Review-Bombing and Goodreads

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by ZodWallop

Goodreads does giveaways of ARCs, so clearly it IS (a) place for those reviews.

When did that start?

That's crazy. Only the publishers should release ARCs and to trusted partners.

[DiapDealer]

Again.... you don't really get to decide who SHOULD do what in the publishing world.

[Lynx-lynx]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

.....
"Require" is not really the right word. For me it would be "prefer the opinions of others..." And you may still have it a bit backwards. I'm very rarely looking for opinions regarding a book I'm already thinking about reading. I've already got plenty of books I may want to read. When looking at the reviews of others, I'm most often looking for books it probably never would have occurred to me to read (left to my own devices).

That books and authors you would not perhaps have been exposed to makes great sense to me, and I agree how does one find these books. For me, it's often by chance.

[Lynx-lynx]

Originally Posted by issybird

Rather patronizing, don't you think? Where did we say "require" as opposed to finding them useful? And you misunderstood or chose to ignore where I mentioned "discovery" and books outside the mainstream, even though you quoted it. Aside from seeing if people with similar tastes to mine have liked or disliked a book and why, I find out titles of interest from what they're reading that I had not heard of and might never hear of otherwise.

Reading goodreads reviews apparently is a topic that hits the odd exposed nerve, and I can appreciate that people who write reviews consider that others will read it. I guess some goodreads reviewers are quite considered in their reviewing approach, and that writing a review can also assist in their further appreciation of the book.

Yes, agreed being exposed to new authors and books is one reason to seek out others for some, and one of your choices is to read reviews.

What apparent manufactured dramas goodreads engages in, reviews for books that don't exist, surely that degrades the honesty of the whole site. Yeah, I know another topic entirely.

[Lynx-lynx]

Originally Posted by Quoth

When did that start?

That's crazy. Only the publishers should release ARCs and to trusted partners.

Can an author restrict a publisher re who they give review copies to? I'm guessing maybe the big earners can, but maybe not the majority of authors


What a silly state of affairs that an odd bod site like goodreads can attract such attention that it could influence poorly the sales of a book yet to be published. A book that a publisher wants to have some sort of successful sales outcome.

Edit: do you self publish Quoth?

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by Lynx-lynx

do you self publish Quoth?

In a manner of speaking, technically.
Corvids Press will come up if you search the ISBN database.
There is more than one author.
Corvids Press was created for someone other than me by me.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

Again.... you don't really get to decide who SHOULD do what in the publishing world.

Neither do you, unless you are publisher and then only for your books. That's an idiotic comment and I've as much right to have an opinion about Goodreads as anyone. I've also had fruitless arguments with their admins. Basically unless you have more lawyer money than Amazon they are "right" when they are totally wrong. So stop with the snarking.

[issybird]

Originally Posted by Lynx-lynx

What a silly state of affairs that an odd bod site like goodreads can attract such attention that it could influence poorly the sales of a book yet to be published. A book that a publisher wants to have some sort of successful sales outcome.

An odd bod site? Goodreads has over 125 million members. That's what I'd call clout.

[Lynx-lynx]

To potentially hit some more nerves, it seems to me that goodreads has some sort of inflated ingratiating status.
To quote Wikipedia:
"Goodreads is an American social cataloging website and a subsidiary of Amazon that allows individuals to search its database of books, annotations, quotes, and reviews."

Book sales, book sales, and book sales for Amazon is surely the raison d'etre.
What I'm saying is, that's the lense goodreads existence can be considered in.

[jmurphy]

Originally Posted by Lynx-lynx

What a silly state of affairs that an odd bod site like goodreads

They've been owned by Amazon for over a decade....

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by Quoth

Neither do you, unless you are publisher and then only for your books. That's an idiotic comment and I've as much right to have an opinion about Goodreads as anyone.

Of course I don't. I never suggested what publishers should or shouldn't do. Not my bailiwick, nor yours. What an idiotic response to an objective observation. Perhaps you've not noticed that you state a lot of your opinions very much like they are facts?

For the record, I don't really care what Goodreads' or Amazon's intentions are. They're just two sites among many that I've found a way to use to my advantage. If they make some hay off of me in the process, so be it. That's how these things work.

[theducks]

Let us (Authors) not forget to Read the Contract terms.

How many of us have (books from) Baen CD's in our Library?
I remember hearing of an unhappy Author complaining about all their work being given away.
(If you read the CD License terms, you can only make and give a Full copy of the CD). The contract had Promotion terms.

My paper Library had many of those titles already, but a few I found there resulted in SALES of that Authors work. Free / cheap samples do work to get something read that might otherwise be passed by.

[Lynx-lynx]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

For the record, I don't really care what Goodreads' or Amazon's intentions are. They're just two sites among many that I've found a way to use to my advantage.

This for me too, I ignore the bulk of whatever is there and hone in on the author info, or book or series info I'm after.

Individual's reviews on books are twaddle to be ignored for my purposes.

[Fbone]

I really like GR's "compare books" function. It quickly tells me how my tastes line up with others.

[Uncle Robin]

Originally Posted by Fbone

I really like GR's "compare books" function. It quickly tells me how my tastes line up with others.

The similar function at The Storygraph works very well too