A recent blog post from an author I follow sent me to another blog written by yet another author. In her post she was complaining about bloggers behaving badly, at least in her opinion, and upset at “bloggers swindling her.” That’s what she calls it when a blogger “promises” a review of her book and the review isn’t forthcoming. In a follow up post she provides a short list of bloggers who have “swindled” her.
This is only the latest in a growing trend I’ve seen in the indie publishing world that I find disconcerting. This trend is calling people out in public (it doesn’t get much more public than the internet) for perceived wrongs. You can find threads in the Amazon forums for outing authors alleged to have behaved badly and reviewers who are supposed to have done the same. There are numerous lists and shelves on Goodreads for those badly behaving authors. One of the latest is a site devoted to “Goodreads Bullys,” (which “fights back” against readers accused of writing vindictive reviews on the popular reader review site by posting personal information about them). The Huffington Post has had at least three separate articles about this site. Continue reading “Bad Blogs and Bloggers?”