Authors hit by bad reviews on Goodreads before review copies are even circulated

Frequent experience with movies also. letterboxd is rife with ratings on movies, which didn't pre-screen at all yet. Most of them by paid shills. A24 being the worst, but Warner also amongst them. And lb fails to hit them.

Same on IMDB, and even Rotten Tomatoes. There's a lot of money in movies. But books?

Right, but those are positive reviews.

No, sometimes they are also brigading competitors. Lot's of 0 star ratings also en masse.

I was shocked to read the new rules for the Academy Awards jury members: newly they must watch the movies before giving their verdict. As in, before they didn't have to...

The same exact thing happens on BoardGameGeek for board games. A game is announced and people rate it 1 out of 10 because they hate the theme or the it has a digital app to help you play or ..... The game isn't released and no one has a copy besides the publisher.

> There's a lot of money in movies. But books?

Generally less money, yes. But not all motives are financial. And there are loads of conflict, drama, and emotions in many parts of the writing world.

Spy Magazine in its time (mid 80s to mid 90s) had an amusing section titled "Logrolling in our time". Usually featuring mutually favorable blurbs by pairs of writers.

Guess you could say it happens everywhere by default - absent any checks and balances. Steam had terrible review bombing issues, but they finally decided to do something about it far too many years too late.

... But when you're an incumbent that's likely to be around for at least a quarter of a decade with a sizeable monopoly, later really is better than never.

Perhaps in the past people had ethics and so it didn't need to be stated. I'm surprised they need it in the rules, as I would expect since they pick the jury they pick people with ethics. But then I'll admit complete ignorance to how they do anything (and no care either since I'm not a movie person)

Online reviews don't have enough control over their reviewers and so it only takes a small number of unethical people to cause a big problem.

They've discontinued mailing out screeners and members have to watch them through the private Academy Screening Room streaming service. The academy now knows who watched what and can use that data for fair voting.

There's a lot of money in movies. But books?

Books were $28,100,000,000 last year in the United States alone.

Audiobooks: $1,800,000,000

e-Books: $191,000,000

https://www.statista.com/topics/1177/book-market/#topicOverv...

Well, now there are two people who remember Spy.

I wish there was a modern equivalent.

Make that three! I'd vote for a modern equivalent, too.