A debut author has admitted to creating fake profiles online to flood other books with mean and abusive reviews to “bomb the ratings” of fellow authors.
Cait Corrain said she was “sorrier than you can ever know” for her actions, which caused her to be dropped by her agent, publisher and distributor.
Her debut novel, Crown Of Starlight, was due to be published in 2024 by Del Rey, an imprint of Penguin Random House.
The scandal was brought to public attention last week by fellow author Xiran Jay Zhao, who claimed an author on the book review site Goodreads had been leaving one-star reviews on debut books by authors of colour for several months.
In a video on TikTok, Zhao explained: “A white author debuting in 2024 has been caught using fake Goodreads accounts to one-star bomb other debuts, who are mostly [people of color].
“There are 31 pages of receipts in a Google doc… but they go back to April of this year.”
They continued: “What gave away the game was that they always ranked one particular book—Crown of Starlight by Cait Corrain—on a bunch of different lists.
“When Cait was finally alerted that people were catching on to these accounts, they went on Twitter to paint themself as one of the victims to further promote their book.”
On Tuesday, Del Rey announced it would no longer publish the book, nor any other works on Corrain’s contract, after previously having acknowledged it was “aware” of the scandal.
Corrain’s agent, Becca Podos, also announced she was parting ways with her.
“Cait and I will not be continuing our partnership moving forward. I deeply appreciate the patience of those directly impacted by last week’s events as I worked through a difficult situation,” she wrote on X/Twitter.
Corrain also took to social media to issue a lengthy apology, saying her actions were the result of a “psychological breakdown”, but did not make reference to the allegations she had targeted books by authors of colour.
She said that in November 2023, following a battle with depression and substance abuse, she had started taking new medication, which had prompted a decline in her mental health.
“During this time, I created roughly six profiles on [review site] Goodreads and, along with two profiles I made during a similar but shorter breakdown in 2022, I boosted the rating of my book, bombed the ratings of several fellow debut authors, and left reviews that ranged from kind of mean to downright abusive.
“My memories of this are extremely fuzzy, so it’s possible there are a couple other authors. If so, please know I take full ownership of what I did to you as well.
“I’m sorrier than you’ll ever know. There’s nothing I can say to erase what I did to you.”
She added that she had “made things worse”, after attempting to hide her actions by blaming a “non-existent friend” and issuing “fake apologies” for their actions.
“I betrayed the confidence of my agent, my pub team, my readers, and my friends, and betrayed my own deeply held values,” she said.
“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, 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.
“I know some of you won’t forgive me, and I recognise that you’re not required to. No one ever wants to be judged by their worst actions, but that’s not always up to us.”
Corrain said she would be reaching out to everyone who had been directly impacted by her actions and was checking into an intensive psychiatric care and rehab facility.
