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00:01:36.860Melody was like, Oh, what should we do for our cold open? Like, how can we start it? And I was
00:01:41.460thinking, Oh, I could go look at some of my Goodreads, like, because I never, ever look at
00:01:48.100them and I was like oh I'll just go look at the ones for like the one-star reviews for my first
00:01:53.420book like it's far enough away oh yeah and I read them and I was like no these are also these so
00:02:02.800mean yeah no one I don't like they're none of my business um they are not your business
00:02:09.340this is the culture study podcast and i'm ann helen peterson i'm maris kreisman i'm a writer
00:02:19.900and critic and you have a new column right now right i have a new column for lit hub that'll
00:02:27.520be bi-weekly so i'm i'm very excited i knew like as soon as you wrote your piece about goodreads
00:02:33.920that like you were the person that i wanted to have on because this is something that's been
00:02:37.560germinating for a long time. Oh, yeah. Do you use Goodreads right now? I sure do. I use it to keep
00:02:44.920track of the books I've read. How many books do you read like in a week? Two. And maybe I'll listen
00:02:50.960to one. So when people ask me, what are you reading? My mind just goes blank and I have to
00:02:57.140open my Goodreads app. So I still depend on it as a reader. Do you write reviews? No. And in fact,
00:03:06.100The 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 Goodreads account.
00:03:22.060I do not use it at all and I think that that has a lot to do with being an author and you're an
00:03:29.920author as well I think that I just like I hadn't started using it before I was an author and so
00:03:36.660by the time I started considering even using it when my first book came out in like 2014
00:03:42.120it was already a place where I knew I shouldn't hang out um or didn't want to hang out as a person
00:03:48.980who's also an author maybe I would be curious to hear your experience with this like it's just too
00:03:53.740hard to avoid accidentally seeing what other people are saying about you on a if you're in
00:04:00.060this space and like I I already saw a lot of what people said about me on Twitter and like
00:04:06.520and writing other articles and that sort of thing and it's not that I don't ever want to hear
00:04:12.200people's critique of my work. It's that there is danger, I think, in only understanding your work
00:04:20.660through the lens of people who are not professional critics, right? Like this is a distinction that I
00:04:28.720think we will get a lot more into. Absolutely. And I think it's great that people who aren't
00:04:35.920critics have a space to talk about books um but then as as you just uh told me it's none of your
00:04:42.740business it's none of your business what they say i feel like that's an old nicole cliff um
00:04:48.120piece of advice nicole cliff who former co-editor of the toast and also the way i first discovered
00:04:54.800nicole's work was um on the hairpin and that sometimes she would say that other people's
00:04:59.860opinion of me is none of my business and that has stuck with me for a very long time and it's a good
00:05:05.840rule of thumb. So you wrote this op ed for the New York Times. And I feel like this is something
00:05:12.920that you had probably written in some form in your mind many, many different times. But can you
00:05:18.900the title of it is Let's Rescue Book Lovers from This Online Hellscape. Can you describe
00:05:25.300for people who aren't familiar with Goodreads? Like what? What is it? What does it look like?
00:05:30.740what is the universe? So Goodreads launched in 2007, I believe. And at the time, it felt like a
00:05:42.100really promising tool for anyone who cared about books, readers, authors, it was the business of
00:05:48.820authors at the time, booksellers, publishers, kind of bridging the gap between the reader
00:05:55.480and the author, which I think is really invaluable. But I think that what happened
00:06:02.500is, as has happened to many areas of social media and the internet, something that started out with
00:06:11.820a really great purpose, then devolves into something where misuse and bad feelings can
00:06:22.680really crowd out all of the rest so basically the mechanics of it are that you can put your reading
00:06:29.000list what you're reading you can search through it like you can type it in and then essentially
00:06:34.760like affix it to your to your profile and then you can rate it it's a scale of five stars right
00:06:41.960five stars and no halfsies that's so hard I know halfsies and then you can also put a
00:06:52.460short review, short or long review of how you felt about it. And then other people can see
00:06:58.780your library and all of the reviews that you've read. Like, where did it turn sour? Like, when
00:07:04.700did it start to turn into the online hellscape? Yeah. I think very much like any other social
00:07:14.220media platform that started out kind of cool and eye-opening and making the world bigger and
00:07:23.700better often takes a turn, as we've seen. But I do think that Amazon acquired Goodreads in 2013,
00:07:33.360and I think that's really where we start to lose that community aspect.
00:07:41.980Like 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?
00:07:54.440See, 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.
00:08:06.820so it's at least reverse engineered that like there there's just these integrations
00:08:11.820but you would think that if amazon acquired this company that they would know how to
00:08:18.840harness the good in it at least to make their at least to make themselves money like they're
00:08:25.020losing so much money on this and that doesn't sound very amazonian totally well this is we're
00:08:30.480going to talk about this later but i also makes me think of like how shitty amazon prime is it's
00:08:35.160like a viewing experience. It's like they're just spending all of this money on these expensive
00:08:38.780shows and it still feels like it's Netflix in 2007. Like the very early streaming, first
00:08:47.180iterations of streaming, that's Amazon Prime. So can you just give us like a greatest hits
00:08:53.220of the bad things about the Goodreads experience right now?
00:08:58.380Yeah. 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 an Amazon-owned site.
00:09:15.460um maris bless you uh yeah yeah yeah yeah um and i also do think it reached a critical mass
00:09:27.600where people were coming in who might not have the best of intentions and um just like any other
00:09:38.840area that you could be online. But Goodreads doesn't have many people there to moderate.
00:09:46.080And I think that's the big difference. One of the fundamental things that strikes me is that you can
00:09:51.420review a book that hasn't come out yet and that you don't have access to. So you have a memoir
00:09:57.760that you're writing. I just turned it in this morning. But somehow it already has some ratings
00:10:04.800on Goodreads. It's wild. And so there are a couple of things to understand about book publishing
00:10:12.820that I struggle to understand sometimes. And one thing is that word of mouth has become so
00:10:21.000important to publishers that they are giving out advanced copies of books months in advance
00:10:30.880sometimes. So there isn't a way to, you know, tell Amazon, this book publishes on this date
00:10:38.760in 2025. So no one should be able to write until then. Right, because the publishers want those
00:10:45.940early reviews on Goodreads. But they also can't like authenticate. Oh, we only sent advanced
00:10:54.320reader copies to these people. And this is their Goodreads profiles. And they clearly would never
00:11:00.440give their copy to anyone else to read because i certainly have never ever been sent an advanced
00:11:05.920reader's copy that i've sent to someone else but like yeah there's no authentication process
00:11:11.760that they can feasibly put in place so so what they do which is also mind-blowing is that they
00:11:20.200have volunteer librarians is what they call them no amazon um and and these librarians out of the
00:11:32.840goodness of their hearts have the authority to enter new books into goodreads and that is very
00:11:41.900helpful for these librarians who want to keep track of the books that are still coming out
00:11:48.160but that means that then they are findable and rateable even if the deal was just announced
00:11:55.040wait so like this isn't even amazon that puts these books on there it's actual users sort of
00:12:01.980like wikipedia who like they're doing the work these librarians are doing the work well so i
00:12:07.380think i think there's a feed for most of it right like yeah that if when amazon gets a feed of of
00:12:13.860all the basic metadata goodreads does too but there are a lot of books that you know there's
00:12:19.560a deal announcement before there's any other information and these librarians can go on
00:12:25.020publisher's marketplace and enter the book as if it were already in existence so then how did
00:12:33.020your unpublished book already get two ratings no one wrote anything i went to look no one wrote
00:12:40.620anything but they like just rated it so it's just people who are like I like Maris five stars yes
00:12:46.080and as flattering as that is it could also go the other way 100 and what we've been seeing
00:12:55.740is that it does go the other way very often for people who put out books that a certain public
00:13:06.560doesn't like the idea of. And that's when it gets tricky. Okay, so tell me about this scandal
00:13:12.700involving a YA novel. I just feel like there's been so many scandals involving
00:13:18.340YA novels and YA novelists on Goodreads. So I'm trying to parse them all in my head. But
00:13:23.100there's a recent one. It is actually not a YA novelist. What? Okay. I'm just like mapping
00:13:31.540it over yes okay anyway kate corain is her name and she she's writing a sci-fi romance novel that
00:13:40.560kind of comes out of the star wars fandom community um which is neither here nor there
00:13:48.760but it's called crown of starlight right yes yes okay and so this up-and-coming author got this
00:13:56.840really nice book deal with a US publisher and a UK publisher. And once again, like, I don't think
00:14:07.420that book has been was out for review. I don't think that anything was really happening with
00:14:14.400the book yet. And it was found that this author had gone on to Goodreads and created false accounts
00:14:23.480so that she could one-star review or review bomb
00:14:29.200books of similar nature that were coming out around the same time.
00:14:35.040Oh, so basically like her class of debut authors.
00:14:38.880And she also wrote positive reviews of her book, right?
00:14:53.120So 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.
00:15:07.660and because goodreads doesn't require that you have read the book or that the book has to be
00:15:15.460out in any way before you can rate them it's an easy way to start a book out with very bad vibes
00:15:23.280yeah yeah yeah and so like someone could like if she did this i don't know like if she just did it
00:15:29.220on twitter if she did it on like the amazon review site or something like that like whatever
00:15:34.900Like, what is it about? I think people are concerned about this because they think Goodreads matter so much. And this is what I think 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?
00:15:54.140Goodreads is one of the only big hubs online 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.
00:16:19.640And 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.
00:16:39.660So 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.
00:16:53.120Absolutely. 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.
00:17:09.080And so, so many books just don't get the media attention that they used to. And so Goodreads then takes on this outsized importance to authors and publishers because it's sometimes the only feedback that they're getting.
00:17:26.560So what I hear you saying is that all of this is the fault of like the decline of media just generally. But there are 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.
00:17:42.740Absolutely. 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.
00:18:07.280Right. 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.
00:18:27.320Yeah, and that's a little harder to moderate, but it does seem like if there was a human reading these reviews that they could do something about it.
00:18:40.060Okay, this is a great tee-up for our first listener question.
00:18:44.260This first one comes from Melissa, and it sets the stage for all of the other things that are going on.
00:18:49.140I'm trying to understand Goodreads' business model.
00:18:52.240Like, how do they make money, and how does Amazon as an owner fit into it?
00:18:57.320and does that model align with how readers use or want to use the site? As a writer, I'm also
00:19:03.680curious how do marketers, publishers, and authors think people use Goodreads, and how do people
00:19:09.700actually use Goodreads? I'd love if you could touch on the Goodreads Choice Awards, too.
00:19:15.120What purpose does it serve, and what's going on there? Okay, this is like 17 questions,
00:19:20.820so let's take it one question at a time. What is your understanding of the Goodreads business model?
00:19:27.320So I just want to say, once again, like I don't work for Goodreads and Goodreads is
00:19:35.980part of Amazon in that their business practices are opaque as hell.
00:19:42.480And so these are just informed guesses, basically.
00:19:48.440But I do think that there's a lot of money from advertising on Goodreads.
00:19:56.140And 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.
00:20:18.640and find a targeted audience who might appreciate that reading experience and that that was kind of
00:20:29.980priceless for both sides like as a reader it's nice to see ads that uh have some bearing on
00:20:37.340on what you like to read yeah yeah and I remember these two from like 2009 like banner ads
00:20:43.420that either found me because they were on a site like The Hairpin or The All.
00:20:49.460It was before it was more like it was like pre-cookie ads, right?
00:20:53.040Like, so it wasn't things that were stalking me across Instagram.
00:20:55.520It was just like an ad that someone had taken out to like on the newyorker.com website or
00:21:35.200and so I think I think publishers still want to use Goodreads as a marketing tool and I think
00:21:45.140they would invest some money in it but I think that the returns are just uh not worth it after
00:21:51.900a while yeah I I just googled Goodreads ads and there's like all these Reddit threads about um
00:21:58.500like I tried to get I tried to spend my money on making Goodreads ads and that it like functions
00:22:04.740essentially like if you try to boost your post on Facebook or something like that like it's not
00:22:09.420it's not doing what you think it's doing it's not the same as a banner ad in any capacity
00:22:14.020and then I think that there's also probably some component of this that's just like
00:22:19.540classic tech company acquisition like conglomerate acquisition media company that
00:22:26.620where they just buy things because they're like I guess that's in our universe yeah and we have
00:22:31.320the money and we don't like why not we don't want someone else to buy it so why don't we buy it
00:22:36.780and then and then they do absolutely nothing with it even like in 2013 i thought oh well there you
00:22:44.160know this will be integrated so well with the amazon book site that'll be like a continuous
00:22:50.040communication across those two sites and that people will be lured to the amazon pages to to
00:22:58.540buy the books, and that would be a way to monetize, that Goodreads would be one big ad
00:23:06.120for Amazon Books. Right. They can't even do that. Can't even do that. Can't even do that.
00:23:14.740Okay, from a publishing industry standpoint, how do you think that, you know, I always think
00:23:21.180there's a difference between the actual editors and the top editors who kind of hold the purse
00:23:26.380strings. So how do the bosses think that people use Goodreads compared to how people actually use
00:23:33.620Goodreads? I am not sure that there's much of a disconnect in that regard. I think that
00:23:43.160most people I know who work at publishers in any capacity think that people use Goodreads
00:23:51.600primarily to rate books and keep track of books but they're just not as engaged as as they had
00:23:59.220been before interesting so like people used to use goodreads in a different way i think so it's
00:24:06.460become so toxic that people don't use it in the same way there are still there are still people
00:24:11.820who write amazing reviews and you can go to their goodreads page and learn a lot like my friend adam
00:24:19.280Dalva is a power user. Roxane Gay for a while is a power user. And that is a lovely way to use
00:24:29.000Goodreads. But for the most part, that's not what we end up seeing. It's so interesting because I
00:24:36.940feel like the original sin is that it's a social network. That's what makes it addictive, but also
00:24:43.580makes it so toxic like and how one person or a very small percentage of people can ruin the
00:24:51.680experience for so many other people like if I go on Facebook now they're the primary thing that I
00:24:57.560see is still people older people I know like posting pictures of their kids or like talking
00:25:04.860about a small thing in their lives that is meaningful to them or like I don't know talking
00:25:10.220about an event that they're going to and then there are just those like the one percent that is
00:25:15.880spamming everyone with like trump memes or whatever right or like people who still need it
00:25:22.740because it's the only way that they can talk to their kids group like that's so many parenting
00:25:27.280things are still so incredibly localized on on facebook but it also like the experience of
00:25:34.320scrolling it is just so chock full of ads that have nothing to do with anything that they're
00:25:40.140interested in that it makes the entire experience that is otherwise just trying to figure out like
00:25:45.040when do we buy the uniforms for basketball or whatever like turns that into a very different
00:25:50.600experience so I yeah I just it it feels like the thing that made it addictive in the first place
00:25:58.380similar to Facebook is now the thing that makes it feel almost unusable I think that's right I
00:26:03.940think that similarly, in the early days of Facebook, it was a place where you could really
00:26:12.320keep in touch with your friends. And there are a couple of friends who I really trust. And I if I
00:26:19.540saw them reading a particular book, it made it on my radar, it made me put it on my to read list.
00:26:27.020And that happens less frequently, I think now. I feel like I use Instagram for that purpose now.
00:26:33.020and other people that I know who work in publishing, like, or who are adjacent in some
00:26:38.980capacity. And they still use the stars, right? But they just put like the little emoji stars in
00:26:44.560the corner and don't necessarily write like a full review. But it seems like they people still
00:26:50.740have this urge to talk to other people about the books that they're reading. But they don't want
00:26:56.300to do it on this site any longer it's so funny because much like writing a book reading a book
00:27:03.500is a lonely experience sometimes but it's so fun to talk about with somebody else who's read what
00:27:10.260you've read and uh compare notes after you've read it even if it's with strangers that's the
00:27:17.500thing is that like charlie my partner just read um the bee sting and he is just like badgering me
00:27:24.300to start it and I'm like oh do I is this the time I want to start an 800 page book instead I am
00:27:29.440reading the book that Melody badgered me to start and it's fun to talk about it like it's so fun and
00:27:34.620I love when when someone takes my rec and then we get to talk about it like this is not new in any
00:27:39.640capacity but you put the infrastructure of like expansion and also put like the the paradigms of
00:27:48.820the publishing industry into that space like how do you know we don't have book press anymore how
00:27:53.400do we use it? Like, how do we decide what's going to be popular? How do we trend forecast before
00:27:58.620other people do all of those things? And then it just like curdles all of it.
00:28:02.400Sure does. One of the new and exciting ways to market a book that I've seen is that the publisher
00:28:13.800atria sponsored a tiktok user to go on the nine month uh world cruise granted they only sponsored
00:28:25.220three weeks of it this and this guy didn't even like books right like he's not he does not like
00:28:31.460books they were just like this guy's on tiktok and he's on the cruise let's give him some books
00:28:38.500And so it's, I understand that we are desperate. The book community is desperate. We want to
00:28:47.600convert non-readers to readers. But my question is, like, does that mean we then have to send
00:28:53.580them to Antarctica? Okay, do you know anything about the Goodreads Choice Awards?
00:29:01.780so i think it's a it it is a good sales tool in terms of like i think people pay attention to
00:29:10.320those awards i'm glad the infrastructure is not there for readers to just then go to amazon and
00:29:16.640buy all of these books but i do think much like everything else there are a few like awards mean
00:29:24.980more when there's less criticism yeah and so this is like the people's choice awards but for books
00:29:32.700yes yes or the i used to be really into um the american music awards which are also not critics
00:29:40.760right like but it was like televised so i wanted to watch it like i i've i vhs taped the one that
00:29:47.920mc hammer hosted i mean when you think it matters it matters right but i think it's one of those
00:29:54.580things like you said that like it's an award that there aren't it's like the golden globes
00:30:00.160like there aren't they've changed the golden globes have supposedly changed a little bit
00:30:04.300but the old golden globes it's like here's some random people who who figured out how to get
00:30:10.360celebrities in a room like let's give this a bunch of of weight even though it doesn't have like that
00:30:15.720much this that much weight at all i think goodreads really does try to make it like voted on by you
00:30:22.620I wouldn't want to receive any reward that I personally voted on.
00:30:52.620specifically through the lens of ambition. Plus, we're putting together an episode with Krista
00:30:57.540Burton full of your wacky one-off questions that fall under Krista's expertise on strong opinions0.99
00:31:03.340about trivial shit. So if any of these topics spark something in you, some question, head to0.97
00:31:09.200tinyurl.com slash culturestudypod and fill out the Google form. And if none of these spark your
00:31:15.660interest, head to the form anyways and tell us what episodes you want. Okay, thanks. Back to the show.
00:31:21.140okay our next question is about how readers use goodreads and how that affects actual reading
00:31:27.080practices this is from someone we'll just call h i feel like goodreads take some of the enjoyment
00:31:33.140out of reading by turning us into critics having to analyze the books and to look for thoughts
00:31:38.980thus making reading a lot more of a performance do you agree and if so do you think the impact
00:31:46.700of goodreads on its users differs from other reviewing websites okay i think this is so
00:31:52.420interesting because it's almost like you know people used to always ask me oh you take film
00:31:57.420studies classes so like can you not enjoy your books anymore because you are always thinking
00:32:02.520about films or movies or whatever through this lens of analysis and so there's a big part of me
00:32:08.940that thinks like it's great to be able to analyze and to also seek enjoyment like keeping those two
00:32:17.080things in one place in your head I think that's useful but what do you think here yeah anytime
00:32:24.620you're asked to rate something yes it's gonna cheapen it in some capacity right and yet I think
00:32:34.880once again like hearing what other people think about books is such a pleasure it's a pleasurable
00:32:41.400thing to do one of the things that i talk about in the op-ed in the times is somehow and maybe
00:32:50.080it's just because it's early in the game but i feel like letterboxd does a really great job
00:32:56.520of allowing users to like write a sentence about a movie that may or may not actually critique
00:33:04.640what's going on it could and and i feel like that experience is so pleasurable do i think that
00:33:11.860film people are just better behaved than book people no no it can't be that it's not that
00:33:18.280i'm struck by the ways in which letterboxd and this comes from the long history of film criticism
00:33:24.940is and even just like the aesthetics of the site is masculinized and like there's something about
00:33:32.440the one sentence review that is masculinized right and contrast that and again we're talking
00:33:40.380like very stereotypical understandings of masculinized and feminized with like the
00:33:45.180unruliness of goodreads which is like overflowing with emotion and like can't behave itself and like
00:33:51.980it's given too much power and and i think that like i don't know what to do with that because
00:34:00.060i like you i very much prefer the letterboxd experience to the goodreads experience but at
00:34:07.060the same time i'm kind of like what like we have this fetishization of brevity of like this whole
00:34:13.700like of like certainty right like this is how i feel about it but some of it i think too is like
00:34:21.380you said the the whole like anytime you are asked to rate something whether it's letter grades or
00:34:28.260stars, it's forcing you to, I think, have a not very nuanced reading experience.
00:34:36.760Yeah. And I think to go back again to the decline of criticism, criticism was there
00:34:44.860to explore the nuance. The best kind was. And so even if you felt four stars about a book,
00:34:56.160you can still read a review and say like oh you know this wasn't satisfying but I don't know what
00:35:04.700the author was intending here and yep I think that all goes hand in hand yeah I think that
00:35:11.020what I have a really good review now if I like I don't know what the author did they like the book
00:35:18.360I don't know were they interested in the book yeah that sort of nuances is part of the where
00:35:24.560of the review itself and i think that the worst kind of review and you see this both in the pages
00:35:30.460of something like the new york times book review and on goodreads is like a compliment sandwich
00:35:36.240almost where it's like i like this and then the paragraph where it talks about its faults because
00:35:41.580you have to have the paragraph towards the end you do the one paragraph and then like you know
00:35:48.540kind of like a a half-assed ending that's like books interesting um i yeah i think that part of
00:35:57.640this is just um i guess we should return to the author's question instead of us just talking about
00:36:03.480these things but like do you think that it's useful for readers themselves to take this
00:36:09.900approach when you're reading a book when you pick up a book that you have to also formulate what
00:36:14.820you're going to say about that book? Or is it maybe they should just formulate what they're
00:36:19.620going to say in their mind? Do you know what I mean? I don't know. 100%. Like, I think Goodreads
00:36:25.920is a nice part of a reading experience, or it could be a nice part. But yeah, what you think
00:36:33.500about a book can be a really personal thing that you might not be able to articulate why it moves
00:36:42.000you and that's okay too and I think sometimes that you can say I was really moved by this book
00:36:48.820and I don't have words for it but that's the sort of thing that maybe like that doesn't have a place
00:36:54.500on Goodreads yeah I think that's because you have to give it a rating because you have to give it a
00:36:58.780rating yeah uh Melody has a question from the side here which is that have you ever encountered the
00:37:05.860problem where you read a book and you thought you had some feelings about it and then you sign on
00:37:11.200of good reads and then see like the average rating and then it changes how you think about
00:37:16.240the book yes but I will say I that happens to me with book coverage of any kind yeah like I will
00:37:25.420think that I have an idea in my head of what I thought about something and then I'll read a
00:37:30.880review and it'll change my mind and truly one of the reasons I loved doing my podcast was talking
00:37:38.800to authors each week about what their intentions are, were in the writing of the book, and
00:37:47.240their inspirations. And it always, it always changes my reading of the book.
00:37:55.360Melody says in the chat, okay, this makes me feel better. Thank you. Yeah, I think criticism,
00:38:00.020like, criticism is interesting that way. It can make you think, rethink some of your thoughts.
00:38:04.960And 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.
00:39:01.680And 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.
00:39:20.700So our next question is from Neely, and this is about the function of online reviews in general.
00:39:25.240So I'm glad that you already brought up monoculture.
00:39:27.700Is there a middle ground for good book reviews between monoculture?0.55
00:39:31.220In this case, I'm generalizing as old school white cis men determining what's worthy.0.65
00:39:35.900And our own echo chambers, as in BookTok and Goodreads.0.59
00:40:02.800So yeah, I just like, how, where's the middle ground here?
00:40:08.540like I understand the liberatory potential of Goodreads and TikTok and BookTok just generally
00:40:15.860but then I also think that sometimes it's really great to have someone who is a practice critic
00:40:21.380like you writing in public forums and there are some really really great publications out there
00:40:29.820and I will name a few yes please book forum is one of my favorites the LA review of books
00:40:36.860four columns which is a website for all sorts of arts criticism but their book reviews are really
00:40:44.560insightful yeah lit hub doesn't do straight book criticism but it does have constantly
00:40:53.680great conversations about something related to books that you might want to read um and they
00:41:01.560even run a site called bookmarks.reviews. And if you go there, it's almost like a Rotten Tomatoes
00:41:10.460where you can see pull quotes from all of the major reviews that a book received. And I find
00:41:19.580that's helpful even just to see the pull quote. And if I am intrigued by it, I will go back and
00:41:25.780read the review and and know that that critic is someone who I either do or don't want to follow
00:41:32.140yeah I find that following like figuring out whose opinions challenge me and who I don't always agree
00:41:40.300with but often agree with or like often if I follow their recommendation or the books that
00:41:46.160they're reading like that that is useful to me there's a couple people who I follow on Instagram
00:41:51.000who do essentially like one of them is my cousin who is a children's book publisher in Minnesota
00:41:58.440but I just like I like having a stream of things that are making me see like oh well here's a book
00:42:05.860that I should try out or here's a book that I could think about or those sorts of things like
00:42:09.800following individuals and this that's old school right like you follow a book critic
00:42:14.260instead of you follow like types of books or the award winners or any of the other categories that
00:42:20.980the Amazon might provide what about first like I find that this is harder when it comes to genre
00:42:26.700fiction yeah I think that's right it's often delegitimized by like the the high reviewers
00:42:33.320and so how do you get out of the echo chamber there I think tour.com has some really great
00:42:41.540writing on on sci-fi and fantasy I am not caught up enough on on romance but I do know that there
00:42:50.660smart writing out there about romance to be found if you seek it out but yeah it's very siloed I
00:42:58.940would say I think podcasts kind of fill this role a little bit but it's less in that understanding
00:43:04.340of like the straight review and more in the like we're gonna have a conversation about this book
00:43:11.400do you know what I mean yeah and I think that's that's kind of fine in terms of like do I want
00:43:17.200to be a part of this conversation. Yeah. And I think that's maybe like the middle ground that
00:43:21.420we're trying to figure out here is that one of the things that the older school of book criticism
00:43:27.720did not necessarily allow for is that conversation is a place for the reader in that conversation,
00:43:34.500other than just like, well, I'm going to read the book and maybe come up with some opinions.
00:43:38.520And now we're getting a little bit more of the reader in that conversation. But then Goodreads
00:43:44.080is an example of what happens when the reader is shouting there's no place for the credit there's
00:43:49.440only the place for the reader right yeah okay so the last question is like if people are so annoyed
00:43:57.300with goodreads if they hate it so much this is similar to like facebook or twitter or instagram
00:44:02.380whatever like why don't they just stop using it like why do people just continue to have their
00:44:07.880toxic relationship with Goodreads? I think once you're there, it's, yeah, it's like I should have
00:44:15.560quit Twitter by now too, but something brings me back each time. And, you know, I have joined Blue
00:44:21.900Sky as a Twitter alternative. And so I've joined Storygraph as an alternative to Goodreads. And
00:44:30.160there are a couple of other really great competitors, but they're small, right? They're
00:44:36.440not where everyone is and unfortunately that is a part of the allure yeah the critical mass right
00:44:46.580yeah do you think that there is any potential for amazon to turn the ship around yeah um
00:44:53.540there is i i don't think it's likely that they will but my my op-ed asks for them to have more
00:45:04.320humans and pay their volunteer librarians actual money to communicate with publishers in a helpful
00:45:13.440way for everyone. I think that could make a dent. I don't know if they have any interest in doing
00:45:23.900such a thing. Right. They have so much money. But I think oftentimes in these situations,
00:45:29.200it's not even like that they don't recognize that it's broken it's like what's broken it's fine
00:45:36.120it still it still works for them right so they're like why not continue to make small amounts of
00:45:44.020money off of like there's just no imperative to try to make this into a better user experience
00:45:49.600a harder to manipulate system even though some of these things are like just very basic tech stuff
00:45:55.720like oh what are your protections against creating multiple accounts like if venmo can do this like
00:46:01.840you think that amazon could control with various things to make sure that people can't create
00:46:07.660like 50 bot accounts that then go and review bomb someone yes yeah but i think that their
00:46:16.860their problem is that they don't necessarily understand themselves as something that like
00:46:20.980like the value is not in making it a higher quality site it's only an expansion absolutely
00:46:26.940um and and that's that's how i feel about so much of culture now i know i know
00:46:33.480and there are people out there like us who like really care and whose lives would be enriched if
00:46:42.900quality and user experience mattered and if there was a cool way for authors to communicate with
00:46:50.020their readers absolutely that that didn't set them up that didn't make authors also yeah that
00:46:56.380didn't set them up for bad faith criticism like I would love to field questions about like all
00:47:02.620sorts of things to do with the book that would be really cool and to get those directly from readers
00:47:06.700but instead I have developed a very thick skin being on the internet as I know you have and like
00:47:12.740it still is wounded by goodreads yeah like i still like it it pierces i mean that's one of
00:47:20.940the first things i warn people who want to write a book or have a book coming out is don't look
00:47:28.140nothing good will come of looking for for an author yeah what good seriously it's not like
00:47:35.980i'm gonna read them and be like oh they're totally right like like i'm gonna work so hard to not do
00:47:42.200out in my next book. Like, that's just going to make me feel like I should never write a book
00:47:45.940again. I think that's the general vibe. So what is a way that you have found that works really
00:47:55.280well to use Goodreads? Like, would you recommend your way of just like putting the books that you
00:48:00.580read in there and only reviewing things that you actually want to endorse? Like, does that seem like
00:48:06.840a healthy strategy no it's healthy for me because i'm in the industry and i don't want to make
00:48:13.540too many enemies i want just a few enemies you know like quality enemies i don't want to just
00:48:20.300be making enemies left and right um yeah and i do think you know authors even do take the the star
00:48:27.440rating system very seriously and you know if if i gave someone i know a three-star review
00:48:34.880Oh, Amaris, 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 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.
00:48:58.780yeah i know and i should clarify too that i don't think people should not like a book that i that i
00:49:04.740read like no book is going to be liked by all people that's exactly crappy if we come with in
00:49:09.300that understanding it's just that the thing about social media is that all people are exposed to way
00:49:16.160more people's opinions of them in a way that they weren't in the past and goodreads is part of that
00:49:21.080larger apparatus absolutely and like that includes not just authors but also if you wrote a review of0.98
00:49:26.660a book and then someone's like no that's bullshit like whatever you thought of this book is bullshit0.59
00:49:30.600like no that we're all part of this too okay i think this is a great place to wrap up and paid0.97
00:49:37.060subscribers are going to get some extra time with maris and me answering a question about how to
00:49:41.580stop beating yourself up for not reading as much as you want to or as much as an app wants you to
00:49:47.000maris where can people find you if they want to hear more from you so you can find me on lit hub
00:49:54.000every other week. And I'm also, yes, I'm still on Twitter. I still call it Twitter,
00:49:59.360who cares, at Maris Kreisman. Thank you so much. This has been such a delight. I cannot think of
00:50:04.760anyone else I would have rather talked about this subject with. So thank you again.
00:50:08.320Oh, thank you for having me. This was great.
00:50:14.380Thanks for listening to the Culture Study Podcast. Be sure to subscribe wherever you
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00:51:18.780really paying just one dollar for an episode. It's a pretty great deal. The Culture Study
00:51:23.080podcast is produced by me, Anne Helen Peterson, and Melody Rowell. Our music is by Poddington
00:51:28.460Bear. You can find me on Instagram at Anne Helen Peterson, Melody at Melodius 47, and
00:51:34.180the show at Culture Study Pod. Instead, I am reading the book that Melody badgered me
00:51:41.240to start, which is A Court of... I can't ever... What is it?
00:51:45.880a court of thorns and roses a crown of a court of sure a court of thorns and roses or you say
00:51:52.880a guitar there's just thorn I know there's a court and a crown there's no crown but I get