Goodreads faces backlash as authors speak out on 'homophobic reviewers' and trolls

The popular book-reviewing website Goodreads has come under fire once again after authors have criticised it for not cracking down on homophobic reviews, trolls and "review-bombers".

For those unaware of the rise of Goodreads, the website and app is a mix between a social media and a traditional reviewing platform where anyone can rate, review and share their thoughts on their latest books. The platform also allows readers to get suggestions from millions of other users - similar to Letterboxd for film reviewing.

After being bought by Amazon more than a decade ago, the platform has exploded in popularity. It is now thought to have more than 150 million members, as reported by The Guardian.

Despite its quite civilised concept,Goodreadshas not been without controversy and its fair share of criticism. And now some top authors have hit out at the platform for not offering protection to authors who have been the victim of "notorious homophobic reviews".

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Speaking to The Bookseller, crime writer Jo Furniss said: “A lot of authors share the soul-destroying experience of seeing their books trashed before they are even available to genuine readers. Worse, like me, they feel they are given no protection by one of the biggest platforms in the industry. What is Goodreads doing to protect authors from online abuse?”

Another author who wished to remain anonymous told the magazine that many reviewers give books a one-star review before even advance review copies have been given to a publisher. They added: "One such reviewer [...] is notorious in the sapphic/queer-author community for giving thousands of sapphic/queer books one star. A number of sapphic authors have complained to Goodreads about him and unfortunately, they have never taken action."

One such reviewer known for piling on one-star reviews of queer books is simply known as Charles. With an average rating of 1.09, the reviewer has left more than 8,200 one-star reviews with queer book authors even coining the phrase "Charles'd" whenever he gets around to review bombing a new queer book.

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However according to Johnson, Goodreads allow people to review books even before they have read it, she claims the platform told her: "The reviewer had a perfect right to predict if they’d enjoy it or not."

This seems to be a common theme, with one author hit with a negative rating after a reviewer mistook their book for a film under the same name, while another received a negative review before he'd even written the last two chapters.

In each instance, they claim that Goodreads stood by the review and refused to remove their comments.

There are some Goodreads rules for rating books. They read: "We will not tolerate abuse of our ratings system, such as rating the same work more than once for the purpose of inflating or deflating the book’s average rating. Multiple ratings we determine to be abusive will be removed.

"Reviews that are harassing or threatening, or that contain hate speech or bigotry. These will be deleted outright and anyone posting them risks being removed from the site."

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