Rating and Review Guidelines

Goodreads is home to some of the most comprehensive book reviews and ratings anywhere. Through their contributions, our passionate, knowledgeable members help others discover their next great reads. These Guidelines aim to ensure the ratings and reviews on Goodreads remain authentic and helpful.

Goodreads is a place for expressing your honest opinions about books you’ve read, through both star ratings and written reviews. Your rating should reflect your personal assessment of the book, while your review captures your thoughts about the book and helps others understand the reasoning behind your rating. We encourage you to use the full rating scale thoughtfully and provide context through your reviews when possible.

We believe that you should see the most appropriate, relevant, and thought-provoking reviews and ratings (positive and negative) when you visit a book page. We will not show reviews and ratings that we deem to be inappropriate or not of a high enough level of quality.

We value members’ trust and take our stewardship of your ratings and reviews seriously. By default, your ratings and reviews remain on your profile and in your bookshelves. We only remove content in specific, limited situations, which are outlined below.

Your ratings and reviews should reflect your authentic reading experience and the book’s content. Our community relies on honest, thoughtful feedback to make informed reading choices. By submitting ratings you confirm that you have read, or attempted to have read, the book you are reviewing.

What We Encourage:

• Ratings and reviews based on your reading experience
• Thoughtful use of the full rating scale
• Evaluations of the book's content, writing, and/or storytelling
• Specific examples and/or constructive criticism to support your opinion
• Pre-publication ratings and reviews from readers with advance copies

Ratings:

• Rating books without reading them
• Ratings based on factors irrelevant to the contents of the book
• Ratings that artificially inflate or deflate a book’s average rating
• Unusual rating patterns that suggest automated or inauthentic behavior

Reviews:

• Harassing, threatening, or hateful content
• Reviews motivated by commentary that is irrelevant to the contents of the book
• Plagiarized content
• Self-promotional reviews
• Spam reviews
• Reviews that link to a blog or other external site without discussing the book
• Undisclosed commercial or paid reviews. If you receive a free copy of a book in exchange for a review, you are required to disclose that in your review

Our updated guidelines apply to all rating and review content. We encourage you to report content, new or old, that you believe may violate these guidelines. Depending on the nature of the violation, we may remove content entirely or limit its visibility to personal profiles only. This approach allows us to maintain both personal reading history and community quality.

And here are a couple of disclaimers:

• Goodreads reserves the right to remove a rating or review at any time for any reason. It is at our sole discretion that we decide when a rating or review is against our Guidelines.
• The reviews posted on Goodreads are individual and subjective opinions. The opinions expressed in reviews are those of Goodreads members and not of Goodreads LLC. We do not endorse any of the opinions expressed by reviewers.
• If we detect unusual rating or reviewing behavior on a book, we might temporarily limit the ability to submit ratings and reviews.