Book Trolls

I think in the long list of people I just don't understand, anti-authors are certainly some of them. There are groups of people (on Amazon and Good Reads and places that tend to review books) who spend the majority of their time finding ways to rip authors apart. New authors, who write about anything these people find objectionable, are lambasted and demonized. Established authors are also criticized, often with long lists of all the 'sins' the writers commit.

Seriously, what the hell?

No, wait. I know. This is mob mentality trolling.  This is a situation where people are trying to control and harm others by using online bullying techniques.  It's harmful and it's wrong. It's keeping a lot of good writers from telling their stories, or maybe even from being able to let people find their stories.  It's going to limit what we have.

How is this even possible? It usually goes something like this. The book trolls will decide they hate an author. If they are on Good Reads, they will begin to give that author really bad reviews. They will write, often at length, about how horrible the book is. If someone writes a good review, they will rant at that person about how wrong they are. They will do anything they can to discredit the author.

On Amazon, they will do basically the same things, often to a greater level of detriment because this is a place to sell books. They will give bad reviews and horrible ratings. And think about how that can impact the author. Many times if someone is looking for a book in general, they'll narrow the search for 'highest rated.' If the author has been targeted by these people, they will never make the cut for that search.

One of the weird things about the internet is that people have found ways to harm others with little to no risk of anything happening to them. They can destroy people's careers or accuse them of things, all behind a wall of anonymity.  This clearly gives them a sense of power and it's a kind of low risks bullying that they see as fulfilling some kind of sick need inside them.

I think the best advice I can give someone when they are looking at book rating is to really consider what the reviews are saying. Do they seem overly critical? Do  they seem to focus on aspects that have very little do to with the book's merits, such as details about the author's personal life? Does the person reviewing the book have an abnormally large number of books they've reviewed? If so, it's probably best to discard that review when making your decision about the book.

This will not only be more fair to the author, maybe it will help to make a dent in the book trolling. The only true way to fight a troll is to refuse to acknowledge its existence. It's really the only way to fight back at this point.