The Information, the 1995 novel by Martin Amis, is about envy. Literary envy, one of the most virulent forms of that particular deadly sin. The novel follows a failed novelist named Richard Tull, given to writing experimental tomes titled “Untitled,” which no one reads, let alone publishes. Tull’s closest friend, his chum since college at Oxford, is also a writer, named Gwyn Barry. Barry, unlike Tull, is successful. His novel hits the bestseller lists. It gets optioned by Hollywood. It is also, in Tull’s estimation, crap. Empty puffery to flatter the masses. (He’s not exactly wrong, either, which is part of what makes envy such a burden. You, you feel, are the only one who sees things clearly. And what good does it do?) Envious to the point of violence, Tull embarks on a series of enjoyably Amisian misadventures, sending threatening letters, hiring hit men, only to have them come after him rather than Barry.
It’s a lot of fun, as Amis is, at his best. Tull is vindictive, petty, cruel—and recognizable. If you’ve been made ugly through the envy of a friend, you’ll see parts of yourself in him. If you’re a writer, and you’ve been made ugly by the envy of a writer friend, you may wonder how, exactly, Amis managed to burrow inside your head and catalog your every thought.
Perhaps Cait Corrain would wonder the same thing.
Corrain, if you weren’t aware, is the latest author to sabotage her own career before it got off the ground, all in the effort to make it. As detailed here, Corrain is, or was, a soon-to-be debut author in the sci-fi/fantasy genre. Her novel A Crown of Starlight, a space opera-ish retelling of the myth of Dionysus and Ariadne, was scheduled to come out in May 2024. Corrain tried to market herself and her book online, as all authors are expected to do nowadays. Some of the marketing took iffy forms, as when she created anonymous Goodreads accounts to hype up her book. Iffy, sure, but not really harmful, all things considered. Hardly unique, either. I’ve seen authors engage in similar tactics all the time. One author I know of used to tweet during The Walking Dead, saying that fans of one character should check out this book, maybe they’ve heard of it??? It was, of course, the author’s own book. Maybe it’s crass, maybe it’s cringe, but, as any encounter with publishing will demonstrate, you gotta hustle. No one else is going to do it for you.
Now, where Corrain veered into genuinely malicious behavior comes next. She created more anonymous accounts—“sock puppets,” in online parlance—but they didn’t hype up her own book. Rather, they cast aspersions on other debut authors, whose SFF books were scheduled to come out at the same time as Corrain’s. In two cases, the books are published by Del Rey—Corrain’s own publisher. To make it even worse, some of the authors targeted by the review-bombing are women of color, historically underserved by publishing. It’s a mess, man.
The discourse around L’affaire Goodreads makes clear that what Corrain did was wrong, and she should face the consequences. (And she has: Del Rey has cancelled the book, and her agent has dropped her.) The general tone is one of condemnation, with other writers wondering what would possess Corrain to do something so foolish, so harmful, with no guaranteed upside.
Allow me to dissent from the consensus:
I get you, Cait Corrain.
I get banging one’s head against the publishing industry for years, and then, once you finally get a shot, feeling like you have to capitalize on it to the fullest extent, no matter what.
I get feeling like you’re in cutthroat competition with, rather than mutual appreciation of, your fellow authors.
I get feeling like you have to fling every last strand of spaghetti against the wall in the name of marketing yourself—because no one else is going to do it for you.
Let me be clear: I don’t condone what Corrain did, especially not the sock-puppeting of other debut novels. But, as with the tragicomic adventures of Richard Tull, I get where she’s coming from. I sympathize with her plight. (Sympathize? Empathize? I can never tell the difference.) I too have banged my head against the industry for a decade plus—to no avail, thus far. I too know something of the desperation that might push an author to act so foolishly.
And, if other authors are honest with themselves, I think they too could see a shard of themselves in Corrain’s spiraling. That’s the point I want to make here. While I don’t want to condone her actions, I also don’t want to portray them as beyond the pale, as uniquely pathological. Corrain is responding to the same stimuli as any other author.
To broaden the scope for a bit, portraying the story of one bad actor going too far misses the fact the publishing industry, as it’s currently arranged, all but sets up authors like Corrain for stepping in it like this. With marketing and publicity budgets cut, much of onus for getting the word out gets displaced onto the author, who feels they must move heaven and earth to give their book a fighting chance. Of course don’t authors are going to take things too far. It’s inevitable. And any disavowal of Corrain that doesn’t include that larger structural overview will be incomplete.
Authors will always struggle with envy. We are particularly prone to it. Which is why publishing should do what it can to make sure authors don’t shoot themselves in the foot. Cuz we will. Guaranteed.