Goodreads was the future of book reviews. Then Amazon bought it.

[APP]

Some writers like it, some writers hate it. Personally, I think the site's very clunky to use, and it doesn't stop the abuse by trolls.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/07/01/amazon-goodreads-elizabeth-gilbert/

[alhawke]

I fear the trolls. I've seen authors post about a hundred 1 star reviews suddenly appearing (one example was a political book). Amazon has that $50 rule that many love and hate too. But it prevents people from randomly rating books competing with them.

Still, i's pretty hard to ignore Goodreads. There are lots and lots and lots of book devourers, I've found fans there and I blog there nearly monthly.

[APP]

Sorry to hear about the reviews lowering you overall average. And to think this could have been a great marketing tool for Amazon, but they've blown it! IMO, one shouldn't be allowed to review a book unless they've read it. But how does someone prove they've read a book? I'm not certain the best way to go about this, but at least Amazon's fifty dollar purchase requirement on their own site is an attempt. They should do something similar for Goodreads.

[alhawke]

Sorry to hear about the reviews lowering you overall average. And to think this could have been a great marketing tool for Amazon, but they've blown it! IMO, one shouldn't be allowed to review a book unless they've read it. But how does someone prove they've read a book? I'm not certain the best way to go about this, but at least Amazon's fifty dollar purchase requirement on their own site is an attempt. They should do something similar for Goodreads.

Yes. I'm not thrilled with them adding them to my Zon averages. And I'm really not a fan of Amazon now posting my Goodreads reviews on the product review. All my books are, oddly, 0.5 down with Goodreads for almost every book across the board. Not sure why.

[Bill Hiatt]

Remember that the Goodreads scale is different. Amazon's description of a 5 is that the user "loves it [the book]". Goodreads' description used to be something about the book being good enough for a major literary award. I've had people leave a 5 on Amazon and a 4 on Goodreads for the same book for that precise reason. It's easier to justify a 5 on Amazon's criteria than a 4.

Also, a 3 is considered a positive review on Goodreads. It's a critical review on Amazon. That makes an enormous difference.

Putting Goodreads reviews on product pages is mixing inconsistent data that shouldn't be combined. It also risks counting some reviewers twice (a lot of people used to review on both sites).

[Hopscotch]

Here's the key bit from the article cited:

Goodreads “is built on outdated technological infrastructure...Meanwhile, limited manual content moderation and a lack of protective features allow users to engage in targeted harassment known as ‘review bombing’ — behavior that has resulted in the cancellation of books and their authors....Amazon seemed happy to mine Goodreads for its user-generated data and otherwise let it limp along with limited resources....”

[cecilia_writer]

I've never got to grips with Goodreads - quite a few of my books are listed there with out of date covers, and I've noticed one or two are duolicated. I haven't been able to summon up the enthusiasm to find out how to get them changed, if this is even possible. Fantastic Fiction is set out in a far more helpful way, with books arranged in series in the right order.
I also haven't been very impressed by the standard of reviews - the worst example I've come across is of someone reviewing a very popular mystery novel, not only ranting on for paragraphs about how awful it was but  also turning on other people who had given it better reviews and suggesting they must be people with abhorrent political opinions!

[LilyBLily]

I keep far away from Goodreads.

Some of my most enthusiastic fans don't buy from Amazon but they do post reviews of my books on Goodreads. Alas, I don't think any of their reviews have been transferred over to Amazon. Perhaps the ratings have?

As for three-star reviews, those are the most interesting ones to read. I want to know what other people think is wrong with a book. Otherwise, I'd buy every book with a beautiful cover. I need a way to filter the vast numbers of books out there.

[alhawke]

I've never got to grips with Goodreads - quite a few of my books are listed there with out of date covers, and I've noticed one or two are duolicated. I haven't been able to summon up the enthusiasm to find out how to get them changed, if this is even possible. Fantastic Fiction is set out in a far more helpful way, with books arranged in series in the right order.

I've contacted Goodreads customer service and they've fixed duplicates. They're not easy to contact, probably because they're huge and don't have the staff like a large retailer, I think, but you can try contacting them if you wish. Though I like Fantastic Fiction, I've never been able to get in touch with anybody there--I've tried a few times in the past and have heard crickets there.

As for three-star reviews, those are the most interesting ones to read. I want to know what other people think is wrong with a book. Otherwise, I'd buy every book with a beautiful cover. I need a way to filter the vast numbers of books out there.

I find the best reviews are not by ranking but are the thoughtful long ones (withstanding ranting and raving, like mentioned above). I have one reviewer who, like Bill Hiatt said ^^, rates based on a different scale than the usual "5" good on Amazon. He's given me mainly 4s saying that a "5" to him is equivalent to a "5" from one of the greats, like Mark Twain or Dickens. He's given me a 3 too. But I continue to seek him out for honest ARC reviews because he's super thorough and thoughtful with reviews.

[LBL]

One way they could try to curb or slow down review trolls on Goodreads would be to not allow anyone with a KDP account to also have a Goodreads account. No, it isn't foolproof, and yes some would find work-arounds, but it might inconvenience enough to discourage the practice to a higher percentage than the current status quo.

[TimothyEllis]

One way they could try to curb or slow down review trolls on Goodreads would be to not allow anyone with a KDP account to also have a Goodreads account.

That doesn't work.

Authors need to be able to monitor that they books are correctly on their account, and the details are up to date.

Without that, books with the same author name will all be on the same list, and books will progressively get more and more out of date.

Goodreads is hostile to authors, but we do need to maintain a presence there.

[Bill Hiatt]

It is good to check from time to time to make sure listings are correct. That said, I haven't followed that advice much in recent years.

I think Goodreads isn't so much hostile to authors as it is indifferent to them. One of the reasons for outdated covers is that reviewers associate the cover from the particular edition they read with their review. GR is sometimes willing to update covers, sometimes not. I've even heard authors who also have librarian privileges and made cover changes referred to as people "who vandalized old editions."

The one ad campaign I ran on Goodreads had the worst ROI of anything I've ever done, by the way. I used to get good mileage out of Goodreads giveaways (30-70% conversion to reviews). Then Amazon mucked that up by making the process much more expensive.

Goodreads can be a great place for readers, but it also seems to be a place where trolls flourish. Amazon should do more about that, but I'm not optimistic.

[TimothyEllis]

I think Goodreads isn't so much hostile to authors as it is indifferent to them.

I call deleting most of your posts when they were not even about anything I wrote, but just conversation about other books, pretty hostile behaviour.

[Hopscotch]

Who is the GR reader and/or categories of readers?  I'm uncertain and my uncertainty keeps me away.

[Bill Hiatt]

I think Goodreads isn't so much hostile to authors as it is indifferent to them.

I call deleting most of your posts when they were not even about anything I wrote, but just conversation about other books, pretty hostile behaviour.

Yes, I'd agree. I think that's the first time I've heard that particular complaint, but if that sort of nonsense is common, then hostile might be a better characterization.

[Lynn]

Places like goodreads are not stores, so I just accept that what readers (real or fake) write is fine as long as it follows the TOS of the site itself, whether they've read the book or not, or bought it.

I really wish stores would limit their reviews to actual customers of the product on their store though. Anything else just doesn't make sense. It becomes a way to get more content to help pages get more search engine visibility and not about helping the customer at all.

Buyers on Amazon, for instance, probably want to know what other Amazon users think about a book (or any issues that book has coming from Amazon) and not general reviews that could be found elsewhere. But that's not what stores want. They'd rather have more random free content generated by users, instead of highly relevant content. Amazon is big enough that getting only their customers who have actually bought something to post reviews is not a problem, and yet they still let just anyone post a review of a product.

If they want to get rid of fake reviews (esp now that the FTC says they're going to crack down https://www.npr.org/2023/07/02/1185712680/ftc-fake-reviews-proposed-rule and https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2023/06/federal-trade-commission-announces-proposed-rule-banning-fake-reviews-testimonials), all they need to do is limit all reviews to verified purchasers. Problem 99% solved.

[alhawke]

If they want to get rid of fake reviews (esp now that the FTC says they're going to crack down https://www.npr.org/2023/07/02/1185712680/ftc-fake-reviews-proposed-rule and https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2023/06/federal-trade-commission-announces-proposed-rule-banning-fake-reviews-testimonials), all they need to do is limit all reviews to verified purchasers. Problem 99% solved.

I think this will be tough to enforce, but it's an interesting development. Thanks for making us aware.

[LilyBLily]

Buying a product and reviewing it and then secretly getting reimbursed for the purchase and paid for the review will continue. I don't see how Amazon can stop it. It was years ago when authors realized they shouldn't hand out Amazon gift cards to people who reviewed their books on Amazon. So they hand out other kinds of gifts. As long as the payment occurs elsewhere, Amazon can't trace it.

Maybe Amazon might get suspicious of an individual who frequently reviews with the same terminology--but that would include a ton of Hidden Gems reviewers and others who use the same words over and over again because they love to read free books and feel obligated to review them but don't have much writing ability. Which is not a crime.

[Bill Hiatt]

As a customer, I don't care whether--or even if--a reviewer bought the book. I care whether or not the reviewer read it.

I don't see anything wrong with people who got a free copy from an author reviewing the book. I know there can be problems if the author is giving reviewers something else under the table. But as LilyBLily points out, it's easy enough for an author to find under the table ways to reimburse someone for buying a book. Limiting reviews to verified purchasers will naturally not stop this problem. It will stop authors who are sending out review copies ethically. It will stop people from using services like Hidden Gems--an even cleaner solution in the sense that the author has no contact with the reviewer. The service acts as an intermediary, eliminating all possibility of authors giving reviewers anything under the table.

[alhawke]

Limiting reviews to verified purchasers will naturally not stop this problem.

I agree. If Amazon is going to take Goodreads reviews as authentic as their own, they should have similar rules to prevent trolling.

Now if only we can convince Amazon and Goodreads.

[Post-Doctorate D]

If you give me your book for free in exchange for a review, what benefit is there to me to leave a dishonestly positive review?  If I think your book stinks, why would I leave a positive review?  So you give me your next smelly book for free?  Why would I want to waste my time reading another bad book so I can leave another glowing review so I can get the next bad book free and repeat the cycle?

The only way I benefit in such a scenario is if I'm reselling the free books.  But, really, the only way to make a decent income that way or even enough of an income to offset my time, would be to skim the books (or not read them at all), leave positive reviews and keep the cycle going.  Which means I'd be leaving reviews at a rate faster than I could have possibly read the books.

So, maybe the key there is for Amazon or whoever to develop and use an algorithm that detects reviews left at a faster pace than the books could have been read.  That would be a red flag that something untoward is happening.

Also, if I recall correctly, there have been studies that have shown people are more likely to praise something they purchased (as a way of justifying their purchase to themselves and/or others) than something they got for free.

If you think about it then, the whole review system is inherently defective because, for the most part, people don't behave rationally.

If you limit reviews to verified buyers, then statistically you're going to end up with more positive reviews due to the proclivity to praise something you have purchased as a means of justifying said purchase.

The best option, which is already a requirement, is disclosure as to the nature of the relationship between the reviewer and the item reviewed.  Enforcement would be the difficult thing, though the low-hanging fruit would be reviews that have no disclosures.

As far as the FTC proposals go, I don't have a lot of confidence that their proposals, if implemented, would make things any better.  Let's say, for example, I am not an author.  Let's say Lily Billy Hawke is a popular writer whose books I find abhorrent for whatever reason.  Lily Billy Hawke can't buy followers or, by the looks of it, even allow people to post reviews on their own website but, me, as a non-commercial entity that is neither an author or a business, could buy myself some followers, tweet about how awful Lily Billy Hawke's books are, set up a review site I control and post fake reviews on Lily Billy Hawke's books, suppress any positive reviews that might get posted, and what recourse would Lily Billy Hawke have?  How would Lily Billy Hawke know the negative reviews are fake?  Lily Billy Hawke could sue, but what if the reviews weren't fake?  Then it looks like review suppression and then Lily Billy Hawke is in trouble with the FTC.  Win-win for me, right?

[TimothyEllis]

If you give me your book for free in exchange for a review,

You can't do that.

It's against ToS.

You can give away a freebee.
You can ask for a review.

But you can't ask for a review in exchange for anything, including a freebee.

The wording of such things has to be very carefully done.

Because offering anything in exchange for a review will get the reviewer banned from doing reviews again, and an author doing a lot of this might get banned for review manipulation.

[alhawke]

Verified reviews on Amazon are weighted higher. They're shown internationally and, I'd bet, are considered in algorithms to be shone higher up on the review thread. So that's something for Amazon. I'd bet the Goodreads reviews transferred over to Zon are probably weighed lower too??

But the worry I see is what I said above; the worry the article mentions. If you use reviews from places such as LibraryThings for example--Goodreads for Amazon--you're dipping into a pool of reviews that are typically not vetted as well as a retailer. Nothing against these places, including Goodreads. There's some wonderful readers and fans at Goodreads. But the reviews have not been vetted well. Point in fact is an author wrote a book about nations at war in Asia and was 1 starred with over a hundred reviews at once for deleterious reasons (fortunately it was fixed after Goodreads librarians were contacted about two weeks later).

Goodreads introduces an entire new pool of reviews which could include reviews that are completely fake. And, as the article states, could be used as a weapon with ARCs for new releases. All it takes is a handful of those to sink a new competing book. And that actually affects newbie authors and Indies the most--authors who don't have ARC teams, like trad publishers, for their new releases.

[elleoco]

Buying a product and reviewing it and then secretly getting reimbursed for the purchase and paid for the review will continue.

One thing they could do is make it easy to report and then pay attention to reports. I tried to report a seller who offered me a $10 gift certificate if I posted a 5-star review and sent them a screen shot of my review. Couldn't find a way to report it with all the automated ways where you have to choose from the problems Amazon offers. I kind of remember one thing I found that said in effect you can email us here but we don't pay much attention to those. I gave up. Thought about leaving a 1-star for the product (which was actually decent) giving the offer as why but at that point was beyond caring.

The other thing they could do IMO to help book reviews is reverse the change allowing ratings without an actual review. It really annoys me to see a book that supposedly has x number of reviews, try to read one and find there are no actual written reviews with reasons.

For my own books I think the Goodreads reviews are probably on average as good or better than the Amazon ones. A few are weird, but then I have one on Amazon that says, "I can't afford to buy this book, but if I could I think this is how much I'd like it."

[PaulineMRoss]

I love Goodreads - as a reader. I follow a number of Goodreaders who read and review in my genre, so that I see all their reviews in my feed. That way I find out about new releases in my genre, and occasionally find a book I want to read myself.

I agree the site is clunky. Like most social sites, the front end has been overhauled and looks quite pretty (if less functional than before), but you don't have to dig far to get back to the original messier (but feature-heavy) original parts. But there are bits that are completely unintuitive. On an author's page, for instance, their books are listed by the total number of ratings, so the book at the top is that big seller from 2015, and the new book (that a reader might reasonably want to know about) is right at the bottom. And there's no obvious way to sort them into a more sensible order.

I agree it's not author-friendly. As an author, my only interaction with it is to make sure my books are listed correctly, and to read the reviews. I've never been one-star-bombed, but I did have a one-star on a pre-order book recently, which no one had read but me, and that rating sat there until the ARC reviews started to trickle in and dragged the average up.

What a lot of authors forget is that Goodreads started as a way for readers to catalogue and rate and possibly review every book they own, including the precise edition, cover art, etc. That's why you can never, ever remove anything from Goodreads. If you change a cover, both versions remain on Goodreads, although there is a way to make sure the new cover is the default one shown. And if you find that Goodreads has got into a muddle with your books, you can ask a librarian to sort it out. There's a librarians' group for that purpose. They're usually very quick to make changes.

[LilyBLily]

If you give me your book for free in exchange for a review, what benefit is there to me to leave a dishonestly positive review?  If I think your book stinks, why would I leave a positive review?  So you give me your next smelly book for free?  Why would I want to waste my time reading another bad book so I can leave another glowing review so I can get the next bad book free and repeat the cycle?

<snip>

There are people who have no budget to buy books but are voracious readers. So they sign up for multiple reviewing sites and they faithfully write reviews of the books they get free to read. While it may be true that getting something free versus paying for it does not encourage positive reviews, the moral obligation of being given something free does. (A distinction between buying it from a discount newsletter on a free day.) Being morally obligated also encourages them to write more favorable reviews than they would if they'd spent their own money on the book. Many books teeter on the edge of disappointing. Getting them free as ARCs encourages readers to up-rate the book. It won't stop them from giving a bad rating to a stinker, but I've noticed that most of the time, super negative ARC reviews acknowledge getting the book from NetGalley and another site (whose name escapes me at the moment) mostly patronized by trad pubs and thus presumably offering higher quality books for review (better edited) than sites that offer majority indie titles. Those readers thus may have higher expectations of the ARCs they read than people who usually just read indie titles. Because, let's face it, many indie titles are poorly edited across the spectrum of what "editing" means, from development all the way to proofreading.

[spin52]

I've never got to grips with Goodreads - quite a few of my books are listed there with out of date covers, and I've noticed one or two are duolicated. I haven't been able to summon up the enthusiasm to find out how to get them changed, if this is even possible. Fantastic Fiction is set out in a far more helpful way, with books arranged in series in the right order.
I also haven't been very impressed by the standard of reviews - the worst example I've come across is of someone reviewing a very popular mystery novel, not only ranting on for paragraphs about how awful it was but  also turning on other people who had given it better reviews and suggesting they must be people with abhorrent political opinions!

Don't try to change/update your covers. That way lies madness. I wanted to update mine and was told I couldn't remove a cover so old I'd forgotten it ever was used, because 'readers have to have the choice of editions'. I argued that a new cover does not equal a new edition, and was given a way to add an updated cover only slightly less convoluted than performing brain surgery. And after that, the old cover would still be shown.
I have stopped looking at the reviews, because the last time I did, I discovered a 2022 review of the first book in an old series, expressing the hope that a second book would soon be published. It was -- in 2012.

[Bill Hiatt]

There are people who have no budget to buy books but are voracious readers. So they sign up for multiple reviewing sites and they faithfully write reviews of the books they get free to read. While it may be true that getting something free versus paying for it does not encourage positive reviews, the moral obligation of being given something free does. (A distinction between buying it from a discount newsletter on a free day.) Being morally obligated also encourages them to write more favorable reviews than they would if they'd spent their own money on the book. Many books teeter on the edge of disappointing. Getting them free as ARCs encourages readers to up-rate the book. It won't stop them from giving a bad rating to a stinker, but I've noticed that most of the time, super negative ARC reviews acknowledge getting the book from NetGalley and another site (whose name escapes me at the moment) mostly patronized by trad pubs and thus presumably offering higher quality books for review (better edited) than sites that offer majority indie titles. Those readers thus may have higher expectations of the ARCs they read than people who usually just read indie titles. Because, let's face it, many indie titles are poorly edited across the spectrum of what "editing" means, from development all the way to proofreading.

I think it's hard to generalize, though the observation about NetGalley is interesting. I wonder how many people whose books are poorly edited send out ARCs, though, especially when they have to pay a fee to do it. If they can't afford a decent editor, are they really going to be on NetGalley? Perhaps.

As for the moral obligation, that's why I prefer ARC services to having my own team. With a service, ARC readers know that they have to do is review most of the books they get. They know they are under no obligation to rate those books highly. In contrast, I know some authors purge people from their ARC teams if they don't review a book positively, so that may be a fear. That said, as Post Crisis D points out, if readers get books they don't like, are they going to rate them more highly just so they can get more of the same?

Probably not, unless, as you say, they feel a moral obligation. But I'm not sure even moral people would all react the same way to what their obligation is. I can just as easily see someone thinking their obligation was to be totally impartial.

Also, ARC readers probably aren't more moral than the general population, and I've encountered a few whose morals could certainly be questioned. For example, I was surprised when an ARC reader criticized something in a book that had already been fixed by the time she would have gotten a copy. (There was a flaw in the first release that I fixed, and the file was uploaded to the ARC service and the order placed after the revision.) Upon closer inspection, I noticed the reviewer raised two issues, one of which was very esoteric and had only been raised in one other review--written before the revision. So I looked to see what other books the reviewer had done. (In those days, it was easy to do that.) At that point, I noticed a couple patterns. First, she was consistently reviewing five books a day (I suspect from a variety of different review services). Second, her reviews always had the same observations, though not the same wording, as the top critical review. After checking about twenty, I decided that she was not actually reading the books. (Maybe she was stockpiling and intended to read some eventually.) To review, she used the top critical one as a source for her ideas, dropping the specific examples to be less conspicuous. Clearly, she felt no moral obligation of any kind.

It's a complicated area. I will say in closing that one of the worst reviews I ever got was from an ARC reader. (At that point in my career, most of the reviews were fours or fives, with one three. (When you haven't had much exposure, and people have to dig to find your book, they're more likely to be readers who really want that type of book.) Her's was a two and included a scathing attack on all the people who gave the book a five, with the clear implication that they all had to be corrupt or stupid.

[R. C.]

I've never got to grips with Goodreads - quite a few of my books are listed there with out of date covers, and I've noticed one or two are duolicated. I haven't been able to summon up the enthusiasm to find out how to get them changed, if this is even possible. Fantastic Fiction is set out in a far more helpful way, with books arranged in series in the right order.
I also haven't been very impressed by the standard of reviews - the worst example I've come across is of someone reviewing a very popular mystery novel, not only ranting on for paragraphs about how awful it was but  also turning on other people who had given it better reviews and suggesting they must be people with abhorrent political opinions!

Don't try to change/update your covers. That way lies madness. I wanted to update mine and was told I couldn't remove a cover so old I'd forgotten it ever was used, because 'readers have to have the choice of editions'. I argued that a new cover does not equal a new edition, and was given a way to add an updated cover only slightly less convoluted than performing brain surgery. And after that, the old cover would still be shown.
I have stopped looking at the reviews, because the last time I did, I discovered a 2022 review of the first book in an old series, expressing the hope that a second book would soon be published. It was -- in 2012.

Co-signed. Requesting corrective action for covers and content is a spiral into the abyss.

R.C.

[PJ Post]

While it is possible to browse other covers (and you cannot delete them), Goodreads does allow you to set a specific cover as the one that shows up on the main page and in thumbs. Only you and librarians have this authority, so they should remain fairly stable.