Goodreads and assorted thoughts on reviews

Here I am, still trying to get into Goodreads, if not for anything else, at least to keep an online catalog of my books.  I never felt particularly inclined to "friend" anyone though now I have a few people in my "friends" list.   I pretty much gave up on trying to import my whole collection of titles using Calibre, but I am going to try again.  I have well over 3500 ebooks (and I am not done yet "organizing" the collection).  I really don't feel like manually entering those that are not "recognized" by their search engines.  In short, I have been organizing the collection in my own computer using Calibre.

And now to the topic of reviews in Goodreads.  The reviews system in Goodreads reminds me too much of the system in Amazon.  Anyone can up vote or down rate a book, books that are not even out yet are either given 5-star ratings or 1-star ratings, people post as a review an actual complaint about the formatting of a book or any random thought based not on their having read the books, but rather on personal opinions based on a blurb, or a cover, or whatever.  A lot of people love Goodreads, they find it useful, they are active in the communities, etc.  I don't have enough time in the day to tend to all of my personal interests as I work full time and have a husband, so I have to admit I haven't gotten into any of the actual communities/groups, there.

All this being said, there is a further element that has been putting me off, that element is author meltdown.  A few years back, there seemingly was an increased number of author meltdowns, particularly by self-published individuals.  One of those meltdowns ended up in what has to be the most disturbing online author v. reviewer incident I've had the misfortune of witnessing in my 20 years of my being online.  I don't know what has happened to the poor reviewers that were viciously attacked in that incident, I suspect some may not even review as they used to any longer.  Other reviewers in the blogger communities had a rather nasty wake up call as well.

There are a couple posts online that are very well written and do a great job of explaining things.  My favorite can be found here.  DA has an epic thread here, though sadly, the comments thread seems to be broken.  I think every major romance-related and YA blog dedicated articles to the incident at the time.

Some people tried to "justify" the actions of the authors involved in the creation of the nasty, bullying website (which no longer exists as it originally was, by the way, as they "sanitized" it substantially with the bad backlash they received, not to mention threats of legal action against them).  The argument was that people should write "nicer" reviews, that the reviewers "brought it upon themselves" because they were rude.  The reviewers (all participant in Goodreads) were also accused of creating mobs of followers and "harassing and bullying authors in Goodreads", etc.

This is the incident that ended up making me decide that Goodreads was not for me.  A site in which you are supposed to be able to share your thoughts and opinions about books you read, civilly of course,  ending up being controlled by "special snowflake" types of authors is not the place for me.  This is also what caused my decision to stick to writing my reviews in either Amazon (yes, even after what I said above about Amazon) or here, if I ever feel the need to review anything.  I was a reviewer for years, but frankly, things have changed from how they used to be back when I still reviewed, and I don't give a fig about any author whose work I review giving me grief because he/she didn't like what I said, no matter how politely I have expressed the thoughts.  My opinion is: if you put your book out there for all the world to see, IT'S ON YOU if you end up with a review from someone that hated it.  No amount of tantrums and bullying is going to change that fact.  It has always been like that since books became mainstream centuries ago.  Even Jane Austen and Charles Dickens received horrible reviews.  My advice to those types of authors: DEAL WITH IT OR WRITE FOR YOURSELF.  If your work is good enough it will survive anything thrown at it.

Reviewing is not easy, no matter where your review is "published": a blog, a website, Goodreads, Amazon, etc.  Reviewing styles are as varied as writing styles.  Some reviewers are very blunt and unapologetic about it, others prefer to use more tact.  If a reader buys a book and gets sorely disappointed in it, and wants to share his/her opinion online, no one can tell the person not to do so and, much less, how to do so.  Period.  Again, you write a book and decide to put it out there... It's ON YOU, so deal with it and own it.  The rest of us don't owe you anything and you should be thankful that we even bothered to get your book.  I don't know when the dynamic started changing (some would blame millennials, though I know better), but it is plain wrong and does no favors to readers like me, who are constantly looking for new authors to love.