Goodreads sucks. It’s as simple as that. The site is filled with trolls, fake reviews, extortion scams, and badly behaving authors. 
So let me tell you what it does to the people who write the books.
It’s supposed to be a place where readers find information about authors and books, with good consumer reviews. Instead, it’s filled with vitriol and malice. Yelp has the same problem.
Goodreads treats authors badly, and most of that anger is on behalf of other writers. The authors I know spend years on a book and then watch its reputation get handed to a site where any stranger can wreck it with one click and never say why. The trolls do the damage, but Amazon built the room they do it in and keeps paying the rent.
I’ve been on the internet before it was called the Internet. Back in my day it was called ARPANET and consisted of less than a thousand systems (we called them nodes). During the intervening years, I’ve experienced just about everything.
I even remember the first worm (a type of computer virus), the Morris worm, the first spam message, and the first major search engine, AltaVista. Okay, now I feel old. I’ve experienced most of the platforms from the old CompuServe and AOL message boards to the modern-day social media giants such as Facebook and X.
Goodreads and Manners
Goodreads trolls attack books because they’re just plain negative, not because of the writing.Share on X
Never have I experienced such negativity and such plain bad manners as on Goodreads. What kind of platform makes that the default setting? The place appears to be filled with “Goodreads trolls” who seemingly have nothing better to do than pounce on authors. Amazon owns Goodreads, but as far as I can tell, a nebulous group of volunteers called Librarians runs it. These folks, for the most part, have been helpful, friendly and competent. It’s just odd that you don’t email or call a support group if you need help.
You drop a message into a forum and a librarian will pick it up and take care of you. It has worked for me every time I’ve needed it, and it still strikes me as a strange way to run a platform owned by a trillion-dollar company. I’d rather deal with paid support who answer for the outcome.
The problem with Goodreads is the overwhelming abundance of negativity concerning reviews and comments. You’ll also find an overabundance of Goodreads trolls, people who attack books because they’re just plain negative people.
First, Goodreads is strange in that you can “review” a book but not leave any explanation. A reader can click one button to give a one- or two-star review without explaining why. This really sucks.
What didn’t they like? There’s no way to know. Were they in a bad mood, did they not like the plot, did they find a grammar error? Who knows?
These hit-and-run reviews are worthless to readers and writers. Who exactly is served by a rating with no reason attached to it? Readers aren’t given a way to judge what was wrong and writers aren’t given a chance to improve their work. There’s no value of any kind to this method.
An author who invested three years writing a book has no more standing than an anonymous account created five minutes ago to destroy it.
Second, when text reviews are left, they’re often extremely negative. Worse than negative. I’ve found Goodreads reviews tend to be vicious to the extreme. It’s almost as if there’s a conspiracy to write negative reviews and torpedo books. I’ve heard this called Goodreads reviewer bullying. In my mind, there are very few books that should ever receive a one-star review. That means, to me, that there’s NOTHING good about the book. Surely there’s something good. In fact, few books even deserve two-star ratings. After all, someone spent a lot of time and effort to write it, and they deserve some kind of acknowledgement at the least for their efforts. Sure, first books can be rough around the edges, but does that mean they deserve a one-star rating?
Most books deserve three stars. That’s the middle. It means “it was okay.” It wasn’t bad and it wasn’t great. It was average compared to other books in the same genre or category.
Yet looking through reviews on Goodreads, there’s a huge preponderance of 1- and 2-star ratings (usually without reviews). I know a lot of authors, hundreds of them, and I’m meeting more every day. Not a single one of them deserves those kinds of reviews or ratings. They all work hard on their books to produce the best possible product that they can.
Sure, there are some books I don’t like because it’s not my taste or whatever. I just don’t leave a review at all. Their books may not be great, but they’re not 1 star, which translates to “worthless garbage.”
For a while, I spent a large amount of time trying to figure out Goodreads and I finally gave up. The site is confusing, the ratings horribly inconsistent, and the hostility obvious. I’ve given up.
Goodreads sucks. I’ve found it’s just not worth the time and effort. There are far better places to engage with readers, authors and my audience.
Watch: Goodreads Has A Massive Problem, Library of a Viking
Why does Goodreads’ design invite review abuse?
Moderation is part of the problem, but the core of it is design. Goodreads operates on a communistic model where everyone gets an equal voice, no one earns authority, and the people willing to abuse the system gain power over those who play fair. An author who invested three years writing a book has no more standing than an anonymous account created five minutes ago to destroy it. I find that insulting to every writer who’s ever finished a book.
The “community policing itself” model only works when the community shares values. Goodreads doesn’t have a community. It has 120 million strangers, some of whom enjoy hurting people, and handing that crowd an anonymous one-click weapon was incompetent. Give malicious actors equal power to everyone else and they’ll use it. Anyone who’s run a system at scale could have predicted that, and Goodreads built a system that rewards it. Every issue below works exactly as designed.
They’re features. The platform’s fundamental design choices create an environment where abuse thrives.
Anonymous one-click ratings. You can tank a book’s rating without writing a single word or proving you read the book. No purchase verification. No identity verification. Just click and destroy. What did anyone expect that button to be used for?
This is the core problem. Any system that lets anonymous users damage someone’s livelihood with zero accountability will attract bad actors. That’s the obvious prediction, and it was ignored.
No barrier to entry. Creating a Goodreads account takes seconds. Creating dozens of fake accounts to coordinate a review-bombing campaign takes minutes. Amazon knows how to verify accounts. Why would the one property full of unpaid volunteers be the exception?
They do it for their marketplace sellers. They do it for Vine reviewers. They choose not to do it for Goodreads.
Ratings on unreleased books. You can rate a book before it’s published. Before ARCs go out. Before anyone on earth has read it. What possible legitimate purpose does this serve? None. It exists only to let trolls preemptively trash books they’ve decided to hate based on the author’s identity or opinions.
Volunteer moderation at industrial scale. Goodreads has over 120 million members. The site handles hundreds of millions of ratings per year. And they rely on unpaid volunteer “librarians” to manage this. That’s not a moderation strategy. That’s hoping problems solve themselves.
Authors are silenced. When an author responds to a troll review, even politely, Goodreads sides with the troll. They’ve explicitly told authors not to engage with negative reviewers. The message is clear: you’re not welcome to defend yourself here.
No downside for bad behavior. Trolls face no consequences. They can one-star every book by authors they dislike. They can leave abusive reviews. They can coordinate harassment campaigns. As long as they don’t directly threaten violence, Goodreads looks the other way. This isn’t an accident.
Every one of these choices makes Goodreads easier and cheaper to run. Verification costs money. Paid moderators cost money. Investigating abuse takes time. Amazon has decided that protecting authors isn’t worth the investment.
The Problems Have Gotten Worse
Since I first wrote this article, the problems on Goodreads have escalated dramatically. Review bombing has become a coordinated weapon. In 2023, author Cait Corrain lost her book deal after being caught creating fake accounts to one-star competitors while boosting her own ratings. She targeted authors of color in her debut cohort. That scandal made national news and exposed how easy the system is to manipulate. One author with a grudge and a handful of fake accounts. What does that say about the people running it? If one author with a grudge can do that much damage, imagine what a coordinated group can accomplish.
Even worse, extortion scams now target authors. Scammers threaten to review-bomb books unless authors pay up. TIME Magazine reported on this in 2021, and the problem has only grown. The scammers know Goodreads won’t stop them. Why would they think otherwise? They know authors are desperate to protect their ratings. It’s a perfect extortion setup.
Authors of color and LGBTQ+ authors face disproportionate targeting when they speak out on social media about anything. Express an opinion about representation in publishing? Get review-bombed. Criticize a problematic book? Get review-bombed. Exist while marginalized? Believe it or not, also review-bombed.
The trolls have learned they can silence authors by threatening their livelihoods. Who taught them that? The platform did, by never once stopping them.
One author told The Bookseller about a reviewer who systematically one-starred thousands of sapphic and queer books. The account had been doing this for years. Goodreads never took action. Years of it, thousands of books, and not one intervention.
Nobody misses a pattern that size for years by accident. Somebody decided those authors weren’t worth the trouble, and I find that harder to forgive than anything the troll did. Amazon, which owns Goodreads, has made half-hearted attempts to address these issues. In late 2023, they announced “changes to prevent review bombing,” including more customer service staff and procedures to prevent spamming that targets individual authors. Industry veterans were skeptical, and they were right to be. The changes only catch massive, coordinated attacks on high-profile authors.
When Elizabeth Gilbert announced a book, the trolls descended, and Goodreads stepped in. But that’s because Gilbert is famous and the media was watching. Smaller authors remain unprotected. The low-level harassment, the steady drip of malicious one-star ratings, the targeted campaigns against debut authors: none of that triggers intervention.
What does Goodreads cost authors?
None of this is about hurt feelings. Publishers watch Goodreads numbers, and a book whose rating drops can lose its publisher. An editor at a major digital imprint told one author to retire a long-running series because the average rating on the most recent book slipped below 4.2 stars. That’s the threshold, apparently. Drop below it and your series is dead. A career ended by a decimal point, decided by people who never had to say who they were.
Agents use Goodreads to evaluate potential clients. A debut author with a pre-publication rating of 3.2 stars (thanks to trolls) looks like damaged goods. The agent doesn’t know the ratings are fake, and has no reason to ask. They just see a book that readers apparently hate. Readers use Goodreads to decide what to buy. That’s the point of the site. When trolls trash a book, fewer readers take a chance on it. Sales drop. Royalties drop. All of it decided by strangers who never opened the book. The author’s next contract gets smaller, or doesn’t happen at all. And then there’s the mental health cost. Authors pour years of their lives into books. Watching anonymous strangers gleefully trash your work, knowing you can’t respond, knowing the platform won’t protect you: that takes a toll.
Some authors stop writing after a campaign like that. Three years of work, a rating set by strangers who never opened the book, and a decision never to try again. The trolls won that one, and they’ll win the next one, because nothing is stopping them.
That’s the outcome I hate most. When a writer quits after a coordinated one-star campaign, every reader who would have loved the second book loses it too, and Goodreads treats that loss as the cost of doing business.
Why Goodreads hurts the authors it should help
The complaints in the comments below fall into a handful of buckets. Here they are, sized by how often authors raised each one. Tap any bar to read the full breakdown, or tap the last one to add your own story.
The design
Anonymous reviews, no gatekeeping, ratings before release
The problems
Pile-ons, review-bombing, bad-faith one-stars
The cost
Publishers watch the numbers, a slipping average can end a series
The stakes aren’t hurt feelings: an editor told one author to retire a series after its average dipped below 4 stars.
Why Amazon Doesn’t Fix It
Amazon bought Goodreads in 2013 for $150 million. At the time, people worried about what the acquisition would mean for the site. It meant neglect, and thirteen years later the neglect is the policy.
Amazon knows how to build safe platforms when they want to. Their marketplace has sophisticated fraud detection. Their review system for products, while imperfect, at least requires a purchase.
Vine reviewers go through verification. AWS has world-class security. Any of that could be pointed at Goodreads tomorrow.
I spent twenty years running computer operations, and I know what it costs to stand up verification and fraud detection at that scale. For Amazon it’s a rounding error. They choose not to spend it.
Why? Because Goodreads still serves Amazon’s core purpose: selling books. The site drives traffic to Amazon’s bookstore. It doesn’t matter if authors get hurt along the way. Authors aren’t Amazon’s customers. Readers are. So why would a bookseller protect the people who write the books? And readers keep using Goodreads despite the toxicity, so Amazon has no incentive to invest in fixing it.
The volunteer librarian system is the giveaway. A trillion-dollar company staffing its moderation with unpaid volunteers is short of will, and that’s a choice somebody signed off on.
A company with Amazon’s resources could hire a real moderation team. They could build automated detection for review bombing. They could require identity verification.
The technology exists. The money exists. The will doesn’t, and after thirteen years of ownership that’s the answer.
Why Isn’t Goodreads Working for Authors?
I feel it’s because of the lack of intelligent moderation combined with design choices that reward abuse. Any platform at scale needs active moderation.
Volunteers can’t do it and algorithms can’t do it alone. It takes real humans with real authority to remove bad actors and real accountability for their decisions. Goodreads has none of that.
When you report abuse, your report disappears into a void. Maybe a volunteer librarian sees it. Maybe they don’t. Maybe they agree with you. Maybe they think the troll has a point. There’s no consistency, no transparency, and no appeals process that works.
The platform has over 120 million members and relies heavily on volunteer librarians. I think calling that moderation insults the volunteers, who are doing their best at a job Amazon should be paying people to do.
Meanwhile, the site itself enables abuse. One-click anonymous ratings. No purchase verification. Ratings on unreleased books. Every design choice favors the trolls. This is why Goodreads isn’t working and isn’t worth the time and effort to even sign up.
What Authors Can Do
If you’re an author dealing with Goodreads, here’s my advice: Stop checking your ratings. Seriously. Nothing good comes from watching the numbers fluctuate. You can’t control what trolls do, and obsessing over it’ll drive you crazy.
Don’t engage. I know it’s tempting. Someone says something false or cruel about your book and you want to correct the record. Don’t. Goodreads will side with the reviewer, every time, and engaging attracts more trolls than it corrects.
Document everything. If a coordinated campaign or extortion attempt is targeting you, screenshot everything. You may need it later.
Report, but don’t expect results. File your reports with Goodreads. Create a paper trail. But understand that reports rarely lead to action unless you have media attention or a large following. Is that a moderation system, or a queue nobody reads?
Focus on platforms you control. Your website, your email list, your direct relationships with readers. These are assets no troll can take away.
Consider not participating. Some authors have deleted their Goodreads accounts entirely. The platform needs authors more than authors need it. Without the books there’s nothing to rate, and it’s worth asking why the people supplying the product are the only ones with no protection.
If enough writers walk away, maybe Amazon will finally pay attention. I wouldn’t hold my breath, but nothing else has worked in thirteen years.
What are the alternatives to Goodreads for authors?
Many readers and authors have migrated to StoryGraph.
That offers similar book tracking features without the toxic culture. It’s not perfect, but the moderation is better and the community is smaller and more civil. Some authors focus on BookBub, more marketing-oriented, with a reader base that buys books. Others have simply abandoned the review world entirely, focusing their energy on email lists, social media, and direct reader relationships. You don’t need Goodreads to sell books. Plenty of successful authors have minimal presence there. The book community existed before Goodreads. It’ll exist after. The platform’s dominance isn’t permanent, especially if they keep treating authors as expendable.
Should authors still use Goodreads?
Goodreads had a good idea: create a community where readers could discover books and share recommendations. Bad design and corporate neglect poisoned it, and Amazon has had thirteen years and all the money in the world to fix it and has chosen not to. I’m not willing to hand my books to a system that protects the people trying to hurt writers. I’ve given up on Goodreads, and I’d tell any author to spend that energy on readers they can reach directly. That goes for a ghostwritten book too, and what happens after the ghostwritten manuscript decides far more about its readers than any review site. What do you think? Leave a comment below with your experiences.
References
- How Extortion Scams and Review Bombing Trolls Turned Goodreads Into Many Authors’ Worst Nightmare (TIME)
- Goodreads has a ‘review bombing’ problem (NPR)
- Does Goodreads do enough to protect authors from trolls? (The Bookseller)
- Goodreads faces further criticism from authors over trolls and ‘homophobic reviewers’ (The Bookseller)
My take
I’ve given up on Goodreads, and I’d tell any author to do the same. Amazon has owned Goodreads for thirteen years and left the trolls and the review extortion alone. The reviewer wins every dispute. Don’t engage, screenshot anything coordinated, and stop expecting reports to change anything. Put that energy into your website, your email list and the readers you reach directly. StoryGraph is a calmer place if you want a tracking site at all.
See also
Once you stop renting an audience on Goodreads, you need a plan for reaching readers. Sell Your Books is the marketing guide I wrote from over a decade in indie publishing.
