“Karma is real.” This is so true in the case of author Cait Corrain. She always left negative reviews on Goodreads. Her publisher and agent dropped her after a heated debate about her online wrongdoings.
Del Rey Books, a publisher in the United States, shared that they won’t be publishing “Crown of Starlight” by Cait Corrain in 2024. This decision was made because writers and readers accused Corrain of “review bombing.”
Review bombing means leaving many negative reviews on other authors’ books. Additionally, Corrain’s agent mentioned they would no longer represent the author.
At first, Corrain kept saying the accusations weren’t true. However, she later admitted to them in a long apology posted on X early Tuesday. In the statement, Corrain explained that she had a tough time in early December.
A change followed this difficult period in her medication that happened in November.
Review bombing on Goodreads means deliberately giving a book a low rating, usually one star out of five, to make its overall rating drop. Over a few months, Corrain made about six fake Goodreads accounts to “review bomb” other new authors.
Most of these authors wrote in a similar science fiction-fantasy genre. The targeted authors were R.M. Virtues, K.M. Enright, Frances White, Kamilah Cole, Molly X. Chang, Thea Guanzon, and Bethany Baptiste.
Sometimes, when people “review bomb” books by giving them a lot of bad reviews, publishers change their plans. For example, in June, Elizabeth Gilbert, who wrote Eat, Pray, Love, decided not to release her new book because it was heavily review-bombed.
As people talked more about the accusations against Corrain, many writers and readers online got angrier. They pushed Corrain’s agent and publisher to do something about it. In the beginning, the new authors who found out it was Corrain behind the accounts wanted to deal with the problem privately.
People reacted differently to Corrain’s apology, ranging from understanding to anger. However, most of the responses leaned more toward the side of anger.
Corrain’s ex-agent, Becca Podos mentioned that mental illness doesn’t justify or excuse racism.
A targeted author, R.M. Virtues, said:
“Honestly, I’ll be completely real right now. For me, personally, the apology felt worse than the reviews.”
Navkiran Dhaliwal is a seasoned content writer with 10+ years of experience. When she's not writing, she can be found cooking up a storm or spending time with her dog, Rain.