1st Avenue

I know I said I will never mention Goodreads again, but this is kind of interesting since it's a take-down notice concerning my review of Uncaged by Joe Gazzam, which violates GR's vague and ambiguous reviewing policies.

Joe Gazzam is the creepy-ass author who steals photos of underage teen models to use in his fake accounts to promote his book (Shelby has all the details). Pointing out something like this in the GR review space is not OK, according to GR, because review space is for reviewing books only, not about an author's behavior... no matter how problematic it is?

Here's the note itself

But lo and behold. GR is doing something about this author. GR is looking into his account. Just his account though, even though he has a legion of fake profiles still updating their fake statuses and recommending his book to everyone they come across.

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[02/08/2014] 38 Calibre Reviews received a strange note from Joe Gazzam trying to "explain" that it was his 12 year old "niece" who was responsible for all the spam and sock puppet accounts and also for stealing photos of underaged teenagers to use in "her" various profiles.

[02/10/2014] So who is Joe Gazzam? darkwriter76 attempts to find out, with little luck. It seems Gazzam is a new talented screenwriter, apparently, when he's not pretending to be 12 year old girls on the internet.

[02/10/2014] Goodreads has deleted my review, which they said they would if the content stayed the same after 2 days, but it took them 5 days to get around to it. 5 days is actually record time, just ask anyone on GR.

Original review:

[2/16/2014] If you thought that's all to it, then you are wrong. Gazzam has since been kicked off GR, but before that, he left a trail of crazy in his wake, as documented here by shelby and tinanicole.

[2/22/2014] Turns out Joe Gazzam is still around, even after attempting to go offline by deleting his main twitter account, a few fake accounts, and a couple GR sock puppets. Shelby once again has the latest. Not only is Gazzam still around, he's shown himself to be a homophobe.