Amazon linking Goodreads to Ebook purchases

Here is an interesting premise: Amazon now appears to link to some of its ratings and reviews from Goodreads. I just noticed that I had a number of ratings suddenly for Shamblers: the zombie apocalypse. These ratings correspond to what Goodreads users have said or rated about my book. They are, in fact, almost a mirror image.

For many authors and readers, this may sound really cool. Indeed, it appears that way for myself. If you view the image below, you’ll  see the results of my newest novel, Shamblers:

In my case, this is very useful. I clearly notice a positive trend, where it shows how my book is rating favorably overall. There are a few unfavorable ratings, but that is always to be expected. I should be rejoicing for this new ratings system change in Amazon. Yet, I have given this some careful thought. I have come to realize that this ratings change in Amazon’s linking to Goodreads is not without faults.

Here are my concerns. I feel that other Indie Authors and even consumers should share them:

1. There are a lot of trolls on Goodreads. These are people who just ‘get off’ on giving poor ratings. They haven’t read a book, and may or may not know anything about the author. They just live pathetic, miserable lives and one of their few satisfactions is disrupting the lives of others. The internet lurks with all kinds of anonymous people who do this with just about any product you can imagine.

2. There are a lot of hacky authors on Goodreads (and also on Amazon). I know for a fact that some of them will go in and rate other competitor’s books low to try to improve their own ratings. I have heard horror stories about this happening. Goodreads has no real system to police this.

3. Goodreads currently lets you rate a book without any sort of verification that you actually ever read it. This is the biggest problem with Amazon linking ratings to Goodreads. This just isn’t right, especially where there are products to be sold and consumers rely upon ratings for their decisions.

How valid are these concerns?

I honestly doubt that many people will abuse this system. I am sure the vast majority of people have better things to do. As a writer, though, I work hard on my books, and I worry about this sort of thing. I am personally convinced that the only 1 STAR review I have is from someone who did not finish my book.

I suppose it wasn’t for them. That’s okay. In truth, the funniest part of that terrible rating and review is that Shamblers has a disclaimer that basically says “watch out for the violence, ***, incredible use of profanity, and some characters that may use racial slurs.” I put this disclaimer there for a reason. Oddly enough, this random person ignored my disclaimer based on another Goodreads user’s feedback. They bought Shamblers anyway, even knowing it was outside the realm of what they enjoyed or read.

Their lousy review then complained about the very things I had warned of.

This naturally annoyed me. I expect many other authors will find new annoyances with Amazon’s changes as well.

 

The post Amazon linking Goodreads to Ebook purchases appeared first on Andrew Cormier - Author - Official Website.