Recently, American science fiction writer Cate Corrain (Cait Corrain) applied for a number of fake accounts on the reading community "GoodReads" (GoodReads) and marked "one star" on the work pages of many writers. After learning of the incident, the U.S. publisher announced that it had canceled plans to publish Corion's new book "Crown of Starlight" in May 2024. Cryan has publicly apologized for the incident.
Compiled by Shen Lu.
Footage from the documentary "The Internet Censor" (Im Schatten der Netzwelt, 2018).
According to the Washington Post and other ** reports, American cutting-edge science fiction writer Kate Corion recently disrupted the book rating on the "Good Reading Network". She applied for multiple fake accounts and marked "one-star negative reviews" on the pages of many works. The move sparked a collective boycott from the publishing industry.
Canadian writer Xiran Jay Zhao was the first to notice this behavior and reminded netizens to pay attention. They found that some anonymous accounts gave "five-star reviews" on the pages of "Starlight Crown", but left "one-star bad reviews" on many other cutting-edge works.
Most of the one-star reviews on Haoyu were written by writers of color, including the new book "So Let Them Burn" by black writer Kamilah Cole and the debut book "To Gaze upon Wicked Gods" by Molly X Chang, a first-generation immigrant writer born in Heilongjiang, China. These works are indicated to be published in January next year.
A number of netizens spontaneously compiled and published a 31-page document containing screenshots of comments from multiple accounts, and suspected that these accounts might have been created by the author of "Starlight Crown". As a result, the author of the book, Corion, became the object of suspicion.
Subsequently, Cryan responded publicly on his personal social ** account.
At first, she claimed that the comments were made by a friend of hers and posted several screenshots of the conversations. However, it was soon stated that the screenshots were fabricated and that the "friend" did not exist. Cryan acknowledged that he did have negative reviews of several works, adding that "there may be several other authors" who were also affected.
The Starlight Crown was originally scheduled to be published in May 2024. Drawing inspiration from Greek mythology, the book tells a hot-blooded sci-fi story that takes place in the human realm, the divine realm, and the galaxy. After the incident, the publisher of the book, Del Rey, a brand owned by Penguin Random House, announced: "The book is no longer included in our 2024 publishing plan." ”
Subsequently, the publisher and another British publisher, Daphne Press, both publicly stated that they would not publish "Starlight Crown" and the second book that was scheduled to be signed with Corion. In addition, Crion's bookseller also announced the end of the partnership.
The cover of the English edition of The Starlight Crown.
In a public response post, Mr. Crane said that he had "been fighting a doomed battle against depression, alcohol and substance abuse" and that he changed his medication at the end of November and had a "complete mental breakdown" shortly after, creating about six accounts on Haoyu.com. In addition, Cryan said that he had "no ill will" towards the target authors, "just worried about how my book would be evaluated after it was published and whether it would get out of control." She added: "I'm more guilty than you think. ”
Haoread.com is known as the "Douban" of the English-speaking world. It was founded in the hope that readers would be able to mark the books they have read and share their thoughts on the books on the community. "Artificially inflating or depressing a book's rating is a serious violation of the Community Guidelines, including manipulating a book's rating by creating fake accounts, buying 'trolls', and inciting votes, likes, and other behaviors," the community pact states. This behavior is referred to as "review bombing" by the user, which refers to users giving negative reviews about books they haven't read, usually before the book is published. A similar "one-star movement" has taken place in the Chinese world.
It is worth noting that this type of behavior is increasingly becoming a common problem faced by the online reading community, and it may have real consequences. For example, in June 2023, Elizabeth Gilbert, the author of "Eat, Pray, Love" (Eat, Pray, Love) received hundreds of negative reviews on the Good Reading website, accused of setting ** in Russia and being unfriendly to Ukrainian readers. As a result, Gilbert decided not to publish **, which was originally scheduled to be published in February 2024.
As of press time, Haoread.com has deleted the "one-star reviews" of the affected titles in this incident, and said in a statement that it will "take seriously the responsibility of maintaining the authenticity and integrity of the ratings, and protect our readers and authors."
Reference Links:1 first-time author loses book deal for ‘review bombing’ authors on goodreads
2.publisher drops author for using fake accounts to ‘review-bomb’ peers
This article is a compilation. Compiled by Shen Lu. Edit: Lotus;Proofreader: Wang Xin. Welcome to the circle of friends. At the end of the article, there is an advertisement for "The Scale of Time: 20 Years of the Beijing News's Good Book of the Year".