Review Bomber Review Bombed
By: Bill Adams
So much for new ideas…
New review site, Tome Rater, was shut down during its beta phase as review bombs of review bombers caused too many issues for developers.
Tome Rater was created to rival traditional book rating sites such as Goodreads and StoryGraph. Their mission statement was ‘To promote a fair review scaling system that is for readers and for authors alike.’
The biggest draw, per Tome Rater’s under-construction website, is the ‘Rate the Reviewer’ option for Certified Authors. The idea was conceived due to prevalent review bombing on opposing sites. This gave authors the ability to counter review bombers, thus negating their lowered overall rating score by awarding the book a 3 star rating if more than 20 authors were affected by a review bomb via the same reviewer profile.
(For those new to the term review bombing, it is when reviewers go to a book’s page and give negative ratings. Some reasons include, but not limited to: use of Generative AI, openly hating an author for their online presence, liking/disliking diverse people, or just all around assholery.)
The issue for Tome Rater arose when a reviewer named 1star_Bob began review bombing every single book with a title style of The/A Blank of Blank & Blank, giving the lowest score of 1 stars to each book, numbering well over 10,000 books in the first week of the beta testing launch.
As predicted, that didn’t go down well with these authors. Because of mob mentality, as well as most romantasy books using this title schema and having such rabid fans, 1star_Bob faced their wrath. His Overall Reviewer Score instantly became one of the highest amount of 1 stars ever recorded in a single day based on data obtained from competitor sites.
But 1star_Bob did not go away quietly. The creator of 1star_Bob then created the profiles 1star_Bob2.0, 1star_Bob2.1, and so forth until he had amassed 100 profiles. These profiles then began an all-out war of rating the same 10,000 books with 1 stars, as well as all the profiles of the reviewers who review bombed 1star_Bob.
The rabid fans were not done either. They retaliated against all 100 1star_Bob profiles, which then caused the beta site to crash.
Tome Rater’s creator, Bob Starr, decided to cease all future production, effectively shutting down the review site, claiming it was unsustainable. In the end, he claimed to have a great idea on hand, but the pettiness of readers, reviewers, and authors far outweighs good concepts.
Bill Adams
During his collegiate days at the turn of the century, he began to develop his passion for writing, especially within the epic fantasy genre about unlikely heroes. It was there, Bill began to formulate the story that would eventually become Ashe’s unwanted journey and The Divine Godsqueen Coda.
Aside from writing, Bill loves movies and reading, especially SFF B-movies. He likes to know all the useless trivia, like who played who, and what the stories were behind the curtain. He is a master at Scene It. Bill’s few other hobbies include soccer, a good whiskey, a slice of pizza, and growing a beard. It is the little things he enjoys most.
Bill currently lives in the greater Chicago, IL area with his wife, goblin (aka toddler) son, & daughter.
*All Porridge Report articles are satire and should be taken with humor in mind. If offense is taken, please let us know in the comments and we will rectify.
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