Several years ago I participated in NaNoWriMo, National Novel Writing Month. I wrote about a baker who falls back in love with her high school crush. At the time I enjoyed reading fanfiction and thought it would be fun to share my story.

I'd read all these other stories where the only comparison to Twilight were the names, and I thought why not? I never thought anything bad would come of it. I changed my character names to fit those of the Twilight series and pushed it out to the world for free. It was the first thing I've ever written.

I was pleased that people seemed to like it, though it mostly went unnoticed. I wrote a few one-shots that were just for fun, and even began to share another story I'd written on another NaNoWriMo, but never finished. In the end, I took the account down.

Over the next couple of years I revised, and edited. Revised, and edited. I submitted to agents and got great feedback, in the end my story wasn't picked up, but I thought I'd go ahead and publish through Amazon. I figured why not? I liked the story enough, and strangers on FF.net seemed to like it alright.

However, because I chose to share my work with a fandom, I have been called unethical, my character has been called to question, and my book shelved in ways I can't even fathom the drive for. I've been honest from the beginning, even when I posted the story. I explained what it was, and that I was "using" the readers. If they chose to read it, they read it, if they liked it, great, if not, I understood it wasn't for everyone. I just wanted to share it. I was upfront with my beta reader, I was upfront on my profile.

I asked Goodreads recently to remove only one review from my page. It had a rather large image stating my book was unethical. The response was unhelpful:

"Thanks for your message. We’ve looked at the review’s content, but unfortunately it does not violate any of our review guidelines. Honest reviews (positive or negative) are very important to us, so members are free to express how they feel about a book. If Katie feels the book was unethically published, that's her opinion and it's her right to say so in her review. We also don't have any rules against posting images in reviews. If we open the door to Goodreads acting as a censor, we hope you’ll agree that there is no way for us to draw the line.

It may help to keep in mind that one negative review rarely makes or breaks a book, especially one with as many ratings and reviews as yours. I'm sorry we can't comply with your request, but hopefully you can understand our reasoning."

No, Goodreads, I do not understand your reasoning. Opinions on the book is welcome, opinions on my ethics are a breach against policy, from what I understood - this was clearly an attack on me, not my book.

I've been honored by the responses to my story, whether they be positive or negative. Truly honored! Thank you for reading my story, it was so much fun to write, and my friends enjoyed trying to figure out which of them were my inspiration (the answer is all of them, and they know who they are!)

So with sadness I'm going to leave Goodreads - although I'm sure the book will remain with its ratings.