Long read, this one...
So here's the important bit!
Yes, this part! I'm trying to get my NEW BOOK out there, so... here's the link to the NEW BOOK, UTSOTS if you're thinking of buying it or recommending it and supporting my work because YOU are CLEVER enough to read it and UNDERSTAND it...(And maybe even pre-order the 2nd!) Reviews and ratings would be nice...GOOD ratings from GOOD people! I need more reviews PRETTY SOON, too! The MORE the better! (Some 5 stars would be nice but hey...) Things are happening... yes, they are. Oh yes, there are. (Yes, I copy and paste this and change it a little every post - do I? Yes. One day it'll turn into an octopus - Look, see it already has one leg... ~~~~.... and another ~~~~ and...? It that another? ~~~~ Yep. 3-legged, so far).
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08X95XLTZ
Now... back to the reading...
Well, one day I woke up to two bad ratings on my books on Goodreads. You know, that 'community' of readers and writers, working together, to make the literature world a better place for all? Okay, I thought, people can have their own opinions, there are many more like them on my books there anyway... but I had a peek AND THEN I saw that this particular person couldn't have bought one of these books because there was no activity at that time and no way for them to get the book beforehand. I smelt something rotten down in Denmark (actually New Jersey, USA).
So, giving myself 5 minutes, I checked this guy's reviews. Almost 4000 reviews in three years. About 100 of them 4 or 5 stars... yes, on Goodreads you can list people's reviews in order. So, that's 0.2% good ratings, and 99.8% 3 star or below. In fact, the HUGE majority of ratings he has given in three years are 1 and 2 star ratings, I would say 98% of them. And sometimes he rates 10 books a day. Either he's stuck inside reading 24/7 or... he hasn't read any of them, perhaps popped into Kindle's 'Look Inside' and read the first sentence/paragraph/page. Maybe just rating the cover. "You can't rate a book by its cover"... so true. Whatever. For myself it was clear this guy wasn't reading the books, merely forcing his opinion on them for whatever reason. Who knows why someone would TROLL Goodreads and give 1/2 star ratings to 3850 books in three years? He's mentally unstable, for sure. He doesn't respect either Goodreads terms of use or the writers who put a lot of time and effort into their books. Sure, he has a right to an opinion, sure probably a lot of those books ARE 1 or 2 stars BUT all I can see is that he either doesn't like reading or he's reading the wrong books.
My next step? Go speak to Goodreads. I wrote them an email. They said they would check into it. I then gave them an update of his activity in April. More 1s and 2s, and on one day 7 books were rated. This guy seems to have some VENDETTA or MISSION to give books 1s and 2s... was he hurt as a child? I was... I should be doing vendettas, but I'm not, I'm writing. Goodreads wrote back and said there was nothing wrong with his activity... "it did not violate [their] terms"... how about this one? "Actively inflating or deflating a book's ratings or reputation".... yep, that's the one.
But hey, it's their website and his opinion of almost 4000 books which he didn't read. So... yeah.
Thanks for reading!
Oh, and do I attract arseholes? Just stopped near a shop in front of someone's house to let someone make a note of a phone number, not even parked, and some aggressive guy came out of the house and told me he was going to report me, and that "there's a place to park for the shop over there on that sandy area by the road which when the wind blows the sand comes into [their] garden." If that's all he has a problem with, then he's had a great life.
