If you ever are lucky enough to get a book deal from a publisher, my advice to you is to befriend your fellow authors. If you have the opportunity to work together to help promote each other’s books, do it. Definitely what you should not do is try to undermine your fellow authors, but that’s exactly what one newbie author recently did, and it came back to bite her in the butt.
This week’s scandal subject is already suffering the consequences of her actions, so I’m not going to name and shame her here, but the basic gist of it is, she won the literary lottery and had a book accepted for publication by a publisher. Her debut YA fantasy novel was due to come out in 2024, I say “was” because her actions ended up derailing those plans.
In a misguided attempt to boost the success of her own book, she apparently set up a bunch of fake Goodreads accounts. (For those outside of the book community Goodreads is a book-themed social media site owned by Amazon where readers can share what books they’ve read and are hoping to read and can write book reviews.) Through the use of these various fake accounts, this author went and left a bunch of one star reviews of other new and forthcoming YA fantasy books, while giving her own books five-star reviews. It’s all very mind-boggling why anyone would think this was a good idea. In terms of algorithms and other technical things, I’m thinking it probably would have helped her book more if she had given other books in her genre five stars.
First of all, no matter what industry you are in, my advice to you is don’t set up fake accounts, especially if you intend to use those accounts for nefarious purposes. You might not be too smart, but trust me on this, there are smart people on the internet, and there are people with a lot of time on their hands. There are also a lot of curious people who like solving mysteries. So, there’s a very good chance your fake accounts are going to eventually be traced back to you. If you are being really bone-headed and obvious in your nefarious schemes like this author was with her one-star and five-star reviews, then you can pretty much count on getting found out.
News of her scheme went viral in the book world at the end of last week, and this week her publisher announced they were cancelling the publication of her book. For the record, you have to mess up really badly for a publisher that has already invested significant money in publishing your book to suddenly pull the plug on it.
Readers are nothing like professional sports fans. I mean some of them might be fans of professional sports, but with books it’s not like one is a Red Sox fan so then must be virulently opposed to the Yankees. Most readers, read more than one book per year, some read more than one per week, I’ve never met one who picks one author and reads their books exclusively. Certainly, if they were to do this they wouldn’t pick a new author whose first book isn’t even out yet. So, that’s why this author’s review-bombing campaign was so unhinged. This is also why, if you are an author it is in your best interest to make friends with your fellow authors and help each other out.
I’m so thankful that when I was a newbie author way back in 2011, I made friends with my fellow authors so we could promote each other’s books. Back then I was part of two groups devoted to debut authors: The Elevensies and the The Class of 2K11 (that’s some of us in the photo above). We had each other’s backs, and that really helped my first novel Popular to have success. Later on, I also joined a local group of children’s and YA authors called The KidLit Authors Club (that’s some of us in the picture below), and we worked together to set up book signings and other events.
In fact, I remember being at a book festival with some of my KidLit Authors Club pals, when a fellow writer stopped by inquiring about our group. He, like this week’s scandal subject was a bit confused about how the book world worked. He couldn’t wrap his head around us being friends with “the competition” as if that was how books work. We tried to explain it to him, but based on what we saw this past week, I think there’s a fifty percent chance he might have left that festival, went home, and set up a bunch of fake Goodreads accounts to leave negative reviews on our books.
So whatever field you are in, I hope you can find your people. It’s rough out there, but it’s easier when you don’t have to go it alone.
— Alissa
Weekly Inspiration
What I’m Reading: “Miracle” by Connie Willis
What I’m Watching: Candy Cane Lane
What I’m Listening to: “St. Stephen’s Day Murders” by The Chieftans (featuring Elvis Costello)
Find out more about my books at alissagrosso.com
Find out more about my digital art at alissacarin.com
My apologies for the typos and such this post is almost certainly riddled with.
I wish people generally saw more attraction in cooperation than competition, but yes, it is especially true of publishing. And most of the people I met in publishing (yourself included!) have been welcoming, friendly, and helpful.