Country Kids asked
"Nannyde,
Very serious question here-are the people who reviewed your book and posted online real people?
Two or three of them (out of like 5) were childcare providers and said some pretty not nice things about it.
Are there reviews anywhere else on it. I imagine you spent quiet a bit getting writing it, editing, having it proofread and then having it published. If it was excepted the first time as it seems hard to get a book published. If it has just bad reviews and not rated high won't that hurt your sales?
If we read it is there a way for us to post a review on it? "
You ladies know I'm new to the author business so the reviews Country is referring to have been a pretty serious aspect of the learning curve in this new venture.
I didn't even know this was possible so when it happened to me, I was completely caught off guard.
My paperback came out on October 3rd which was a Friday. On Friday I had made an announcement on three Facebook groups I am an admin for. One is Child Care, one is Daycare Debate, and one is Daycare Providers Rock.
The Child Care and Daycare Debate boards are fairly new and once we hit around five hundred users on the Child Care one it changed how high we were in the Facebook search so our requests to join started coming in pretty heavily. I didn't think anything of it when on October 3rd I got many many requests to join. I also got many on the Daycare Debate too but it wasn't out of the ordinary considering how high we were in the recommended search.
My sister calls me (she is my editor) and said we have one star reviews on the Barnes and Noble, Amazon Ebook, and our BRAND NEW
THAT DAY paperback on Amazon. We thought something was fishy because the paperbook just came out so anyone who bought it couldn't have possibly have received it.
We also are given a daily report that shows if the book has ever been lent out. At that point there were no lends on the Ebook.
All of the reviews that we had received up until that day were five star reviews. Of the five star reviews two of them were from unverified purchases. Of the two that were unverified, one was from a member here who helped me through the first drafts of the book. I had sent her all of the chapters and she read them and gave feedback. She had "heard" all the chapters because I read them out loud to her one by one. She could review it as an unverified because she got it before it came out. The other unverified review was from an attorney I am working with as an expert witness.
ALL of the other five star reviews were from verified purchases. All of the one star reviews are from unverified purchases. They literally could NOT have read the book so I knew they hadn't.
The other thing that happened with the negative reviews was that each review had been "liked" or found "helpful" by eight to eleven people. This matters because the most helpful reviews appear at the TOP of the reviews. So we had 16 five star reviews buried under their negative reviews.
So anyway... the day after the bad reviews from nowhere, I start seeing posts on the Facebook forums. For a little history... the debates they were posting were the Developmentally Appropriate Practice discussions we have had here MANY times. I, personally, have had this particular debate at least three hundred times in my sixteen years on daycare boards.
When I enter into this debate I start with a foundational claim that I am a babysitter and I don't offer a developmentally appropriate program. That's the bottom starting point I use in these debates. Because I'm skilled in this particular debate, I can accurately tell what will come next through the discussion. It started on Saturday and all though the day the debate grew to the tune of 560 responses.
The typical reaction to my input always comes down to: I feel so sorry for your kids. Their parents must be desperate. You have no business taking care of kids. And the end game is....
You are a child abuser.
I'm SO used to this progression that it doesn't phase me. I wouldn't expect it to go anywhere else. I didn't think that much of it until one of the posters who was in the debate used a phrase that was identical to a phrase that was in the reviews. It wasn't until THEN that it ding donged on me that this poster was one of the one star reviewers.
So I asked her point blank if she wrote a review on my book and she said she had. I asked her HOW she could review a book she could not have possibly read. She said she read the free preview and the free was half the book. I pointed out that the free was actually only one and a half chapters of the twenty three chapters in the book and the only FULL chapter she could have read was the one on the "Magnificent" parent. She insisted she didn't have to read the book to know how horrible it was.
During this 560 post thread there were legions of the new members contributing to the conversation. They were slinging "child abuse" around like a rag doll. I didn't let it phase me... I just plotted away discussing what they were perceiving as child abuse was what I considered to be good practice.
So one by one they went after EVERYTHING I have online. They said my youtube videos were PROOF of my abusing children. They said that ALL of them were abusive. The backward footed pajamas was a straight jacket. The belly time video was abuse because babies should NEVER be put on their bellies before they can roll. My one handed car play video was abuse because I'm limiting a child's natural body movements. My "play rules" video was proof of abuse because I should allow all the children to go anywhere in the room and not FORCE the babies to stay in the area with the safe toys they can't choke on.
So while all of this is going on... which was about fifteen hours of debate, I kept getting private messages from members of my groups and members that told me they were in a group with these posters. Come to find out, they are a secret Facebook group of 800 members. I can't say the name of their group because I don't want anything like what happened to me happen to them. They found out about the book from a member who was in both of our groups, infiltrated my groups, and started screen shotting my posts, posting them on their group and using them as proof of my abusing children.
The administrators of the group made a call to action to their members to go in and carpet bomb ALL of my content. They hit my youtube videos, all three sales venue of my book, and my blogs. Michael posted a link to one of them (not the administrators) who commented on my "MyChild" blog.
The book has only been out on Ebook for about five weeks and the paperback was new that day. They went in behind each other and promoted the reviews so they remain at the top.
The last hit they have done is my blog. Interestingly, me and Michael's Daycare Whisperer blog got hit by someone trying to hack into it at the same time the "comment" came on my MyChild blog. Can't tell if it is from them or a coincidence. We had to deal with that.
The latest contact with them is they are threatening to follow me around and bomb EVERY thing I do. I have had two calls to my state claiming I am abusing children. This at a time when I don't have kids in my house so it's a little hard to pin the abuse on a particular kid.
I had to notify my new DHS that the threat to turn me in was made with my videos on YouTube being the "proof" that I have abused children. I also had the videos reviewed by a child protective expert to provide an expert opinion on the claim of abuse. (they are all still up... so you can see how that went
As in real life, when someone is angry at a child care provider they know the ultimate retaliation is to "turn you in". When you take a stand and don't back down the end game can often lead to someone trying to harm you and your business by making a claim of child abuse or child neglect.
So long story short... this group, who I had NEVER heard of before came out of nowhere and launched a full scale attack on me. They didn't say much about the actual parent book. It was just about my care of kids. The comment that the person put on my blog
" I will make it a mission to expose your practices to all in your area and in this country…since I am not standing alone, brace yourself. was the same threat they made to me in the debate. This threat was to turn me into my state and to follow behind and bomb all of my content. They have made good on both threats.
When they bomb your content and "turn you in" it is for ONE reason, and that is to harm you financially. Their one star reviews did slow the sale of the book for a week which sucked especially for my sister who is part owner in my content... she worked hard on this and it affects her livelihood. We sold a TON of books before this happened and didn't sell one for a week after it happened. It's just now picking up again... so hopefully it will continue.
I did end up getting a bunch of consults out of the deal. Once they featured me in their group, some of their members contacted me and set up consults. That really helped BUT the reviews are there forever now.
Amazon and Barnes and Nobel not only allow unverified purchases to review but encourage it. I think that's unfair especially when they are calling me the devil and a child abuser but I went into business with them and I have to play by their rules. I hope as the book continues to sell that the ladies who purchase it will write reviews that will improve the overall.
I had never heard of carpet bombing and it NEVER crossed my mind that someone would write a review on a book they read five percent of. I didn't know there were groups of people out there who enjoy tampering with another persons livelihood... The only thing I was familiar with was the debate and turning me into the state... neither of which affects my money.
I'm now prepared for it to happen with any book I write. I can't do anything about it so I just have to take the hits as they come. I'm not going to write the kind of books they would approve of... those books are a dime a dozen and they don't sell. They taunted me about being a horrible mother... and that's never easy to take. They also offered to "train" me about how to take care of kids if I was "REALLY" interested in learning how BUT it would mean that I would need to STOP taking care of kids for a very long time as they couldn't be a part of anyone who was abusing children as I am now.
We have an attorney now to represent us. We have their entire members list plus copies of everything. There are now new laws coming up in states to address this type of behavior... when people incite groups to intentionally cause financial harm to a person or business.. you can hold the leaders accountable.
Dr Phil JUST did a show on this the other day. So we are keeping track of their claims and we know the real names of everyone who has made calls and the accusations of abuse. I hate to spend my hard earned money on them but if I have to, I will.
We invited them to join us here on Daycare.com to discuss the book or any of my other content but they have so far declined. I hope they reconsider because it's a great debate and can be done without all of the venom. I've been nothing but polite to them through the entire thing and haven't even disclosed their group or individual names. I'm all for playing fair but it doesn't seem they are interested in fair play. They just want to hurt me financially... that's all there is to it. The kindness and compassionate care they claim they have with children is a little difficult to imagine up alongside of the hateful attack they have launched on my livelihood.
So Country... that's the LONG LONG answer to your question.