Is GoodReads Rating Trustworthy?
- Abigail
- Jan 5, 2022
- 5 min read
Before you decide what you read next or purchase based on GoodReads' rating, consider the following.
Are You an Avid Reader? Check Out GoodReads!
I am a big-time user of GoodReads. Since I joined it several years ago, I have been visiting that website quite frequently, at least twice a week today. I have been always appreciating its members' collective knowledge and opinions especially when it comes to looking up books on particular topics or choosing the next books to read.
A subsidiary social cataloging website of Amazon especially aimed at book lovers, it boasts the largest number of members within its category. A lot of famous authors are also active members of GoodReads themselves. It may be a marketing strategy with which they use the platform to promote their books. On the other hand, some authors also logged what they have read so it's worth checking out if your favorite author is on GoodReads.
Some famous authors you might want to check out:
For me, GoodReads comes in very handy for two purposes. First, when I finish a book, I visit the website to see what reviews the book has received. Before I go in, I briefly jot down my thoughts and feelings on a piece of paper. Then I read some reviews other uses have written and compare them with what I have written down. Many times I have seen reviews that offered brilliant insights and fresh perspectives. Such experience is genuinely thrilling. On the other hand, some reviews came in clear contrast to my own. Such difference reminds me of a lesson that I have acquired a long time ago: We all have our own frames through which we filter, interpret and analyze every knowledge and opinion that comes to us, and depending on what frame one has, we can have totally different responses on the same object. In other words, we all are products of our environment. It is totally natural to meet people who hate the book you love or vice versa just because we carry different presumptions, ideologies, philosophies, and/or just simply individual preferences.
The other big reason I use GoodReads is when I try to find some good books to read next or even purchase. The GoodReads app installed on my phone comes especially useful when I visit used bookstores. Unlike commercial chain bookstores such as Barnes and Noble or Indigo where a lot of marketing strategies are getting constantly done such as putting advertised books on the front, books at used bookstores are usually lined up uniformly. When you are not sure what you are looking at is a good book for its content worth purchasing or not, GoodReads can be a really good tool. Just type in the title of the book or try scanning the cover page with your phone's camera then, within seconds, you will find the book's general information including the average ratings it's got by its users. Mind you, high ratings do not always guarantee that you are going to enjoy that book. As a rule of thumb, when other information is limited, I usually go with books with 3-star ratings or higher.
Be Aware of Its 'Social' Side
A number of websites have made the signing up process easier for new members by allowing them to sign in using their existing Facebook or Google accounts. If you already have an account on Facebook, for example, you don't need to go through all the annoying steps of filling in information.
Signing up with Facebook, however, has a 'side effect', so to speak. Facebook is one of the biggest social media platforms of today. If your friends on Facebook see you that you use GoodReads, they can easily find you on GoodReads then see what you have logged as 'read'.
Broadly speaking, we tend to associate books with intelligence. I speculate if it is so because books are the oldest means of communication that enables us to transfer the current knowledge to future generations. If someone says he reads a lot of books, we almost automatically assume that he is smart, knowledgeable, and even wise. And it is many of us's wish to present ourselves like that to our family, friends, co-workers, and even strangers. When people can see what kind of books you have read and are reading, we are tempted to include books in our GoodReads logs which we in fact have never touched.
On GoodReads, it is easy to find a particularly higher number of reviews for books widely raved such as classics. Their average ratings also tend to be higher. I wonder if all the people, especially those who have given them five stars out of five had really read the book. It is interesting to find that among those books rated 4+, the most liked reviews often give lower ratings: With their detailed, generally constructive arguments, you understand why that user gave the book a poor score and why many people agreed on it. Is there a chance that people just pretend they have read those books and say they loved them because it is widely considered as popular and good? Because they want to show off to other people that they are well-read, therefore, smart?
We never know. Am I possibly being a bit too cynical? Possibly, but I think it is a fair question.
Extortion Scams and Review Bombing Trolls
Recently, Time published an article on how authors suffer from scammers on GoodReads. These scammers blackmail authors, brazenly claiming that unless they pay them good money, they will damage the reputation of authors' books by giving them a great number of 1-star ratings. Because many people depend on the GoodReads' average star ratings to determine if the book is good or not, this criminal activity may come extremely critical to the success of the authors and their books, especially when they are new to the field and market. These scammers abuse GoodReads' system for their shameful monetary gain.
For ordinary users like myself, we do not know who is a scammer and who is a genuine reviewer. These scammers might even have left reviews to justify their negative reviews and to persuade others - further damaging the authors' reputation. The sad truth is we really can't tell. GoodReads announced that it constantly makes efforts into removing fake reviews, but again, I can't stop wondering how efficient their efforts really are. When GoodReads is built upon its vast number of members freely joining in and freely leaving their reviews, it seems very challenging to filter out the chaff.
My Thoughts on GoodReads
GoodReads certainly has some critical errors when it comes to how trustworthy their information is. And this issue is not new. If you look it up, you will find tons of people stopped using GoodReads altogether due to that concern.
For me, I think I will continue to use it at least for a while mainly because I cannot find any better replacement that provides equally competitive resourcefulness. At the same time, I am very much aware that I should take its ratings and reviews with a grain of salt, especially books' average ratings.
As I frequently enjoyed its vast information on and off for years, I have encountered some good reviewers who are active on GoodReads. I found that their reviews sincere, clever, and heartfelt. Some of them have written many reviews, so whenever I look up information about a new book, I see if they have already written reviews on it. Many times, I have found that their reviews were more accurate than average ratings, and it has helped me a lot in choosing books. I am looking forward to finding more good reviewers to follow this year.
GoodReads provides the largest online community for avid book lovers around the world. I sincerely hope that it improves its security measure so that both authors and readers will enjoy its collective knowledge and insights safely and pleasantly.
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