Shock horror! According to the media, a new author created fake accounts on Goodreads and published one-star reviews of her fellow first-time novelists.

Cait Corrain targeted writers who were also signed to her publisher, Del Rey Books, a sci-fi–fantasy imprint of Penguin Random House and used the fake accounts to praise her book, Crown of Starlight, which was scheduled for release in 2024. Brilliant!

She did what every author since the beginning of time has wanted to do. Ethics in publishing is much like asking hookers on Williams Street, Kings Cross what they think of John Rawl’s writings on justice.

Corrain has been dropped by both her agent and her publisher for showing initiative.

While she originally blamed a friend, she later admitted she was behind the swathe of negative reviews. In a statement, she wrote that she suffered from depression, alcoholism and substance abuse, and began posting the reviews while adjusting to a new medication, and in the grip of a “complete psychological breakdown”.

These are all qualities needed by a writer to write a book in the first place.

“I accept responsibility for the pain and suffering I caused,” she wrote, which is going too far. She should be running a university course in self-promotion in creative writing.

Review-bombing is also affecting high-profile authors such as Elizabeth Gilbert, the author of Eat, Pray, Love. Three months ago, Gilbert decided to suspend the release of her next novel, The Snow Forest, due out in February 2024, following a backlash on Goodreads from Ukrainian users objecting to the novel’s Russian setting.

Just as well she didn’t write Dr Zhivago.

Robbie Egan, chief executive of BookPeople acknowledges the platform, “does help sell books and promote writing”.

Of course the real art of selling books is in the hands of independent booksellers who can target their wares to small progressive women (not little women) with significant disposal income.