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I stopped adding books I read, wanted to read and reviews when I realised that Goodreads was an Amazon data capture tool. Amazon should never have been allowed to buy it, Mobipocket, IMDB, Book depository, Abe Books and others.
Also they are totally inflexible about content removal. As mentioned in the article, the site doesn't even work very well.
Like Amazon, they also conflate illustrators and colourists as book authors!
StoryGraph seems to be on a second incarnation and seems poor. Their selection screen for filtering recommendations is also poor, though the idea is reasonable and works well on the TV broadcast Guide, Digiguide, which is far better than Radio Times, RTE Guide, Sky Onscreen Guide / Search or Freeview/Freesat guide/search.
The best alternative would be for Amazon to be forced to divest of companies that they should never have been allowed to buy. But we certainly don't want to see Goodreads owned by any Social Media Company, Apple, Microsoft, Google or Oracle. Or any company owning online or physical bookshops.
I don't know what the answer is for an alternative. We do still of course list our new releases on Goodreads. But be warned, even if no copies are yet sold and the cover is changed before release, Goodreads will not remove the never used invalid cover.
Also Amazon refuses to remove listings for totally withdrawn novels. It's reasonable that they should keep listings for merely out-of-print novels.
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