hey y'all. i shouldn't have downplayed the details of what happened in the original version of this post. the author in question, cait corrain, made multiple sockpuppet accounts on goodreads for the purpose of reviewbombing books that were debuting at the same time as hers, many of which were written by authors of color. as well as this, several of the sockpuppet accounts used east asian and bipoc names (this comes from the receipts i've seen, i don't know exactly how many they racefaked on).
this was racist, on so many levels. corrain couldn't handle that debut authors of color were seeing the same, if not higher, level of success as her. i'm sorry for focusing on the sensationalism of this over the fact that it tells on the much larger problem of racism in the publishing industry (goodreads, for instance, i believe still has reviews of corrain's book locked despite doing nothing of the sort for their victims or other authors of color who've faced similar harassment campaigns). i'm also sorry for contributing to that by reducing the reality of what happened to 'petty drama'.
if you're going to engage with this post from this point onwards, please do so with this version. i don't feel great about leaving the meme unedited, but i also feel as though quietly replacing it or deleting the post entirely would look like i'm trying to dodge accountability. i'd rather the people who took part with me in laughing acknowledge that people other than corrain did get hurt because of this, and making light of that is a very callous show of privilege.
on that note: corrain has lost her book deal and will hopefully never have a presence in publishing again, but the authors who they targeted have their books forthcoming and would deserve support regardless of whether they'd been harmed by this.
other than that, i'm sorry and it's on me to do better in the future.
