22 Facts About Goodreads

Goodreads is an American social cataloging website and a subsidiary of Amazon that allows individuals to search its database of books, annotations, quotes, and reviews.

Goodreads was founded in December 2006 and launched in January 2007 by Otis Chandler and Elizabeth Khuri Chandler.

Goodreads wanted to integrate this scanning experience and to create a space where people could write reviews regarding the books that they read.

Goodreads addressed what publishers call the "discoverability problem" by guiding consumers in the digital age to find books they might want to read.

Later that year, Goodreads introduced an algorithm to suggest books to registered users and had over five million members.

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In October 2012, Goodreads announced it had grown to 11 million members with 395 million books cataloged and over 20,000 book clubs created by its users.

Goodreads offers quizzes and trivia, quotations, book lists, and free giveaways.

Goodreads has a presence on Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, and other social networking sites.

Goodreads librarians improve book information on the website, including editing book and author information and adding cover images.

In December 2020, Goodreads deactivated API keys more than 30 days old and said it would no longer be issuing new API keys.

In January 2012, Goodreads switched from using Amazon's public Product Advertising API for book metadata to book wholesaler Ingram.

Goodreads felt Amazon's requirements for using its API were too restrictive, and the combination of Ingram, the Library of Congress, and other sources would be more flexible.

Some users worried that their reading records would be lost, but Goodreads had a number of plans in place to ease the transition and ensure that no data was lost, even for titles that might be in danger of deletion because they were available only through Amazon, such as Kindle editions and self-published works on Amazon.

That same year, Goodreads received criticism from users about the availability and tone of reviews posted on the site, with some users and websites stating that certain reviewers were harassing and encouraging attacks on authors.

Goodreads publicly posted its review guidelines in August 2012 to address these issues.

Critics of the Goodreads platform feel that Goodreads' dominant position, coupled with limited development by Amazon, has prevented better tools emerging for personalized book recommendations.

Goodreads has fallen under criticism from users who feel that the site is outdated and prone to frequent crashes and bugs, and that the recommendations are poor, frequently suggesting popular books at random rather than anything more personalized.

Authors who are aware of the site have noted problematic qualities of Goodreads affecting discoverability and search engine results, particularly the platform's inability to sort pseudonyms, and its refusal to allow authors to choose the primary author name that appears on book records.

Goodreads often refuses to remove quotes with "likes" from an author's profile, even if the quotes are false or invalid.

Goodreads has tried to address this, implementing rules such as only allowing reviewers to criticize a book itself, not author behaviour or political affiliations.

Critics of Goodreads have considered this decision to be a form of censorship.

Some authors have suggested that Goodreads take a stricter approach to public review postings in the same manner that Amazon has done in the past, such as requiring a telephone number, a verified account by email address, and a real name before any account-holder can post public ratings or reviews.