The influential user review site has suffered a year of controversies, from cancelled book deals to review-bombing, and exposed a dark side to the industry
While there are really bad things about goodreads, the article/interviews give me a vibe of “boohoo, we want to decide what people like and now they decide it themselves and we don’t like that.”
There is definitely an element of that from the article and I agree it’s ridiculous. Some authors and their followers attack those who give poor reviews (because they can’t accept criticism, instead arguing that a ‘professional’ review would give them a much better score) and on the other side you have people reviewing books that aren’t even out. In many cases it’s no longer a place to find genuine reviews, but an unmoderated wild west with crap at both extremes (a bit like Twitter in that respect). It’s a shame because there are plenty of people leaving great reviews, but it’s becoming much harder to find them.
While there are really bad things about goodreads, the article/interviews give me a vibe of “boohoo, we want to decide what people like and now they decide it themselves and we don’t like that.”
There is definitely an element of that from the article and I agree it’s ridiculous. Some authors and their followers attack those who give poor reviews (because they can’t accept criticism, instead arguing that a ‘professional’ review would give them a much better score) and on the other side you have people reviewing books that aren’t even out. In many cases it’s no longer a place to find genuine reviews, but an unmoderated wild west with crap at both extremes (a bit like Twitter in that respect). It’s a shame because there are plenty of people leaving great reviews, but it’s becoming much harder to find them.