awwwww thank you so much for checking in, love❤ I’m doing well, just been busy and exhausted lately… I really hope my muse will come back to me, so that I can be soft and naughty with y'all
A group of Twitter users most notorious for driving the Santino Hassell debacle have kept active in the wank-realm of publishing. After #CopyPasteKris erupted, there’s been many discussions among industry members over Amazon’s different methods of selling books. One such discussion drew the attention of the Santino Hassell group.
A debate of Kindle Unlimited’s merits follows, with Nick Mamatas using abrasive language to forward his points. He is against KU while Tanya is forKU.
A brief break down of Kindle Unlimited: Authors agree to exclusively offering their work for Amazon’s subscription service and receive a certain amount of money with each page of their book read after the reader has passed a certain marker. Research has shown that Amazon’s monopoly on book selling has driven down author income.
At this point, the conversation branches out in several directions, and new players (well, old to those who pay attention) join in. At the point of this post being written, all tweets are still available. However, here we’re going to focus on a core group of tweeters.
Angela reads books and tweets. She first appears in this discussion about publishing between authors by asking MK where her books can be found on Goodreads. She was also a primary member of Santino Hassell’s exposure and takedown.
Others from Angela’s sphere join, including Samantha Derr — a co-owner of Less Than Three Press.
(Side-note: typically, in the publishing industry, authors are paid once for an anthology and don’t have immediate control over where they are published.)
More Quote Tweeting
Concurrently, Angela is also having a quote tweet conversation with Nick Mamatas.
As seen above, Angela replies with a screenshot of Nick’s book on Goodreads. Nick replies by encouraging Angela to go leave a review:
Here, readers, is where we face an interesting response from Angela. Let’s break it down.
She informs Nick that Goodreads shelves are not reviews
She declares she has a right to do so
The conversation drags on a bit, but there are some fascinating moments. Most interestingly, Angela starts introducing some new accusations against Nick Mamatas.
Accusation: Nick Mamatas is trying to get his followers to attack Angela.
Accusation: Declares Nick called her a troll for disagreeing with him. [This claim can be proven false by reviewing previous tweets.] However, Mamatas participates in some trolling of his own by saying “homophobe” to a gif Angela sent that said “butthurt.”
Accusation:Veiled, but has the implication that Mamatas is misogynistic.
Well, then.
As seen above, Angela uses the hallmark techniques of trolls— misdirection, weird accusations, and ignoring actual responses.
To recap: Mamatas, Tanya Chris, and MK were discussing the merits of Kindle Unlimited from the perspective of authors. Yes, the language was abrasive. But it was not abusive.
Angela tried to introduce real world harm to MK by tagging her agent and stated it was to ‘show him how she treats her peers.’
Below is Nick’s final quote tweet because Angela did not respond.
(And, we might add, where Angela introduced another accusation, this time implying harassment of a woman of color.)
Perhaps she found him a harder target than she could have predicted? Mamata appeared hard to fluster and rattle, so there may have come a point when the effort felt wasted.
However, her conversation with MK produced much more satisfying dividends.
Back in the Ring
To put it bluntly, the “conversation” between MK and Angela devolved almost immediately. A sampling:
Winding Down
Of note - Angela’s group of twitter friends started tweeting at MK. One example:
Finally Angela bows out with this note:
Addendum
The crew lobbed a second volley at Nick Mamatas after the writing of this post. More trolling tactics were used, including muddying the timeline of events and portraying Nick’s responses to their tweets as harassment.
To expand further: They provoke people and then blame and mock them for responding.
Angela and her friends push to make the reader a “protected class” while the author is the villain. If an author voices dissatisfaction with how KU operates, it’s an attack on readers and not a stand for valuing their work higher than what Amazon dictates.
As of now, multiple individuals in Angela’s sphere have locked down their Twitter accounts. Is this the calm before a storm?
