Authors of color face enough obstacles already without a Goodreads villain

Cait Corrain, whose debut sci-fi/fantasy novel “Crown of Starlight” was due to be published in May 2024, had a dream publication path laid out ahead of them. Corrain, a nonbinary author who uses the pronouns she and they, had a deal with Penguin Random House to write two books. “Crown of Starlight” had garnered plenty of positive reviews and had been selected as the May 2024 pick for the book subscription service Illumicrate. That means Corrain was having the kind of year most authors never get surrounding their debuts, or even across their careers.

But instead of enjoying their good fortune, Corrain, by her own admission, made fake Goodreads accounts to review-bomb other authors with books debuting in 2024. Most of the debut authors whose books she trashed on Goodreads were Black, Indigenous or people of color (BIPOC), including fellow Del Rey Books authors Molly X. Chang and Danielle Jensen. Del Rey said Monday on the social media platform X that it was “aware of the ongoing discussion” and that “Crown of Starlight” is no longer on its publishing schedule.

Corrain’s agent also dropped them. “Cait and I will not be continuing our partnership moving forward,” Rebecca Podos wrote on X. “I deeply appreciate the patience of those directly impacted by last week’s events as I worked through a difficult situation.”

Corrain released a statement on the social media platform in which she cited depression, alcoholism and substance abuse: “Let me be extremely clear: while I might not have been sober or of sound mind during this time, I accept responsibility for the pain and suffering I caused,” she wrote, “and my delay in posting this is due to spending the last few days offline while going through withdrawal as I sobered up enough to be brutally honest with you and myself.”

(Because Corrain took the effort and time to trash them, I want to take the time to lift up the authors they maligned and encourage you to read their books. Among them, though not all of them, are Bethany Baptiste, Molly X. Chang, KM Enright, Thea Guanzon, Danielle L. Jensen, Akure Phénix, RM Virtues and Frances White.)

There are two immediate issues here: Corrain’s targeting of people of color, who already have a disproportionately hard time getting novels published, and her use of Goodreads, which doesn’t moderate its reviews, to do it. Goodreads, arguably the best known and most popular review site for books, was acquired by Amazon in 2013. Instead of moderating what reviewers write, users can report reviews, and in turn other users, “that might violate” its guidelines.

In October, Goodreads acknowledged that the platform does have a problem with review-bombing. In an Oct. 30 statement — that is, before Corrain’s review-bombing became known — the company said that “this kind of activity is not tolerated on Goodreads and it diminishes the community’s trust in people who participate.”

Bethany Baptiste, whose forthcoming debut novel “The Poisons We Drink” was review-bombed by Corrain, said in an online conversation with me: “From querying agent to subbing to editors, a white person’s ability to relate to a BIPOC author’s story determines whether that BIPOC author gets that agent and interests an editor enough to successfully convince an acquisitions team that that book is worth publishing.”

She said that it’s an especially awful time for writers of color to be attacked the way Corrain attacked them, because so many of the book bans across the country are also targeting books written by BIPOC.

However, when we look beyond Goodreads and individual authors attacking authors of color, we’re forced to take a look at the book-publishing industry as a whole. Publishing, despite decades of work to improve its diversity both within and outside the houses, continues to be an overwhelmingly white business.

According to the Cooperative Children’s Book Center, which tracked statistics in the field of children’s and young adult literature in 2022, 29% of the main characters in the 3,451 titles it received were white, and 22% were animals. Black or African characters were the next most common among those with a specified race or ethnicity, at 12%; Pacific Islanders were represented the least, at 0.3%. On the adult side, a December 2020 piece in The New York Times, “Just How White Is the Book Industry?” includes a sobering visual representation of the answer to that question.

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Inside publishing houses, racial and ethnic representation also remains incredibly white, as seen by both the Lee & Low Diversity Baseline Surveys and the yearly Publishers Weekly Publishing Industry Salary Surveys. To Baptiste’s point about people of color having to persuade white people that they have a story worth telling, the agents who represent authors and are often the first gatekeepers to being published are also overwhelmingly white.

Pitch contests on X were once a great alternative avenue for authors to get their works seen by agents and editors across the industry. However, with social media changing and the rise of AI, many are wary of continuing this work. On Dec. 11, #DVpit, one of the largest pitch contests that served traditionally marginalized creators, released a statement saying it is taking a hiatus after eight years of operation.

Even if BIPOC authors get past these initial gatekeepers and have their books acquired, they’re still in for a fight.

As is evident on the #PublishingPaidMe spreadsheet created by L.L. McKinney with Tochi Onyebuchi, two Black authors, even if BIPOC authors have their books acquired and sold by publishers, they are contending with lower advances compared to their white counterparts. And this is compounded by the fact that, as Baptise points out, many of the titles being banned across the country were written by BIPOC and/or queer authors.

Baptiste, who was an inner-city Title I educator in Florida for seven years, told me: “I’ve seen the devastating effects book bans can have in classrooms and in libraries, but oftentimes, people don’t realize that schools in lower social-economic areas already have limited budgets for books. Book bans shrink an already shallow pool of books children in these schools have access to. Add in the fact that Black and Brown books are most often targeted in book ban movements, Black and Brown children have little to no books they can find themselves in.”

With review-bombing, lackluster advances and book bans on the rise, how can readers best support the authors impacted by the recent debacle, and in general? “Word of mouth and taking active steps,” Baptiste explained. “Add our books to your to-be-read lists and wish lists, preorder our books, if possible, or request our titles at your local libraries.”

She said “building interest in our books, both online and offline, will signal to gatekeepers the demand and necessity for our stories. It will show them that there are audiences out there that want to hear what our stories have to say.”