Oops.

A word of advice: don’t do this.

Publisher drops author for using fake accounts to ‘review-bomb’ peers

You mean, like overwhelm peers with rave reviews? No.

Cait Corrain, whose book Crown of Starlight was due to be published in May next year, posted on X to apologise for her behaviour. “I boosted the rating of my book, bombed the ratings of several fellow debut authors, and left reviews that ranged from kind of mean to downright abusive,” she tweeted.

Corrain’s US publisher Del Rey, an imprint of Penguin Random House, stated on Monday that it was “aware of the ongoing discussion” about the author. Crown of Starlight “is no longer on our 2024 publishing schedule”, it said. Though it was initially unclear whether this meant that the book’s publication was being postponed or cancelled, both Del Rey and Corrain’s UK publisher Daphne Press later said that neither Crown of Starlight nor the second book in Corrain’s contract will be published by them.

Corrain’s former agent, Rebecca Podos, announced on Monday that she will no longer be working with Corrain. “Cait and I will not be continuing our partnership moving forward. I deeply appreciate the patience of those directly impacted by last week’s events as I worked through a difficult situation,” she wrote in a post on X.

So it all worked out pretty badly for this Corrain person.

“I can’t believe Del Rey spent half a million dollars on this when they could have spent half a million dollars on anything else. Sorry not sorry,” read one of the review screenshots of Chang’s book, posted by a user called Brett Spinner. The review was liked by Chantal B.

Sounds very “I agree with Polly-O!” if anyone remembers that extended prank.

A review of Corrain’s book, posted under the username Oh Se-Young, called Corrain a “f*cking genius”.

“I love this book so much that I regret reading it because now nothing on my TBR sounds interesting by comparison,” it stated.

Corrain claimed a friend was responsible for fake reviews, and shared several screenshots of a conversation in which the author berates “Lilly” for posting the ratings. Corrain later admitted that the screenshots were fabricated, and that the “friend” was “nonexistent”.

Hahahahahahaha it was all I agree with Polly-O all the way down. It’s hilarious.

In an X post, Corrain said that they had been “fighting a losing battle against depression, alcoholism and substance abuse” and changed medication in late November. They explained that on 2 December they “suffered a complete psychological breakdown” and created “roughly six profiles on Goodreads”. Along with two profiles created “during a similar but shorter breakdown in 2022”, they used the accounts to post the negative reviews of other books and to boost their own.

Uh huh uh huh uh huh. I especially like the part where she has a complete pyschological breakdown but still remains calculating enough to use those profiles created “during a similar but shorter breakdown in 2022”…in fact I think that’s one of the funniest things I’ve read in some time.

Also hilarious? Brave scourge of terfs Joanne Harris was in there supporting the psychologically broken down mad review bomber. I can’t share the tweets because of too many locked accounts, but I can tell you she was defending the poor misunderstood trickster. Good stuff.