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<\/p>\nFOR contemporary authors, one of the most necessary of evils is Goodreads (owned by Amazon). The book review site for active readers can be a real benefit to writers, particularly those without big publicity machines behind them \u2013 which is most authors. On the platform, with a few clicks on the keyboard by enthusiastic audiences, word-of-mouth can translate to potential sales.<\/p>\n
Alas, like many such user-powered recommendation engines, it is also easily manipulated \u2013 thanks not only to unethical consumers but also to Amazon\u2019s unwillingness to take responsibility for the site\u2019s oversized reach and institute common-sense guardrails.<\/p>\n
A key issue at Goodreads, as at counterpart sites such as Rotten Tomatoes and Rate Your Music, is \u201creview bombing\u201d. Online groups often target certain books or authors not because of the actual content \u2013 which they likely haven\u2019t read \u2013 but because of perceived ideological views.\u00a0The \u201cbombers\u201d will then bombard the work with bad reviews in an effort to sink its average rating. The effects can be seismic and irreversible, creating a perception of widespread rejection. When so many books, films, music and media are vying for our ever-precious attention and leisure time, a quick glance at an aggregate rating or sample critique is often all it takes to dash a potential reader\u2019s interest.<\/p>\n
A recent article by Heloise Wood at the Bookseller pinpoints an even more troubling trend on Goodreads: negative feedback\u00a0that is\u00a0demonstrably false because the books in question are not even available. The logistics here can be complicated since early copies of books often circulate six months or more before the publication date. These advance reading copies (ARCs), usually available in both physical and electronic form, are used to generate advance reviews, blurbs for marketing and (hopefully) general good buzz.<\/p>\n
But the Bookseller has uncovered instances where negative comments appeared on Goodreads before those ARCs were in circulation or even before proofs for copy-editing had been created. In every case detailed in the Bookseller report, the authors reached out to Goodreads about the obviously inaccurate and dishonest reviews, and the site did nothing. One writer, Millie Johnson, said her removal request was refused by the site because \u201cthe reviewer had a perfect right to predict if they\u2019d enjoy it or not\u201d; crime writer Jo Furniss only had a false one removed after the publication contacted Goodreads for comment.<\/p>\n
Furniss characterised the situation as \u201ca form of online abuse\u201d, and she\u2019s not wrong. But in some ways, it\u2019s worse than our go-to perceptions of disturbing behaviour on social media sites and the like. On X, you can block an abusive party or delete a post that\u2019s prompted harassment, and on Bluesky, you can do the same, as well as detaching a post that\u2019s being quoted to provoke an online swarm. But at Goodreads, such forms of disengagement are not in the target\u2019s hands \u2013 they\u2019re up to the site\u2019s administrators, who seem to be dismissive or disinterested in such concerns.<\/p>\n
A NEWSLETTER FOR YOU<\/p>\n
Friday, 2 pm<\/p>\n
Lifestyle<\/p>\n
Our picks of the latest dining, travel and leisure options to treat yourself.<\/p>\n
So, what is the solution? There isn\u2019t an easy one. Once a book is out in the world, it\u2019s all but impossible to determine if an online response to the work is genuine or an act of trolling against an author whom a Goodreads user has deemed worthy of their ire. (There are also, on the opposite side, sites that offer to stuff the virtual ballot box with good reviews for authors who are willing to pay for it.)<\/p>\n
One partial solution, which would presumably be simple for Goodreads to deploy, is the use of verification \u2013 marking that the reviewer has, at the very least, bought the book in question by verifying the purchase of it on Amazon. Amazon currently uses this system for reviewing products on its own site but, oddly, hasn\u2019t implemented a similar option on Goodreads. (Rotten Tomatoes adopted something similar in 2019, tying critiques to purchases via the site\u2019s partner, Fandango, to delegitimise its review bombers.) This would exclude readers who purchase their books elsewhere, unfortunately, but at least it would provide some sort of baseline for legitimacy.<\/p>\n
Of course, such a system could not and would not address the starker issue of review bombing during that lengthy pre-publication period, when reviews from ARCs would be difficult, if not impossible, to verify. But in dealing with the clearer problem of false appraisals of works that are not yet available in any form, Goodreads has to take the more active step of listening to its authors and taking appropriate action. Writers have told stories of reporting critiques obviously posted by people who could not have read the books in question, only to see them fall on deaf ears while the defamatory comments remained online.<\/p>\n
This is simply unacceptable. It\u2019s downright irresponsible that the platform won\u2019t take any kind of action to enforce the veracity of such \u201creviews\u201d. Yes, its users are its customers, in the strictest sense \u2013 but Goodreads should treat authors with respect because they\u2019re the reason\u00a0why anyone\u00a0is on that site in the first place.\u00a0BLOOMBERG<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"FOR contemporary authors, one of the most necessary of evils is Goodreads (owned by Amazon). The book review…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":39373,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[1022,171,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-39372","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-books","8":"tag-books","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-united-states","11":"tag-unitedstates","12":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114797716721032603","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39372","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39372"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39372\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/39373"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39372"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39372"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39372"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}