Twitter’s Most Infamous Book Drama

Coming into a community of book lovers in any social media, you would expect to enter into a very welcoming, loving space. If you’ve ever spent more than five minutes on “Book Twitter,” then you know that is not true and that the internet is a truly ruthless place, even for bookworms. Authors, books, and even fictional characters getting canceled and un-canceled every other week, illegal selling of fan fiction, scamming your way into the NYT Bestseller list, and curses. Here are some of the Book Twitter scandals that deserve to be on the hall of infamy.   image via …

Camila Fagen –
Book Culture

Coming into a community of book lovers in any social media, you would expect to enter into a very welcoming, loving space. If you’ve ever spent more than five minutes on “Book Twitter,” then you know that is not true and that the internet is a truly ruthless place, even for bookworms.

Authors, books, and even fictional characters getting canceled and un-canceled every other week, illegal selling of fan fiction, scamming your way into the NYT Bestseller list, and curses. Here are some of the Book Twitter scandals that deserve to be on the hall of infamy.

 

This is The Bad Place Blank Template - Imgflip

image via imgflp

 

  • The Handbook for Mortals debacle 

Everybody raised their eyebrows when an unknown book, Handbook for Mortals, kicked off Angie Thomas’ The Hate U Give off the number 1 spot on the NYT bestseller list. This prompted YA writer Phil Stamper to raise some questions on Twitter, because how come this book that basically no one had heard about dethroned The Hate U Give, which at the time had been on the list for over 20 weeks.

 

https://twitter.com/stampepk/status/900703122145857536?s=20

https://twitter.com/stampepk/status/900705245642313728?s=20

 

After various book lovers, bloggers, and such pulled out their detective hats, it was announced by The New York Times, a mere 23 hours after the list was released, that the book was being pulled off for “inconsistencies in the reporting cycle.”

 

 

Apparently what happened was that American Pie actor Thomas Ian Nicholas, who is attached to star in and produce a potential movie version of Handbook for Mortals, purchased copies in bulk ahead of local comic conventions in the fall, though he wouldn’t receive them until later, which bumped up the numbers for this book. The incident was quickly swept under the rug and The Hate U Give was rightfully reinstated as the number 1 bestseller for that week. But Book Twitter never forgot, and neither did the author Lani Sarem, who later accused the community of shutting out new voices.

 

  • an author was signing books…that they didn’t write? 

It seems strange to sign books that you didn’t write, right? Well, that didn’t stop author Mackenzi Lee from doing it…repeatedly. This was brought up to public knowledge on twitter by author Rin Chupeco, who tweeted the following:

 

https://twitter.com/RinChupeco/status/1251860837242777600?s=20

This was problematic for various reasons, first, that the authors in question didn’t give consent for their books to be signed by another author, and second, that Mackenzi Lee signing books by other people kind of made the implication that Lee’s signature is more valuable than that of the original author.

Why was she signing them in the first place? Well, turns out that the bookstore that Lee worked sort of used this as “promotion” and had “authorized” it because readers had specifically requested those books to be signed by her.

 

And yes, as the tweet above mentioned, the drama didn’t end there, because soon after Rin Chupeco took this issue over to twitter, her book was flooded with one-star reviews on Goodreads.

This story had a lot of levels of messiness to it, and to this day it is still discussed regularly on Book Twitter.

 

  • Author hexed someone over a bad Goodreads review

That’s a lot to take in, I know, we all felt the same way. This incident was brought up to Twitter by author Claribel Ortega with this tweet:

 

https://twitter.com/Claribel_Ortega/status/989189650383335424?s=20

The review in question as deleted, but this is what the author had to say about it:

Imagen

image via goodreads

There isn’t much more to say about it, that message really just says it all.

This whole ordeal was pure insanity, and it had Book Twitter losing their minds for days, and it is still brought up when people talk about past dramas.

  • Soapgate 

While other dramas tend to be just messy and problematic, Soapgate managed to be messy, problematic, and extremely hilarious, and it all started with a subscription box.

 

 

Book subscription boxes most often include an array of book-themed merch such as totes, candles, pins, etc. You know, the usual merch stuff. But this box was not your usual box, this “Book Boyfriend Box” by Bookish Stuff, themed after Sarah J. Mass’ A Court of Thorns and Roses series was “NSFW” and intended only for people over 18 years of age.

The problem starts there, because A Court of Thorns and Roses is technically a YA series. Yes, there is explicit content in it and many people label it as New Adult instead of YA, but still, it is marketed towards a younger audience, so making a NSFW book box themed after these books seems…weird, right? But just wait until you hear what’s inside the box.

Some lip balm, a pillowcase, a book sleeve, NSFW art of the characters, an explicit fan fiction booklet, and *checks notes* a penis-shaped soap?

Did someone else hear that record scratch?

 

 

Leaving the NSFW artwork aside, Fan fiction? For profit? A penis-shaped soap?

Yes. That happened. And the whole of Book Twitter lost it, because yes, selling fan fiction is technically illegal, and the soap thing was just plain weird.

Readers, authors, publishers, and even people who are not usually involved with Book Twitter got roped into this madness.

https://twitter.com/AdamSilvera/status/1029569036030550016?s=20

If you want to look at actual pictures of the products you can do so here, but I will refrain from adding them to this article to spare your eyes from it.

The soap was later addressed by Bookish Stuff, saying that “If you’ve read the series, you should be surprised,” but the fan fiction issue was left untouched.

 

featured image via twitter