Nest Book Club
Skeezon
member
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Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Goodreads
So, have you guys heard about this author who was bullied on Goodreads? I'm kind of torn about how I feel...
Here's an article explaining what happened.
I think this article hits it right on the head. There was an overreaction by the author AND bullying by Goodreads members. As author Jamie McGuire tweeted Tuesday, “Negative reviews are part of the business. Bullying authors shouldn’t be.” And a community that tolerates the latter in the name of the former is a community that might claim to espouse reading, but one that has a serious comprehension problem.
I haven't even been published yet and I was targeted by a witch hunt group of people, so I know how this girl feels. I had entered my story into Amazon's Breakthrough Novel Contest. It used to be fanfic. I pulled it, worked on it for a year and half and entered it in this contest. I never thought to change the title. That was my naivety. Someone recognized it as a fic, went on Goodreads, added it as a book and then bashed it. They gave it 1 star ratings and got all their lemming followers to do the same. Even put a big badge with skull and crossbones in the reviews that said "THIS WAS FANFIC! DO NOT READ!"
Crazy part? I didn't even know about it.
One of my friends told me, "I added your book to my To Read list."
I was like, "It's not a book and I never added it to Goodreads."
So, yeah, it's disturbing that anyone can go and add YOUR WORK (not even a published book) to Goodreads. And yes, they have the right to rate it however they want. Like the above author...no one had read my book. While I thought it was unfair that this could happen, I didn't lash out. I simply emailed Goodreads and asked them to remove the book. It was taken care of pretty quickly. Unfortunately, this author did not have the same experience.
I know that once my book is published next year, that these same grown-ass women with too much time on their hands will come after me again. And I know that they will give me the same shitty ratings without ever reading my book. Is it fair? No. Is there anything I can do about it? No.
What do you guys think?
Here's an article explaining what happened.
I think this article hits it right on the head. There was an overreaction by the author AND bullying by Goodreads members. As author Jamie McGuire tweeted Tuesday, “Negative reviews are part of the business. Bullying authors shouldn’t be.” And a community that tolerates the latter in the name of the former is a community that might claim to espouse reading, but one that has a serious comprehension problem.
I haven't even been published yet and I was targeted by a witch hunt group of people, so I know how this girl feels. I had entered my story into Amazon's Breakthrough Novel Contest. It used to be fanfic. I pulled it, worked on it for a year and half and entered it in this contest. I never thought to change the title. That was my naivety. Someone recognized it as a fic, went on Goodreads, added it as a book and then bashed it. They gave it 1 star ratings and got all their lemming followers to do the same. Even put a big badge with skull and crossbones in the reviews that said "THIS WAS FANFIC! DO NOT READ!"
Crazy part? I didn't even know about it.
One of my friends told me, "I added your book to my To Read list."
I was like, "It's not a book and I never added it to Goodreads."
So, yeah, it's disturbing that anyone can go and add YOUR WORK (not even a published book) to Goodreads. And yes, they have the right to rate it however they want. Like the above author...no one had read my book. While I thought it was unfair that this could happen, I didn't lash out. I simply emailed Goodreads and asked them to remove the book. It was taken care of pretty quickly. Unfortunately, this author did not have the same experience.
I know that once my book is published next year, that these same grown-ass women with too much time on their hands will come after me again. And I know that they will give me the same shitty ratings without ever reading my book. Is it fair? No. Is there anything I can do about it? No.
What do you guys think?
Re: Goodreads
Same with 5 star ratings beforehand. It's not a good representation of what people really think of the book.
I know there has to be a good amount of tough skin for any artist (I include authors in that) since their work is up for debate, there's a difference between a well thought out criticism and vitriolic diarrhea of the mouth. Unfortunately it's hard to police that. Hopefully articles like this can get through to a few people, but there will always be those ones who like to make others lives miserable.
my read shelf:
Wes: 10/8/2012
That being said, I'm someone who ignores ratings and reviews on GR until after I've read the book. Especially on books by new or self-published authors. I have nothing against those books, and do read them, but you have to take the reviews and ratings with a grain of salt because you don't know how many are coming from the author's friends, family, enemies, or even the author themself, looking to skew the ratings in either a positive or negative way.
This is why I seriously try very hard not to read the community reviews on GR, only ones from my friends. If no one I know has read it, then I just go based off of the description, like I did back in "the old days" before GR & eBooks.
Skeezon, you will have to be sure to let us know when your book gets put on GR for real. All of us NBCers will have to go and cancel out anything those negative hussies post.
I will kick some major a** of anyone who bullies you.
Jack 11/29/2009 and Brynne 7/11/2013
I agree that you should not be able to add the stars until the book as been released. I am one of the people who read the reviews and the star ratings but I usually take it with a grain of salt and see if I can check what other books that person hated or liked in order to make sure it is a review that I'd even consider. I do this even with Nesties that I'm GR friends with; if they love a book, I see what other books they love. Life is too short to read a bad book.
I also feel that not just anyone should be able to add a book to GR but I'm not sure how the vetting process would go.