Authors, Good Luck With Goodreads

As a naive first-time novelist, I knew absolutely nothing about anything. I didn't know you were supposed to trawl for reviews; I didn't know there were actually marketing sites for books; I didn't even know there were alternatives to KDP's cover creator. (I think I ended up using one of its extremely ugly green and orange striped monstrosities.)

I vaguely knew about Goodreads, because a work acquaintance had urged me to join (for some reason) ~ solely as a reader, mind you. And so I did, but I quickly began to question its purpose. I added a bunch of books I'd read, then looked around and found nothing else to do. I left and never went back.

Once I began getting into the swing of the whole indie author universe, I read somewhere that authors should absolutely establish a Goodreads account. As a penniless writer, I'm pretty much on board with anything that's free (and not a scam), and while I questioned what Goodreads could actually do for me, I figured, why not? 

Quickly, I ran into some issues. I'm one who changes her book covers a lot. If I'm not getting sales, I'll try something new; and since my covers have never been genre-conforming (because I hate those and find them ugly), I was willing to go with the flow and create new covers that more closely matched the current zeitgeist. 

Well, Goodreads does not let an author update her book cover, and they won't do it for you. All they will offer is to create a separate "edition" of your book, so if you're like me and change a cover three or four times, you will have three or four different editions of a book on the Goodreads site.

Here's what I don't understand about that: Amazon owns Goodreads. When an author adds her book to her Goodreads account, the info is pulled from the Amazon book link. It should be a simple matter for the Goodreads "librarians" to click the link again and voila! Updated! If that's too much "work", allow the author to upload a new cover. Their refusal is simple recalcitrance. 

But, fine, I'll deal with the now outdated book covers and try to ignore them on my dashboard. However, Goodreads also doesn't allow for a book to be deleted. I unpublished my second novel for reasons I've documented here before, and thus I went to the librarians and asked for it to be removed. Nope! Sorry, someone purchased a copy of it once, so it's a no-go. I don't understand that reasoning. Maybe they think the purchaser might want to leave a review nine years later. Well, first of all, that purchaser was me; I buy copies of all my books to keep on my Kindle, and I'm obviously not going to review myself. 

I also once published a collection of three of my novellas. My writing was at a standstill and I was looking for something, anything book-related to do. Novellas are a hard sell, but I thought maybe a collection might tempt someone to spend a couple of bucks. (No one did.) One of the novellas I included was Second Chance, which, as you know, has now been expanded into the novel, Running From Herself. There was no way I'd leave that inferior novella out there for someone to accidentally stumble upon. For that reason and just for the fact that the collection was a dumb idea to begin with, I unpublished it. By now I knew that Goodreads wouldn't remove it, so I had two non-existent books on my author page with dead Amazon links. My only recourse was to update their descriptions with, "This book is no longer available." Asking for any assistance would be hopeless, I knew. I don't know if other authors have had these situations arise, so I don't know how they dealt with them, but my solution was the only one I could come up with.

Now let's talk reviews. When I released my novella, Inn Dreams, which I thought was quite good, I tried to give it a bit of a push. I joined BookSprouts to try to get ARC reviewers; I tried a Facebook ARC community with zero success, and I posted on about three different ARC groups on Goodreads. The Goodreads groups yielded approximately four takers, and three of them left so-so reviews (four stars, but noted the story's deficiencies). One reader, though, took it upon herself to malign not only my writing skills, but my cognitive ones. She claimed that I used words I didn't know the meaning of, and that she'd "need to read more from this author to verify" that belief. Oh ~ thanks? 

Another ARC reader posted a review stating that the main character was someone named "Eliza Hart". (The MC's name is Karen Grace.)

I probably should be grateful that I got any reviews at all, but this points to my hesitancy regarding ARC readers ~ be careful what you wish for. Because Inn Dreams has so few reviews, that harsh one stands out. (In total, I only sold 14 copies, all likely before that review was posted.) I've said it before, and I firmly believe it ~ Goodreads as a site promotes a negative, snarky vibe. Any request of staff is greeted with a firm "no", and reviewers are subliminally encouraged to demean authors (for clicks, maybe?) The site's philosophy seems to be, we'll let you little indie authors play in our sandbox, but we're not here for you, silly, and we'll be sure to let you know that.

Oh, they allow self-published authors to have their little promotion groups, which the less savvy writers seem to think gives them carte blanche to paste excerpt upon excerpt in contiguous posts. (HINT: Less is more. Otherwise, you're just pissing people off.) It lets indie authors beg for reviews or ARC readers in groups that barely no one browses except other authors.

Goodreads blares its disdain for self-published authors. It exists for the big boys, the big publishing houses. It sells banner ads for the latest trade release. But other than advertising (and thus pushing) books with big money behind them, I don't know why the site exists. For passive-aggressive reviewers? I honestly fail to see its purpose. Oh, here you go:

Goodreads makes money primarily through affiliate commissions from book sales, advertising (including sponsored posts and giveaways), and potentially through data services. As an affiliate partner, Goodreads earns a percentage of sales when users click on links to purchase books on platforms like Amazon. Advertising is another major revenue source, with Goodreads offering programs for authors and publishers to promote their books. Additionally, Goodreads may offer data services and analytics to third parties.

All good for the site, but what's in it for anyone else? The (very) rare times I visit, I go away depressed. Self-published authors begging someone, anyone, to read or buy their book, which is often subpar, scammers offering to review books for free, but never following up with the thousand authors who reply. I even saw a post from someone claiming to have set up an indie book library and urging authors to join. A pirate site? Probably. (The OP never even provided a web address, even after I asked ~ I asked in order to prove a point.) While the site claims to have group moderators, I think they tend to call in sick (every day). 

Don't just take it from me. Here's one online opinion:

"Second, when text reviews are left, they are quite often extremely negative. Not just negative – I’ve found Goodreads reviews tend to be vicious to the extreme. It’s almost as if there’s a conspiracy to write negative reviews and torpedo books. I’ve heard this referred to as Goodreads reviewer bullying."

It's almost comforting to know it's not just me. 

So, authors, feel free to set up your Goodreads account if you feel the benefits outweigh the risks. But don't say you weren't warned.