Why Goodreads is good for readers and books: a rebuttal to Sarah Manavis’ “Why Goodreads is bad for books”

I read Sarah Manavis’ article “Why Goodreads is bad for books” on The New Statesman’s site today (read it here: https://www.newstatesman.com/science-...) wondering if I was going to learn something new about Goodreads (hereafter abbreviated as GR) - because why else would this article be written but as an expose on a seemingly benign site; surely it wouldn’t be an arbitrary, weak jab against a popular site simply because it’s popular, would it? - and I didn’t unfortunately. It’s basically just an opinion piece with some vague, and ultimately pointless, assertions to cater to malcontents who have an axe to grind against GR for their own reasons.

A little about myself before we go any further: I’m a top 100 reviewer on GR and have been on the site since July 2011 - this is my profile: https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/5... (“Sam Quixote” is not my real name obviously but I joined the site not wanting to use my real name and people came to know me as “Sam” so I’ve kept it ever since). I have no stake in the site - I don’t get paid for my reviews and I’m certainly not being paid to write this - but I do like the site, hence my long-standing membership, and I thought a number of the things Manavis said were unbalanced and GR deserved a defence against some of these spurious claims.

Some of Manavis’ comments are melodramatic to the point of comedy (GR has “become a monster”! Maybe in terms of the size of its membership?) and without any strong basis on fact. Her opening paragraph doesn’t even closely resemble my experience of the site at any time, and I can’t imagine any long-time user of GR struggling to find new releases or reply to messages and reviews.

Her complaints boil down to: 1) GR is an Amazon company, 2) GR is the most popular books site and “monopolises” discussion of books (as you would expect from being the most popular site), 3) the search function is bad, and 4) the recommendation system is bad. MONSTER!

The first point is true, but I don’t think, because there’s been a lot of criticism of Amazon in recent years, and particularly this year, over their business practices, that that makes GR bad by association. The assertion that Amazon doesn't seem to invest much in GR is probably because, more than anything, the site already works well and doesn’t need significant revamping. I also believe Amazon said, when they bought GR, that they weren’t looking to change the site dramatically and would let it continue with its own identity - which it largely has, to its credit.

The second point is also true but what’s the nefariousness of being the largest aggregator of book discussion - does that translate into big bucks? Maybe if people click the Amazon links in the book’s description and buy the book. Sure, I bet some people do that - there’s plenty of people who acknowledge Amazon’s business practices but continue using Amazon anyway. But I think if you’re someone who cares about supporting indie booksellers, you’re never going to click those links anyway, or you’ve no intention of buying the book at all but will borrow it from the library. In which case - nobody’s making money. Unless you count ads that run on the page - unless you have AdBlock.

TheStoryGraph, a site Manavis proposes as a potential alternative to GR, doesn’t use star ratings but I think these are essential. Sometimes when I give up on a book, I want to read someone’s one star review of it to see how bad it got for those who finished it. Sometimes I won’t review a book but will still want to see what people thought of it rather than try to corral my own thoughts. Sometimes I’ll have queries about a book - maybe some aspects were impressionistic - and I’ll want some thoughtful soul to enlighten me on hidden meanings I probably missed. Star ratings help narrow down the kinds of reviews you’re searching for. That’s partly why GR is the biggest books site: because of the range of and mostly uncensored views (you can, and I do, post swears in your reviews, which you can’t do on Amazon reviews) to voice your dis/pleasure one way or the other and nobody’s going to take it down.

The third point on the search function being bad: I’m sure I’ve had issues with finding books in the past but these are so few and far between that I can’t think of specific examples. About the worst thing I can say about the search function is that you can sometimes get multiple editions of the same book in the search results and, if you care enough about this sort of thing, you can ask a GR Librarian (a non-GR employee but user of the site who has the ability to edit the books on the site) on the Goodreads Librarians Group board to combine the editions so that only one book shows up on the search.

The example Manavis gives to highlight the supposed flaws in the search function - Holiday Heart by Margarita Garcia Robayo - is a misleading one. She says that it’s “almost impossible” to find this book when you type it in (I’m guessing she only typed the title in the search box because if she typed in the title and author together there’d be no other search result besides the book in question - in other words, no problem). Yeah - because “holiday” and “heart” are common words and have been used in hundreds (707 according to GR’s search engine) of book titles/series names (the search also covers the series books have appeared in) over the years.

Expecting the search engine to pick out the exact “Holiday Heart” novel you have in mind - especially an obscure one published only a few months ago (in English - it appeared in its original Spanish in 2017), from a small publisher, compared to the hundreds that have appeared over the years from bigger publishers - is an enormously unfair expectation. If she had typed in the author’s name, which is far from common, then she would have found the book immediately - it’s second from the top. Hardly “almost impossible”.

The fourth and biggest point Manavis makes is that the recommendations function is bad and I don’t disagree on this one - it’s never been good. It used to be much, much worse and it’s only slightly better now - hardly a glowing recommendation in itself! I’m not going to defend the recs function of GR - I don’t use it, I’ve never used it, and I don’t recommend others rely on it either!

So Manavis’ solution to this failed recommendations function is to point frustrated users to a new books site, TheStoryGraph, which apparently has a superior algorithm. I’m not going to get into any extensive commentary on that site as I don’t use/know it, other than to say about its supposed superior system partly stemming from users’ tags that I’m sure no users will abuse the tags system out of trolling/comedy and thus fudge the recs for others, right?

My point about recommendations functions of any site attempting this is: you will NEVER find a site with a great recommendations function. I would even say it’s impossible and to try is a waste of time. There’s no guarantee that, if you like thrillers and enjoy Lee Child that you’ll enjoy James Patterson or Gregg Hurwitz. They’re similar but not the same - they have different writing styles, the stories are different, even if they’re in the same genre. If you like horror and love Shirley Jackson, there’s no guarantee you’ll like Stephen King or HP Lovecraft or Edgar Allan Poe.

You can try to figure out a foolproof algorithm that’ll match styles, genres, subjects, readers’ opinions, and on and on, but I don’t see there being an objective and functional system arising out of something as nebulous, capricious and ever-changing as each individual reader’s tastes. The books I liked as a teenager are different from the books I liked in my 20s which are different from the books I enjoy now in my 30s and I expect my tastes to continue evolving.

And this idea that bookshops or libraries offer good recs - no. I almost never ask anyway but what few recs I have received, and have overheard, from librarians and booksellers have all been next to worthless. Librarians in general strike me as quite dull people who don’t read that much more than the average person. I forget the exact book but it was a novel with a name for a title and the librarian, when handing it to me, read the author’s name as the title and the title as the author! Bookshops too - the people who work there are just working a job; they’re rarely passionate readers themselves. The recs they give out are usually titles that are being promoted or are so general (“Yeah, I think Marvel put out some great comics - have you tried Spider-Man?!” etc.).

Look: there’s no foolproof way of finding books. There never has been, there probably never will be, and this isn’t GR’s fault. Some suggestions for finding books to read that have worked for me in the past:

• Amazon has a “Customers Who Bought This Also Bought…” function you can scroll through in a book’s product page - I used that for years in the ‘00s to find many great books.
• GR has a List function that groups similar books together in a handy list.
• Read books by authors you’ve read before but who also blurb other authors.
• Go against received wisdom and DO judge a book by its cover - sometimes a rad cover does represent a great book. Check out any book for any reason - cover, title, premise. You’re allowed to be shallow in your selections and sometimes a hunch leads to a great read.
• But - and this probably the best advice I can give - DON’T commit yourself to finishing everything you start. So if you’ve chosen a book for its cover and you’re not enjoying it - if you’re not enjoying it for any reason - put it down and pick up something else. If you’re anything like me and have been reading your entire life, you can probably tell from an author’s style whether the book is something you’ll enjoy or won’t - so don’t punish yourself by slogging through it needlessly and joylessly. This is why libraries are such a good resource, because you can try any number of books for free without feeling you’ve lost out by paying for a book you didn’t like. This approach also means you can try lots of books because you’re not committing yourself to however many hours in completing it once you’ve started.
• Make a note of books that you come across in your everyday life - books you see mentioned in articles, podcasts, other books, conversation, and so on - and look them up later to see if they sound like something you might want to try reading. That’s why I’m going to look up Margarita Garcia Robayo!

GR’s recommendations function may be janky as hell, but it has something similar that’s really terrific: users’ reviews. If you come across and glom onto a reviewer whose voice you like, whose tastes are similar to yours, who reads widely in genres and subjects that interest you - that’s where you’ll find useful recommendations. That’s a big part of what I use the site for: to get recs from friends I’ve known for years whose tastes are like mine and through whom I can discover new books I might’ve missed. And that’s another point to refute - Manavis’ claim that users can’t build a community on GR. Not even remotely true - I’ve seen numerous private boards spring up over the years and I’ve been a part of one with several friends for nearly a decade now. Many people have private and public boards - there are innumerable communities on GR.

I’m not sure what prompted this unconvincing attack against a site that - besides not magically recommending books you’ll enjoy that you don’t know about, ie. the impossible - works fine and is enjoyed by millions. Maybe it’s just a contrarian-type piece designed to stimulate discussion? But the tone of the article, that GR is a broken site just aching to be replaced if it weren’t for its derned Amazon backing, or that it’s somehow bad for books because someone couldn’t find a generically-named novel, isn’t deserved. The assertion throughout that GR isn’t working simply isn’t true - its popularity is testament to the fact that it is functional to the vast majority of its audience.

I’m all for fair competition and would be happy for rival sites to challenge GR’s dominance - I wish TheStoryGraph well - but I think this is just a case of one site’s quality far outshining that of its competitors; Sarah Manavis asserting otherwise through a lopsided portrayal is dishonest and won’t do anything to change this paradigm.