on Goodreads would not have dinged her one single bit.  In fact authors who don't have the sort of marketing machine she had at her back would kill for pre-publication reviews of 4 and 4.5 stars. 

And also Goodreads is first and foremost a reader centric social network and book cataloging platform.  Readers who use the platform understand that.  It is authors who try to make it just about the reviews.  It isn't.

In summary, she was an entitled cow.

Also there is a twitter account called Bad Writing Takes that has an entire thread on her and it is hysterical.  They start each tweet with her name because they know that she searches on her own name in twitter in order to block anyone who says anything she doesn't like.

[Ms Blue Jay]

On 1/13/2016 at 12:02 PM, JaneDigby said:

John Grisham and his now infamous after-a-few-drinks-child-porn-can-happen interview with The Guardian.

I'm 5 years late, but wow, I did not know about this, and this SUCKS.

[Macbeth]

On 4/25/2021 at 12:41 AM, Ms Blue Jay said:

I'm 5 years late, but wow, I did not know about this, and this SUCKS.

I didn't know about this either.  That is criminal.  And I actually bought a couple of his books within the last few years.  Nooooo.   This is awful.

[lasu]

On 4/24/2021 at 6:58 PM, scarynikki12 said:

I have sympathy for Lauren Hough in the same way I'm sympathetic to the people working at Target and similar stores. They have the policy where customer surveys that don't give a score of 100% result in the individual store and employees getting reprimanded. The store could always have what customers are looking for and the service could be top notch but a survey not leaving 100% means that the employees are screwing up and get pressured to improve. If Amazon/Goodreads also won't allow nuance in reader feedback then I get why she was anxious about getting everyone to leave 5/5 stars. She loses me after that but that one specific area has my sympathy.

This is true for Uber and Lyft as well.  I drove for both, and anything less than 5 stars is really unacceptable.  But it's completely unfair because obviously people think 4 stars is really good, and 5 is perfect.  But at least at that time (maybe 4 years ago), you would never see a driver with a 4.0 rating because they would have been deactivated.  I think 4.2 might have been the area you should start getting really nervous.  I tried to explain this to as many riders as I could (if they seemed open not only to being chatty but talking about Lyft's rating system, lol), because I think the vast majority of people would be pretty upset to find out giving a "good" 4 star rating could lead to someone losing their job.

THAT SAID, I would never yell at a damn passenger who gave me a four-star rating.

[Katy M]

1 hour ago, lasu said:

This is true for Uber and Lyft as well.  I drove for both, and anything less than 5 stars is really unacceptable.  But it's completely unfair because obviously people think 4 stars is really good, and 5 is perfect.  But at least at that time (maybe 4 years ago), you would never see a driver with a 4.0 rating because they would have been deactivated.  I think 4.2 might have been the area you should start getting really nervous.  I tried to explain this to as many riders as I could (if they seemed open not only to being chatty but talking about Lyft's rating system, lol), because I think the vast majority of people would be pretty upset to find out giving a "good" 4 star rating could lead to someone losing their job.

THAT SAID, I would never yell at a damn passenger who gave me a four-star rating.

IMO, that's a stupid way to run a business.  If you want your employees on a pass/fail system with the customers, you should only allow them to give 0 stars or 5 stars.  You shouldn't expect them to be able to read your mind and know that only 5 stars is good and that 4 stars which says good is also failing.

[dubbel zout]

The airlines are the same. I had to talk to a Delta agent to change a flight, and he specifically told me to give him 5s. The whole thing is pointless if you can't score the way you want and have it mean something.

[Mabinogia]

What a horrible way to judge performance. I always give 4 for a good job. I always reserved 5 for someone who went above and beyond. It is unfair to the person being graded but it's also unfair to the reviewer who doesn't know this and thinks they are doing good by giving out 4s. They should do away with the 5 point system and just ask "should we fire this person or not" or in an authors case "would you read another book by them or not". 

I've graded some books very low but read other work by that author because I liked the writing style, just not the subject matter on one of their works. So while I might have rated that particular book a 2 I wouldn't want them to not write again and it doesn't necessarily mean I wouldn't buy another book by them. 

I have always hated a pass/fail system, no matter what is being reviewed because life isn't black and white. 

[Irlandesa]

I think even rougher is that people can rate a book even if they haven't read it.  I remember for the latest Strike book, people were reviewing it after J.K. Rowling's controversial statements about trans women came out but before the book had actually been released.  Or if there are other authors who have done controversial things or are even highly political, reviewers come out of the woodwork who may never read the book. 

But maybe that's not a great example as popular people probably don't quite have the issues of achieving the right kind of visibility if they sell.

[DearEvette]

On 5/12/2021 at 7:22 PM, Irlandesa said:

I think even rougher is that people can rate a book even if they haven't read it.

There is a reason so many people emphasize that Goodreads is a reader site.  Authors are welcome to use it for their discoverability and marketing, but it is meant to be consumed by the readers as a social site to discuss books amongst themselves.

The mistake authors make is to think that its purpose is to help them sell books.  And some readers do grow clout.  But the intent and mission of the site was to be a sort of water-cooler kiki to meet like minded people and discover books. And yes, a review and rating system is so that people can compare books with other people to find the people with your taste. (I love the compare book feature, I use it to decide whether or not to accept a friend request).

It is also meant to be used as a personal cataloging site, albeit a somewhat visible one. But it is only as visible as you want it to be.

I believe people will down rate a book they haven't read for many reasons.  There is an algorithm that suggests books to you, suggests friends to you and will suggest more works of an author to you etc.  Outside of the featured stuff or advertised stuff, some of what appears on your feed is tailored to you.  It has to be because I am forever being suggested books I am likely to read but never any that I am unlikely to read.  Also I notice some authors tend to be suggested more prominently if I have rated them well.  So I know some people will shelve or rate one star a book they don't want to read and don't want to have suggested.  And if it is a less well known author it can act as a future reminder that this is an author you don't want to read because you shelved them a specific way or rated them a specific way. 

I think a lot of authors forget that 1) these are not professional, objective or peer reviewers.  They are readers who bought your book and are sharing their very subjective feelings and 2)a bad review can be as much an attractor as a good one.  A 'This completely rocks!' 5-star does nothing for me but a 1-star "there is too much sex and rolled my eyes at the male character 'going all night long." will have me giving the book a closer  look.  LOL (this was an actual review btw).

[Madding crowd]

I use Goodreads and I would never rate a book I hadn’t read. It’s not fair to authors or fellow readers. If a book is recommended to me and I’m not interested, I just pass on reading the book. Ratings should be for books read IMO.

[BlackberryJam]

On 5/17/2021 at 2:04 PM, Madding crowd said:

I use Goodreads and I would never rate a book I hadn’t read. It’s not fair to authors or fellow readers. If a book is recommended to me and I’m not interested, I just pass on reading the book. Ratings should be for books read IMO.

If only Goodreads let me say "Not interested" regarding an author and let me block every book by that author, or an entire series. It's frustrating. That's why people use the low rating to curate their recommendations.

However, as mentioned above, the purpose of Goodreads is not to enable authors to sell their books. It's a reader site, not a sales site. 

[Katy M]

1 hour ago, BlackberryJam said:

If only Goodreads let me say "Not interested" regarding an author and let me block every book by that author, or an entire series. It's frustrating. That's why people use the low rating to curate their recommendations.

However, as mentioned above, the purpose of Goodreads is not to enable authors to sell their books. It's a reader site, not a sales site. 

Actually you can just say not interested to a recommended book.  That option is literally right underneath the stars.

[BlackberryJam]

1 minute ago, Katy M said:

Actually you can just say not interested to a recommended book.  That option is literally right underneath the stars.

To one recommended book, not an author or not an entire series. Somehow the alogorithm doesn't get that if I am not interested in book 1-8 of a series, I'm not interested in 9-22 of that series either. 

[Ohiopirate02]

I have also heard of readers giving books 1 star on Goodreads in a way to keep track of all the authors behaving badly.  That way you have a list of authors to avoid.  You don't need to rate all the books by a particular author, one is enough.  I work in books and follow more than a few authors and readers on Twitter, and every week there is a new author who gets put on the "never buy" list for acting out.  You can keep a separate spreadsheet, but who has the time.  Easier to rate on Goodreads where you track the rest of your reading.  

[DearEvette]

Right and like I indicated in a previous post, one of the specific uses of Goodreads  -- and per their own definition -- is as a personal book cataloguing site.  One feature they have is you can export all your book data (title, author, isbn, date/times read, rating, reviews, notes...) basically all the meta data you've created for your books into an excel file.  You can catalogue/curate your books however you want, that includes pre-release rating for what ever reason or no reason.  That is a part of the TOS.  Readers are using it the way Goodreads not only allows,  but intended. 

Not only that but readers are the majority of creators of the actual meta content.  I am a Goodreads Librarian.  It is 100% volunteer work by the members to create, update, clean up, disambiguate (is that a word?), track down ASIN, ISBN, different editions, covers etc. etc. Authors ask us to add new covers, change spellings, incorporate a new edition, to import non-English language descriptions. 

The site is much more holistic about reading than just reviews.  But that is all the authors care about.

I was on in ... 2010/2011 when a bunch of authors really tried to dictate how GR should be used by readers. They wanted it to be Amazon-lite which had at that time begun really hinky practices with how it was prioritizing what reviews to showcase (one of the reasons I stopped reviewing on Amazon despite having been a top 500 reviewer at the time). This was even before Amazon bought GR.  It became a bit of a battleground with authors claiming bullying and readers entrenching  For a minute there is seemed like GR was gonna try to appease authors because it began disappearing reviews. There was a huge revolt by readers, with some of the the biggest, most prolific users decamping. But in the end GR kinda backed off and the site settled back into what it had been and the furor died down.

[BlackberryJam]

4 hours ago, DearEvette said:

Right and like I indicated in a previous post, one of the specific uses of Goodreads  -- and per their own definition -- is as a personal book cataloguing site.  One feature they have is you can export all your book data (title, author, isbn, date/times read, rating, reviews, notes...) basically all the meta data you've created for your books into an excel file.  You can catalogue/curate your books however you want, that includes pre-release rating for what ever reason or no reason.  That is a part of the TOS.  Readers are using it the way Goodreads not only allows,  but intended. 

Not only that but readers are the majority of creators of the actual meta content.  I am a Goodreads Librarian.  It is 100% volunteer work by the members to create, update, clean up, disambiguate (is that a word?), track down ASIN, ISBN, different editions, covers etc. etc. Authors ask us to add new covers, change spellings, incorporate a new edition, to import non-English language descriptions. 

The site is much more holistic about reading than just reviews.  But that is all the authors care about.

I was on in ... 2010/2011 when a bunch of authors really tried to dictate how GR should be used by readers. They wanted it to be Amazon-lite which had at that time begun really hinky practices with how it was prioritizing what reviews to showcase (one of the reasons I stopped reviewing on Amazon despite having been a top 500 reviewer at the time). This was even before Amazon bought GR.  It became a bit of a battleground with authors claiming bullying and readers entrenching  For a minute there is seemed like GR was gonna try to appease authors because it began disappearing reviews. There was a huge revolt by readers, with some of the the biggest, most prolific users decamping. But in the end GR kinda backed off and the site settled back into what it had been and the furor died down.

Thank you for your work.

[krankydoodle]

I guess I'm out of the loop because I hadn't heard of 2017's Cat Person, but writer Alexis Nowicki shared that Kristen Roupenian took some details from her life for that short story: "Cat Person" and Me. It was apparently inspired by a relationship Nowicki had as a teenager with an older man named "Charles" who Roupenian later dated and who died in 2020. I stumbled across the article last night when I couldn't sleep, got sucked in, and spent a few hours reading more about it. Hearing other authors weigh in has been interesting, but the speculation about Charles's death is uncomfortable. I'm curious how things will play out since a movie adaptation was recently announced.

Edited July 9, 2021 by krankydoodle

[Ohiopirate02]

2 hours ago, krankydoodle said:

I guess I'm out of the loop because I hadn't heard of 2017's Cat Person, but writer Alexis Nowicki shared that Kristen Roupenian took some details from her life for that short story: "Cat Person" and Me. I stumbled across the article last night when I couldn't sleep, got sucked in, and spent a few hours reading more about it. Hearing other authors weigh in has been interesting, and I'm curious how things will play out since a movie adaptation was recently announced.

I read a lot of Twitter discourse on this yesterday.  I'm torn on this because on one hand I do think the identifying details of Nowicki should have been changed and on the other Roupenian took her inspiration into a completely different direction than the author's life.  The story didn't go viral because of her using real people.  It went viral because it touched a nerve with many a woman who shared similar experiences with older men.  

[Irlandesa]

55 minutes ago, Ohiopirate02 said:

It went viral because it touched a nerve with many a woman who shared similar experiences with older men.  

In terms of copyright, no.  But it still seems like the short story author might have ended up harming real people by not changing the biographical details.  And it's just the start if this is going to become a movie.  How long would it have taken before someone posted on Reddit "hey, it sounds like this is about someone I went to school with and her boyfriend X." 

It's fiction but fiction would become the reality for many people and Charles would become Robert.

[SomeTameGazelle]

On 7/9/2021 at 10:51 AM, Irlandesa said:

In terms of copyright, no.  But it still seems like the short story author might have ended up harming real people by not changing the biographical details.  And it's just the start if this is going to become a movie.  How long would it have taken before someone posted on Reddit "hey, it sounds like this is about someone I went to school with and her boyfriend X." 

It's fiction but fiction would become the reality for many people and Charles would become Robert.

Yes, exactly. Imagine if someone wrote something which included a character whose appearance and background and relationships all resembled you down to a lot of very specific details. However the crux of the plot was something that was nothing to do with you and you know isn't you -- but the general public is going to think, "I know that A, B, and C are true, so it seems probable that D could be true as well."

[Vanderboom]

The Bad Art Friend saga contributes to the debate about how many real-life details add up to personality plagiarism and adds kidney donation, writer cliques, and subpoenas.

[Ohiopirate02]

47 minutes ago, Vanderboom said:

The Bad Art Friend saga contributes to the debate about how many real-life details add up to personality plagiarism and adds kidney donation, writer cliques, and subpoenas.

I was consumed by that story and the many many takes on Twitter yesterday.  I was fascinated by Dawn and her narcissism.  Every time you thought she could not go lower, she did.  From the Facebook group devoted to her kidney donation to her emailing her "friends" to ask why they did not join the group to "Do writers not care about my kidney donation?" to her subpoenaing the group texts to her sitting in on Lawson's Zoom appearances to her spending years shopping this story to various publications until finally the New York Times Magazine finally took the bait.  That woman is a piece of work and I was riveted.