Authors hit by bad reviews on Goodreads before review copies are even circulated

Goodreads is a case study in the natural monopoly of social networks. The product has been terrible for years now, with Amazon investing the bare minimum to keep it online and one slight design change every few years. But competitors like TheStoryGraph can't get traction because all the people are still on Goodreads.

I keep reading complaints about how bad it is and I just don’t see it. The last redesign is tremendously slow though.

Off the top of my head there's two things that rub me the wrong way about Goodreads.

One is there isn't a separate section for professional reviews (Polish movie/TV site Filmweb has that), so that right off the bat the first comment might be that someone doesn't like what the book is even about, it's a 1-star, liked by 15 people.

Two is they closed their API completely, so there's no way you can get any book info from their DB, not with limits and/or authorization, not if you pay, just not at all.

Yes, the network effect is huge with social network - if not the biggest thing about them. People tolerate a lot just to participate where the people they want to be closer with participate.

Well, start here with the article being discussed. They made a product decision to allow fake reviewers to trash books before they are even released.