Support for Indie Authors discussion

Yes, this has happened to me last summer and several others I know.
Hopefully, a reader seeing this would read the good reviews.

Jeb wrote: "Has anyone else been attacked by 1 star ratings recently? My book has been bombarded with about (12) 1 star ratings over a couple days, all with no review, just the rating, and all profiles are set..."

That's about all you can do, report it to Goodreads and let them look into it. Hopefully they will resolve the issue. I'm removing your initial post, due to the link to your book.

A. wrote: "Yes, this has happened to me last summer and several others I know.
Hopefully, a reader seeing this would read the good reviews."

Savvy readers who pay any attention to reader reviews and ratings won't pay much attention to fly by one-star ratings. You are right.

I have a couple of friends who have had the same problem. It is a bot and you should be getting an email about publicity or marketing or some other offer to help you do ______.

Both of them reported the reviews (if you check dates/times they are generally close together) and those reviews were removed. (on Amazon, not sure about Goodreads.) Any time you get a bunch of recviews coming in close together without any comments, on a book that is barely selling, they are bots or fake reviews. Amazon will remove them. This is an ongoing problem and they know it.

I agree. I had one troll who got upset when I wouldn't send her a "free" print book. I told her the ebook was free and that one wasn't in print edition. So she gave me a one star and said that it wasn't formatted properly (it was as I checked) . I just ignored it after asking her to please tell me what problems she foudn with the formatting. There was no answer. That was the only one star on the book.

I've gotten one star ratings from people who read the blurb, didn't like the politics, and acted out of spite. It's annoying because the rating system really responds to a one star rating. It takes lots and lots of four or five star ratings to get the average up again.

This thread is getting off topic. It's one thing to have bots attacking several books at once, as seems to be happening to Jeb. It's another to get a one-star review from a reader... for any reason.

Don't be surprised if a reader doesn't care for your book, no matter how much hard work you put in. Everyone has different tastes. Move on, keep writing, and forget about their review.

When you write about anything, politics or otherwise, you run the risk of getting a negative rating or review from someone who doesn't like your point of view. Keep writing, move on, let it go.

It does us no good to stew about negative ratings. They will happen and, yes, it stings a bit, but the sting will pass.

Finally, discussing one-star ratings and reviews is against our rules, so I'm closing the thread as it seems to be the direction this is going, away from the topic of bots that attack an author. That's a very different animal indeed.