Ironic is goes to an Amazon owned newspaper link which is then paywalled
terriaminute on
I’ve noticed no changes, other than GR star & review number added to amz page. I’ve been on Goodreads since 2016.
SoonerFan619 on
I don’t even bother with book reviews anymore. Some of the worst books I’ve ever read had great reviews.
Tobacco_Bhaji on
Goodreads hasn’t gotten any worse than it already was.
Uptons_BJs on
From a business perspective, Goodreads is in a way representative of the “data is new oil” delusion from around 15 years ago.
​
Around 15, 10 years ago, you’d hear of so many dumb business plans. Like, you ask a lot of founders “how is your business supposed to make money?” and they’ll either give you a vague “advertising” or “we’ll accumulate data and that data will be valuable!”. There were a bunch of grifters out there seeking investment with the slogan “data is the new oil” – Their argument was that data is inherently valuable, and that more data means more value.
​
But unlike other commodities like oil, sugar, steel, etc, data is not inherently valuable. It really depends on what you do with it, what you can do with it, and how you can monetize it.
​
Or to use a pretty famous example, Moviepass used to charge people $10/month for unlimited movie tickets, except that their cost for movie tickets is like, $10 each. So if you used moviepass at all per month, Moviepass could not have made a profit on you. This is obviously a stupid business model, makes no sense.
​
Moviepass argued that they’re accumulating tons of data on buyer preferences, and that data will be valuable to movie theaters and studios to help them understand how to sell more tickets. Except uhh, if Moviepass succeeded, nobody will be buying tickets anyways, so what is the value of their data?
​
Amazon paid $150 million for a site that makes paltry advertising revenue. I guess initially Amazon would argue internally that “with this data we can sell more books!”, except uhh, they’re already the dominant online bookseller. How much higher can their market share get? Besides, what kind of data can Goodreads provide that Amazon doesn’t already have? Data is only valuable if you can use it to somehow make money, I don’t see how Goodreads can provide data that amazon doesn’t already have.
​
Thus, Goodreads is probably languishing with a tiny development team and a directive to “break even”. Changes at Goodreads are incredibly difficult to justify.
​
Like, think about it, if it costs $X for Goodreads to implement a new feature, their product team has to justify that $X in one of two ways:
1. Our advertising revenue will increase by more than $X in the next few years
2. This feature will provide us with data to allow us to increase book sales by more than $X
​
Except with online advertising being what it is now, with low clickthrough rates and prevalent adblock usage, X has to be very small for the first line of reasoning possible. And with Amazon being already the dominant online book seller, the second line of reasoning is practically impossible.
frightened_by_bark on
I have a few issues with StoryGraph, but overall really happy I switched over
greebytime on
It’s crazy that you cannot, for instance, instantly add a book to Goodreads that you buy on Amazon. It’s also bonkers that Goodreads, which wasn’t built all that long ago, has such wonky architecture it’s not worth working on from Amazons perspective. Truly wonder what they thought they were buying.
I use Goodreads solely to keep track of what I read (mostly so I don’t start reading something I’ve already read!) – any other feature is just gravy
shedrinkscoffee on
I only use Goodreads to keep track of books I’ve read or want to read. It serves a specific purpose. Many in my book clubs use it the same way. In terms of tracking I’ll be okay with however it chugs along as long as I don’t lose my lists.
merrysociopath on
Goodreads became shit when people started using shitty gifs in their reviews.
grynch43 on
I think Goodreads has always kind of sucked.
Glittering_Car_9282 on
stop posting stuff with a paywall
apri11a on
I wish Amazon had stuck with fictfact, that was shaping up to be an interesting site
ngorman007 on
I don’t use Goodreads for actual recommendations or even to gauge the quality of books. The vast majority of books, from Colleen Hoover to Steinbeck, fall in the 3-4 star range, so it’s hard to get a good feel without reading reviews. Plus, it doesn’t have half-star rating increments (these two issues are closely intertwined)
jarrettbrown on
I would love to leave goodreads, but I am so invested in it that I can’t. When you’ve read over 300 books and have rated most of them, it’s kinda hard to leave something that you’ve been involved with it for nine years.
furankusu on
Goodreads was my favorite social network.
warlocktx on
there was a good episode of “How I Built This” in the past year or so with the two founders
thedanyes on
Personally, my fav was ‘shelfari’. It had a much better UX than any of the current crop.
Mynock33 on
Paywall links should be banned
skepticalmonique on
goodreads still works just fine though?
FloydBlack on
The Washington post was the future of journalism. Then Jeff Bezos bought it. 😛
[deleted] on
[deleted]
OneGoodRib on
“The future of book reviews” what
Like it was some super innovative thing rather than just a place for people to leave book reviews… like amazon.
Devin-Bickmore on
It’s literally 50% bots just giving 5 stars to those that pay and 2 stars to randoms to keep from getting flagged.
SS2602 on
It’s the users lol. The site itself is fine. They haven’t upgraded it a lot but I don’t think that has anything to do with the quality of reviews or ratings.
therankin on
I didn’t realize they owned imdb too. It’s crazy what the oligarchy can do these days.
praanik on
I moved over to StoryGraph and it feels like GR in the early days again.
AzBearin on
Once Amazon got into it I bailed
Twokindsofpeople on
The SECOND you introduce a financial incentive to something it ruins it. As long as Goodreads reviews are valuable they become untrustworthy.
The best way to get book reviews hasn’t changed in centuries. Find critics who’s taste aligns with yours and go from there.
Double_Lingonberry98 on
Amazon also owns IMDB
Daeval on
I liked it for reviews until it got popular. As soon as it was big enough for people to actively chase an audience with their reviews, the quality of those reviews hit the bin. I don’t know how many reviews I’ve seen that recounted the entire plot, were full of desperate jokes and tired memes, were *very* confident in their gross misread of the book’s themes, and were upvoted all the way to the top.
This is not all that terribly different from any other review platform lately. I feel like the only way I’ll really get use out of one again is if I can pick whose reviews I care about and filter everybody else out, at which point we’re not far from just reading professional reviews.
deadendshearme on
An amazon owned company reporting on an amazon owned company
scottsss2001 on
I used goodreads before Amazon. The recommendations where not great. I mostly turned to reddit for new audio books.
Like others have said I use it to track what I’ve listened to.
Bnanaphone246 on
I think it’s really funny that this story is on WaPo, which is also owned by Bezos, and has also changed for the worse.
truthpooper on
LOL Bezos owns the Washington Post. This is just a cycle of clicky bullshit.
greihund on
TIL that AbeBooks is owned by Amazon. That’s the site I use to buy books *because I don’t want to buy from Amazon.*
vaer-k on
I like Readerly these days.
ThrowBackFF on
Librarything is a great alternative and very supportive of indie authors. They have free ARC reviews on there monthly (like Goodreads used to do before charging like 100+$ for authors to give away their books). Check em out if you haven’t!
collimat on
I mean, that happened an entire decade ago. I’m kind of surprised the book community hasn’t moved onto something less conflicted in their interest by now.
kielchaos on
This article brought to you by the Washington Post, also owned by Amazon.
CognaticCognac on
While some of Twitter and Reddit user are moving to Fedi options, Mastodon and Lemmy/Kbin, respectively, there’s also an option for Goodreads there, which is [Bookwyrm](https://joinbookwyrm.com/instances/). If you are interested in alternatives not supervised by a corporation, this might be your choice.
gaspitsagirl on
GoodReads is my first stop when I hear of a book and want to see what it’s about. It’s a great service for what it is. Not perfect, but when it’s the #1 site for its purpose, it’s going to have the most info.
magpte29 on
I used to love Shelfari—I liked that if I looked at a book, it put it to the top of my shelf. I wish Goodreads had that feature.
7ootles on
Paywalled, didn’t read.
Pangloss_ex_machina on
Goodreads NEVER was the future of book reviews.
[deleted] on
Goodreads is good to track your books and reading challenge progress. That is all.
If you judge what book you’re going to read next from some random people’s reviews then you’re already lost
Sprinklypoo on
And just like every other thing that could have been glorious, a corporation and greed just flat out murdered it.
46 Comments
Ironic is goes to an Amazon owned newspaper link which is then paywalled
I’ve noticed no changes, other than GR star & review number added to amz page. I’ve been on Goodreads since 2016.
I don’t even bother with book reviews anymore. Some of the worst books I’ve ever read had great reviews.
Goodreads hasn’t gotten any worse than it already was.
From a business perspective, Goodreads is in a way representative of the “data is new oil” delusion from around 15 years ago.
​
Around 15, 10 years ago, you’d hear of so many dumb business plans. Like, you ask a lot of founders “how is your business supposed to make money?” and they’ll either give you a vague “advertising” or “we’ll accumulate data and that data will be valuable!”. There were a bunch of grifters out there seeking investment with the slogan “data is the new oil” – Their argument was that data is inherently valuable, and that more data means more value.
​
But unlike other commodities like oil, sugar, steel, etc, data is not inherently valuable. It really depends on what you do with it, what you can do with it, and how you can monetize it.
​
Or to use a pretty famous example, Moviepass used to charge people $10/month for unlimited movie tickets, except that their cost for movie tickets is like, $10 each. So if you used moviepass at all per month, Moviepass could not have made a profit on you. This is obviously a stupid business model, makes no sense.
​
Moviepass argued that they’re accumulating tons of data on buyer preferences, and that data will be valuable to movie theaters and studios to help them understand how to sell more tickets. Except uhh, if Moviepass succeeded, nobody will be buying tickets anyways, so what is the value of their data?
​
Amazon paid $150 million for a site that makes paltry advertising revenue. I guess initially Amazon would argue internally that “with this data we can sell more books!”, except uhh, they’re already the dominant online bookseller. How much higher can their market share get? Besides, what kind of data can Goodreads provide that Amazon doesn’t already have? Data is only valuable if you can use it to somehow make money, I don’t see how Goodreads can provide data that amazon doesn’t already have.
​
Thus, Goodreads is probably languishing with a tiny development team and a directive to “break even”. Changes at Goodreads are incredibly difficult to justify.
​
Like, think about it, if it costs $X for Goodreads to implement a new feature, their product team has to justify that $X in one of two ways:
1. Our advertising revenue will increase by more than $X in the next few years
2. This feature will provide us with data to allow us to increase book sales by more than $X
​
Except with online advertising being what it is now, with low clickthrough rates and prevalent adblock usage, X has to be very small for the first line of reasoning possible. And with Amazon being already the dominant online book seller, the second line of reasoning is practically impossible.
I have a few issues with StoryGraph, but overall really happy I switched over
It’s crazy that you cannot, for instance, instantly add a book to Goodreads that you buy on Amazon. It’s also bonkers that Goodreads, which wasn’t built all that long ago, has such wonky architecture it’s not worth working on from Amazons perspective. Truly wonder what they thought they were buying.
I use Goodreads solely to keep track of what I read (mostly so I don’t start reading something I’ve already read!) – any other feature is just gravy
I only use Goodreads to keep track of books I’ve read or want to read. It serves a specific purpose. Many in my book clubs use it the same way. In terms of tracking I’ll be okay with however it chugs along as long as I don’t lose my lists.
Goodreads became shit when people started using shitty gifs in their reviews.
I think Goodreads has always kind of sucked.
stop posting stuff with a paywall
I wish Amazon had stuck with fictfact, that was shaping up to be an interesting site
I don’t use Goodreads for actual recommendations or even to gauge the quality of books. The vast majority of books, from Colleen Hoover to Steinbeck, fall in the 3-4 star range, so it’s hard to get a good feel without reading reviews. Plus, it doesn’t have half-star rating increments (these two issues are closely intertwined)
I would love to leave goodreads, but I am so invested in it that I can’t. When you’ve read over 300 books and have rated most of them, it’s kinda hard to leave something that you’ve been involved with it for nine years.
Goodreads was my favorite social network.
there was a good episode of “How I Built This” in the past year or so with the two founders
Personally, my fav was ‘shelfari’. It had a much better UX than any of the current crop.
Paywall links should be banned
goodreads still works just fine though?
The Washington post was the future of journalism. Then Jeff Bezos bought it. 😛
[deleted]
“The future of book reviews” what
Like it was some super innovative thing rather than just a place for people to leave book reviews… like amazon.
It’s literally 50% bots just giving 5 stars to those that pay and 2 stars to randoms to keep from getting flagged.
It’s the users lol. The site itself is fine. They haven’t upgraded it a lot but I don’t think that has anything to do with the quality of reviews or ratings.
I didn’t realize they owned imdb too. It’s crazy what the oligarchy can do these days.
I moved over to StoryGraph and it feels like GR in the early days again.
Once Amazon got into it I bailed
The SECOND you introduce a financial incentive to something it ruins it. As long as Goodreads reviews are valuable they become untrustworthy.
The best way to get book reviews hasn’t changed in centuries. Find critics who’s taste aligns with yours and go from there.
Amazon also owns IMDB
I liked it for reviews until it got popular. As soon as it was big enough for people to actively chase an audience with their reviews, the quality of those reviews hit the bin. I don’t know how many reviews I’ve seen that recounted the entire plot, were full of desperate jokes and tired memes, were *very* confident in their gross misread of the book’s themes, and were upvoted all the way to the top.
This is not all that terribly different from any other review platform lately. I feel like the only way I’ll really get use out of one again is if I can pick whose reviews I care about and filter everybody else out, at which point we’re not far from just reading professional reviews.
An amazon owned company reporting on an amazon owned company
I used goodreads before Amazon. The recommendations where not great. I mostly turned to reddit for new audio books.
Like others have said I use it to track what I’ve listened to.
I think it’s really funny that this story is on WaPo, which is also owned by Bezos, and has also changed for the worse.
LOL Bezos owns the Washington Post. This is just a cycle of clicky bullshit.
TIL that AbeBooks is owned by Amazon. That’s the site I use to buy books *because I don’t want to buy from Amazon.*
I like Readerly these days.
Librarything is a great alternative and very supportive of indie authors. They have free ARC reviews on there monthly (like Goodreads used to do before charging like 100+$ for authors to give away their books). Check em out if you haven’t!
I mean, that happened an entire decade ago. I’m kind of surprised the book community hasn’t moved onto something less conflicted in their interest by now.
This article brought to you by the Washington Post, also owned by Amazon.
While some of Twitter and Reddit user are moving to Fedi options, Mastodon and Lemmy/Kbin, respectively, there’s also an option for Goodreads there, which is [Bookwyrm](https://joinbookwyrm.com/instances/). If you are interested in alternatives not supervised by a corporation, this might be your choice.
GoodReads is my first stop when I hear of a book and want to see what it’s about. It’s a great service for what it is. Not perfect, but when it’s the #1 site for its purpose, it’s going to have the most info.
I used to love Shelfari—I liked that if I looked at a book, it put it to the top of my shelf. I wish Goodreads had that feature.
Paywalled, didn’t read.
Goodreads NEVER was the future of book reviews.
Goodreads is good to track your books and reading challenge progress. That is all.
If you judge what book you’re going to read next from some random people’s reviews then you’re already lost
And just like every other thing that could have been glorious, a corporation and greed just flat out murdered it.