Authors vs. Goodreads
I will flat out admit it....my own drama brought me here. I had maybe a few honest interactions with authors trough the years, and one of them was where the author was extremely unhappy with me not liking their book. Once I have seen the tittle of this, I thought maybe I get to see all this from a different perspective. The author's perspective. I didn't. I have been a member of Goodreads for a few years now and trough my travels I have seen certain interactions between people that raised my eyebrows on occasion. I have seen the carnage when Fandoms clash and the adoring fans protect their beloved novels. I have seen reviews of people's work I thought are very unfair. I HAVE REVIEWED NOVELS THAT PEOPLE THOUGHT WERE VERY UNFAIR.
Reviewers seem to sort things out between themselves. Like tends to gravitate towards like, and people do form groups. It's not that fascinating and it happens in other areas of life also. What of it? To say that these are dark and murky waters is bullshit to say the least. If you don't want to speak to someone, you simply don't, and the argument is over. Authors on the other hand rarely survive clashes with the reviewers. I will explain why that is.
It's not a secret that Goodreads makes money. It makes a very healthy profit. We don't mind. What it does for us: Gets us up close and personal with hundreds of thousands of novels, most of witch we wouldn't have discovered in your local, pretty, charming but limited bookstore. It gets us in touch with people like us, who like to read. It allows us to interact, review and express our opinion on novels without censorship even if we are not world renowned literary critics. This is a social networking site for book lovers and bookstore for consumers primarily. The reason it is so successful is because of everything I just listed. We, the readers, the consumers love this site! That is why the authors, people who want to make money come here to try and do just that.The list of suggested rules in this booklet is ridiculous. If something like that was implemented, GR would go bust because people would go elsewhere. It won't, because at the end it all boils down about making a profit. Goodreads and authors are not doing what they are doing out of kindness of their hearts. So let's not kid ourselves.
This booklet isn't about Goodreads making money. This booklet is a lament about THIS PARTICULAR AUTHOR NOT MAKING ANY MONEY. I will take the author's own observations here and ask one question. If Goodreads allows such rabid behaviour between people with abandon, and if we do such horrible and unspeakable things to eacother and still don't get any repercussions whatsoever, what on earth did THIS AUTHOR DO do to get excommunicated? Where there is smoke, there is fire. It's hypocritical to use the GR network to bitch and moan about the GR network, but then again, just looking at this booklet tells me more then the author ever could. Truth be told if the writing of this booklet is the measure of the writing capacity of this person, I am not surprised for bad press. The editing is crap, the grammar bad and the research done to back it debunked in over thirty points.
The implications about some countries in this little rant is disturbing and a measure of the author's knowledge. The author is upset that some reviewer gets to be No.1 in some small country somewhere, and he/she doesn't get to be anything. Cheer up, you're my No.1 asshat of the day. Here's a cookie.
