For the previous week, I’ve been watching Goodreads drama occur in what looks like sluggish movement. Debut creator Cait Corrain admitted to fabricating a minimum of six Goodreads consumer accounts, and leaving detrimental critiques (together with one-star rankings) of different debut authors’ books — lots of whom have been authors of colour. On Monday, her writer dropped her e-book Crown of Starlight, and Corrain posted a mea culpa on X (previously Twitter).
The coordinated efforts of followers and authors helped expose Corrain’s evaluate bombing. Final week, Iron Widow creator Xiran Jay Zhao tweeted a thread noting a sequence of one-star critiques on debut science fiction and fantasy authors’ Goodreads accounts, with out naming any names. Additionally they shared a 31-page doc of unknown origin (which Polygon reviewed) that contained screenshots of accounts that added Crown of Starlight to a lot of most-anticipated lists, and left one-star critiques on forthcoming books by Kamilah Cole, Frances White, Bethany Baptiste, Molly X. Chang, R.M. Virtues, Ok.M. Enright, and others.
This as soon as once more brings Goodreads’ moderation points to the fore. When reached for remark, a Goodreads spokesperson despatched Polygon a press release: “Goodreads takes the accountability of sustaining the authenticity and integrity of rankings and defending our group of readers and authors very significantly. Now we have clear critiques and group tips, and we take away critiques and/or accounts that violate these tips.” The corporate added, relating to Corrain’s one-star critiques, “The critiques in query have been eliminated.” Goodreads group tips state that members mustn’t “misrepresent [their] identification or create accounts to harass different members” and that “artificially inflating or deflating a e-book’s rankings or status violates our guidelines.” However it doesn’t clarify how these tips are enforced.
Goodreads additionally pointed Polygon to an Oct. 30 put up about “authenticity of rankings and critiques,” which mentioned the corporate “strengthened account verification to dam potential spammers,” expanded its customer support crew, and added extra methods for members to report “problematic content material.” The corporate addressed evaluate bombing and “launched the flexibility to quickly restrict submission of rankings and critiques on a e-book throughout occasions of surprising exercise that violate our tips.”
Ostensibly, these measures have been put in place after a number of particularly high-profile situations of evaluate bombing on the platform this yr. However these new instruments didn’t stop Corrain from evaluate bombing authors in November and December. The rules, together with the October one, ask customers to “report” content material that “breaks our guidelines,” seemingly shifting accountability onto the consumer base. It’s previous time for Goodreads, which is owned by Amazon, to contemplate implementing extra complete in-house moderation — or a minimum of extra refined inside instruments — if not for the sake of its customers, then for the sake of authors who’re on the mercy of the platform.
Goodreads is extraordinarily influential. There are over 150 million members on the platform, 7 million of whom participated on this yr’s Studying Problem. The platform additionally has few limitations in opposition to these kinds of review-bombing campaigns, as any consumer in good standing can put up a evaluate to the platform, together with earlier than the e-book has been printed. Pre-publish critiques are a part of the advertising and marketing cycle, and they’re expressly allowed on Goodreads. Publishers encourage authors to get critiques on the Goodreads pages for his or her forthcoming books, together with throughout the lead-up interval to launch. Readers can entry advance copies of books by means of official channels like NetGalley, or by receiving an advance reader copy from the writer, however there’s no strategy to know whether or not a reviewer on Goodreads has truly obtained an advance copy or not. (Although Goodreads evaluate tips require readers to reveal in the event that they obtained a free copy, not all customers comply with these guidelines — principally, you’ll be able to put up your evaluate regardless.)
That is clearly not a difficulty that’s novel to Goodreads, however many different platforms require some type of verification earlier than reviewing. Etsy permits customers to evaluate a product after they buy it. Steam solely permits customers to jot down critiques of merchandise of their Steam library, and contains “hours performed” within the evaluate. The closest comparability to Goodreads I can consider is Yelp, which permits individuals to depart critiques of eating places and different institutions, and which additionally has to deal with waves of detrimental critiques — usually involving complaints about issues which can be completely out of that enterprise’s management. So far as fan-review platforms for leisure go, there’s Letterboxd, a platform the place customers can monitor and evaluate movies. However it doesn’t maintain a candle to the cultural chokehold of Rotten Tomatoes, a platform that aggregates evaluate scores from professionally printed critics (whereas it additionally aggregates viewers scores, these are listed individually). Rotten Tomatoes has its personal points, however its system does imply critiques don’t have a tendency to come back from individuals who haven’t even consumed the media in query.
As an off-the-cuff peruser on Goodreads, in search of a e-book to learn, how are you aware if a reviewer truly learn the e-book? I suppose the reply, a minimum of proper now, is: You’ll be able to’t. And as followers have grow to be extra refined and coordinated on the web, it’s grow to be even tougher to take the platform’s critiques and rankings significantly. In July, Eat, Pray, Love creator Elizabeth Gilbert pulled her forthcoming e-book The Snow Forest — which was set in Russia — after some 500 customers, who had not learn the e-book, left one-star critiques. Gilbert is way more established and higher resourced than the debut authors Corrain focused. She nonetheless made the choice to tug her e-book.
These debut authors didn’t have the identical energy or cachet, and it’s painful to think about how Corrain’s detrimental critiques may have impacted these authors’ e-book gross sales — and subsequently their alternative to jot down any extra books — had Corrain’s actions gone unnoticed. Publishing is stuffed with sufficient hurdles as it’s, particularly for authors of colour, with out this big one so near the end line.
