Author Cait Corrain’s wish for a successful debut that outshines her contemporaries has resulted in one of the biggest bookish community scandals. The East Coast-based writer of the Sci-Fi book ‘Crown of Starlight allegedly created half a dozen fake Goodreads accounts and participated in review bombings. However, the scandal spans much wider with alleged racial motivations which can result in serious legal repercussions.
Cait Corrain can face legal charges for Review bombing
In the era of the internet and social media, audience reviews affect all consumer products including books. Many of the authors have successfully used this in their favor by creating a loyal fanbase who share their projects, often ahead of their publication, among the Bookish community.
Seeing some complaints about the extent of blowback Cait Corrain is getting. I work IN the industry. So many would kill for the opportunity she was given, yet she was out there, literally review bombing fellow debut authors who shared the same publisher. She deserved it.
— Ania ◊ (@a_wild_bokatan) December 11, 2023
These fandoms also help authors climb the charts on Goodreads, a review and progress-tracking platform that helps readers and authors form a community. This aspect allured SFF author Cait Corrain to form several fake IDs to leave negative reviews on her contemporary writers’ pages while writing false five-star praise for her book.
Due to the advancement and severity of the review bombing and fake testimonies, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) prohibited the activity earlier this year. Apart from heavy fines, the ‘Crown of Starlight‘ author can face defamation, and racial bullying/harassment charges.
Additionally, she can get blacklisted from Goodreads for breaking their review bombing and authenticity policy. To better understand the scandal and the possible charges let’s take a closer look at what happened in the past few months.
The suspicious review bombing
A couple of months ago debuting authors witnessed weird activities on their Goodreads page from over a dozen accounts. They were leaving poor ratings for the books that hadn’t yet been published or been shipped for advanced readers.
https://twitter.com/captwinghead/status/1733182029578072522?t=_ntPlem-9lrsCzTHQcT7BA&s=19
Upon more research, the writers found out that the same accounts have been praising Corrain’s upcoming novel and adding it to 37 lists. These suspicious activities began sometime in February 2023 and weren’t traced until recently. Right after the discovery, the suspicious accounts left Goodreads.
Frustrated by the complete event, bestselling author Xiran Jay Zhao created a thread on X (former Twitter) detailing the events. She also attached a 31-page Google document showing multimedia evidence of the Goodreads review bombing and their connection with Corrain.
The alleged racial motivation
One of the patterns that require to be noted is that all the fake accounts targeted the BIPOC writers including Kamilah Cole (So Let Them Burn), Bethany Baptiste (The Poisons We Drink), Frances White (Voyage of the Damned), K.M. Enright (Mistress of Lies) and more.
Part 3 (final)
Support the books most impacted:
So Let Them Burn, @wordsiren
The Poisons We Drink, @StorySorcery
To Gaze Upon Wicked Gods, @mollyxchang
Voyage of the Damned, @Frances_Writes
Mistress of Lies, @KM_Enright
The Gods of Hunger Series, @rmvirtues pic.twitter.com/HnGwU5DSXP— Xiran Jay Zhao 🍉 (@XiranJayZhao) December 8, 2023
The same accounts also left several negative reviews on the books of Black author R.M. Virtues, who isn’t even part of the debut lineup. Considering the shortage of BIPOC authors, and editors in the publishing domain it is hard to overlook the identity of the accounts’ targets.
Although the issue would have remained just as grave if it was any other author; this targeting can result in charges of racial bullying. However, as per the updates of the victims, they do not appear to be taking any legal actions at the moment.
The TikTok videos of Xiran Jay Zhao, where she highlights that all the authors wished to sort out this matter in private but they were asked to ‘let it go’ further shows that the authors did not wish to create a scandal of this level.
The slack character
Zhao wanted to clarify this situation so she created a Thread highlighting the issue without dropping any names but the readers’ community was quick to analyze the situation and the needle began to point towards Corrain.
If you as a debut author are going to make a bunch of fake Goodreads accounts one-star-bombing fellow debuts 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
— Xiran Jay Zhao 🍉 (@XiranJayZhao) December 6, 2023
The same day Corrain came forward and made claims of knowing who was behind the review bombing accounts. The next day, she shared screenshots of a conversation with her former friend ‘Lilly.’
The screenshot captured their dramatic conversation with false timestamps that charged between yesterday and today. In the scene ‘Lilly’ is accused of master planning the review bombing because she was allegedly sympathetic to Corrain’s worries about her competition.
https://twitter.com/neon_heartbeat/status/1732841106285404345?t=o19CBSQDJKPSMIbV9ASUwQ&s=19
The victims couldn’t digest these screenshots and demanded to have a conversation with ‘Lilly’ or more evidence supporting their friendship. However, Corrain couldn’t bring forth either and soon disappeared from Slack.
The Reylos fandom
In this discourse, there are many other side controversies such as Baptiste getting accused of ableism by Meredith Mooring because of a misunderstood X/Tweet. Another one is Reylos fandom made up of fans who ship Rey and Kylo Ren from Star Wars.
Corrain posted about ‘Lilly’ and mentioned that they met as Relyos, thus giving an unstable fangirl arc to the alleged villain of the story. The fake accounts also placed ‘Crown of Starlight‘ in lists related to Reylos, which resulted in the fandom getting involved in the issue.
shared with permission does anyone have evidence of a lilly or someone with that name who could have gone hard for cait while dragging other authors by benefit of slack association pic.twitter.com/64io8cKvzV
— nat 🇵🇸 + 🚬🐀 (@ashesforfoxes) December 7, 2023
Cait Corrain apologizes after losing book deals and fans
The most baffling aspect of this controversy is that Cait Corrain was on her way to stardom with the release of her debut novel. She had strong marketing, two book deals, the May Illumicrate pick, and a substantial fanbase.
https://twitter.com/CaitCorrain/status/1734447140041359751?t=SurEpMFlRfg4zC7hN3XPdg&s=19
However, due to the allure of outshining others (which she was set to do anyway), Corrain has unfortunately lost the sweet deals. In a way Corrain also became the victim of her actions, losing material gains and credibility.
In an apology published on December 12, Corrain accepted the allegations of creating fake accounts and reviewed the bombing. She also admitted to creating fake chats with ‘Lilly’ to hide her deeds. It remains to be seen if the other authors will take any legal actions and whether the book ‘Crown of Starlight gets published.
