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If there’s one take-away I want to make clear about ruining your career by pettily review-bombing other writers, it’s that traditional publishing is not a competition you can win. You have no control over how well your sales do versus someone else’s sales. No amount self-promotion, hard work, and social media is going to guarantee a viral tweet, a Booktok sensation, or rave reviews. Those are beyond your control.
In this, your fellow authors are not your rivals, but your peers. If you are not super rich or well-connected, you will be reliant on connections you have to communities that know and trust you, and this is far more important than anything you do on your own. The publishing world is quite small, and these relationships will be a boon in building your future opportunities as well as helping other writers. The industry, in fact, relies on selling books with similar themes at the same time, because they know readers who like one Greek-inspired fantasy will likely pick up another one. That’s how publishing trends work!
Publishing is never going to be free from drama or interpersonal-driven conflict. Review-bombing is going to continue, driven by political or ideological agendas. But treating what should be a professional career as some sort of winner-takes-all Squid Game is going to blow up in your face the moment you’re caught out, and it will ruin your career before it even begins.
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