Some clarification: this is not a boycott goodreads video 😂 I totally understand why people love it and find community there, and I think there are many benefits. I just DO get asked almost daily where my goodreads is, so I wanted to talk about why I'm personally uninterested in the platform for myself!
Hy there, you mentioned an Excel-File in your Video. I do the same for my books. Is there any chance you could share that file or maybe send a printscreen or something… I‘m always interested in others excels to optimize mine… 😉 Thanks a lot and great video! 😁
I’m part of Goodreads but I’m not part of the community other than connecting with the friends I have in IRL. I do the challenge but have never felt compelled to compete against others. I mainly use it to keep track of TBR and look up book details but that’s about it. You can use Goodreads and never connect with people.
Yeah I JUST made an account last year specifically to keep track of what I read and when, this is my first year where I've read 15+ books and it's starting to get difficult keeping track of them all. I never bother connecting with the community
Yep! And I think Goodreads can work GREAT for people depending on what your goals are. I've just found that it doesn't work for me for what I'd want it for.
I second this. I've been using it since 2010 pretty much just how it sounds Bookborn uses her excel spreadsheet. I almost never interact with other people on there. I used to do a tiny bit more comments to others on reviews, but never a ton, and that's basically completely fallen off. I've never done a challenge there ever. I did go back to school though, a couple years ago. It's a bit amusing to see that I read hundreds of books multiple years in a row -- until I started school again. That year I read like 20 or 30. :)
Same here! I like the challenges. It helps me to keep reading, and since I'm not competing with anyone, I keep my goals simple. I admit some people's challenges look a bit ridiculous. People keep sending me friend requests, and I don't know why... I read for myself and leave reviews for the fun of it. I don't use the community features at all.
I use both Goodreads and StoryGraph. I like GR for the social aspect- seeing what my friends are reading and reviewing. Reader reviews are also easier to find. Many other aspects annoy me. I’m not a competitive person so the book goal is more just for fun- I set it at an easily obtainable number. I love StoryGraph for everything else. I used it as a daily reading tracker and love the stats it gives. Community seems really underemphasized though. It’s on a separate tab and is not really laid out well. I do love that SG has page goal options along with book goals- that way it doesn’t discourage away from longer books.
Yeah, I find that Storygraph has so many features that I want, but it doesn't quite seem laid out (yet) in the most useful of ways. I'm really rooting for them, though.
Hi! I’m in the middle of building an app for readers and looking for opinions :). I’d love to chat on whatever platform is most comfortable for you if you’re willing to talk.
I think you're throwing away the baby with the bathwater, here. Goodreads is more than its culture: it is a tool you use to track what you've ready. You don't have to put your entire life on there. You could just start using it today, to keep track of what you've read. I don't actually use Goodreads. I rely on my Audible ratings and reviews, primarily. But it's a structured way, a formal application, to answer the questions: "what have I read" and "what did I think about it?". I find this kind of resource helpful when recommending books to others, as well as determining whether I should continue a series or not. It's better than a spreadsheet.
Why is it better than a spreadsheet though? I can see my reads by year easily, and search easily. The community isn’t there, but I get my community through Instagram and RU-vid :)
"Are you reading or just consuming?"... good question!! I use Goodreads and I like the "number goal" feature as a personal challenge, but I often found just what your question asks, Am I reading or just rifling through as many books as possible? Because at what point do we read so quickly that we're no longer digesting the book and even enjoying it for that matter? Then there's the pressure to push through a book so you can just get on to the next one. I've since kept my goal number to about a couple books a week average and use that as a minimum just to keep in my head a goal that helps to prevent life from getting in the way of my reading time. Thanks for this video and your shared perspective. 👍😁
Yeah! I think number goals can be incredibly useful, and even sometimes I try to keep myself a little on track to help prioritize reading over other hobbies that I don't find as fulfilling. But I always want to make sure I'm growing in other ways, too.
Storygraph had a recent-ish update (like in the last 6 months) that really added the polish and ease of use that it was missing. The app is significantly improved as well. It's definitely getting more popular!
I had to start a Goodreads account because I started publishing my books. I probably never would have otherwise. Goodreads is very important for authors -- I definitely get that, and I think there can be some great community interaction there. However, I can't help but feel a wee bit cynical about Goodreads. Without getting too detailed in this comment, I will mention that I've been approached more than once by people who offered me positive ratings on Goodreads for my book (for example, $1,200 for 250 ratings). I don't know how widespread such abuses are, but I have a feeling that a lot of what we see on Goodreads in terms of the star ratings is manipulated by bad actors. I also get the feeling that Goodreads doesn't do much to curb abuses, but I'm no expert there either.
Some excellent insight, as always, Philip. I think almost every review platform has this issue - although, I realize that Amazon is the other platform I think most of, and Goodreads is owned by them 😂 With the recent uptick in review bombing (and that does affect a lot of places more than Amazon), I wish there was a way to curb it, although I don't know how.
I never know how bad the problem is for books that are medium to highly popular. I assume once you get to that point, "real" reviews overtake the kind of thing you're talking about, but that's just supposition. I basically never trust book ratings on books that have lowish total rating levels because of this kind of thing.
While GR is certainly flawed, it's still important for authors. But, IMO it's not worth it to pay for ratings. Many of us don't pay any attention to ratings with no reviews and don't really pay much attention to reviews with 1 or 5-star ratings either.
I'm on goodreads daily because I use it to track my reading. I personally find it super easy to use (also not bothered by the UI lol super minority opinion). Second reason i use GR is to follow other people's reviews. Following adds someone to the cranky main feed. But biggest thing is when you look up a book you see reviews of all the poeple you freinded/followed in a section before general reviews. I find it's an easy all in one place way to get a litmus test on if I might like a book. You can set up a permanent dnf shelf on goodreads, it's just not the default. You can mark rereads as well. The reading goal aspect on GR barely matters imo. I don't even know how to check the reading goal of the poeple I follow.
I think most avid book readers understand that Goodreads is a bad site. Amazon bought it and has basically not updated it in a decade. False book release dates are all over. Meanwhile, they’ve failed to protect authors from review bombs (or avoid manipulative/confusing pre-release positive reviews). I like sharing what I’m reading, but I think it’s an awful website.
I don’t use it any longer. I did for a couple years (Covid years) & then found storygraph to track my reading & reaction. It isn’t about community for me. I just want to track things. Community happens through my channel and buddy reads and commenting on others’ channels. ♥️
I use story graph and I’ve encouraged a bunch of my friends to convert too! I think it is mainly word of mouth that gets people to switch over TSG so I’ll post about it occasionally bc it really is so much better than GR & isn’t owned by Jeff bezos.
I'm a Goodreads addict... 😄 But I pretty much started it once my heavy-routine reading took off. I slowly added books I've read before, but didn't have TOO many, because I didn't read as much as I do now. I been on long enough to gather friends, so I like the GR community. I only set reading goals for 25 - 30 books a year for myself because realistically, that's about what I accomplish. So, because of that, I never felt that competitiveness
These were great points! I use Goodreads but I only like to see other people’s reviews on books, see when books are being released and post my own short reviews. I don’t use it to do a lot of interacting within the community but I do agree with StoryGraph in that there isn’t much of a community. I also keep my own spreadsheet which technically would be all I need, but I like how I can post how I feel about books on Goodreads.
yes, totally. I think I get that through my book instagram, which helps, but not everyone is going to want to start something like that, and Goodreads gives a simple way to connect with other readers. That's why I think a site like Goodreads is actually SO important. I just wish they improved a few things 😭
I've used Storygraph exclusively for the past two years and I LOVE it. They have improved the app a lot too so it's easy to update on the go if you're not on your computer. They have really cool features including buddy reads (with hidden comments depending on the % of the book you're at so you don't spoil others) and challenges that you can join or create yourself. They add new stuff all the time and you can definitely tell that the developers are readers too.
I totally see the negative aspects of it but I only use Goodreads to keep track of the books I've read. I don't partake in the community aspect of it and two IRL friends had to do some convincing to make me accept them as friends. I like keeping track of books for myself and no one else. I'm a fairly new reader in terms of novels. I've read manga for a very long time and the occasional novel but ever since I got a Kindle for Christmas this year I've been a man on a mission plowing through books. The minimal functionality is great for me cause having too many options causes my brain to overload and the overlap with Kindle makes it so simple to just put it a book on there and give it a rating. It takes five seconds of my day and that's all I need it for. And it let's me know what books are in a series and what order they go in. I find Goodreads to be very simple when it comes to knowing what novella is in-between books and what series connects with other series without having to look too deep into things.
Damn, now I wanna be on Goodreads specifically because I don't read more than 2-3 books a year - which as an aspiring author I feel is super controversial 😅 But your opinion on it has motivated me to make my slowness public because I do think it's important to show exactly that other side of "loving books"!
@@Bookborn True! But I think in most writing circles it's a bit frowned upon because of the whole "you can't write if you don't read" thing.. I'm glad you see it that way though! Whenever I go to read something, I just immediately get inspired to write, so yeah, reading is hard, haha!
@@geholohorroh I think it's more that if you were NEVER a big reader, people would look at you strangely. If you aren't a big reader now because you're busy writing (or busy other ways), that'd be understandable, though. If you never read others' books very much -- it seems a strange profession for you to go into. Not that that means you shouldn't, it would just feel odd to some of us.
I started Goodreads about 10-15 years ago. I updated my readings at that time because I didn’t have kids yet and I had the time. I use it just to keep track of my reading and to make reading goals. It is non-user friendly!
Carl Sagan said something that undermines the GoodReads ethos. 'It's not how many books you read, but which books'. Looked at it many years ago and it was obvious it was about bragging, rather than reading.
Goodreads has a lot of my school/college friends, so its a little like Facebook...the personal connection is still there so I still use it. Also, the giveaways are nice, I've actually won a few and paid it forward to the authors. (because I've heard it costs them money to even post their book to be given away. almost like an advertisement...) I've been trying out Storygraph this year and I appreciate the content warnings portion it has in its reviews. Otherwise you are correct about no connections personally to anyone...I think I have 2 people I follow.
Why do I love Goodreads? Let me count the ways. Firstly, Goodreads serves as my ultimate book-tracking companion, and this feature alone makes it an invaluable tool for any avid reader. Secondly, I am particularly fond of the 'New Release' section, which conveniently highlights the latest books related to ones I have already read. This ensures I never miss the opportunity to discover new additions to my favorite series. Moreover, the yearly challenge feature provided by Goodreads is a delightful way to engage with my reading habits. Even though it doesn't directly influence my reading pace, I thoroughly enjoy setting and achieving my reading goals each year. Additionally, the 'My Year in Books' page is a cherished corner of Goodreads for me. I delight in revisiting the books I devoured throughout the year and reflecting on how my reading tastes and preferences have evolved over time. Furthermore, the 'Explore' page is a treasure trove of literary exploration. It has become an essential tool for me in discovering captivating books that I might have otherwise overlooked. Lastly, the updates page serves as a captivating window into the reading lives of both fellow readers and beloved authors. It's always intriguing to see what they are currently engrossed in and the thoughts they share. Despite my attempts to explore other platforms, none have managed to replicate the comprehensive experience that Goodreads provides. Other services often seem to lack certain features or fail to capture the essence of what makes Goodreads so special. Consequently, I find myself consistently returning to Goodreads, unable to part ways with the unmatched satisfaction it brings to my reading journey.
I mostly use Goodreads to read other people's reviews. I have a few close online friends there whose opinions I really value, and if they were to move over to a different platform, I likely would too. The reading challenges are not too influential for me, I don't feel pressured to read too much, and I always set my challenge for a lower number of books than I know I can manage, because it feels less pressure that way! I used to use Goodreads ratings to quickly determine whether I was willing to try a book or not, but the last few years, my tastes and Goodreads' average rating have diverged quite a bit. A bounce off a lot of highly-rated books, and I ended up liking books that the GR community felt pretty meh about. So now I delve into the actual reviews to see what people liked or don't like. I also think that the shelving functionality helps me avoid tropes I know I won't enjoy like when books are shelved under 'love-triangle' or 'main-character-deaths', stuff like that.
As always, interesting video. I could not agree with you more about the quantity culture in the book community. Goodreads is certainly part of that, as is Booktube IMHO. I have two bookish pet peeves. I don't want to hear how many books you've read. And I don't want to hear how fast you read a book. That said, I do have a Goodreads account, which I'm slowly updating with past reads. I think the good outweighs the bad, but not by much. I hold out hope that Amazon puts some resources into it someday. I've tried Storygraph, but it had some shortcomings that were a dealbreaker for me. I did do a reading goal this year, but I probably won't again for the reasons you shared. I.e., if you focus on reading quantity, you'll probably lose a lot of the benefits of reading. I'm pretty successful at ignoring that part of the culture, but I'm human, so sometimes I succumb and push myself to read when I should just chill. Anyway, that's my two cents.......
I use storygraph and just decided to start from the moment I started using storygraph. The main reason is, it is not Amazon but independent. The second reason is to get new recommendations for books to read. However I am not going to check that out until I have a decent history of books. To keep track of pages read, I just put a post-it on the cover of a book and mark the page at the beginning of the day and later on add it to Storygraph. It helps me keep track of my reading but it does not force me to constantly open the app. I think Storygraph's biggest problem is that it is an independent team of just three persons so implementing new things takes time.
I use Goodreads solely as a personal organization tool, but I have to say it is one of the worst websites I regularly use. It is a horrible UX experience, there's so many baffling problems with the functionality of the website itself. I also find the community frustrating. Less so about the 'competitive' reading number aspect, but the top rated reviews for most books are really bad. Something about the review culture of goodreads is very off-putting to me. Stuffing reviews with a bunch of pop culture gifs and snappy one-liners while completely lacking in any kind of analysis beyond the surface level. I hadn't heard about Storygraph before, maybe I'll check it out! I mostly use Goodreads because it's just a hair more convenient than using a spreadsheet to me.
Goodreads: I think you're *reading* too much into it. Lists of books I've read, what others on BookTube are interested in, new releases in the near future, information from authors about what's new. The biggest problem with Goodreads is if someone there was given a book with blank pages it would get 3 stars. I agree with your comment about DNF book rating/review.
I don’t rate my DNFs on goodreads, I created a folder that’s just for my DNF books. I also have a StoryGraph and I have been trying to use that more often.
I went through the effort of logging my years of reading backlog and yet I still don't keep up with GR very well. I just forget to check or update it for some reason. And I feel like I should write more than just a star rating but that always seems like too much effort.
I agree that they need to add a DNF function. There's an workaround I've figured out where you can make a DNF shelf and that way you can review a book without having to place it on "read" and you don't have to rate it. I do wish it was a built in feature for everyone thought.
I had no idea that GR was involved with all that competitive BS. I use it, but only to look up a new book that I have previously not heard of when I want to findout what it is about by reading the reviews. (I read almost entirely non-fiction.) I read the reviews with a pinch of salt to hand, as I know that many of the reviewers have a personal axe to grind.
Yep. *_All_* of this. _Readers should be in control of their environments!_ I think the site sucks in that regard. That's why I haven't bothered going back to it even after publishing my novel. It's also a major motivator for me developing an Operating System for Creators, an environment that isn't controlled by me nor my company, but by the creator community, even at the individual level. Truth be told, I've been developing this thing for years, many MB of C code (not web tech), hundreds of files, and it's been driving me nuts lately. That's because it's insanely difficult to develop this platform (and I have 3 decades of experience). So, on some level anyway, I can understand why Goodreads hasn't updated their--.........😞 Who am I kidding? I was trying to give them the benefit of the doubt, but creating a good website really ain't that hard. Especially with today's web tech. 🤷♂
3:35 You can review a book without giving it a star rating, although I don't believe it counts in the average as a zero. I'm one of the people who doesn't participate in reading competitions, book clubs, etc. I do sign up to receive ARCs and I write a review for every ARC I receive. That is the one thing that I dislike: back in the day, the ARC algorithm favored people who reviewed the books and I used to get a lot more ARCs. Due to complaints from people who thought the system unfair (non-reviewers, apparently) they moved to random drawings and the number of ARCs I received fell drastically.
Yeah, tried Goodreads. Tried Storygraph. Tried just sharing whatever I'm reading on socials. I just don't think I'm the kind of person who likes to "report" on his reading. I just like talking to people IRL about stuff we both like.
I really want a platform to discuss my books on and connect with others who have read the same books, preferably a place where i can also post the pics of books that have beautiful covers. However till now I'm kinda confused. I already have a really busy job, so i can't really make time to make RU-vid videos, and I'm not on Instagram mainly because of privacy concerns. Goodreads... Has all the drawbacks you just mentioned. Also I can hardly ever see any discussion on non-English books there (like some excellent books in my native language Bangla). A comment about people demanding money for good reviews is also quite disheartening. Hadn't ever heard of Story graph, though. Any other suggestions, peeps?
I don’t use Goodreads as everyone takes all the books soo personal, especially if it’s fiction “like it’s not real lol”. I found people using bad language and was just plain angry. It’s so silly, books should never do that, especially if it is fictional. If a book is getting you angry, just DNF it, and maybe see a therapist lol; because clearly these people have past issues to address. Books should be an escape and feel good vibes, well at least that’s what I get from books 😝☺🤗🥰
Setting reading goals should be challenging, but not forcing someone to read differently in a bad way. In my personal opinion, setting a goal wrong is one's own fault, not the tool used. I'm not 100% happy with either Goodreads or Storygraph, but it helped me find new books I wouldn't have otherwise found and to understand my reading habit and taste better. I use it to track my reading, not to make me read, since I already read every day and try to stick to that one goal primarily. I do kind of mostly agree with what you said in your video, and I think goodreads needs a way to separate this "competitive" nature of the site for people who just want to use it without getting guilt tripped into reading more. But I also think that it's not really competitive until you make it so. Now the Design/Layout and functions, yes, I agree it sucks lol. It's outdated and needs some updates so very badly.
Absolutely not a good reflection of books. Take only just me. I read more than several booktubers. But being not! an English native I never had the idea to use goodreads until I was good enough to read books in English and started be more active in some discussions here. (With Merph, Daniel, etc…)And I think in a lot of countries even if they speak (and can read) in English it’s not a common app to use. That’s one point. The other is: today it’s way more active than in the past. What will it cause? Sanderson has a lot of reviews and books in the past that were successful enough to be read today not necessarily that much. Even if they have 300-500k that’s not the same. If we would consider active users in the past… that would be 2m, way more than Sanderson’s. So that’s about the comparison. Just two points.
when I was younger, writers had literary agents that would do all the leg work, so they could concentrate on WRITING, but since Amazon did everything but finished this fairy tale, writers now need to be whores, selling themselves on a digital streets to try to make even a decent living, when mostly won't even stand the chance. When in this world i will find the time to be reading other people's work if |i can't find the time to even read my own, besides all the planning needed to be done on editing, prrofreadfing, formating, advertising, promoting and socializing on social media (that i hate and don't use) like a sttupid moron bothering everyone i know while begging for them to either bur or link my links to their links? I have now 11 books published with Amazon but long lost any interest or hopes to ever make a living, and I'm now looking for further equaly interesting ways to pay my bills, allthough still put a book out there every 12 months, except that now is only for myself, as a hobby. Sometimes is good to dance the dance and realize work from your desk at home in your pj's ain't never gonna happen.
I agree with all your points... But I also do use it. I have a story graph but haven't kept up with it. I do like parts of SG better but like you said the community/social aspect isn't there which is a good and bad thing. I like to keep up with my what a few of my friends and family are reading. I like stats and so it's nice to see that at the end of the year. SG definitely does a better job of that, but at the beginning of this year I decided to just make my own spreadsheet (Google sheets). I'm still honing it, but I've added a lot of fun functionality to it and have gotten to learn a lot more functions and stuff that I wouldn't have known about otherwise.
I do not like the 5 star rating system for overall book rating and the pressure to give 5 stars as few books would meet that level for me. I think we should use a 5 star system (half-stars too) for 5 ratings - SCOPS. Story, Characters, Originality, Prose, and Setting. 5 stars = the best, a handful of authors. 4 stars = excellent, great. 3 stars = good, solid, recommendable. 2 stars = okay, your mileage varies. 1 star = subpar.
Reading a certain amount of books per year isn't an indication of your level of being a book fan. We're halfway through the year and I still haven't read 20 books yet. Storygraph sounds cool though. There's something like that but for anime and manga Called My Anime List.
I don't use Goodreads as a community app. It is purely to log the books I've read. I also use a spreadsheet and to lesser extent storygraphs so I have a bit of maybe unnecessary redundancy there.
Use what works best for you and I think your RU-vid channel & Instagram should be enough if people want to see what your reading. The only reason I i started using Goodreads is because of how Indie Authors mention that reviews are helpful even on Goodreads despite the negative side to it. I can't review on Amazon because of their $50 rule for reviews. So that's why I mainly use it. I also keep it as a personal log/list of what I read. And StoryGraph is great it's improved alot. I like the stats feature, buddy read feature audibook review feature & and community feature updates will be added this year I think. So yeah it's a great competitor. Followed you there if you do decide to use again 🙂 and would like to see your spreadsheet someday !
Thank you so much for saying this. I feel exactly the same way on all points. While I do have an account, I pretty much treat it as a book diary for myself to go back on since I started the account, not so much an accurate representation of my reading habits/history. I think moving to StoryGraph might be a great idea, and it's not owned by Amazon!
I definitely agree with your opinion that goodreads doesn’t appear to be run by readers… like realllly why no half stars?????? I tried story graf for most of the reasons you said - but similarly stopped using it… I just found I lost interest in updating it. Guess I’m just waiting for someone to come out with a better platform 🤷🏻♀️
I use goodreads for 11 years. Never care the community part. I have a around 5000 so it helps catalogue stuff. I agree with you, the objetvies are not good. You can read 10 books of 100 pages or 1 of 1000. I used yhe objectives and stop because your concern. I end reading smaller books to finish more in one year lol. Nowadays i stop that. I think its better pages count.
I still use Goodreads because it has reading challenges and year in reviews for books that I finished before 2021, which is when I started using Storygraph which I really like the stats and year in reviews.
All my stuff is on Excel. If I used an external site I'd probably end up trying to download it all in to Excel at some point anyway... I have an excuse though as a my career is based on keying in to Excel; it is very brave of Bookborn to come out as a fellow user 😂
I quit using Goodreads this year. I was putting stress on myself to meet the arbitrary number of books I set. Thus I was feeling bad because I didn't feel that re-reading counted and then more stress because there aren't enough new books I like and the vicious cycle continued. So I quit. No one cares how much I read.
I don't like Goodreads for the reasons you've mentioned, but still for me it is the best place to find new books or people who read similar books. But I don't use the community function as I find it hard to make sense of it. I love Storygraph for tracking and charts but it's not the best for just browsing for new reads I think. I'm using a third site from my county, which has its own problems but at least it's local 😅
I don't use Goodreads or Storygraph. I guess I was just never very interested. I track my reading on an excel spreadsheet, as well. I just like spreadsheets 😊.
i used it to find books,malazan and wheel were found on fantasy top list....and o fcourse 250 books read in a year used to give me a sense of accomplishment.not anymore though
If I ever get my book published, I think I'd rather be reviewed by Daniel or Mike or Merphy or someone like that than try to get a high rating on a site like GR. That may change, but it's how I feel right now.
I was looking for a way to log my reading, and when I heard how Amazon seems to be treating Goodreads I just didn't have any interest. So I've been using Storygraph for about 9 months now for my own personal interest. I have no intention of using it as social media or to compare myself to other people
I literally only use goodreads to keep track of books I wanna read and have read. I recently started an excel spreadsheet because I wanted to be able to rate books on a 10 star scale (with half stars!). I enjoy setting the challenge but I don’t care if I don’t reach it. I don’t take it to seriously because that would ruin the fun of reading. I think good reads lacks a lot of functionality, like the dnf function and half stars, as well as the ability to create a tbr where you can move things around in certain order (I know that is asking a lot) but that’s what excel is for! 😅
I have a goodreads account but don't get on there much. Most of the people i know who use it are using it show how much they are reading which I always got the feeling of it being kind of a competition, like you were saying. In the end I realized that I'm mostly just reading for myself and don't feel the need to share everything I read with everybody.
i am just using GR for tracking my personal goal for year and also reading progress.... books that I want to read in future .... basically not using it as another social media but just tracking/database tool for me
My Goodreads use it to keep up with my own TBR and have some sort of history of my own reading and what I have liked or not. If there was an option to set my profile private I probably would. I don't follow there anyone else than Petrik.
Interesting commentary, but I had to give up at two minutes because the competing music made me want to break my computer into tiny pieces. I don't know why creators ruin their own videos with this garbage, but I really hope it stops soon.
I don't use it. It feels like it's made for publishers and as a byproduct authors then for readers, in that order. It's not well laid out, its recommendations and similar are frequently a huge miss so I believe that its algorithm is not particularly well optimized, I don't like that it makes it hard for me to do reviews, and yeah. I don't like it, don't use it.
Fair points - all of them. I’m there a lot but that’s because I was very lucky to find a brilliant, small, inclusive, group. That and I don’t pay attention to the quantity I read. And I keep a notebook to list all I read and keep my reading notes, reviews😊
I have account on good reads but I only use it to write reviews sometimes when I remember to do it. I’m a slow reader because of my dyslexia so I don’t want to be in a “reading competition “. I rather read my books in my own time and don’t care about how many I read in a year for example.
I use mostly storygraph for the interesting charts and my excel sheet. The excel sheet is great because it is more than just what I read but it is summaries, my thoughts on the book and also a planning doc for tracking future release dates.
the only reason i started using goodreads is because my english teacher made me but i honestly love it and don't really mind the fact that my past books aren't shown, however i do agree that it's annoying that you can't mark it as dnf and can't do half stars
Ye only made one like 2 years ago and only did for a group of friends so we could look at what we are reading or want to read. We dont even use anything else on goodreads. So no need to try and be a big part of it.
I pretty much use GR because it's what "everyone" else uses, so I feel it is the one place to help out with reviews and ratings etc. I can't stand that it never seems to change though, it really looks like no one cares that it barely functions. Saying that, you *can* search someone's read list (if you already have their list, there's a separate search box to look within the books on a list) and you can review DNFs (you can't *mark* them as DNF techically, but I review books I DNF and don't give them ratings and they still show up in my read list). Recently, I have been trialling Storylace (my profile link is in my channel's "about" section), which is another alternative to GR/SG. I like the look and functionality of it, and it has a 100-point scale instead of star ratings, which works for me as I put in my weighted rating score on there when I finish a book.
Perfectionism would keep me off Goodreads now - I think it would take me years to remember and update everything I’ve read. I agree about the lack of functionality as well. What draws me there is indeed the community and the lists and shelves archives I’ve built.
I just don't set a number goal on Goodreads. You don't have to. Be a rebel. Don't worry abt the past books. I agree that the functionality and look is crap. You can create a shelf for DNFs.
Yes you can create a shelf, but if you want to rate them you still are required to make a star rating to review it as far as I’ve seen - which is why I’ve seen so many one star DNFs which drives me personally crazy 😂
Your criticisms are pretty reasonable. I've used goodreads since 2010, mostly to keep track of what I've read and as a way to link to my published reviews or give a quick opinion. Personally, I'd rather Amazon stayed more hands-off.
I remember joining GR back in 2014 and trying for days to remember and all the books I read in high school and college for completeness sake (I wasn't a big reader back then so it wasn't so many). I agree with all of the negatives you point out; it seems like Amazon doesn't care enough to invest in the major upgrade it needs to be a more modern website. I use it for book tracking and (some times) reviewing mostly. I don't really rely on it for the community aspects to find books as a lot of my book friends I follow on other platforms, so I hear about what they're reading there and not on GR. It is helpful as an author to have the user base on there rating and reviewing your books, although this can backfire on you spectacularly if you set off the users in a bad way. I've seen many GR replacements come along but for me, I don't want to have to port over all of my books from Goodreads, unless a site offered some sort of one-click importing.
Thanks for posting this. I'm on Goodreads and post reviews, but trying to interact is confusing to me. This gives me permission to stop feeling guilty about not doing more.
Goodreads is just a stat collector for me. I do write reviews but I use it more like a diary. I think story graph also has some good stats it collects. Its fun to look back at the end of the year. As far as looking at book reviews i use booktube for that.
I’ve got both and update both. I prefer GoodReads for the backlog of reviews and ratings and people I follow, but for actual functionality I prefer StoryGraph. As with many people it frustrates me that Amazon bought the platform and have done nothing useful with it. For now I’m updating both when I finish a book, and I don’t read enough to track things very frequently.
