The Goodreads Scandal That Predicted Publishing's AI Crisis

Publishing is having a trust crisis. With AI accusations swirling around authors like Mia Ballard, whose novel Shy Girl was dropped by her publisher despite her denying any AI use, questions about authenticity in publishing have never felt more urgent. But this kind of chaos isn't new. We saw it coming.

We're revisiting one of our wildest deep dives: the Cait Corrain Goodreads scandal. Corrain had a highly anticipated debut novel, Crown of Starlight, coming out in 2024 — until she admitted to using fake Goodreads accounts to review bomb other writers' forthcoming books. Most of her targets were Black or queer authors. Corrain is white.

The story has a lot of twists and turns, including a fabricated conversation with a completely made-up person that Corrain invented to take the fall.

Canadian author Xiran Jay Zhao was the first to bring it to wider attention, noticing that Crown of Starlight was getting glowing reviews from the same accounts trashing other books — some of which weren't even out yet. Zhao also compiled a 31-page Google document of screenshots and receipts: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1__mO1uqIqcmupBAPKwXDzlUbZIwtY6fKf0S1Y0SNz0E/edit?tab=t.0

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