[prohobo]

You ignore it and enjoy the free publicity. People who read the book, assuming it sheds light on these people, will figure it out.

The biggest issue I can see is review bombing, so you can try warning various platforms that it might be targeted, though most of them already have systems in place to try to prevent it or will ignore your pleas.

IMO, the only thing you can really do there is market your book in other ways, and maybe ask some bloggers to pick up the story if you do get publicly attacked. A lot of people will search a controversial subject and read blog posts about it to see what the issue is. If some of those articles can convince them that the book or author are important and are being cancelled for any reason other than merit they'll be more likely to check it out.

[zneiposh]

Thank you for your response.

Alas, I think they're going to be able to find ways to make the "free publicity" harmful. These people are petty, but they're not stupid. I'm expecting GPT-written negative reviews (which will drown out the positive ones) and various chatter on social media that redirects any discussion of the work to discussion of the author and what he may or may not have done (nothing illegal, but stupid shit that's really embarrassing) 20 years ago. I know they're going to try to raise a cancel mob. They did it in 2015 over my (ill-considered) use of one word. I was using it as a regular trash insult, but a bunch of people got paid $75 a post to misrepresent my intentions on social media, and it ended up costing me job opportunities.

I used to believe that "there's no such thing as bad publicity", but that isn't true. If you get a negative review in good faith by, say, the New York Times, that's not going to hurt you financially at all. (Emotionally, it might.) Critical or even negative publicity that comes in good faith does tend to help you in the long run. On the other hand, if you get 100 low-effort negative reviews on Goodreads by people who've never read the book, your average drops into 1.x or 2.x territory and you're done. To the rest of the world, it just looks like you wrote a bad book. And if someone drums up a cancel mob, it can get really bad really quick.

The book isn't about the people are going to attack it. It's an unrelated novel. They're going to attack it because they're vindictive, not because there's anything in there for them to fear. They might be afraid that if the book succeeds and I become famous, I use my "platform" to go after them in the future. (It isn't really my plan, but I understand their paranoia, as I must sound a bit paranoid myself.) The book itself isn't going to "shed light on" them, though, as that's not its purpose. I'd rather forget entirely that they exist.

I'm playing defense here because offense isn't really a possibility. Some of these people, I know exactly who they are. Most of them are people who work for those people (or who did) whose names I don't even know. One of the guys who was stupid enough to attack me under his real name is some dork in Seattle (I'm on the east coast) who claims to have worked with me even though we've never met.

[prohobo]

Even if they manage to get a cancel mob on you, it's pretty well known that those fizzle out if the target doesn't give them more ammunition by acknowledging them. So, if it gets bad and you handle it well it's just a temporary setback.

Cancel mobs get off on having influence over the target's emotions. Deny them that and they lose their fuel.

I recommend looking at some of SunnyV2's dissections on influencers who have been cancelled or ruined their reputations some other way: https://www.youtube.com/@SunnyV2/videos

The main rule for surviving is pretty prominent in the thumbnails themselves: never respond.

Since your book doesn't have anything to do with the attackers then that complicates things. In that case you might have to straight up market the book with ads and such, and try to get review-ignorant readers. The attackers will lose energy after some time, so those bad reviews could get buried by genuine readers.

You should probably consult with a PR specialist really.

[zneiposh]

The problem is that I can't afford a PR specialist, any more than poor people can just go buy more money, and the adversaries can.

The only unknown is how seriously they are going to attack me. They don't really gain anything, so it could be no more than a couple sock puppets on Twitter. Or it could be a full force affair.

[muzani]

Not sure about the others but GPT bombing is a severe violation of the OpenAI policy, which was literally one of the main reasons they kept it locked up for so long. If someone gets caught for it, they'll get access revoked.

Also in general, sites like Google Play have built up defense mechanisms against review bombing and review bribes. I'd be surprised if a company owned by Amazon doesn't have such measures, but then again, no algorithm is perfect.

[zneiposh]

Right. I'm well-aware that review bombing is against OpenAI's policies. The main issue that the adversaries have connections through Y Combinator, and I don't. None of this should be taken to cast aspersion on OpenAI itself--very loose and often indirect business or social ties to an evildoer to not make oneself an evildoer, of course--but it wouldn't shock me if certain policies were under-enforced. Even if OpenAI does revoke access, they probably won't assist me in exposing people, should they decide to do this.