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Wikipedia

Goodreads

May 05, 2023

Goodreads is an American social cataloging website and a subsidiary of Amazon[1] that allows individuals to search its database of books, annotations, quotes, and reviews. Users can sign up and register books to generate library catalogs and reading lists. They can also create their own groups of book suggestions, surveys, polls, blogs, and discussions. The website's offices are located in San Francisco.[2]

Goodreads
Type of site
Book
Available inEnglish
FoundedDecember 2006; 16 years ago (2006-12)
OwnerAmazon
Founder(s)Otis Chandler
Elizabeth Khuri
URLgoodreads.com
CommercialYes
RegistrationOptional
Current statusActive

Goodreads was founded in December 2006 and launched in January 2007 by Otis Chandler and Elizabeth Khuri Chandler.[3][4] In December 2007, the site had 650,000 members[5] and 10,000,000 books had been added.[6] By July 2012, the site reported 10 million members, 20 million monthly visits, and thirty employees.[7] On March 28, 2013, Amazon announced its acquisition of Goodreads,[8] and by July 23, 2013, Goodreads announced their user base had grown to 20 million members.[9]

By July 2019, the site had 90 million members.[10]

History

Founders

 
Otis Chandler

Goodreads founders Otis Chandler and Elizabeth Khuri Chandler first met while studying at Stanford (Engineering and English respectively). After university Chandler initially worked as a programmer in on-line businesses,[11] including dating sites,[12] and Khuri Chandler as a journalist.[13] Chandler and Khuri both grew up in California. Chandler is a descendant of the publisher of the Los Angeles Times; Otis Chandler.[14]

Foundation and mission

Goodreads was founded in 2006. The idea came about when Otis Chandler was browsing through his friend's bookshelf. He wanted to integrate this scanning experience and to create a space where people could write reviews regarding the books that they read.[15]

Goodreads addressed what publishers call the "discoverability problem" by guiding consumers in the digital age to find books they might want to read.[16]

Early years

Before gaining much traction, Otis and Elizabeth Chandler grew the platform through their friends of friends where it reached 800 users. Eventually, it gained attention through the media such as Mashable and other various blogs.[17] During its first year of business, the company was run without any formal funding. In December 2007, the site received funding estimated at $750,000 from angel investors.[6] This funding lasted Goodreads until 2009, when Goodreads received two million dollars from True Ventures.[18]

In October 2010, the company opened its application programming interface, which enabled developers to access its ratings and titles.[19]

In 2011, Goodreads acquired Discovereads, a book recommendation engine that employs "machine learning algorithms to analyze which books people might like, based on books they've liked in the past and books that people with similar tastes have liked."[4][20] After a user has rated 20 books on its five-star scale, the site will begin making recommendations. Otis Chandler believed this rating system would be superior to Amazon's, as Amazon's includes books a user has browsed or purchased as gifts when determining its recommendations.[4][20] Later that year, Goodreads introduced an algorithm to suggest books to registered users and had over five million members.[21] The New Yorker's Macy Halford noted that the algorithm was not perfect, as the number of books needed to create a perfect recommendation system is so large that "by the time I'd got halfway there, my reading preferences would have changed and I'd have to start over again."[22]

As of 2012, membership was required to use but free.[23] In October 2012, Goodreads announced it had grown to 11 million members with 395 million books cataloged and over 20,000 book clubs created by its users.[24] A month later, in November 2012, Goodreads had surpassed 12 million members, with the member base having doubled in one year.[25]

2013 acquisition by Amazon

In March 2013, Amazon made an agreement to acquire Goodreads in the second quarter of 2013 for an undisclosed sum.[26][27][28] Amazon had previously purchased the competitor Shelfari in 2008,[29] with the Goodreads purchase "stunning" the book industry. The Authors Guild called it a "truly devastating act of vertical integration" and that Amazon's "control of online bookselling approaches the insurmountable." There were mixed reactions from Goodreads users, at the time totaling 16 million members.[30] Goodreads founder Otis Chandler said that "his management team would remain in place to guard the reviewing process" with the acquisition. Chandler continued running Goodreads until 2019. The New York Times noted that Goodreads, at the time of the acquisition, had a more reputable reviewing system than Amazon's.[31]

Noting that some authors had been "too aggressive in their self-promotion" (as Goodreads admitted in an email) and that some readers had responded with aggression,[32] in September 2013, Goodreads announced it would delete, without warning, reviews that threatened authors or mentioned authors' behavior.[33] As of April 2020, the site's guidelines still state that "reviews that are predominantly about an author's behavior and not about the book will be deleted."[34]

2014–2019

In January 2016, Amazon announced that it would shut down Shelfari in favor of Goodreads, effective March 16, 2016. Users were offered the ability to export data and migrate accounts.[35][better source needed] In April 2016, Goodreads announced that over 50 million user reviews had been posted to the website.[36]

Features

Book discovery

On the Goodreads website, users can add books to their personal bookshelves, rate and review books, see what their friends and authors are reading, participate in discussion boards and groups on a variety of topics, and get suggestions for future reading choices based on their reviews of previously read books.[37] Once users have added friends to their profile, they will see their friends' shelves and reviews and can comment on friends' pages. Goodreads features a rating system of one to five stars, with the option of accompanying the rating with a written review. The site provides default bookshelves—read, currently-reading, to-read—and the opportunity to create customized shelves to categorize a user's books.[38]

Content access

Goodreads users can read or listen to a preview of a book on the website using Kindle Cloud Reader and Audible.[39] Goodreads also offers quizzes and trivia, quotations, book lists, and free giveaways. Members can receive the regular newsletter featuring new books, suggestions, author interviews, and poetry. If a user has written a work, the work can be linked on the author's profile page, which also includes an author's blog.[40] Goodreads organizes offline opportunities as well, such as in-person book exchanges and "literary pub crawls".[41]

User interaction

The website facilitates reader interactions with authors through the interviews, giveaways, authors' blogs, and profile information. There is also a special section for authors with suggestions for promoting their works on Goodreads.com, aimed at helping them reach their target audience.[42] By 2011, "seventeen thousand authors, including James Patterson and Margaret Atwood" used Goodreads to advertise.[4]

Users can add each other as "Friends", enabling them to share reviews, posts, book recommendations, and messages.

Goodreads has a presence on Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, and other social networking sites.[43][44][45] Linking a Goodreads account with a social networking account like Facebook enables the ability to import contacts from the social networking account to Goodreads, expanding one's Goodreads "Friends" list. There are settings available, as well, to allow Goodreads to post straight to a social networking account, which informs, e.g., Facebook friends, what one is reading or how one rated a book.[46]

The Amazon Kindle Paperwhite (version 2) and Kindle Voyage feature integration with Goodreads' social network via a user interface button.[47]

Catalog data

Book catalog data was seeded with large imports from various closed and open data sources, including individual publishers, Ingram,[48] Amazon (before 2012 and after 2013),[49][50] WorldCat and the Library of Congress.[51]

Goodreads librarians improve book information on the website, including editing book and author information and adding cover images. Goodreads members can apply to become volunteer librarians after they have 50 books on their profile.[52] Goodreads librarians coordinate on the Goodreads Librarian Group.[53]

User data becomes proprietary to Goodreads[54] though available via an application programming interface, or API,[55] unlike similar projects like The Open Library which publish the catalog and user edits as open data. In December 2020, Goodreads deactivated API keys more than 30 days old and said it would no longer be issuing new API keys.[56][57][58]

Metadata source change

In January 2012, Goodreads switched from using Amazon's public Product Advertising API for book metadata (such as title, author, and number of pages) to book wholesaler Ingram. Goodreads felt Amazon's requirements for using its API were too restrictive, and the combination of Ingram, the Library of Congress, and other sources would be more flexible. Some users worried that their reading records would be lost, but Goodreads had a number of plans in place to ease the transition and ensure that no data was lost, even for titles that might be in danger of deletion because they were available only through Amazon, such as Kindle editions and self-published works on Amazon.[59]

In May 2013, as a result of Goodreads' acquisition by Amazon, Goodreads began using Amazon's data again.[60]

Competition and review fairness

In 2012, after a receiving a poor review on her novel The Selection, author Kiera Cass encouraged her Twitter followers to "knock [the review] off" the front page of Goodreads' section on the book. This sparked public outrage and started a discussion on the relationship between authors and reviewers on Goodreads.[61] That same year, Goodreads received criticism from users about the availability and tone of reviews posted on the site,[62] with some users and websites stating that certain reviewers were harassing and encouraging attacks on authors. Goodreads publicly posted its review guidelines in August 2012 to address these issues.[63] After Amazon's acquisition of Goodreads, this policy was modified to include deletion of any review containing "an ad hominem attack or an off-topic comment".[64] Several news sources reported the announcement, noting Amazon's business reasons for the move:

Where authors were threatening a mass account cancellation to protest the bullying, many of the reader users who commented on the announcement are now threatening the same thing. And while much of this might seem like nothing more than petty playground behavior between children who honestly do not have a clear good guy or bad guy, keep in mind that several e-book retailers incorporate the Goodreads' API into their sales pages, effectively posting book reviews that many in the Goodreads community know to be false, and nothing more than an act of revenge against an author; real-world sales decisions have been made by consumers based on these reviews.

— Mercy Pilkington, Good E-Reader News[65]

Regarding the 2013 Amazon acquisition of Goodreads, The New York Times said that: "Goodreads was a rival to Amazon as a place for discovering books" and that this deal "consolidates Amazon's power to determine which authors get exposure for their work".[66]

Goodreads Choice Awards

Main article: Goodreads Choice Awards

Criticism

Critics of the Goodreads platform feel that Goodreads' dominant position, coupled with limited development by Amazon, has prevented better tools emerging for personalized book recommendations.[67] Goodreads has also fallen under criticism from users who feel that the site is outdated and prone to frequent crashes and bugs, and that the recommendations are poor, frequently suggesting popular books at random rather than anything more personalized.[68]

Authors who are aware of the site have noted problematic qualities of Goodreads affecting discoverability and search engine results, particularly the platform's inability to sort pseudonyms, and its refusal to allow authors to choose the primary author name that appears on book records.[69] According to Goodreads, transgender authors who published under a different name before coming out can contact the website directly to request exceptions, although there are no known or notable cases where trans authors have been given such choices.[70] Some authors have criticized Goodreads's stance on functioning like a public library rather than giving authors any control over how their information is displayed, noting that for most authors, Goodreads is the first page people see when they search on a web browser. It has also been criticized that Goodreads allows both users and authors to post quotes attributed to an author without verification of any sort; removal of such quotes is left largely in the hands of volunteer "librarians", as authors have little to no individual control over quotes posted to their own profiles.[71] Having false or invalid quotes removed can be a difficult process; problematically the quotes can be picked up by third-party websites like Pinterest and Instagram in the meantime, spreading invalid quotes attributed to the author even further, as Goodreads quotes bring a high amount of web traffic. Goodreads often refuses to remove quotes with "likes" from an author's profile, even if the quotes are false or invalid.[72]

Both authors and readers have noted an increase in political banter, trolling, cancel culture and cyberbullying afflicting the website. Goodreads has tried to address this, implementing rules such as only allowing reviewers to criticize a book itself, not author behaviour or political affiliations. Critics of Goodreads have considered this decision to be a form of censorship.[73] A form of extortion scam known as "review bombing", in which trolls post numerous 1-star ratings and poor reviews on an author's new book from different sock-puppet accounts to make the book look bad (sometimes demanding money or that the author quit Goodreads usage to stop the bad reviews from coming in), has also been widely reported as a growing form of bullying on Goodreads, targeting both traditional and self-published authors. Popular fantasy novelist Rin Chupeco has noted that authors from marginalized groups are often a target, and she also criticized the minimalist approach Goodreads takes to moderation, saying, "Goodreads only removes reviews that specifically target the author, but they do not do that for every book, either—just for the authors with big enough marketing and publicity teams to demand these removals." Other victims of review bombing have pointed out that once a record for a book is created on Goodreads, even if the book has never been released to the public, is not in fact a "book" by Goodreads's definition, or will never be released to the public due to errors or delays in publishing, one-star ratings can still appear from accounts with no access to the title. Because Goodreads allows reviews for any book record as soon as it first appears on Goodreads, and cannot verify that any account-holder in fact owns the book they claim to have read, there is no clear way to police this. Some authors have suggested that Goodreads take a stricter approach to public review postings in the same manner that Amazon has done in the past, such as requiring a telephone number, a verified account by email address, and a real name before any account-holder can post public ratings or reviews.[74]

Removal from site

In early 2021, Amazon removed all new and used copies of William Luther Pierce's white supremacist novel The Turner Diaries from sales on its platform and subsidiary platforms, citing concerns with the QAnon movement as the cause.[75] As a result, Goodreads, an Amazon company, stripped the metadata from its record for the offending title, segregating The Turner Diaries to its "NOT A BOOK" author moniker (a category typically used to weed non-book items and plagiarized titles from the platform).[76]

See also

References

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  54. ^ "Terms of use". By posting any User Content on the Service, you expressly grant, and you represent and warrant that you have a right to grant, to Goodreads a royalty-free, sublicensable, transferable, perpetual, irrevocable, non-exclusive, worldwide ....
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  64. ^ Erikson, Kara (September 20, 2013). "Important Note Regarding Reviews". Goodreads. Retrieved September 21, 2013.
  65. ^ Pilkington, Mercy (September 21, 2013). "Goodreads Modifies User Terms to Prevent Author Bullying, Reviewers Outraged". goodereader.com. Retrieved September 21, 2013.
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  74. ^ McCluskey, Megan (August 9, 2021). "How Extortion Scams and Review Bombing Trolls Turned Goodreads Into Many Authors' Worst Nightmare". www.time.com.
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  • Sharick, Catherine (December 11, 2007). . Time. Archived from the original on December 12, 2007.

External links

 
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  • Official website

May 05, 2023
goodreads, this, article, relies, excessively, references, primary, sources, please, improve, this, article, adding, secondary, tertiary, sources, find, sources, news, newspapers, books, scholar, jstor, january, 2022, learn, when, remove, this, template, messa. This article relies excessively on references to primary sources Please improve this article by adding secondary or tertiary sources Find sources Goodreads news newspapers books scholar JSTOR January 2022 Learn how and when to remove this template message Goodreads is an American social cataloging website and a subsidiary of Amazon 1 that allows individuals to search its database of books annotations quotes and reviews Users can sign up and register books to generate library catalogs and reading lists They can also create their own groups of book suggestions surveys polls blogs and discussions The website s offices are located in San Francisco 2 GoodreadsType of siteBookAvailable inEnglishFoundedDecember 2006 16 years ago 2006 12 OwnerAmazonFounder s Otis ChandlerElizabeth KhuriURLgoodreads wbr comCommercialYesRegistrationOptionalCurrent statusActiveGoodreads was founded in December 2006 and launched in January 2007 by Otis Chandler and Elizabeth Khuri Chandler 3 4 In December 2007 the site had 650 000 members 5 and 10 000 000 books had been added 6 By July 2012 the site reported 10 million members 20 million monthly visits and thirty employees 7 On March 28 2013 Amazon announced its acquisition of Goodreads 8 and by July 23 2013 Goodreads announced their user base had grown to 20 million members 9 By July 2019 the site had 90 million members 10 Contents 1 History 1 1 Founders 1 2 Foundation and mission 1 3 Early years 1 4 2013 acquisition by Amazon 1 5 2014 2019 2 Features 2 1 Book discovery 2 2 Content access 2 3 User interaction 3 Catalog data 3 1 Metadata source change 4 Competition and review fairness 5 Goodreads Choice Awards 6 Criticism 7 Removal from site 8 See also 9 References 10 Bibliography 11 External linksHistory EditFounders Edit Otis Chandler Goodreads founders Otis Chandler and Elizabeth Khuri Chandler first met while studying at Stanford Engineering and English respectively After university Chandler initially worked as a programmer in on line businesses 11 including dating sites 12 and Khuri Chandler as a journalist 13 Chandler and Khuri both grew up in California Chandler is a descendant of the publisher of the Los Angeles Times Otis Chandler 14 Foundation and mission Edit Goodreads was founded in 2006 The idea came about when Otis Chandler was browsing through his friend s bookshelf He wanted to integrate this scanning experience and to create a space where people could write reviews regarding the books that they read 15 Goodreads addressed what publishers call the discoverability problem by guiding consumers in the digital age to find books they might want to read 16 Early years Edit Before gaining much traction Otis and Elizabeth Chandler grew the platform through their friends of friends where it reached 800 users Eventually it gained attention through the media such as Mashable and other various blogs 17 During its first year of business the company was run without any formal funding In December 2007 the site received funding estimated at 750 000 from angel investors 6 This funding lasted Goodreads until 2009 when Goodreads received two million dollars from True Ventures 18 In October 2010 the company opened its application programming interface which enabled developers to access its ratings and titles 19 In 2011 Goodreads acquired Discovereads a book recommendation engine that employs machine learning algorithms to analyze which books people might like based on books they ve liked in the past and books that people with similar tastes have liked 4 20 After a user has rated 20 books on its five star scale the site will begin making recommendations Otis Chandler believed this rating system would be superior to Amazon s as Amazon s includes books a user has browsed or purchased as gifts when determining its recommendations 4 20 Later that year Goodreads introduced an algorithm to suggest books to registered users and had over five million members 21 The New Yorker s Macy Halford noted that the algorithm was not perfect as the number of books needed to create a perfect recommendation system is so large that by the time I d got halfway there my reading preferences would have changed and I d have to start over again 22 As of 2012 membership was required to use but free 23 In October 2012 Goodreads announced it had grown to 11 million members with 395 million books cataloged and over 20 000 book clubs created by its users 24 A month later in November 2012 Goodreads had surpassed 12 million members with the member base having doubled in one year 25 2013 acquisition by Amazon Edit In March 2013 Amazon made an agreement to acquire Goodreads in the second quarter of 2013 for an undisclosed sum 26 27 28 Amazon had previously purchased the competitor Shelfari in 2008 29 with the Goodreads purchase stunning the book industry The Authors Guild called it a truly devastating act of vertical integration and that Amazon s control of online bookselling approaches the insurmountable There were mixed reactions from Goodreads users at the time totaling 16 million members 30 Goodreads founder Otis Chandler said that his management team would remain in place to guard the reviewing process with the acquisition Chandler continued running Goodreads until 2019 The New York Times noted that Goodreads at the time of the acquisition had a more reputable reviewing system than Amazon s 31 Noting that some authors had been too aggressive in their self promotion as Goodreads admitted in an email and that some readers had responded with aggression 32 in September 2013 Goodreads announced it would delete without warning reviews that threatened authors or mentioned authors behavior 33 As of April 2020 the site s guidelines still state that reviews that are predominantly about an author s behavior and not about the book will be deleted 34 2014 2019 Edit In January 2016 Amazon announced that it would shut down Shelfari in favor of Goodreads effective March 16 2016 Users were offered the ability to export data and migrate accounts 35 better source needed In April 2016 Goodreads announced that over 50 million user reviews had been posted to the website 36 Features EditBook discovery Edit On the Goodreads website users can add books to their personal bookshelves rate and review books see what their friends and authors are reading participate in discussion boards and groups on a variety of topics and get suggestions for future reading choices based on their reviews of previously read books 37 Once users have added friends to their profile they will see their friends shelves and reviews and can comment on friends pages Goodreads features a rating system of one to five stars with the option of accompanying the rating with a written review The site provides default bookshelves read currently reading to read and the opportunity to create customized shelves to categorize a user s books 38 Content access Edit Goodreads users can read or listen to a preview of a book on the website using Kindle Cloud Reader and Audible 39 Goodreads also offers quizzes and trivia quotations book lists and free giveaways Members can receive the regular newsletter featuring new books suggestions author interviews and poetry If a user has written a work the work can be linked on the author s profile page which also includes an author s blog 40 Goodreads organizes offline opportunities as well such as in person book exchanges and literary pub crawls 41 User interaction Edit The website facilitates reader interactions with authors through the interviews giveaways authors blogs and profile information There is also a special section for authors with suggestions for promoting their works on Goodreads com aimed at helping them reach their target audience 42 By 2011 seventeen thousand authors including James Patterson and Margaret Atwood used Goodreads to advertise 4 Users can add each other as Friends enabling them to share reviews posts book recommendations and messages Goodreads has a presence on Facebook Pinterest Twitter and other social networking sites 43 44 45 Linking a Goodreads account with a social networking account like Facebook enables the ability to import contacts from the social networking account to Goodreads expanding one s Goodreads Friends list There are settings available as well to allow Goodreads to post straight to a social networking account which informs e g Facebook friends what one is reading or how one rated a book 46 The Amazon Kindle Paperwhite version 2 and Kindle Voyage feature integration with Goodreads social network via a user interface button 47 Catalog data EditBook catalog data was seeded with large imports from various closed and open data sources including individual publishers Ingram 48 Amazon before 2012 and after 2013 49 50 WorldCat and the Library of Congress 51 Goodreads librarians improve book information on the website including editing book and author information and adding cover images Goodreads members can apply to become volunteer librarians after they have 50 books on their profile 52 Goodreads librarians coordinate on the Goodreads Librarian Group 53 User data becomes proprietary to Goodreads 54 though available via an application programming interface or API 55 unlike similar projects like The Open Library which publish the catalog and user edits as open data In December 2020 Goodreads deactivated API keys more than 30 days old and said it would no longer be issuing new API keys 56 57 58 Metadata source change Edit In January 2012 Goodreads switched from using Amazon s public Product Advertising API for book metadata such as title author and number of pages to book wholesaler Ingram Goodreads felt Amazon s requirements for using its API were too restrictive and the combination of Ingram the Library of Congress and other sources would be more flexible Some users worried that their reading records would be lost but Goodreads had a number of plans in place to ease the transition and ensure that no data was lost even for titles that might be in danger of deletion because they were available only through Amazon such as Kindle editions and self published works on Amazon 59 In May 2013 as a result of Goodreads acquisition by Amazon Goodreads began using Amazon s data again 60 Competition and review fairness EditIn 2012 after a receiving a poor review on her novel The Selection author Kiera Cass encouraged her Twitter followers to knock the review off the front page of Goodreads section on the book This sparked public outrage and started a discussion on the relationship between authors and reviewers on Goodreads 61 That same year Goodreads received criticism from users about the availability and tone of reviews posted on the site 62 with some users and websites stating that certain reviewers were harassing and encouraging attacks on authors Goodreads publicly posted its review guidelines in August 2012 to address these issues 63 After Amazon s acquisition of Goodreads this policy was modified to include deletion of any review containing an ad hominem attack or an off topic comment 64 Several news sources reported the announcement noting Amazon s business reasons for the move Where authors were threatening a mass account cancellation to protest the bullying many of the reader users who commented on the announcement are now threatening the same thing And while much of this might seem like nothing more than petty playground behavior between children who honestly do not have a clear good guy or bad guy keep in mind that several e book retailers incorporate the Goodreads API into their sales pages effectively posting book reviews that many in the Goodreads community know to be false and nothing more than an act of revenge against an author real world sales decisions have been made by consumers based on these reviews Mercy Pilkington Good E Reader News 65 Regarding the 2013 Amazon acquisition of Goodreads The New York Times said that Goodreads was a rival to Amazon as a place for discovering books and that this deal consolidates Amazon s power to determine which authors get exposure for their work 66 Goodreads Choice Awards EditMain article Goodreads Choice AwardsCriticism EditCritics of the Goodreads platform feel that Goodreads dominant position coupled with limited development by Amazon has prevented better tools emerging for personalized book recommendations 67 Goodreads has also fallen under criticism from users who feel that the site is outdated and prone to frequent crashes and bugs and that the recommendations are poor frequently suggesting popular books at random rather than anything more personalized 68 Authors who are aware of the site have noted problematic qualities of Goodreads affecting discoverability and search engine results particularly the platform s inability to sort pseudonyms and its refusal to allow authors to choose the primary author name that appears on book records 69 According to Goodreads transgender authors who published under a different name before coming out can contact the website directly to request exceptions although there are no known or notable cases where trans authors have been given such choices 70 Some authors have criticized Goodreads s stance on functioning like a public library rather than giving authors any control over how their information is displayed noting that for most authors Goodreads is the first page people see when they search on a web browser It has also been criticized that Goodreads allows both users and authors to post quotes attributed to an author without verification of any sort removal of such quotes is left largely in the hands of volunteer librarians as authors have little to no individual control over quotes posted to their own profiles 71 Having false or invalid quotes removed can be a difficult process problematically the quotes can be picked up by third party websites like Pinterest and Instagram in the meantime spreading invalid quotes attributed to the author even further as Goodreads quotes bring a high amount of web traffic Goodreads often refuses to remove quotes with likes from an author s profile even if the quotes are false or invalid 72 Both authors and readers have noted an increase in political banter trolling cancel culture and cyberbullying afflicting the website Goodreads has tried to address this implementing rules such as only allowing reviewers to criticize a book itself not author behaviour or political affiliations Critics of Goodreads have considered this decision to be a form of censorship 73 A form of extortion scam known as review bombing in which trolls post numerous 1 star ratings and poor reviews on an author s new book from different sock puppet accounts to make the book look bad sometimes demanding money or that the author quit Goodreads usage to stop the bad reviews from coming in has also been widely reported as a growing form of bullying on Goodreads targeting both traditional and self published authors Popular fantasy novelist Rin Chupeco has noted that authors from marginalized groups are often a target and she also criticized the minimalist approach Goodreads takes to moderation saying Goodreads only removes reviews that specifically target the author but they do not do that for every book either just for the authors with big enough marketing and publicity teams to demand these removals Other victims of review bombing have pointed out that once a record for a book is created on Goodreads even if the book has never been released to the public is not in fact a book by Goodreads s definition or will never be released to the public due to errors or delays in publishing one star ratings can still appear from accounts with no access to the title Because Goodreads allows reviews for any book record as soon as it first appears on Goodreads and cannot verify that any account holder in fact owns the book they claim to have read there is no clear way to police this Some authors have suggested that Goodreads take a stricter approach to public review postings in the same manner that Amazon has done in the past such as requiring a telephone number a verified account by email address and a real name before any account holder can post public ratings or reviews 74 Removal from site EditIn early 2021 Amazon removed all new and used copies of William Luther Pierce s white supremacist novel The Turner Diaries from sales on its platform and subsidiary platforms citing concerns with the QAnon movement as the cause 75 As a result Goodreads an Amazon company stripped the metadata from its record for the offending title segregating The Turner Diaries to its NOT A BOOK author moniker a category typically used to weed non book items and plagiarized titles from the platform 76 See also EditaNobii Babelio BookArmy Bookish douban iDreamBooks LibraryThing Open Library Readgeek Shelfari The StoryGraph Library 2 0 the concept behind Goodreads and similar sitesReferences Edit Kaufman Leslie March 28 2013 Amazon to Buy Social Site Dedicated to Sharing Books The New York Times ISSN 0362 4331 Retrieved June 16 2019 Book lovers seething over Amazon acquisition of Goodreads Inside Bay area April 4 2013 Elizabeth Khuri Chandler Tells the Origin Story of Goodreads Literary Hub December 3 2018 Retrieved April 18 2019 a b c d Miller Claire Cain March 10 2011 Need Advice on What to Read Ask the Internet The New York Times Bits Retrieved November 29 2012 Good reads book nerds social networking TechCoastReview archived from the original on December 19 2007 retrieved September 17 2007 a b Goodreads Raises Angel Round To Help You Find That Perfect Book Tech Crunch 17 December 2007 Retrieved October 22 2012 Lee Ellen July 21 2012 Goodreads Otis Chandler reviews growth SF Gate Retrieved October 22 2012 Olanoff Drew Amazon Acquires Social Reading Site Goodreads Which Gives The Company A Social Advantage Over Apple SF Gate Retrieved October 22 2012 Chandler Otis July 23 2013 Goodreads Grows to 20 Million Readers Goodreads Goodreads number of registered members 2019 Statista Retrieved 2020 12 01 Book Buddies stanfordmag org January 2012 How A Quiet Developer Built Goodreads com Into Book Community Of 2 6 Million Members with Otis Chandler Greiving Tim Goodreads Co Founder Builds a Literary Community USC News Goodreads Otis and Elizabeth Chandler NPR org Retrieved 2022 12 16 About Goodreads Goodreads Retrieved 2020 12 01 Kaufman Leslie February 12 2013 Goodreads com Is Growing as a Popular Book Site The New York Times ISSN 0362 4331 Retrieved October 11 2016 Narula Svati Kirsten 2014 02 12 Millions of People Reading Alone Together The Rise of Goodreads The Atlantic Retrieved 2023 01 08 Kellogg Carolyn December 14 2009 What Goodreads will do with its new millions Los Angeles Times Retrieved August 6 2012 Goodreads Launches Social Reading API Read write Web October 2010 Archived from the original on November 26 2010 a b Hopkins Curt March 10 2011 Goodreads Buys Recommendation Service Discovereads ReadWrite Frassica Matt July 2 2011 For ebook devotees reading is a whole new experience USA Today The Courier Journal Louisville Retrieved July 28 2011 Halford Macy November 2011 Getting Good at Goodreads The New Yorker Retrieved November 15 2011 Zukerman Erez March 5 2012 Find New Favorite Books With Goodreads PCWorld Retrieved August 26 2019 Fidelman Mark October 16 2012 These are Top 25 Book Reviewers on Goodreads Forbes infographic Retrieved October 22 2012 Greenfield Jeremy November 8 2012 Goodreads CEO Otis Chandler on the Future of Discoverability and Social Reading Digital Book World archived from the original on November 14 2012 retrieved November 15 2012 Amazon com to Acquire Goodreads Press release Corporate IR Archived from the original on October 4 2014 Retrieved March 28 2013 Exciting News About Goodreads We re Joining the Amazon Family Goodreads Kaufman Leslie March 28 2013 Amazon to Buy Social Site Dedicated to Sharing Books The New York Times Retrieved March 29 2013 Kaufman Leslie March 29 2013 Amazon to Buy Social Site Dedicated to Sharing Books The New York Times Retrieved August 26 2019 Flood Allison April 2 2013 Amazon purchase of Goodreads stuns book industry The Guardian Retrieved August 26 2019 Kaufman Leslie February 13 2013 Amazon to Buy Social Site Dedicated to Sharing Books The New York Times Retrieved August 26 2019 Petri Alexandra September 23 2013 Is Goodreads new policy really censorship The Washington Post Retrieved April 19 2020 Goodreads Announces New Content Policy Now Deletes Reviews Which Mention Author Behavior The Digital Reader 21 September 2013 Review Guidelines Goodreads Retrieved April 19 2020 Amazon Kills Shelfari The Reader s Room January 12 2016 Goodreads Reaches New Milestone Fifty Million Reviews The Digital Reader 7 April 2016 Goodreads Retrieved November 29 2012 Groups Goodreads Retrieved November 15 2011 Klose Stephanie May 7 2015 Audiobook Samples Added to Goodreads Library Journal Reviews Archived from the original on October 12 2016 Retrieved October 11 2016 Strickland Jonathan July 14 2009 How Goodreads Works How Stuff Works Retrieved November 29 2012 Kellogg Carolyn August 14 2012 Goodreads reaches 10 million users Los Angeles Times Retrieved November 29 2012 Author Program Goodreads Retrieved November 29 2012 Ha Anthony 13 August 2012 Reading Is Alive And Well At Social Reading Site Goodreads Which Just Hit 10M Members Tech Crunch AOL Tech Retrieved November 29 2012 Goodreads Twitter Retrieved December 20 2012 Goodreads Pinterest Retrieved December 20 2012 Goodreads Goodreads Retrieved June 15 2014 Amazon s next Kindle Paperwhite outed ahead of its official launch via Amazon s own leak Archived 2013 09 05 at the Wayback Machine Goodreads Librarians Group New Ingram Import Goodreads Retrieved January 9 2017 Goodreads Librarians Group Adding New Books Large Book Data Import showing 1 50 of 472 www goodreads com Retrieved September 20 2018 Amazon is going away as a data source At Goodreads we make it a priority to use book information from the most reliable and open data sources Patrick January 9 2012 Goodreads Librarians Group discussion Announcement Goodreads to Import WorldCat amp Library of Congress Data Tonight What is a goodreads librarian www goodreads com Retrieved October 11 2016 Goodreads Librarians Group Goodreads Retrieved October 11 2016 Terms of use By posting any User Content on the Service you expressly grant and you represent and warrant that you have a right to grant to Goodreads a royalty free sublicensable transferable perpetual irrevocable non exclusive worldwide Goodreads Librarians Group Amazon is going away as a data source showing 1 50 of 1 601 www goodreads com Retrieved September 20 2018 Goodreads plans to retire API access disables existing API keys December 13 2020 Retrieved December 15 2020 Goodreads shutters all APIs breaking my open source app December 10 2020 Retrieved December 15 2020 Mek 13 Dec 2020 Importing your Goodreads amp Accessing them with Open Library s APIs The Open Library Blog Retrieved 16 May 2021 Owen Laura Hazard January 27 2012 As Goodreads Ends Sourcing From Amazon Users Fear Lost Books Paid Content The Economics of Digital Content Gigaom Archived from the original on April 19 2012 Retrieved November 29 2012 Rivka May 23 2013 The Announcement You ve All Been Waiting For Goodreads Librarians Group forums goodreads com Retrieved July 17 2013 Matthews Jolie C July 9 2016 Professionals and nonprofessionals on Goodreads Behavior standards for authors reviewers and readers New Media amp Society 18 10 2305 2322 r doi 10 1177 1461444815582141 S2CID 26264609 Miller Laura October 23 2013 How Amazon and Goodreads could lose their best readers Salon Retrieved August 5 2017 Brown Patrick August 6 2012 Review Guidelines amp Updated Author Guidelines Goodreads Retrieved September 9 2012 Erikson Kara September 20 2013 Important Note Regarding Reviews Goodreads Retrieved September 21 2013 Pilkington Mercy September 21 2013 Goodreads Modifies User Terms to Prevent Author Bullying Reviewers Outraged goodereader com Retrieved September 21 2013 Kaufman Leslie March 28 2013 Amazon to Buy Goodreads The New York Times ISSN 0362 4331 Retrieved October 11 2016 Why Goodreads is bad for books www newstatesman com 10 September 2020 Lashbrook Angela September 10 2019 Almost Everything About Goodreads Is Broken Medium Goodreads Help help goodreads com Goodreads Help help goodreads com Goodreads Help help goodreads com Goodreads Librarians Group Issues with Quotes Editing amp Deleting My Quotes Showing 1 50 of 53 www goodreads com Owen Laura September 23 2013 Goodreads growing pains Attempt to curtail author bullying angers many users gigaom com McCluskey Megan August 9 2021 How Extortion Scams and Review Bombing Trolls Turned Goodreads Into Many Authors Worst Nightmare www time com Amazon pulls white supremacist novel The Turner Diaries alongside QAnon purge www theverge com 12 January 2021 NOT A BOOK by NOT A BOOK www goodreads com Bibliography EditKeegan Victor Keegan June 21 2007 It s a new online chapter for books The Guardian Mendez Teresa June 15 2007 Peer to peer book reviews fill a niche The Christian Science Monitor Roy Nilanjana S September 27 2007 The world s largest reading room Business Standard Archived from the original on October 21 2007 archived Sharick Catherine December 11 2007 Top 10 Websites of 2007 Time Archived from the original on December 12 2007 External links Edit Wikimedia Commons has media related to Goodreads Official website Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Goodreads amp oldid 1143921045, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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