The Goodreads Scandal That Predicted Publishing's AI Crisis

Summary

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Podcast Summary: "The Goodreads Scandal That Predicted Publishing's AI Crisis"

Podcast: There Are No Girls on the Internet
Host: Bridget Todd
Date: April 4, 2026
Episode Theme:
Exploring a scandal in the online book community, where a white author, Kate Corian, was caught review bombing fellow authors—mostly marginalized writers—using fake Goodreads accounts and then tried to cover it up through elaborate fabrications. The episode investigates how platform flaws, racial dynamics, jealousy, and publishing industry pressures all intersect in this wild saga, and draws parallels to current anxieties about AI and authenticity in publishing.

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Episode Overview

Bridget Todd and her guest/co-host Mike take a deep dive into the infamous "Goodreads review bombing" scandal involving author Kate Corian. This case exposed how online platforms like Goodreads can be weaponized to harm marginalized authors, illuminated recurring jealousies and power dynamics in publishing, and foreshadowed wider crises in creative authenticity—particularly in light of AI anxieties.

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Key Discussion Points & Timeline

1. Introduction: Book Communities & Online Drama

[02:55]

• Bridget confesses her deep engagement with online book communities (BookTok, Bookstagram), which are lively but often drama-filled.
• “The drama is always very deep when it’s online book drama. Like people who are voracious readers and connect about it on the Internet, their drama is very deep. I consider myself part of that community, by the way, so I can say that because I’m one of them.” (Bridget, [04:31])

2. The Scandal: Who Is Kate Corian and What Happened?

[05:37]

• Kate Corian, a white author, poised for success, sabotaged fellow debut authors (mainly POC and queer writers) by leaving fake negative reviews on Goodreads, while upvoting her own (not yet released) book, The Crown of Starlight.
• The fraud was flagged publicly when Canadian author Saran J. Zao posted screenshots and a 31-page doc of evidence.
• Reviews were “downright mean—‘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.’” (Bridget, [09:20])
• The fake accounts even had names crafted to sound like POC, adding layers of racial harm and appropriation.

3. The Cover-up: ‘Lily’ and the Sloppy Fabrication

[13:10]

• When confronted, Kate denied responsibility, blaming a supposed superfan ‘Lily’ from her Star Wars Reylo fandom days.
• She posted staged chat screenshots between herself and Lily—full of cringeworthy, expository writing meant to exculpate her.
• Highlights from the reenactment (dramatic reading):
  • “Do you have any idea how patronizing that is? … I’m gonna be sick. Literally going to vomit.” (Bridget, posing as Kate, [16:39])
  • Mike points out how hilariously fake and expository the entire conversation reads: “There’s like a long part of just straight exposition in there.” ([19:06])
• Authors in the Slack group asked for deeper receipts—a request Kate couldn't meet.

4. The Admission & Aftermath

[24:47]

• Under continued pressure, Kate ultimately confessed: there was no ‘Lily’; she, herself, had created the fake accounts and reviews.
• Kate released a lengthy apology, attributing her actions to substance abuse and mental health struggles during a breakdown, but Bridget is skeptical about using this as a “defense” for racially-driven harm:
  • “I really do take issue with how she uses her mental and substance abuse issues as a defense. Like, it is the very first sentence of this explanation even.” ([27:57])
• Kate’s publisher (Del Rey) and agent dropped her; her supporters felt deeply betrayed.

5. Platform Problems: Goodreads, Amazon, and Vulnerable Marginalized Authors

[30:44]

• Bridget points out Goodreads’ (an Amazon subsidiary) flawed system: it allows reviews for books not yet released and doesn’t verify if reviewers have even read or purchased the book.
• Marginalized and debut authors bear the brunt of review bombing and harassment campaigns.
  • Example: Author Cecilia Rabbis, a Black debut novelist, was similarly targeted before publication ([34:25]).
  • “It may look like a bunch of 1 star reviews on Goodreads, but these are broader campaigns of harassment. People were very keen to not just attack the work, but to attack me as well.” (Cecilia quoted by Bridget, [33:54])
• Unlike Amazon’s retail site, Goodreads does not restrict reviews to actual buyers, inviting bad actors and making it a tool for sabotage.

6. The Broader Industry Myth: "Marginalized Writers Have It Easier"

[40:50]

• The episode debunks persistent publishing myths, quoting famous authors James Patterson and Joyce Carol Oates, who claim white men are now disadvantaged.
• Bridget cites hard data disproving this:
  • “Penguin Random House did an audit where they found that white contributors accounted for 76% of books released between 2019 and 2021… Of the books surveyed, 95% were written by white people.” ([43:07])
• She calls out the fantasy that book deals and good press are being handed to people of color, noting, “If a black person or a brown person has wound up in a space where there are not a lot of black and brown people best believe that is because that person earned that shit. They don’t give us anything.” ([44:25])

7. Reflections on Jealousy, Competition, and Self-Sabotage

[46:14]

• Bridget relates the story to broader lessons about jealousy, competition, and the myth of “finite success.”
  • “The way that I have learned to sort of reprogram jealousy in my own mind is by… training myself to see the wins of people in my circle… as my own wins.” ([47:30])
• She emphasizes that it wasn’t authors of color who “blocked [Kate’s] bag”—Kate ruined her own career through self-hate and destructive behavior.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Internet book drama:
  “Weird, wild stories on the Internet… if I’m saying this, you know, it’s truly wild.” (Bridget, [03:04])

• On the “Lily” coverup:
  “I have to give a cringe alert… the proof in quotes that Kate shares… is these screenshots of faked back and forth conversations between Kate and Lily.” (Bridget, [15:24])

• On racial impact:
  “Using a fake name that is clearly meant to sound like it is the fake name of a person of color to trash authors of color while also praising her own work as a white woman is, like, so diabolically, like, messed up.” (Bridget, [10:31])

• On Goodreads as a platform:
  “It is not surprising to me that this is all happening on Goodreads. Goodreads, which is owned by Amazon, does say they have rules against review bombing… However, this is far from the first time that review bombing campaigns have happened on Goodreads. And also this is not even the first time that they have been racially motivated.” (Bridget, [30:44])

• On industry myths and reality:
  “The data could not demonstrate how clearly untrue this is. More clearly that it is white people who still and always have been the majority of the book publishing space.” (Bridget, [43:07])

• On envy and creative success:
  “It is such a white supremacist and also patriarchal lie that there can only be one. There’s only enough room for one person to be successful. … There truly is enough for all of us.” (Bridget, [48:27])

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• [02:55] Introduction, Book Community Drama
• [05:37] Recap of the Scandal: Kate Corian’s actions
• [13:10] The failed “Lily” coverup and dramatic reading
• [24:47] Kate’s confession, apology, and backlash
• [30:44] Analysis: Goodreads, platform flaws, and impact on marginalized writers
• [40:50] Industry Myths: “Marginalized writers are privileged”—debunked with data
• [46:14] Jealousy, self-sabotage, and lessons for creative professionals

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Tone and Style

Bridget’s trademark mix of humor, exasperation, and insight shines through. There’s clear empathy for the marginalized authors harmed by the scandal, but the tone remains brisk, irreverent, and accessible.

• “Joyce Carol Oates… my forever problematic fave. She’s like the Azalea Banks of the book industry… I cannot quit Joyce Carol Oates.” ([41:49])
• “Don’t leave fake reviews. Don’t make up fake conversations with people who don’t exist. Just do your best. That’s all we can do.” ([49:44])

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Takeaways

• Platform design flaws can have outsized, real-world harm, especially on the least protected creative voices.
• Myths about diversity benefiting marginalized groups in publishing are easily disproved by data; white authors remain dominant.
• Jealousy and comparison are destructive—celebrate others’ wins as your own, and remember there’s space for everyone.
• Ultimately, self-sabotage, not “diversity,” was the villain in Kate Corian’s downfall.

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Further Reading

• A 31-page Google doc of evidence assembled by Saran J. Zao (linked in show notes)
• New York Times: "How Review Bombing Can Tank a Book Before It's Published"
• Penguin Random House Diversity Audit

Support marginalized authors by checking out their books (links in the show notes).

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Transcript

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[Bridget Todd]

There Are no Girls on the Internet is a production of iHeartRadio and unbossed creative. I'm Bridget Todd, and this is There Are no Girls on the Internet. Did an author use AI to write her novel? That's what the Internet says, but the actual story is a lot more complicated. Next week, I'm doing a deep dive on the story of Shy Girl, a horror novel by Mia Ballard that set the Internet on fire. Readers accused Ballard, a black woman author, of using AI to write her novel. She denies it, but her publisher dropped the book anyway. It's a story about how fragile publishing feels right now and just how quickly a career can unravel. But AI or not, the literary world has always had its fair share of chaos. So while you wait, we're revisiting one of our wildest deep dives about how an author lost her book deal after a Goodreads review bombing scandal. There Are no Girls on the Internet. As a production of iHeartRadio and unbossed creative. I'm Bridget Todd, and this is There Are no Girls on the Internet. Okay, so Mike, I desperately need to talk about what's going on with the Goodreads review bombing story. Honestly, this is like probably one of the more wild stories I've heard in a very long time. And if I'm saying that somebody who covers weird, wild stories on the Internet, if I'm saying this, you know, it's truly wild. We were going to do this in this week's News Roundup, but honestly, I had so much to say about it that I decided it needed to be its own thing. That's because it really involves a lot of stuff that I spend a ton of time thinking and talking about. First of all, book communities online. I don't know how tapped in you are to like online book communities like booktok or Bookstagram, but the drama is always very deep when it's online book drama. Like people who are voracious readers and connect about it on the Internet, their drama is very deep. I consider myself part of that community, by the way, so this is. I can say that because I'm one of them.

[Mike (Co-host or Guest)]

Okay. This is good context to have you often tell me about very intense Internet drama and it often involves book clubs. So I didn't realize that this was like a particularly common thing of book communities, but it makes sense.

[Bridget Todd]

Oh yes. So that's part of why I'm so interested in this. But there's also issues of how platforms impact marginalized people. Like a lot of issues mixed up with what it means to be a creative professional in this day and age and how the Internet experience has sort of complicated that and also good old fashioned jealousy, something I know quite a bit about. So there's a lot going on here. So let's get into it. So this story really all starts with an author named Kate Corian. She's an author who had a highly anticipated book coming out called the Crown of Starlight, which was meant to be out in May of 2024. I also read that she might have had like this book deal and then like a subscription box deal from this book and then like maybe even like a film publishing deal on the table. So Kate is a writer who had a lot of positive things going on. Like she was really doing the damn thing, very successful. But now Kate's book has been shelved after she admitted using Goodreads to review bomb a bunch of forthcoming books, mostly by black, Asian and queer authors. Kate is white. It sounds like this had been going on for kind of a while and that it was something that the writing community was aware of and like knew was happening, but was up until this point kind of hoping that deal with

[Mike (Co-host or Guest)]

privately they knew that she in particular was doing it or just that it was like a general problem in their community.

[Bridget Todd]

Okay, so great question. I would say both. I think that writers knew that this specific writer, Kate, was doing this. And I think that writers were generally aware that Goodreads and Goodreads bombing like, like, like submitting tons and tons of bad reviews for a book, even if you haven't read it, is an ongoing problem in the space. So I think I would say both if I had to say. So the first time that this came on my radar was when Canadian author Saran J. Zo first tweeted about it. And that's when it really got more wide attention online. So they first noticed that Kate's book Crown of Starlight was getting good reviews from the same accounts that were also trashing other books. Some of those books were not even out yet. So Zirin tweeted, if you as a debut author are going to make a bunch of fake Goodreads accounts, one star bombing fellow debuts that you're threatened by. Can you at least not make it so obvious by upvoting your own book on a bajillion different lists with those same accounts? So they then posted a 31 page Google document, which we'll link to in the show. Notes of receipts, screenshots showing the Goodreads activity of a number of accounts with usernames including names like chantal B. And O.C. young, that they suspected were actually Kate leaving good reviews for her own book and bad reviews for other people's debut books. So the books that she left bad reviews for were mostly written by people of color, including so Let Them Burn by Camilla Cole, which was meant to be released in January of next year. And to gaze upon Wicked Gods by Molly X. Chang, whose book is actually being put out by the same publisher, Del Rey, as Kate's book. So, so this is essentially like trashing a fellow writer whose book is being published by the same company. Pretty bad.

[Mike (Co-host or Guest)]

But it's also, like, not surprising at all, right, that like, this sort of petty jealousy would be happening within a single publishing house. I bet these women know each other and have, you know, been in the same circles for a while.

[Bridget Todd]

Notably, the authors of these books say that in some cases the. Their books weren't even available yet, they hadn't been published. And in some cases they had not even sent out, like, advanced copies or galleys. So, like, how could someone be reviewing it if there's like, there's no way to actually read the book. It's not out yet. They have not sent out any kind of advanced copies. How are you. How is someone leaving bad reviews already on Goodreads? Something else to note here is that these reviews are not just negative. In some cases, they're like, downright mean. In one review, Kate writes, 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. Like, that's not even like. That's just like a mean review. You don't deserve the money that you were paid to write this book. And literally anything else would have been a better way to spend that money. That is not a criticism of the book or the text. It is like just a mean insult.

[Mike (Co-host or Guest)]

Yeah. And it just drips with that same petty jealousy, like they could have spent it on anything else. Like one of my books. Yes, that should have. That money should have been my money.

[Bridget Todd]

Hold that thought because. Yes, a million times, yes. And that's going to come up very soon. So we also need to Talk about the fact that there is a very real, like, identity aspect to this. Like, a very real racial aspect to this. I want to come back to that in just a moment. But some of the names that Kate chose are clearly meant to sound like they could belong to people of color. Names like O.C. young were some of the fake names that Kate used to leave mean reviews on other people's work. And then, like, using a fake name that is clearly meant to sound like it is the fake name of a person of color to trash authors of color while also praising her own work as a white woman is, like, so diabolically, like, messed up. That's just so. That's, like, there's layers to how fucked up that is. So using the fake name OC Young, Kate left this review on her own book. I love this book so much that I regret reading it because now nothing on my to be read sounds as interesting by comparison. So. So, like, clearly that's not just hyping up her own book. It is a way to trash other authors of color in the process. Zao, that Canadian author who was the first person that I saw tweeting about this, really summed it up. They say there's something extra despicable about using clearly people of color names in fake accounts to upvote every negative review on people of color books. So the top ones are all one and two stars. Like, what in the. Yellowface. What's also funny about that is that if anybody has read the novel Yellowface, which was probably one of my favorite novels of this year, it's like a plot point from that novel. A white writer being kind of like, pretending to be a person of color because they are so jealous of writers of color. It's so interesting how this whole situation mirrors the plot line of a very popular novel that everybody should read. It was the best novel I read this year. So this is already, like, a really awful, messed up thing to have done. But when Kate was called out on it, rather than just fessing up and coming clean and being like, yep, I did this, jealousy got the better of me. She made things so much worse by inventing a fake friend to take the fall. So a bunch of these debut authors, including authors whose books were targeted by Kate or were all in a Slack channel for debut writers. And of course, they were discussing what happened and starting to suspect Kate Meredith Mooring, who it sounds like was friends with Kate, told them all, like, oh, listen, Kate did not do this. She could not have done this. And Kate has proof that she didn't do this. It was a friend of hers who did this. Meredith told the writers in this debut writer Slack channel, hold tight, Kate will pop in to explain. And eventually Kate does pop into this Slack channel and explains. She writes, I did not Capital Letters review bomb anyone. I did not positively review my own book with false accounts. So basically this is Kate's explanation. She says that somebody named Lily in the Reylo fandom community, which is a particularly like dedicated online fan community that centers on their romantic relationship between two Star wars characters, Rey and Kylo Ren. And she said that this person Lily, she had met this person through this like particularly dedicated online fan base and that in this fan base you like, would she would like pick up people like this who were just like very, very dedicated and that that was the person who was behind these reviews. This person Lily was just like a friend of hers, believed so much in her writing, wanted to make her writing a success. And that's why she was, she was the one who was behind these reviews. Kate wrote in the Slack channel. This person is someone I knew from a time in Star wars fandom where I was a well known fan fiction author and a lightning rod for unhinged behavior, the type of behavior that anyone else who was well known in the fandom at the time still sees online. I have no further details. I haven't heard anything else from them. I never responded. So I gotta give a. You know how we usually do like warnings when we're gonna talk about something that is like really bad on the podcast? I have to give a cringe alert for this because. Oh my God, is it cringy? So the proof in quotes that Kate shares that she didn't do this and that Lily did is these screenshots of faked back and forth conversations between Kate and Lily. Mike, are you down to do a dramatic reading of these conversations with me?

[Mike (Co-host or Guest)]

Yeah. Should I be Kate or should I be Lily?

[Bridget Todd]

You be Lily, I'll be Kate.

[Mike (Co-host or Guest)]

Okay. It seems like the reviews were positive, but I didn't do anything. Question mark. Rating books high is against the rules?

[Bridget Todd]

No, but making fake accounts to rate them high is. It's artificially inflating a book's reviews. That's against the rules.

[Mike (Co-host or Guest)]

Grimacing emoji. Oh, I didn't realize you could get in trouble.

[Bridget Todd]

What?

[Mike (Co-host or Guest)]

Please don't get mad. Umm, I made a couple accounts. I think that was me.

[Bridget Todd]

What? Why?

[Mike (Co-host or Guest)]

The other night you were worrying that your book would get overshone by bigger books at your publisher. I wanted to help, so I made A couple accounts to rate your book high. I'm sorry. I really didn't think it would be a problem.

[Bridget Todd]

What the fuck? Why? I don't need fake reviews to help me. Jesus Christ.

[Mike (Co-host or Guest)]

I'm sorry. I really didn't think it would hurt. Exclamation point. I was trying to be nice.

[Bridget Todd]

Oh, my God. I don't even know what to say. I don't need you to step in and try to be nice with this. Do you have any idea how patronizing that is? How humiliating? Spelled incorrectly. How much damage you could have done? I'm gonna be sick. Literally going to vomit. Please tell me that for the love of God, you weren't actually stupid enough to use the same accounts that you made to boost me to bomb other people.

[Mike (Co-host or Guest)]

Well, I didn't think anyone would notice.

[Bridget Todd]

I am literally going to be sick. I need to email my agent. This could literally cost me my fucking career. I don't even know what to say. This is such a violation of my trust and of our friendship.

[Mike (Co-host or Guest)]

I'm so, so sorry, Kate. I'm really sorry. I didn't think it would hurt.

[Bridget Todd]

She just types a bunch of letters, like, random letters. How could it not hurt? Who the fuck did you go after?

[Mike (Co-host or Guest)]

It was just the books you said you were worried would bury yours on social media. Wicked Gods and fate. Inked and blood.

[Bridget Todd]

You went after people in my imprint, in my debut group. Do you have any idea how much this could have cost me? I could lose my deal. I could lose everything. All caps. If this is what Zirin was talking about. I'm going to kill you. All day I've been sitting here worried that someone was review bombing me, only to find out that I wasn't the victim of a review bombing campaign, but instead someone I trusted and considered a friend. Really thought I was so insecure and helpless that I needed you to fuck. Step in and level the playing field.

[Mike (Co-host or Guest)]

I'm so sorry. I didn't think people would think it was you. I tried to make the accounts look real.

[Bridget Todd]

I. I don't even know what to say. That somehow makes it even worse. Seriously, what the fuck, dude? I trusted you. I told you about stuff I was insecure about, and you literally turned right back around and pulled this shit. You understand that we're done here, right? And scene. Oh, my God. So first of all, I have to say, it just sounds so fake. Like when you read it out loud, knowing this is a conversation between one person, like someone's faking a. Like someone is playing both parts of this. It Just sounds so fake.

[Mike (Co-host or Guest)]

There's like a long part of just straight exposition in there. I've been sitting here worried that someone was review bombing me, only to find out that I wasn't the victim of a review bombing campaign, but instead someone I trusted and considered a friend. Really thought I was so insecure.

[Bridget Todd]

Like, nobody explains, like conveniently explains what is happening in their life in such clear and explicit terms. It's like when you watch a movie and the main character is like, oh, well, a convenient explanation of what's going on in the plot.

[Mike (Co-host or Guest)]

Yeah. Or like right when they've got James Bond captured and the villain is explaining his master plan.

[Bridget Todd]

So I cannot believe that this is what she published on the Slack channel to prove in heavy quotes that she was not the person behind this review bombing. And I really gotta give it to the authors of Color, some of whom weren't even targeted, who just like, cared about this enough to stay on it. Who really stayed on Kate, even after she dropped this very compelling proof to get to the truth. So they. So people were asking, like, can you show us earlier conversations between you and Lily so that we can actually verify this person exists? Like, very convenient that the only conversations that you're able to show are conversations where you're talking about this specific incident and not any other conversations from somebody that you said that you've had an online friendship with that was so deep that they. That it led them to do this. Pretty weird, right?

[Mike (Co-host or Guest)]

Yeah, pretty weird. Pretty weak evidence.

[Bridget Todd]

Very weak evidence. Like, I honestly can't believe that she posted this.

[Mike (Co-host or Guest)]

She's a novelist, right?

[Bridget Todd]

Yeah.

[Mike (Co-host or Guest)]

Like she's supposed to make up stories that presumably sound plausible.

[Bridget Todd]

Yeah, it really kind of makes you think like, oh, maybe this is why she felt like she had to do this review bombing scheme because she didn't think she was going to be successful on her own. Maybe if this is the caliber of writing that she puts out,

[Mike (Co-host or Guest)]

it's pretty weak writing.

[Bridget Todd]

Let's take a quick break.

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[Bridget Todd]

Error back so after she released this proof and writers were like no, can you give us more proof? She eventually did admit the truth, that there was no Lily and that she was the one who had done the review bombing. Here is her apology slash explanation that she posted Apology maybe is too strong. You tell me. You be the judge, she wrote Since June 2022, I've been fighting a losing battle against depression, alcoholism and substance abuse, the full scope of which I've hidden from everyone in my life out of shame and a misguided belief that with the right medicine and therapy, I could beat it. In late November 2023, I started a new medication and on December 2, 2023 I suffered a complete psychological breakdown. During this time I created roughly six profiles on Goodreads and along with two profiles I made during a similar but shorter breakout in 2022, 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. Two of those authors, Molly X. Chang and Danielle Jensen, are fellow Del Rey authors Camilla Cole and Bethany Baptiste just happened to be on the wrong Goodreads list at the wrong time. I felt no ill will toward any of them. It was just my fear about how my book would be received running out of control. My memories of this are extremely fuzzy, so it's possible there are a couple of other authors. If so, I take full ownership of what I did as well. I'm sorrier than you'll ever know. There's nothing I can say to erase what I did to you. When I was slapped on the wrist by Goodreads and vague tweeted by a handful of people, I panicked that my secret was about to get out. Rather than taking responsibility for my actions, I tried to cover my tracks. Still, in the middle of my breakdown, I made up the world's sloppiest chat with a non existent friend who was supposedly to blame, sent fake apologies for the action of said friend, which only made things worse. I betrayed the confidence of my agent, my pub team, my readers, my friends, and betrayed my own deeply held values. I dragged one of my dearest friends and fellow debut authors into the mud with me when she came to my defense. I'll leave her name out of this so as not to pull her in even deeper. However, if she wishes to come forward, I'll apologize to her publicly as well, let me be extremely clear. While I might not have been sober or of sound mind during this time, I accept responsibility for the pain and suffering I caused. And my delay in posting this is due to the spending the last few days offline while going through withdrawals. I sobered up enough to be brutally honest with you and myself. I know some of you won't forgive me. I recognize that you're not required to. No one ever wants to be judged by their worst actions, so it's not always up to us. I'll be reaching out to everyone directly impacted, though that may take time since I'm checking into an intensive psychiatric care and rehab facility, which means I'll be mostly off social media, as I need to give 100% to the program if I want it to stick. All I can do going forward is try to live my life in a way that shows you that these are not empty words.

[Mike (Co-host or Guest)]

Wow, what a redemption arc for her. She was struggling with addiction, a secret addiction that no one knew about, but now she's over it.

[Bridget Todd]

So, yeah, I mean, I will say this. I don't want to get too deep into this because, like, she may very well be suffering from genuine mental health and substance abuse issues. However, I really do take issue with how she uses her mental and substance abuse issues as a defense. Like, it is the very first sentence of this explanation even. And I just don't know that I would agree that mental health issues or substance issues would cause you to do something that is, like, so clearly racially motivated. You know, I don't think that is a defense. And I take issue with how she is framing it of, like, oh, I was suffering from some kind of a mental breakdown. I know plenty of people who suffer with addiction issues and suffer with mental health issues. And I don't know that this is something that I would say is a typical result of dealing with mental or substance abuse issues. I'll put it that way.

[Mike (Co-host or Guest)]

Yeah, that's a really good way to put it. Like, really mean. Racial behavior, not a typical result of dealing with mental health issues.

[Bridget Todd]

So after all of this, Kate's agent dropped her. Her publisher dropped her. It does seem like that at all. First, her publisher, Del Rey, was like, oh, we're gonna hold her book launch. We're not gonna launch it until later. Like, maybe we'll launch it when the heat dies down. But then they said recently that they are just gonna drop her permanently. Her friend who stuck up for her in that Slack channel for debut authors, Meredith Mooring, has publicly said that she Felt lied to and that she is, you know, saying, like, I'm not gonna talk to Kate ever again. She lied to me. I don't trust her. Honestly, here is the thing. It sounds like Kate really, truly had an amazing thing going. A well regarded book deal, a subscription, a subscription box deal, maybe movie rights. And she threw it all away because of her decision to do this. Like, this is on her. Like, she lost it because of her own choices.

[Mike (Co-host or Guest)]

Yeah. And we can take her at her word that she did this out of, you know, fear of her own success, but. Or, you know, lack of success. Jealousy, I guess. But even if that's true and that's what motivated her, like, doesn't remotely make it okay. And like you said that, like, that fear drove her to do this thing that threw it all away.

[Bridget Todd]

So I absolutely want to get into that because I do think this is a story about what happens when you don't check some of your more destructive impulses. And jealousy, like, dealing with jealousy is certainly something I know a little bit about. But like, yes, I agree. So there is so much going on here. First, I think there is a really clear platform piece happening here. It is not surprising to me that this is all happening on Goodreads. Goodreads, which is owned by Amazon, does say that they have rules against review bombing. Their rules say artificially inflating or deflating a book's ratings or reputation violates our rules. This includes activity like creating fake accounts to manipulate book ratings, purchasing reviews and incentivizing votes, likes or other actions on Goodreads. They have that as their policy. However, this is far from the first time that review bombing campaigns have happened on Goodreads. And also this is not even the first time that they have been racially motivated. Back in the summer, the New York Times published a piece called How Review Bombing Can Tank a Book Before It's Published. In it, they described how the same things that make Goodreads work and like a platform that people want to show up to to talk about books, you know, excitement and passion around books also makes it an effective tool to sabotage writers. And like most online attacks, it is more marginalized people who bear the brunt of it. The New York Times talked to Cecilia Rabbis, a black woman and a former data scientist at Google who left tech to write her debut novel called Everything's Fine, which is about a young black woman working at Goldman Sachs who falls in love with a conservative white co worker who with bigoted views. Her book was the target of coordinated review bombing campaigns. Cecilia says it may look like a bunch of 1 star reviews on Goodreads, but these are broader campaigns of harassment. People were very keen to not just attack the work, but to attack me as well. Some of the reviews actually say like, I didn't read this book, I've never read this book, but I feel inclined to leave this review anyway. And Cecilia says that it's not just like somebody leaving a mean review, that this can actually impact how the book is received. She says, I was concerned about the risk of contagion and that readers and reviewers would dismiss the work without really engaging it. I felt particularly vulnerable as a debut author, but also as a black woman author. So you're probably not surprised to hear how much Amazon has taken over the book publishing space. We actually did an episode about it a while back with Jane Friedman after somebody on Amazon was selling AI dupes of her books using her name. But since Amazon has purchased Goodreads, Amazon has basically dominated the book publishing space. And Goodreads is an incredibly powerful tool for authors to get their work discovered. So review bombing can actually have a meaningful impact on writers getting their books read, and it can make or break whether or not an author is able to successfully launch their work. So on Amazon, like the Amazon shopping apparatus, it actually tells you if the person who is leaving a review on Amazon has actually purchased the book or not through Amazon. And Amazon's like shopping platform does not allow anybody to leave reviews on books that are not yet out. However, that is not the case on Goodreads, which leaves it uniquely open to coordinated attacks on books that aren't even out yet. I don't mean books that aren't out yet in the like. Oh, there's a specific release date further in the future sense. I mean, books that aren't out yet in the like this is still an idea in the author's head sense. Like George R.R. martin's long awaited the Winds of the Winter, which is the next installment in his A Song of Fire and Ice series, does not even have an official release date. Like as far as we know, it has not been written. However, that has not stopped it from amassing more than 10,800 ratings and 500 reviews on Goodreads. As far as we know, this book has not is not even on paper. It is like still in George R.R. martin's head.

[Mike (Co-host or Guest)]

That's pretty wild. I wonder what its rating is.

[Bridget Todd]

It's 4.40. He's got four and a half stars.

[Mike (Co-host or Guest)]

I could see someone doing this because they love George R.R. martin and so they'd want to like give it a five to give them a boost or something. Or I could see people panning it because they really hate George R.R. martin and giving him a 1. How does it get like foreign change? Who's coming in here and being like, yeah, it'll probably be all right.

[Bridget Todd]

So it's a lot of people just using this space. I'm looking at it now. They're just like using this space to be like, when is this book coming out? Somebody has been updating their review for years. Here's the top review. I have this plan that when this comes out in 2015, I'm going to drop my child by then age 4 off at grandma and grandpa's house, get myself a hotel room and do nothing but read this for three days straight. Then an update. Alas, as 2015 begins to fade, I have come to the realization that my plan will never come to fruition. It was a good plan. I'll miss the plan. Maybe. 2016 update of the update. 2016 is half over. At this point, I'm pretty sure when I purchase this book, it's going to be a page that says just watch the show followed by 600 blank pages. New update. It's 2017. I give up. Another update. It's 2020. And I return to this hopeful snapshot of my optimistic youth from time to time to wonder what it must have been like to be so innocent. Alas. Last update. Oh my sweet summer child. Do you remember what it was like to have such Hope, such confidence? 2015. It was going to be your year. But as summer of 2022 fades and leaves begin to fall, it is clear that no one will be reading this book. Even now, some seven years later in 2022, what could have been?

[Mike (Co-host or Guest)]

Wow, George R.R. martin, like ruining this guy's life, taking away his childhood.

[Bridget Todd]

He's been leaving these reviews. More after a quick break.

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[Bridget Todd]

Let's get right back into it. So beyond this being like a tech and platform story, I do think there is something to the fact that Kate was review, bombing and targeting marginalized writers, queer authors, authors of color, and that these specific authors were the ones that she was concerned were going to outshine her own debut. I do think that there's this attitude that people of color are like the golden children of publishing right now. Last year, James Patterson, who is this ridiculously successful writer, said that older white men like him basically cannot get writing jobs right now, saying, can you get a job? Yes. Is it harder? Yes, it's even harder for older writers. You don't meet many 52 year old white males, he insisted. Now keep in mind, this is somebody that has sold more than 450 million books during his storied 30 year career where his books have been turned into blockbuster movies. Joyce Carol Oates, who I have to say is kind of my like forever problematic fave. Joyce Carol Oates, she's like the Azalea Banks of the book industry. Like she, like nine times out of ten she's super wrong. But when she is right, she is so right. That's how I would describe her. I cannot quit. Joyce Carol Oates, she is my forever problematic fave. Well, she said the very same thing. She said a friend who was a literary agent told me that he cannot even get editors to read first novels by young white male writers, no matter how good. They're just not interested. This is heartbreaking for writers who may in fact be brilliant and critical of their own privilege. So there is this attitude that the only people who find success in the book world are people who are traditionally marginalized. But it's so laughably and frustratingly untrue. And the data could not demonstrate how clearly untrue this is. More clearly that it is white people who still and always have been the majority of the book publishing space. Penguin Random House did an audit where they found that white contributors accounted for 76% of books released between 2019 and 2021, 34% of those writers were male. A 2020 analysis by New York Times surveyed more than 7,000 popular novels published by the largest publishing houses, Simon and Schuster, Penguin Random House, Doubleday, HarperCollins, and Macmillan. Of the books surveyed, 95% of them were written by white people. In 2018 alone, non Hispanic white people wrote a whopping 89% of the books sampled. So it's white people. Like, white people are the ones who are dominating the industry and always have. I do think there is this very persistent attitude that, oh, you have to be, like, a person of color or, like, somehow marginalized to get a foothold in the publishing space. But that just betrays the reality that, like, the people who are succeeding in the space are white people. It's just the truth.

[Mike (Co-host or Guest)]

Yeah, those stats you just read were pretty overwhelming in that analysis of authors. 95% of the books, what were they? It was the New York times study. Yeah, 95% were written by white people. That's, like, way over the proportion of the population that is white.

[Bridget Todd]

And I also think it mirrors this conversation that's sort of bubbling up now around does diversity and inclusion efforts. We'll have an episode diving into some of this next week about that wild situation happening at Harvard. But I do think that people will sit here with a straight face and say that they believe that black and brown folks are being handed, like, cushy gigs or cushy contracts in spaces that have mostly been dominated by white people, when the reality is that they don't give us shit. If a black person or a brown person has wound up in a space where there are not a lot of black and brown people best believe that is because that person earned that shit. They don't give us anything. People are out here thinking that, like, oh, they're just handing out book deals and cushy reviews and, like, praise to black people. I would like some of that, please. If they're handing that out, I would love to be the first in line to get some, because that has not been my experience. And even beyond the racial dynamics at play, I think that Kate's story really is, like, what you were talking about before Mike. That it is one of what happens when you are, as my father used to say, when you're so busy looking at everybody else's plate that your own food gets cold. Right? Like, you are so focused on the comparison game and looking at what other people have and obsessing about it and, like, really internalizing what's going on with others that you can't even focus on what you have. Which, in Kate's situation, was a lot Kate was. Had a lot of success and she ruined that because of her own inability to stop being jealous and stop obsessing and fantasizing about what other people might get.

[Mike (Co-host or Guest)]

Yeah, Jealousy is so destructive.

[Bridget Todd]

It's true. And like, this is the reason why I know this, I'm speaking from experience, is that, I mean, like, I have definitely had to struggle to deal with jealousy. I wasn't handling it through review bombing my colleagues, thank God. But when you make something, particularly like when you're in a creative field, but I'm sure anybody who is in any kind of field can relate to this, you really have to work to learn to not let things like jealousy and comparison get to you if you're going to make anything right. Like, especially right now, this time of year where all of my very, very talented friends and colleagues are making like best of lists and getting awards and things like that, it can be hard. Like, I don't want to negate the fact that Kate probably was dealing with very real feelings that are tough to grapple with. I have had to do a ton of work to keep that kind of comparison and jealousy from making me spin out or making me like, second guess my own work. If this is something that sounds familiar, I will give you, I will give folks a tip. Like, the way that I have learned to sort of reprogram jealousy in my own mind is by kind of flipping the dynamic a little bit and so training myself to see the wins of people in my circle, the wins of people that I know as my own wins. And so like, when a friend of mine gets on a best of list telling myself like, wow, how great for me that I am connected to such a dynamic network of creators that I know somebody like this. Like, what a win for me, you know, this is. Wow, this is somebody that maybe I can collaborate with. Like, what a great thing for me. Like, really seeing the wins of other people as wins for yourself has really helped me sort of reframe the game a little bit and like, not be like, salty. When someone gets something that I want, it can be helpful. So that's a little tip for folks. But I also think it's about remembering that success is not finite. Something good happening to somebody else does not mean that something is being taken away from you. It is such a white supremacist and also patriarchal lie that there can only be one. There's only enough room for one person to be successful. Capitalism and white supremacy and all of those other other forces want us to think that there is only enough Room for one. But that is a lie. There truly is enough for all of us. There is enough room for all of us to be at the table. There is enough room for all of us to be successful, for all of us to have what we need. You do not need the voice in your head that says that other people doing similar work are your competitors and not your collaborators. That voice is a liar. There is truly enough room for all of us. And honestly, we can all be successful. We can all win. And Kate, that's the thing is Kate really was successful, it sounds like. But she spoiled it all. And you know what? It wasn't authors of color who blocked her bag. It was her own behavior, like it was herself. In the end, that is your main hater, yourself.

[Mike (Co-host or Guest)]

Yeah. Boy, what an arc to the story, huh?

[Bridget Todd]

It's true. So we'll add a link in the show notes to the different authors who were impacted. If you wanna get their books, show them some love. Yeah, a wild story. At the end of the day, remember, don't let jealousy let you spin out and block your own bad. You truly are enough. Don't leave fake reviews. Don't make up fake conversations with people who don't exist. Just do your best. That's all we can do.

[Mike (Co-host or Guest)]

Well, thanks, Bridget. I really enjoyed that. That was a wild story.

[Bridget Todd]

I told you it was wild. Got a story about an interesting thing in tech or just want to say hi? You can reach [e-mail] youm can also find transcripts for today's [e-mail] There are no girls on the Internet was created by me, Bridget Todd. It's a production of iHeartRadio and unbossed creative. Jonathan Strickland is our executive producer. Tari Harrison is our producer and sound engineer. Michael Amato is our contributing producer. I'm your host, Bridget Todd. If you want to help us grow, rate and review us on Apple Podcasts for more podcasts from iHeartRadio, check out the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

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