Blog Giveaway & Feature Special

Hi guys

So my birthday is in October and I was thinking: "what shall I do for this very special blog in that very special month" and it hit me a Blog Giveaway & Feature Special.

At the moment, I have 5 books to giveaway and I'll hopefully get more to add.

I'm also going to be doing author interviews and blogger interviews (and blog features).

[Authors, If you'd like to donate a book to my giveaway and/or be interviewed or bloggers, if you want to be interviewed or you want to do a guest post, send me an email, fill the contact form in the left sidebar or leave a comment on this post and I'll get back to you. In your email, please include what dates you prefer. If you're indifferent as to dates, state this.]

I'll post the schedule in my next post and linkback here.

You can also check the calendar [top widget on the right].

I created three images for this but I haven't decided on which to pick

Check out the schedule

Books I've Reviewed

Books I've reviewed in alphabetical order of book title.

~#~

~A~
Angel Killer by P.J. Nunn

~B~
Baby, You're as Sweet as 3.14159265 by Hog Wild
The Ballerina and The Fighter by Ursula Sinclair
Breaking The Reins by Juliana Haygert
Buchanan's Redemption by Alexx Andria

~C~

~D~
Dead Before Morning by Geraldine Evans
The Divine Dantes: Squirt Guns In Hades by Andrew Barger
The Domino Effect by Jill Elaine Hughes

~E~
Étoile by Olivia Besse

~F~
Faith, Hope and Murder by Elise M Stone
Forever Mine by Elizabeth Reyes

~G~

~H~
Hussy by Selena Kitt

~I~
Imagined Love by Diamond Drake

~J~

~K~
Killer Rumors by Antonello Foire

~L~
Lesbian Crushes and Bulimia by Natasha Holme
The Lily Branch by Carole Pitt
Love At 11 by Mari Mancusi
Love, Carry My Bags by C. R. Everett
Love Me If You Dare by Kate Laurens

~M~
Me, Cinderella? by Aubrey Rose
More Than This by Jay McLean
Mr. Murder by Dean Koontz

~N~

~O~

~P~

~Q~

~R~

~S~
The Siren's Tale by Anne Carlisle
Something Furry Underfoot by Amy L Peterson

~T~

~U~

~V~

~W~
The Wedding Date by Yolanda Allen
Winter Shadows by Casey Bond
Won't Last Long by Heidi Joy Tretheway

~X~

~Y~

~Z~

Paperback Saturday

Hi guys

I've been thinking of things to do for the blog. So I came up with Paperback Saturday.

I created this because I've been reading a lot of ebooks lately. In fact, about 90% of the books I've read this year are ebooks.

I did 3 images for this. If you want to participate, please use one of the images at the end of this post and linkback to this blog.

UPDATE: Changed title from Paperback of The Week to Paperback Saturday. Changed images

My Blogging Bucket List

So I saw this great idea on Reading Is My Treasure

You can find the guidelines here

I've been blogging for like two years and have had this blog for longer but I started actively using it about two months ago.
The design is pretty basic but there are a lot of things I wanting to do to spruce things. (I have to get a laptop first).

Abstract goals:
*Have as much fun as possible
*Meet a lot of amazing people in the blogosphere
*Improve my review writing

Numbers to reach by the end of 2013:
*17 email subscribers (I'll be 17 next month)
*50 Bloglovin followers
*Lots of pageviews
*100 blog posts
*80 reviews

Book and review related:
*Review at least one pre-pub ARC
*update my Netgalley and actually use it
*All post have at least one GIF or photo
*A month long giveaway in October. (Birthday month. I have no idea how this will work)

Post/Event related:
*Post a movie vs book reaction
*Do blog tours and interviews
*Start a blogging event—be it weekly, monthly, or a one time thing. Or memes
*Host my very own giveaway--one where I give away the prize.
*Guest posts on other blogs
-Do something blog related to celebrate my birthday (see above month long giveaway)
*Start writing discussion posts based on my reader's requests (I will do a form when I get a laptop)

Design:
*Get a designed layout
*Create a button to represent my blog (and swap with other bloggers)
*Do blog buttons
*Create a logo
*Create a pintrest board for books
*Get a blog designer to help
*Create logos for memes

Bullying On Goodreads: My Opinion

This is my third and final post on the topic. Read the first one here and the second one here

No one knows if Lauren Pippa/Howard started this whole thing to create attention for her book or if it was just a misunderstanding but that's not what I'm going to be talking about.

On a larger scale, it's impossible for trolls, bullies etc to not exist on a site as big as goodreads.

Authors should not get upset if people rate their books. You put out a product, you will get good and bad feedback. You should not respond to negative non-constructive feedback(on your product).
On the other hand, if someone abuses, bullies or threatens you, you should not just sit and do nothing. Report. That's why goodreads has a flag button bedside reviews.

IMO, people shouldn't rate or "review" books they haven't read. You can shelve whatever books you want to however you like but I think it's stupid to rate books you haven't read.

Authors harass people daily on goodreads. I have never personally been harassed but I know people who have. They harass you to read their books. They spam groups. I'm a member of a lot of groups on Goodreads and I see this a lot.

I know someone who was threatened by an author because she wrote a negative review of the author's book. She didn't bash the author or the book and she gave constructive criticism but the author took it personal and threatened to attack her if she didn't remove the review.

The worst I've experienced with author harassment on goodreads was when an author kept on messaging me that I got his characters' names wrong in my review. I went back and checked the book and I hadn't made any mistakes. I told him but he kept on disturbing me so I just removed the names in my review.

Bottom line is this. People shouldn't be able to rate or review books they haven't read. Authors need to stop spamming people's messages and group threads. And reviewers should stop bashing authors or books. Write helpful/useful reviews. When there's an argument, don't jump into conclusions. Find out the facts.

The saddest thing about all this is that the people usually involved in these things are adults. When adults are acting like they're in high school, what do they expect the ones who are actually in high school to do.

As for Lauren Pippa/Howard's book, the part of me that would read probably any book I can lay my hands on wants her to release the book. Another part of me doesn't want her to release the book because I feel sorry for her if this is how she wants to start a  career as an author

*image from The Savvy Senorita

Bullying On Goodreads: Badly Behaving Authors

Today, I'll be talking about the bullying on goodreads I started talking about here

In that post, I talked about how authors(specifically Lauren Howard/Pippa) were allegedly bullied and threatened with rape and other forms of violence.

I did a little more research on the topic and found a lot of people calling bullshit on the whole thing. Rosepetals, and DarkWriter give a lot of proof (screenshots from Twitter, Goodreads and Blogs) to support their claims. According to the other things I found, the whole things was a ploy for attention that blew beyond what Pippa could control.

On the issue of STGRB.com, FozMeadows calls them out. StopTheGoodreadsBullies.net, a website dedicated to proving that STGRB is made up of authors who bully readers and other authors who don't agree with them or have put up bad reviews of the books. They explain fully here.

Around the internet, I also saw that STGRB.com has allegedly called and threatened people that they "don't like".

On goodreads, I've seen a lot of threads discussing authors who harass reviewers and spam group threads and send messages threatening them.
It is said that these authors are mostly indie authors.
There are many groups on goodreads dedicated to discussing these authors. The most popular one is Badly Behaving Authors

My next and final post on this topic will be up soon. It's basically a conclusion and my opinions on the whole thing

*image from farmanor

Bullying On Goodreads: Stop The Bullies

So I found a post on goodreads about an article on Salon.com

According to the "supporters", Lauren Howard  asked -when the book hadn't come out yet - why people were giving 1 and 2 star reviews? Some people responded by giving more low reviews (just to prove that they can do whatever they please), and then started shelving her book as "authors who should be sodomized" and "should be raped in prison". She decided that that was too much and is no longer releasing the book.

I've noticed something like this once. I remember when I wanted to read reviews for the 4th & 5th books in the Secret Circle. It took a while to find an actual review. All I could find was people bashing the author.
Long story short, LJ Smith wrote the series as a trilogy but the publishers wanted more and she said no so they gave it to a ghost writer to write 3 more books.

According to STGRB(Stop The Goodreads Bullies), these people don't stop at online threats. They find out their home numbers and email addresses to call and send them threats. When the authors report, they are seen as childish and are told to grow thick skins.
Then the bullies will gather all their friends, rate the book 1 star and write negative reviews. They'll vote down all the positive reviews and tag the book or author as a BBA (Badly Behaving Author) and "blacklist" them.

I read that the goodreads moderators don't do anything. Some of the bullies are actually Goodreads moderators.

STGRB has compiled a list of the worst of the worst

My biggest problem with this is
¤ I really don't understand how you can rate and/or review a book you haven't read(or hasn't been released). It doesn't make sense. Besides book reviews are for BOOKS. Review the book not the author

There are petitions at Change.org for Amazon and Goodreads to stop letting abuse and bullying continue under the guise of freedom of speech and that Goodreads' should not allow comments that are abusive in nature for those who are interested.

Frankly, I don't care about the author or the book. All I'm saying is that you shouldn't be able to review books that you haven't read and you shouldn't threaten people.

I don't know how true the allegations of abuse are because there are no shelves on goodreads to prove that (some say the shelves have been deleted.)

This is part one of three posts that i will put up on the issue.

My next post will be about the supposed bullies and people that think STGRB is a bunch of crap