Over the early days of December 2023, a tight-knit, online community of authors was thrown into chaos after it was revealed that one among them was sabotaging the others on Goodreads. 

On December 5th, sci-fi author and member of the aforementioned community, Xiran Jay Zhao, tweeted, “If you as a debut author are going to make a bunch of fake Goodreads accounts one-star-bombing fellow debuts you’re threatened by can you at least not make it so obvious by upvoting your own book […] with those same accounts.” The post has been viewed 1.8 million times and has over 13 thousand likes. 

“One-star-bombing” or “review bombing” is when an author or book is flooded with fake negative reviews. This can come from a targeted campaign from real users who haven’t read the book or, in this case, from sock puppet accounts created en-mass by one person. 

New Authors Vs. Bad Actors

Zhao’s original and subsequent tweets never mentioned the perpetrator by name, but it was fairly easy for the other members of the community to put the pieces of the puzzle together. Over the next few days, multiple debut authors, first privately on Slack and then publicly on Twitter, accused fellow debut author Cait Corrain of creating fake accounts to sabotage their books.

Corrain initially denied everything. But the evidence against her was overwhelming. On all the fake accounts, they left one-star reviews everywhere except on Corrain’s book, Crown of Starlight, where they left glowing five-star reviews. Corrain deflected by fabricating a story about a friend creating the fake accounts, not her. 

But the other authors weren’t satisfied. They kept pushing and finally, on December 12th, Corrain admitted everything. She created all the fake accounts, she wrote the negative reviews, and she lied extensively about a made-up friend being the responsible party. Corrain tweeted an apology where she claimed the whole situation arose after she suffered a “complete psychological breakdown” after switching to a new medication. This apology was not well received.

On the same day she posted her apology, Corrain’s publisher, Del Rey Books, announced that they would no longer release Crown of Starlight or any other books in her contract. Goodreads has also removed the fake reviews created by Corrain. 

But the damage is done and the community at large remains in shock. The Slack channel, where much of the drama unfolded before making its way to Twitter, is now a ghost town. In a statement to the New York Times, Bethany Baptiste, whom Corrain named as one of her victims in her apology, said, “It’s very sad that it came to this and that this one person caused this very supportive community to implode because we weren’t sure who we could trust anymore.”

To me, the most shocking thing about this situation is just how easily Corrain could have gotten away with this behavior if she had been just a little more subtle. If she had dedicated specific accounts to praising herself and separate accounts to bomb others, she might have gone by completely unnoticed. It made me wonder, how many others are doing this and haven’t been caught?

Tale as Old as Time

Time Magazine reported on Goodreads’ review bombing troubles in August of 2021. They spoke to several authors who reported being review bombed for various reasons ranging from extortion to racism and homophobia. The only authors who were able to convince Goodreads to remove the fake reviews were the ones who had a large publishing company backing them up. For indie and self-published authors, it is almost impossible to get a reply from Goodreads’ Customer Service let alone any results. 

“On Goodreads, you don’t even need to verify your email address [when creating an account],” Says sci-fi author Patrick S. Tomlinson who was among those interviewed by Time, “You can make a dozen fake accounts a day, and then go on and just completely bomb out the reviews and ratings of whatever book. […] Even something as simple as requiring email verification would cut [this problem] down immensely.”

As we progress into the digital age, it will get easier and easier to create fake accounts. People like Corrian are manipulating the system. But that system incentivizes them to play dirty. Goodreads’ supposed democratization of books has turned out, for many, more like a nightmare. And it will keep getting worse until Goodreads, and their parent company Amazon, take the basic steps necessary to protect the creators whose work drives so many clicks to their website.