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

(www.thebookseller.com)
97 points healsdata | 1 comments | 25 Jun 25 11:35 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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A_D_E_P_T ◴[25 Jun 25 12:52 UTC] No.44376732[source]▶
Goodreads is the worst. At this point, Amazon should just shut it down.

Amazon reviews are unironically better, because you can see if somebody actually bought the book or not, and Amazon has very sophisticated anti-Astroturfing measures. (Good luck getting your friends and family to leave good reviews of your book -- they'll catch it and delete them.)

Goodreads is infested with marketing and publishing cliques and a lot of their reviews are fake or paid for. It has never been more over.

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cratermoon ◴[25 Jun 25 13:20 UTC] No.44377018[source]▶
Do you trust Amazon to be honest and accurate about who bought the product?
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1. A_D_E_P_T ◴[25 Jun 25 13:39 UTC] No.44377233[source]▶
I buy lots of books and write lots of reviews on Amazon, and mine always say "verified purchase." I also see other reviews which were solicited by giving readers free copies (ARCs) a la Goodreads, and they never say "verified purchase." (And some reviews that were written by people who never read the book at all...) So yeah. Unless you have evidence to the contrary -- which would be evidence of a crime -- I think they can be trusted on this point.