Lu (Sugar & Snark)

I just wanted to say THANK YOU to the admins at Booklikes for being supportive, welcoming, and having outstanding customer service. I'm a Goodreads refugee. I left Goodreads for the most part. It felt like it was no longer a welcome environment for regular readers.

Truth be told, I left my old Goodreads account months ago and opened up a brand, spanking new account in June of this year. Why? I was tired of being harassed by STGRB and certain members of that website, or by people who contribute there regularly. I felt like my every move was being watched and it got to the point where I just shut down all forms of social media.

I deleted my blog (Hippies, Beauty and Books Oh My!) that took me 2 years to build up from scratch. I deleted over 500 reviews, my Twitter account, Tumblr, and even Facebook for a while. I wanted to get away from the drama. Unfortunately, a certain member of STGRB still writes about me and I'm sure will find this post somehow. This is what these people do: they can't let go of things and move on. They follow you everywhere.

(As a side note: STGRB claims I was, "investigated by the FBI" and "removed from the internet" for bullying. This never happened. Nobody ever came to drag me away. I removed myself to get away from the crazies.)

A lot of people are making the jump from Goodreads to Booklikes and I hope that this site will remain a friendly environment for readers, regardless if we like the books we are reading.

I'm not a troll. My average rating on books I read was somewhere around a 3.7 and I always tried to give constructive feedback. I never talked about an author unless they gave me reason to. I don't like spamming, unsolicited remarks, or outright nastiness from authors (nor do I like these things when they come from other readers.) I hardly ever included the author in the content of a review, but I would shelf them as "badly behaving" when their behavior was below par. I did this as a reminder to myself to never read their books and as a warning to my friend that they may want to consider staying away. I never went around Goodreads randomly picking out self-published authors to ruin their careers. 

My personal philosophy on authors: Authors are their own business. When a business does something unfavorable to hurt/annoy/piss off their customers, it is perfectly acceptable to spread the word about it. People even boycott businesses that have values different from their own (A&F, anyone?) 

When authors put their books out into the world, they are subject to public scrutiny just like any other business would be. For example, if they are associated with STGRB, people are going to want to know that. If they have anti-homosexual views and support groups with bigotry, I'm sure many people want to know that. I vote with my wallet.

Vice versa when it comes to amazing authors. I think people should know when an author has been professional and outstanding to work with. This road goes both ways, in my honest opinion. 

So, once again, thank you Booklikes for impressing me so much in my short time here so far. It's nice to know that we carry a lot of the same values.