by If you haven’t been keeping up with the latest scandal in the world of young adult publishing, it’s a blast. This is a debut author with lots of rumors, lies, clumsy alibis, “review bombing,” a long, sordid confession, and, of course, Goodreads. Because every time there is a collapse in the publishing sector, Goodreads, the Amazon-owned site that bills As “the largest site for readers and book recommendations,” it is firmly in the thick of it.
You may be wondering if Goodreads is not just an enabler of the scandal but the problem itself.
But first, the scandal: Internet sleuths discovered that an author named Cait Corrain, whose first novel was due out in 2024, had created fake accounts on Goodreads to bombard other books, overwhelming them with negative one-star reviews. When she was confronted online, she made up a fake online chat to deflect blame onto a non-existent friend; When this deception was discovered, she confessed, citing a “complete psychological breakdown.” Her editor and her agent abandoned her; The planned publication of her novel was cancelled. As is often the case in these scandals, the use and abuse of Goodreads, a site whose cheerful name masks a recent history of abhorrent user behavior, has left many people hurt and at least one person’s career in ruins.
Goodreads is broken. What began in 2007 as a promising tool for readers, authors, booksellers, and publishers has become an unreliable, unmanageable, and nearly unnavigable morass of unreliable data and unbridled ill will. Of course, the Internet offers no shortage of misinformation and ill will, but in its early days Goodreads promised something different: a gathering space where passionate readers could connect with writers and each other, exchanging impressions and sharing recommendations. It’s an idea that’s both obvious (the Internet is great for helping like-minded people come together) and essential (reading is a solitary activity, but it’s a great pleasure to talk about a book afterwards). In fact, Goodreads is still an essential idea, so much so that it’s worth fighting to fix.
When I joined the site in 2007, I felt like I had finally found my place online. At the time, I was still using a physical notebook to keep a list of books I’d read or wanted to read, so discovering a place to track, rate, and review books seemed like a completely, if I may use the word, novel. . After its acquisition by Amazon in 2013, Goodreads seemed poised to crash or soar. While Amazon had gained little following in the book community, thanks to its predatory business practices, it is also the leading online marketplace for books, so a companion site dedicated to discussing books seemed an obvious and potentially beneficial addition.
