Attack of the Internet Trolls

The saga of the Greek Seaman continues. Over the past few hours Jacqueline Howett's online hissy fit about a bad review she has got has become an internet sensation. She is like the new Rebecca Black now. I've been googling her name out of interest and she is all over heaps of blogs, message boards, there's a YouTube cartoon video making fun of her comments, and she has gotten 65 bad reviews on Amazon that are pretty mean. Alot of people are saying that this thing has gone too far and that people should not be posting one star reviews of her book on Amazon just to be mean or to criticise her AGAIN on her lack of manners and professionalism. The link to her amazon page is here:

http://www.amazon.com/The-Greek-Seaman-ebook/dp/B003ZSILSW/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1301471555&sr=1-1-spell

Someone said they would not use the book as toilet paper. Another person said they knew pre-schoolers with better grammer. Is this too harsh? Is this taking it too far? Maybe. Alot of the "reviews" that have been posted in the past few hours seem to be from people who read sample pages and that was it. I don't think its right to post a bad review of a book that you have not even read from start to finish. I've read heaps of books that started off crap (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo) but got really good in the middle. Ms Howlett is suffering the wrath of Internet Trolls.


This is what happens when you act like an ass on the net. You bring out all the haters. You start finding videos about yourself on YouTube. You start getting pizza deliveries in the middle of the night. Weird phone calls. Hate pages turn up on Facebook. You get death threats and bitchy emails. Its amazing how quickly flame wars can spread and develop. This woman acted like an idiot. No one is not disagreeing with that fact. But she does not deserve 65 vile reviews on Amazon. I hope she has learned a lesson. When I first heard about this thing, I thought 'Her career is over' that blog attracted a hell of a lot of attention. Agents and editors and other authors heard about it! I've even heard people using the phrase 'Now don't go all Greek Seaman on me' over the net today.

In the space of a day this woman made an ass of herself in front of the entire global writing community. But that does not mean she cannot rebuild a career for herself. She could use a pen name or disappear from publishing for a few years, polish and relearn her craft, then come back with a killer book. I hope she grows from this experience and comes down off her high horse. I read some of her work and while I thought it was bad, it was not terrible. It had promise. It was just very, very, very rough. I wish her the best. In the mean time I hope the trolls back off.