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you buy books. And right now, you can use the code Culture to get 10% off your next order at Bookshop.org. That's promo code Culture for 10% off your next favorite book at Bookshop.org. And thank you so much to Bookshop.org for sponsoring this episode. Melody was like, oh, what should we do for our cold open? How can we start it? And I was thinking, oh, I could go look at some of my good reads, because I never, ever look at
them. And I was like, oh, I'll just go look at the ones for the one-star reviews for my first book. Like, it's far enough away. Uh-oh. Yeah. And I read them and I was like, no. These are all so mean. Yeah. No one. I don't, like, they're not in my business. They're not your business. This is the Culture Study podcast and I'm Anne Helen Peterson. I'm Maris Krizman. I'm a writer and critic. And you have a new column right now, right? I have
a new column for LitHub that'll be by weekly. So I'm very excited. I knew, like, as soon as you wrote your piece about good reads that, like, you were the person that I wanted to have on because this is something that's been germinating for a long time. Oh, yeah. Do you use good reads right now? I sure do. I use it to keep track of the books I've read. How many books do you read, like, in a week? Two. And maybe I'll listen to one. So when
people ask me, what are you reading? My mind just goes blank and I have to open my good reads app. So I still depend on it as a reader. Do you write reviews? No. And in fact, the one thing I'll say is that most of the time I'm only giving five star reviews to the books that I've read and want to support. And the other books I've read and don't want to support don't get onto my good reads account. I do not use it at all. And I think that
that has a lot to do with being an author and you're an author as well. I think that I just, like, I hadn't started using it before I was an author. And so by the time I started considering even using it, when my first book came out in like 2014, it was already a place where I knew I shouldn't hang out or didn't want to hang out as a person who is
also an author. Maybe I would be curious to hear your experience with this. Like it's just too hard to avoid accidentally seeing what other people are saying about you on a, if you're in this space. And like I, I already saw a lot of what people said about me on Twitter and like, and writing other articles and that sort of thing. And it's not
that I don't ever want to hear people's critique of my work. It's that there is danger, I think, in only understanding your work through the lens of people who, people who are not professional critics, right? Like this is, this is a distinction that I think we will get a lot more into. Absolutely. And I think it's great that people who aren't critics have a space to talk about books. But then as you just told me, it's none of your business. It's none of your
business what they say. I feel like that's an old Nicole Cliff piece of advice. Nicole Cliff who former co editor of the toast and also the way I first discovered Nicole's work was on the hairpin and that sometimes she would say that other people's opinion of me has none of my business and that has stuck with me for a very long time. And it's a good role of fun. So you wrote this op-ed for the New York Times. And I feel like this is something
that you had probably written in some form in your mind many, many different times. But can you, the title of it is Let's Rescue Booklovers from this online hellscape. Can you describe it for people who aren't familiar with goodreads? Like what is it? What does it look like? What is the universe? So goodreads launched in 2007, I believe. And at the time, it felt like a really promising tool for anyone who cared about books readers, authors,
it was the business of authors at the time. Booksellers, publishers, kind of bridging the gap between the reader and the author, which I think is really invaluable. But I think that what happened is as has happened to many areas of social media and the internet, something that started out with a really great purpose, then devolves into something where misuse and bad feelings can really crowd out all of the rest.
So basically the mechanics of it are that you can put your reading list, what you're reading, you can search through it, like you can type it in and then essentially like a fix it to your profile and then you can rate it. It's a scale of five stars, right? Five stars and no half sees you. That's so hard. I know half sees. And then you can also
put a short review, a short or long review of how you felt about it. And then other people can see your library and all of the reviews that you've read, like where did it turn in sour? Like when did it start to turn into the online hellscape? I think very much like any other social media platform that started out kind of cool and eye opening and making the world bigger and better often takes a turn as we've seen.
I do think that Amazon acquired Goodreads in 2013. And I think that's really where we start to lose that community aspect. Like it just got too big because people could also, if they bought the book on Amazon, there was like this, I've seen this, I feel like I've seen it. This prompt that you could also review it on Goodreads or at least like some sort of connection, right?
I don't buy books on Amazon, so I'm not sure. But I do know that on Goodreads there is a link so that you can buy the Kindle version directly from Amazon. So it's at least reverse engineered that like there's just these integrations. But you would think that if Amazon acquired this company that they would know how to harness the good in it, at least to make themselves money, like they're losing so much money on this. And that doesn't sound very Amazonian.
Totally. Well, this is, we're going to talk about this later, but I also makes me think of like how shitty Amazon Prime is. It's like a viewing experience. It's like they're just spending all of this money on these expensive shows and it still feels like it's Netflix in 2007. Like the very early streaming, it first iterations is streaming. That's Amazon Prime. So can you just give us like a greatest hits of the bad things about the Goodreads experience right now?
Yeah. One thing that blows my mind is that the interface is so bad and it's confusing to use and it's clunky and it clearly hasn't been updated in 10 years. And I was expecting more from from an Amazon-owned site. Mara's bless you. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I also do think it reached a critical mass where people were coming in who might not have the best of intentions and just like any other area that you could be on mine, but Goodreads doesn't have many people there to moderate. And I think
that's the big difference. One of the fundamental things that strikes me is that you can review a book that hasn't come out yet and that you don't have access to. So you have a memoir that you're writing. I just turned it in this morning. But somehow it already has some ratings on Goodreads. It's wild. And so there are a couple of things to understand about
book publishing that I struggle to understand sometimes. And one thing is that word of mouth has become so important to publishers that they are giving out advanced copies of books, once in advance sometimes. So there isn't a way to tell Amazon this book publishes on this day in 2025. So no one should be able to write until then. Right. Because the publishers want those early reviews on Goodreads. But they also can't
like authenticate. Oh, we only sent advanced reader copies to these people. And this is their Goodreads profiles. And they clearly would never give their copy to anyone else to read. Because I certainly have never ever ever sent an advanced reader's copy that I've sent to someone else. But like they yeah, there's no authentication process that they can feasibly put in place. So what they do, which is also mind blowing, is that they have volunteer
librarians is what they call them. Now Amazon. And these librarians out of the goodness of their hearts have the authority to enter new books into Goodreads. And that is very helpful for these librarians who want to keep track of the books that are still coming out. But that means that they are findable and readable, even if the deal was just announced. Wait, so like this isn't even Amazon that puts these books on there. It's actual users
sort of like Wikipedia who like they're doing the work. These librarians are doing the work. Well, so I think I think there's a feed for most of it, right? Like that. If when Amazon gets a feed of all the basic metadata, Goodreads does too. But there are a lot of books that you know, there's a deal announcement before there's any other information. And these librarians can go on publisher's marketplace and enter the book as if it were already in
existence. So then how did your unpublished book already get to radians? No one wrote anything. I went to look. No one wrote anything, but they like just rated it. So it's just people who are like, I like Maris five stars. Yes. And as flattering as that is, it could also go the other way. 100%. And what we've been seeing is that it does go the other way very often for people who put out books that a certain public doesn't like the idea
of. And that's when it gets tricky. Okay. So tell me about this scandal involving a YA novel. I just feel like there's been so many scandals involving YA novels and YA novelists on Goodreads. So I'm trying to personal in my head, but there's a reason one. It is actually not a YA novelist. What? Okay. I was like mapping it over. Yes. Okay. Kate Karain is her name. And she she's writing a sci-fi romance novel that kind of comes out of the Star Wars
fandom community, which is neither here nor there, but it's called Crown of Starlight. Right? Yes. Yes. Okay. And so this up and coming author got this really nice book deal with a US publisher and a UK publisher. And once again, like I don't think that book has been was out
for review. I don't think that anything was really happening with the book yet. And it was found that this author had gone on to Goodreads and created false accounts so that she could one star review or review bomb books of similar nature that were coming out around the same time. Oh. So basically like her class of debut authors. And she also wrote positive reviews of her book. Great. Yes. I can see the desire to do this. Like you have so much anxiety about how this is
going to happen. What is review bombing? Can you explain that a little bit? Yes. So review bombing is giving one star reviews as kind of a means of revenge or anything to kind of to bring the overall score of a book down. And because Goodreads doesn't require that you have read the book or that the book has to be out in any way before you can rate them, it's an easy way to start a book
out with very bad vibes. Yeah. Yeah. And so like someone could like if she did this, I don't know, like if she just did it on Twitter or if she did it on like the Amazon review site or something like that, like whatever, like what is it about? I think people are concerned about this because they think Goodreads matters so much. And this is what I think we we need to somehow convey to readers who maybe don't understand like what's exactly going on in the publishing industry right now.
Like why does it matter so much that Goodreads can be manipulated? Goodreads is one of the only big hubs online where where book people gather. And in this age of you know everybody has to follow the data and the data means everything. So much of the experience of reading a book is subjective. And it's it's incredibly hard to put numbers on whatever your gut feeling is about the latest novel you've read and the quality of its writing. So Goodreads is the one area where
you can say, oh this got 150,000 ratings, this is important. So it's like because we have so few places where we can talk about books and like understand if a book is popular, it becomes like a deadly weapon. Like it can be weaponized essentially. Absolutely. And then from a critical standpoint, we've seen so many different outlets either give up on book reviewing entirely or cut back in really big ways. And so so many books just don't get the media attention that that they used to.
And so Goodreads then takes on this outsize importance to authors and publishers because it's sometimes the only feedback that they're getting. So what I hear you saying is that all of this is the fault of like the decline of media just general. But there are dots that are connected here. Like the reason that this is also fraught is because we no longer have this robust press in so many different understandings of the word. Absolutely. And yeah, even like pitchfork falling under
GQ was really shook me. For that same reason, there is so much good art coming out. And there will just be fewer and fewer places where people who devote their lives to the enjoyment and the study of these things can tell people about them. Right. And also instead of talking about the book, I think what oftentimes happens that it devolves into like I want to talk about their online persona. Or like I'm going to I really am actually talking about their online persona. But I'm going to say
that I'm talking about the book. Like that sort of thing. Like it's not actually about the book at all. Yeah. And and that's a little harder to moderate. Right. But it does seem like if there was a human reading these reviews that they could do something about it. Okay, this is a great TEP for our first listener question. This first one comes from Melissa and it sets the stage for all of the other
things that are going on. I'm trying to understand Goodreads business model. Like how do they make money? And how does Amazon as an owner fit into it? And does that model align with how readers use or want to use the site? As a writer, I'm also curious how do marketers, publishers and authors think people use Goodreads? And how do people actually use Goodreads? I love if you could touch on the Goodreads
choice awards too. What purpose does it serve and what's going on there? Okay, this is this is like 17 questions. So let's see. One question at a time. What is your understanding of the Goodreads business model? So I just want to say once again, like I don't work for Goodreads and Goodreads is part of Amazon in that their business practices are opaque as hell. And so these are are just informed guesses basically. Yeah, but I do think that there's a lot of money from advertising
on Goodreads. And one of the best things about how it used to be, sorry, I sound old like it in my day, but in my day, in like 2009, a publisher could make a beautiful ad for a book that might not get any other media play from them and find a targeted audience who might appreciate that reading experience. And that that was kind of priceless for both sides. Like as a reader,
it's nice to see ads that have some bearing on what you like to read. Yeah, yeah. And I remember these two from like 2009, like banner ads that either found me because they were on a site like the hairpin or the all. It was before it was more like the it was like pre cookie ads, right? Like so it wasn't things that were stalking me across Instagram. It was just like an ad that someone had taken out to like on the New Yorker.com website or something. And I was like, huh, interesting.
And as you said, like they were often very beautiful because they weren't they weren't working the same way that ads work now. So now those ads show up on Goodreads to some extent. Is that what you're saying? So so now yeah, I'm looking at Goodreads now. And there's like a verbo ad and I don't know. Yeah, those kind of ads. Oh yeah. Or here's a rotor router. Get a free quote. So it's it's like that experience stinks. And so I think I think publishers still
want to use Goodreads as a marketing tool. And I think they would invest some money in it. But I think that the returns are just not worth it after a while. Yeah. I just Google Goodreads ads. And there's like all these Reddit threads about like I tried to get I tried to spend my money on making Goodreads ads and that it like functions essentially like if you try to boost your post on Facebook or something like that. Like it's not it's not doing what you think it's doing.
It's not the same as a banner ad in any capacity. And then I think that there's also probably some component of this that's just like classic tech company acquisition. Like Kenglomer and Acquisition media company that were there they just buy things because they're like I guess that's in our universe. Yeah. And we have the money. And we don't like why not we don't want someone else to buy it. So why don't we buy it? And then and then they do absolutely nothing with a even like
in 2013. I thought oh well there you know this will be integrated so well with the Amazon book site that'll be like a continuous communication across those two sites. And that people will be Lord to the Amazon pages to to buy the books. And and that would be a way to monetize that Goodreads would be an one big ad for for Amazon books. Right. That's not even they can't even do that. Can't even do that. Can't even do that. Okay from a publishing industry standpoint. How do you
think that? You know I always think there's a difference between the actual editors and the top editors who kind of hold the purse strings. So how do the bosses think that people use Goodreads compared to how people actually use Goodreads? I am not sure that there's much of a disconnect in that regard. I think that most people I know who work at publishers and any capacity think that people use Goodreads primarily to rate books and keep track of books. But they're
just not as engaged as as they had been before. Interesting. So like people used to use Goodreads in a different way. I think so. I think so. So toxic that people don't use it in the same way. There are still there are still people who write amazing reviews and you can go to their Goodreads page and learn a lot like my friend Adam Delva is a power user Roxanne Gay for a while is a power user and that is a lovely way to use Goodreads. But for the most part that's not what we end up seeing.
It's so interesting because I feel like the original sin is that it's a social network. That's what makes it addictive but also makes it so toxic like and how one person or a very small percentage of people can ruin the experience for so many other people. Like if I go on Facebook now they're the primary thing that I see is still people older people I know like posting pictures with their kids or like talking about a small thing in their lives that is meaningful to them or like
I don't know talking about an event that they're going to. And then there are just those like the 1% that is spamming everyone with like Trump memes or whatever right or like people who still need it because it's the only way that they can talk to their kids group like that's so
many parenting things are still so incredibly localized on on Facebook but it also like the experience of scrolling it is just so chock full of ads that have nothing to do with anything that they're interested in that it makes the entire experience that is otherwise just trying to figure out like when do we buy the uniforms for basketball or whatever it's not into a very
different experience. So yeah I just it it feels like the thing that made it addictive in the first place similar to Facebook is now the thing that makes it feel almost unusable. I think that's right I think that similarly in the early days of Facebook it was a place where you could really keep in touch with your friends and there are a couple of friends who I really trust and if I saw them reading a particular book it made it on my radar it made me put it on my
to read list and that happens less frequently I think no. I feel like I use Instagram for that purpose now and other people that I know who work in publishing like or who are adjacent in some capacity and they still use the stars right but they just put like the little emoji stars in the corner and don't necessarily write like a full review but it seems like they people still have this urge to talk to other people about the books that they're reading but they don't want to do
it on this site any longer. It's so funny because much like writing a book reading a book is a lonely experience sometimes but it's so fun to talk about with somebody else who's read what you've read and compare notes after you've read it. Even if it's with strangers that's the thing is that like Charlie my partner just read the beasting and he is just like badgering me to start it and I'm like oh do I want is this the time I want to start an 800 page book instead I am reading
the book that Melody badgered me to start and it's fun to talk about it like it's so fun and I love when someone takes my right and then we get to talk about it like this is not new in any capacity but you put the infrastructure of like expansion and also put like the the paradigms
of the publishing industry into that space like how do you know we don't have book press anymore how do we use it like how do we decide what's going to be popular how do we trend forecast before other people do all of those things and then it just like kernels all of it sure does one of the
new and exciting ways to market a book that I've seen is that the publisher atria sponsored a tiktok user to go on the nine month world crews granted they only sponsored three weeks of it this and this guy didn't even like books right like he's not he does not like books
they were just like this guy's on tiktok and he's on the crews let's give him some books and and so it's I understand that we are desperate the book unity is desperate we want to convert non-readers to readers but my question is like does that mean we then have to send them to Antarctica do you know
anything about the goodreads tracer words so I think it's it it is a good sales tool in terms of like I think people pay attention to those awards I'm glad the infrastructure is not there for readers to just then go to amazon and buy all of these books but I do think much like everything else
there are a few like awards mean more when there's less criticism yeah and so this is like the people's choice awards but for books yes yes or the I used to be really into the American music awards yes I'm not critics right like that but it was like televised so I wanted to watch it like I
VHS taped the one that MC Hammer hosted I mean when you think it matters it matters right but I think it's one of those things like you said that like it's an award that there there aren't any this is like the Golden Globes like there aren't it's a safe chain the Golden Globes have
supposedly changed a little bit but the old Golden Globes it's like here's some random people who who who figured out how to get celebrities in a room like let's give this a bunch of of weight even though it doesn't have like that much this that much weight at all I think good
reads really does try to make it like voted on by you I wouldn't want to receive any award that I personally vote on hey it's Ann we are recording a whole bunch of episodes this month and we want your questions we're talking about the British Royal family like how do we talk about them why
do we talk about them the future of reality TV the contemporary Jennifer Lopez and then we're doing a separate episode on Ben Affleck but specifically through the lens of ambition plus we're putting together an episode with Christopher Burton full of your wacky one-off questions that
fall under Christa's expertise on strong opinions about trivial shit so if any of these topics spark something in you some question head to tiny url dot com slash culture study pod and fill out the Google form and if none of these spark your interest head to the form anyways and tell us what
episodes you want okay thanks back to the show okay our next question is about how readers use good reads and how that affects actual reading practices this is from someone we'll just call H I feel like good reads take some of the enjoyment out of reading by turning us into critics
having to analyze the books and to look through thoughts thus making reading a lot more of a performance do you agree and if so do you think the impact of good reads on its users differs from other reviewing websites okay I think this is so interesting because it's almost like you know people
used to always ask me oh you take film studies classes so like can you not enjoy your books anymore because you are always thinking about films or movies or whatever through this lens of analysis and so there's a big part of me that thinks like it's great to be able to analyze and to also seek
enjoyment like keeping those two things in one place in your head I think that's useful but what do you think here yeah anytime you're asked to rate something yes it's gonna cheapen it in some capacity right and yet I think once again like hearing what other people think about books is
such a pleasure it's a pleasurable thing to do one of the things that I talk about in the op-ed in the times is somehow and and maybe it's just because it's early in the game but I feel like letter box does a really great job of allowing users to like write a sentence about a movie that may or may not actually critique what's going on and I feel like that experience is so pleasurable do I think that film people are just better behavior than book people know no it can't be that it's not
that I'm struck by the ways in which letter box and this comes from the long history of film criticism is and even just like the aesthetics of the site is masculinized and like there's something about the one sentence review that is masculinized right and contrast that and again we're talking like very stereotypical understandings of masculinized with like the unruliness of goodreads which is like overflowing with emotion and like can't behave itself and like it's given too much power
and and I think that like I don't know what to do with that because I like you I very much prefer the letter boxed experience to the goodreads experience but at the same time I'm kind of like what like we have this fetishization of brevity of like this whole like of like certainty
right like this is how I feel about it but some of it I think too is like you said the whole like anytime you are asked to rate something whether it's letter grades or stars it's forcing you to I think have a not very nuanced reading experience yeah and I think to go back again to
to the decline of criticism criticism was there to explore the nuance the best kind what's right and so even if you felt four stars about a book you can still read a review and say like oh you know this wasn't satisfying but I don't know what the author was intending here and
yep I think that all goes hand in hand yeah I think that what I have a really good review now if I like I don't know what the author did they like the book I don't know were they interested in the book yeah that sort of nuances is part of the word of the review itself and I think that the
worst kind of review and you see this both in the pages of something like the New York Times book review and on goodreads is like a compliment sandwich almost yeah where it's like I like this and then the paragraph where it talks about it's false because you have to have the paragraph
and you do the one paragraph and then like you know kind of like a half-assed ending it's like books interesting yeah I think that part of this is just um I guess we should return to the author's question instead of us just talking about things for like do you think that it's useful for readers themselves to take this approach when you're reading a book when you pick up a book that you have to also formulate what you're going to say about that book or is it maybe they should just formulate
what they're going to say in their mind I don't know 100 percent like I think goodreads is a nice part of a reading experience or it could be a nice part but yeah what you think about a book can be a really personal thing that you might not be able to articulate why it moves you and that's okay
too and I think sometimes that you can say I was really moved by this book and I don't have words for it but that's the sort of thing that maybe like that doesn't have a place on goodreads yeah I think that's because you have to give it a rating because you have to give it a rating yeah
uh melody has a question from the side here which is that have you ever encountered the problem where you read a book and you thought you had some feelings about it and then you sign on a goodreads and then see like the average rating and then it changes how you think about the book
yes but I will say I that happens to me with book coverage of any kind yeah like I will think that I have an idea in my head of what I thought about something and then I'll read a review and it'll change my mind and truly one of the reasons I loved doing my podcast was talking to authors
each week about what their intentions are were in the writing of the book and their inspirations and it always it always changes my reading of the book melody says in the chat okay this makes me feel better thank you yeah I think criticism like criticism is interesting that way it can make
you think rethink some of your thoughts and also if your criticism or your thinking on the book stands up if you read all the other things and you're like well that's interesting that they had a different experience but I still hold on to my experience of the book that's useful too
absolutely I mean I even think about this in terms of books at win awards I often go in with the expectation like this is gonna be good and so how do I form my opinion of the book despite in spite of whatever award it has won and I actually just finished a national book award winner
that I really was hoping to love and I didn't and I was like I still have taste right like I don't just like you're not just a robot there um that is also useful I mean I'm one of the things that I think is interesting now is that there isn't a monoculture in book awards so much yeah
and so once again it does kind of rely on the judgment of a few judges who are individual people with specific tastes and I think that that is exciting but also doesn't entirely guarantee quality all the time so our next question is from Neely and this is about the function of online
reviews in general so I'm glad that you already brought up monoculture is there a middle ground for good book reviews between monoculture in this case I'm generalizing as old school light cis men determining what's worthy and our own echo chambers as in book talk and goodreads and
does it matter okay so I think about this constantly I like I think about it with my own newsletter like what if people are only getting their recommendations from like me and like another newsletter that is in many ways similar to mine and where we always recommend the same things
you know like there's that cross-pollination that can make someone think oh I'm reading all the good stuff right so yeah I just like how where's the middle ground here like I I understand the liberatory potential of goodreads and tiktok and book talk just generally but then I also
think that sometimes it's really great to have someone who is a practice critic like you writing in public forums and there are some really really great publications out there and I will name a few yes please book forum is one of my favorites the LA review of books
four columns which is a website for all sorts of arts criticism but their book reviews are really insightful yeah lit hub doesn't do straight book criticism but it does have constantly great conversations about something related to books that you might want to read
and they even run a site called bookmarks dot reviews and if you go there it's it's almost like a rotten tomatoes where you can see poke quotes from from all of the major reviews that that a book received and I find that's helpful even just to see the poke quote and if I am intrigued by it I
will go back and read the review and and know that that critic is someone who I either do or don't want to follow yeah I find that following like figuring out whose opinions challenge me and who I don't always agree with but often agree with or like often if I follow their recommendation or the books that they're reading like that that is useful to me there's a couple people who I follow on Instagram who do essentially like one of them is my cousin who is a children's
book publisher in Minnesota but I just like I like having a stream of things that are making me see like oh well here's a book that I should try out or here's a book that I could think about or those sorts of things like following individuals and this that's old school right like you follow a book
instead of you follow like types of books or the award winners or any of the other categories that the Amazon might provide what about first like I find that this is harder when it comes to genre fiction yeah because right it's often delegitimized by like the the high reviewers and so
how do you get out of the echo chamber there I think tour.com has some really great writing on on sci-fi and fantasy I am not caught up enough on on romance but I do know that there is smart writing out there about romance to be found if you seek it out but yeah it's very siloed I would say
I think podcast kind of fill this role a little bit but it's less than that understanding of like the straight review and more and they're like we're gonna have a conversation about this book do you not I mean yeah and I think that's that's kind of fine in terms of like do I want to be a part of
this conversation yeah and I think that's maybe like the middle ground that we're trying to figure out here is that one of the things that the older school of book criticism did not necessarily allow for is that conversation is a place for the reader in that conversation other than just like long gonna read the book and maybe come up with some opinions and now we're getting a little bit more of the reader in that conversation but then goodreads is an example of what happens when the reader
is shouting there's no place for the credit there's only the place for the reader right yeah okay so the last question is like if people are so annoyed with goodreads if they hate it so much this is similar to like Facebook or Twitter or Instagram whatever like
why don't they just stop using it like why do people just can't continue to have their caught their toxic relationship with goodreads I think once you're there it's uh yeah it's like I should have quit Twitter by now too but something brings me back each time and you know I
have joined Blue Sky as a Twitter alternative and so I've joined Story Graph as an alternative to goodreads and there are a couple of other really great competitors but they're small right they're not where everyone is and unfortunately that is part of the allure yeah the critical mass right
yeah do you think that there is any potential for Amazon to turn the ship around yeah um there is I don't think it's likely that they will but my my op ed asks for them to have more humans and pay their volunteer librarians actual money to um communicate with publishers in a
helpful way for everyone yeah I think I think that could make a dent I don't know if they have any interest in doing such a thing right they have so much money but I think oftentimes in these situations it's not even like that they don't recognize that it's
broken it's like what's broken it's fine it's still it still works for them right so if they're like why not continue to make small amounts of money out of like there's just no imperative to try to make this into a better user experience a harder to manipulate system even though some of these things
are like just very basic tech stuff like oh what are your protections against creating multiple accounts like if Venmo can do this like using that Amazon control with various things to make sure that people can't create like 50 bought accounts that Venmo and review bomb someone yes yeah
but I think that their their problem is that they don't necessarily understand themselves as something that like like the value is not in making it a higher quality site it's only an expansion absolutely and and that's that's how I feel about so much of culture now I know I know and they're
pulled out there like us who like really care and whose lives would be enriched if quality and user experience matter and if there was a cool way for authors to communicate with their readers absolutely that didn't set them up they didn't make authors also yeah they didn't set them up for
bad bad faith criticism like I would love to field questions about like all sorts of things to do with the book that would be really cool and I get those directly from readers but instead I have developed a very thick skin being on the internet as I know you have and like it still is wounded by
good reads yeah like I still like it it pierces I mean that's one of the first things I warn people who want to write a book or have a book coming out is don't look nothing good will come of looking for for an author there's yeah what good seriously it's not like I'm gonna read them and be like
oh they're totally right like like I'm gonna work so hard to not do that in my next book like that's just gonna make me feel like I should never write a book again I think that's the general vibe so what is a way that you have found that works really well to use good reads like I do would
you recommend your way of just like putting the books that you read in there and only reviewing things that you actually want to endorse like does that seem like a healthy strategy no it's healthy for me because I'm in the industry and I don't want to make too many enemies I want just a few
enemies you know like quality enemies I don't want to just be making enemies left and right yeah and I do think you know authors even do take the the star rating system very seriously and you know if if I gave someone I know a three star review oh a Maris if you gave me a three star review I would
like I would be in my bed for like six months or something like that so yeah so for me so for me that's what I do but I do think I like the idea of having a general reader say what they think about a book like I don't think that is inherently bad I think it's really cool yeah and oh and I
should clarify too that I don't think people should not like a book that I that I read like no book is going to be liked by all people exactly if we come in and not understanding it's just that the thing about social media is that all people are exposed to way more people's opinions of them
and a way that they weren't in the past and goodreads as part of that larger apparatus absolutely and like that includes not just authors but also if you wrote a review of a book and then someone's like no that's bullshit like whatever you thought of this book is bullshit like no
that we're all part of this too okay I think this is a great place to wrap up and paid subscribers are going to get some extra time with Maris and me answering a question about how to stop beating yourself up for not reading as much as you want to or as much as an app one seem to
Maris where can people find you if they want to hear more from you so you can find me on lit hub every other week and I'm also yes I'm still on Twitter I still call it Twitter who cares uh at Maris kriseman thank you so much this has been such a delight I cannot think of anyone
else I would have rather talked about this subject with so thank you again oh thank you for having me this was great thanks for listening to the culture study podcast be sure to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts we have so many great episodes in the works and I promise you don't want to
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you can find me on instagram at and Helen Peterson melody at melodious forty seven in the show at culture study pod instead i am reading the book that melody badgered me to start which is um a quarter of i can't ever like what is it the court of throwing corn of a court of sure or a court of sores or you say a guitar there's just thought i know there's a court and a crown there's no crown i get i get them mixed up which