Good Grief Goodreads!

I do not venture over to Goodreads very often, for I have heard it’s the place that authors go to die. Heard very many humourous jibes from fellow authors and after today I can see why.

So I am pretty useless with keeping up with my Goodreads profile and unless I get an email from them asking me to respond to a question, I do not really use it much. I try to occasionally update my books and what not’s but I only read actual Goodreads reviews when readers send me a personal link because they want to know they did read my book. Really, I am lazy and busy and I don’t read my Goodreads reviews very often at all.
I just find it better to not know the content of those reviews unless someone makes a point of asking me to read theirs.
I do however read Amazon and blog reviews, or when I am tagged on Instagram or book groups. There is far more respect I have found on other platforms.

It’s better for my self esteem! LOL

Today however, I was really amped to discover it’s romance week on there and as it’s my genre I decided to trawl it a bit and see what was cooking. Look at some books I want to read and have a nosy while updating my new buys.

Oh boy was that a mistake.

I am horrified by the amount of reviewers who seem to have a popularity contest going on with the worst kind of scathing reviews.

Is that the norm?

Is that how it works?

The mean girls get the fans?

I have to say I put my ass in reverse, like it was on fire and scooted out of there pronto, before I was blinded by the stain of so much nasty.

Don’t get me wrong, a lot, in fact, an overwhelming majority on there are genuine reviewers and readers and some of the reviews warm the cockles of your heart, but the sour taste is definitely a hindrance.
Authors I respect and love have all been hit at least once or twice by the popular ‘hate reviews’ yes even me. GASP…I know. I actually expected more LMAO
I am lucky in that generally after an initial ‘WOW’ moment I tend to not dwell on bad reviews, it’s part of the writer life but I know many authors who fair very badly with such things.
Writers tend to be very anti social or anxious folks at the best of times and I can only imagine the hurt it could cause someone. Especially an introvert or socially awkward author who doesn’t mingle in support groups to get much needed reassurance that this happens.
I have heard the comical stories of how authors should never stray to ‘dreadreads’ ‘godsakesreads’ or ‘godawfulreads’ and now I can kind of see why.
Books are so personal and contain a piece of an authors heart and soul. It’s almost like ripping their child to shreds in front of their eyes for some.

So to save my sanity in the future, I will continue to only visit reviews on Goodreads sent via links by readers who would love for me to read them. I do appreciate when you do that and for a long time it allowed me to live in a fantasy bubble of good reviews – let’s continue to do that shall we?
I do hope in the near future Goodreads Daddy, Amazon takes note of the kind of things being posted on their platform and tighten up the etiquette of review posting. There should be a report abuse button at the least so other readers can have extremely personal and nasty reviews monitored or removed.
Personal attacks are not cool.

If you are a writer and you do not venture onto social media into the many writer support groups with us, please do not feel saddened at these reviews. I honestly do not think they are personal, they do seem to be a trend in getting likes, and authors will tell you this happens to the best of us. It’s horrible that it is a ‘thing’ and maybe one day that will change.

I am all for fair reviews though, so if you are in doubt about how to post a negative review, I wrote a helpful post a few months back I would like to share – Bad Review Etiquette

Bad reviews do not have to be overly negative and mean, be kind to one another x