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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: 0.256s | source
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NelsonMinar ◴[25 Jun 25 13:13 UTC] No.44376945[source]▶
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.
replies(3): >>44377256 #>>44377291 #>>44378425 #
1. PokerFacowaty ◴[25 Jun 25 13:46 UTC] No.44377291[source]▶
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.