17:33 Goodreads bookshelves can be edited to include a DNF shelf (or any shelf you want) by marking it as 'exclusive' in the settings. It will appear in the button just like 'want to read' or 'read,' etc do. But yeah, it should've been included by default.
I just found out about this very recently. I knew about tags but didn't realize I could add custom shelves. Now I have the standard 3 and then a soft DNF of books that I have started but need to revisit/restart, and then another shelf of books I'm well into but not in the mood for.
Goodreads also elevates the exposure of books featuring minority protagonists over ones with white protagonists(especially if they're male). Political correct DEI trash is super absurd these days. :/
@@Dizaster977 you do realize that white authors and white characters are promoted WAAAYY more than any minority protagonist or writer so Im confused as to why you have a problem with DEI.
@Sarasstorytime22 - most prominent authors, at least in the past, were white and many protagonists written by whatever writer tends to have a lot of personal trends with their own protagonist. The honest thing to say is that your own protagonists tend to lean towards what you are because people tend to write what they know....... which would be their own race. What I am saying is that more and more white men are self publishing and more and more man hating cnts are literally posting online to "don't support white authors and ignore stories with white protagonists". Which has literally been happening in fkn movies and tv shows and comics and all kinds of video games... which is probable fkn reality. So WTF are YOU on about, Sweetpea?
I’ve had Goodreads for a long time. I’ve been trying story graph the past 6ish months. I really like the story graph stats features and how it tracks my personal reading. I really don’t like other features like the lack of social, how reviews are buried. I also find the UI to be excessively minimalist in reaction to Goodreads opposite approach. I feel like I have to click through 10 different menus to do basic tasks. So while I like the stats and summaries story graph makes on my reading, I find Goodreads to be a much more useable and valuable website despite the many problems, old formats that need updates
Have you used Fable? I find it the most social of the 3. It's basically like Facebook but with books/TV. I'll see random people who I don't know IRL but are reading books I've read/saved. I also will see bookish posts, like what are your favorite books for fall, etc. It's really promoting just bookish discussion which I'm really enjoying and don't see that happening on GR or Storygraph. I do like Storygraph for the data, and just use GR as a habit of having it since my 20s.
@@brendanl8390 YES to the buried reviews and click through 10 things to get where I need to be! I have both Goodreads and StoryGraph on my phone and I use Goodreads more than I use StoryGraph. I will only track a book on StoryGraph so I can have the chart/graphs.
I agree, it looks cleaner but I hate the interface on storygraph. The personal tracking is good, but you can do that elsewhere as well. I use notion and created my personal book tracker. Fully customisable and I love it.
1000% same. I’ve tested SG too and came to the same conclusion. GR just works. I like that I can get really granular with it. Yeah the stats are cool on the other apps but that doesn’t make the day to day experience of using them easier.
Yeah I really didn't like Storygraph's UI. I was using it alongside GR for awhile and ultimately I just like GR better for the purpose of tracking my books and looking at reviews.
I don't think I'll ever stop using goodreads just for the simplicity of it for me, but I've tried Storygraph and Fable. Fable is a bit overwhelming to me because of all the social stuff, but I like the stats and graphics it gives and the streak features keeps me motivated. Storygraph was nice and had goot stats as well, but something about it put me off and I proceeded to forget to log books for a bit and just never went back.
I liked seeing my friends updates on Goodreads. I don’t like seeing the ‘popular in fantasy this week’ on the homepage bc it’s never helpful for me lol
I will never understand why people endlessly complain about awards being popularity contests. It’s like complaining about something like the B&N bestseller list being full of the most sold books.
Personally, I do not think that choices should pull from any shelf but the read shelf. Just because a lot of people what to read a book, doesn't make it a good book.
YOU CAN CHANGE THE VERSION YOU ARE READING IN A BOOK ON GOODREADS. 1) search for the book you want 2) go to its homepage 3) hit the button near the top that says ‘Book Details’ 4) then click versions (there are over 2,500 versions of War and Peace on there!) 5) then scroll until you find the one you want (audiobooks are also here) and add it to whichever shelf you’re intending (want to read, currently reading etc.) That’s it! Enjoy 😊 ❤
I got annoyed sometimes when people complain about goodreads being the way it's always been instead of seeking out a platform that suits their needs better. every app has good and bad things I personally use 3 and a spreadsheet but you can always just pick the one that meets more of your needs. personally I feel like the choice awards are like Christmas I love it. if it was taken away because you can never make everyone happy I'd be crushed. I wish we could have multiple choice awards a year and celebrate more authors.
39:43 you CAN change this in your settings! I have mine set so that I only see reviews in my feed. I don't know that you can change which of your activities come up on your friends and following people's feeds though, they would have to change those settings for themselves to not see your page updates or want to read adds
Only about halfway through, but so many of these complaints are things Storygraph does. Half stars? How about quarter stars. Want to make a DNF? Go for it. All reviews aggregated regardless of edition? Yep. Will even tell you if you're reading a review from a different edition. Also extremely easy to browse editions. There's a button for that.
I love Storygraph too! Even when writing a review they have different sections about the tone, pace and characters that you can answer very easily without writing anything
I also love StoryGraph! I love that you can also do custom reading challenges, buddy reads, and book clubs in the app. And the developers actively seek out and act on feedback from StoryGraph users. ❤
@@brittanyallemanayers3447 Oh, I didn’t know there were clubs on StoryGraph! The only edge I felt GR had on SG was the social aspect of groups and message boards. (I’m trying out Fable for this reason.)
Huh, the title is odd a bunch of letters and numbers, idk if it’s a problem with my phone or with the upload (thanks for all your great videos Elliot! Just writing this in case it’s helpful to identify a problem)
There’s a whole lot of “I hated reading this in school so I’m giving it a low rating” reviews, which are people’s personal experiences, but which are more like revenge than actual reviews. And are often books that are a totally different reading experience for a more mature audience. So it’s a game of “is this rating reflective of the book or the failures of the school system and the reader being too young?”
Every award I've ever heard of has inspired endless discussion about how it awards the wrong things, and I often think they award the wrong things, so I've just concluded that awards don't matter to me, whether it's goodreads, the Oscars, whatever. It's nice if something I like get an award, but otherwise, it's not worth worrying about. I don't use "want to read" on goodreads. There are so many books that i want to read, if i filled out that list honestly, every time i saw it, i'd feel a little bad about all the books i haven't read yet, and i don't need that. I rate high on purpose, for two reasons: 1. It means I don't have too worry about how "good" the book is and keep track of its flaws, i can just enjoy it; and 2. hopefully it helps to balance out all the too-low ratings like "I loved this book it was awesome can't wait for the next one, three stars."
I loved Goodreads when it existed back in like 2011 as an entity that wasn't pushing sales for Amazon. It felt like such a solid community of people who loved to read, give good feedback, critically look at literature, have book club discussions.. Amazon really destroyed a lot of it, and it's truly just a place where people go now to either hand out five star reviews or don't bother reviewing because they don't want to be "too mean".
I'm commenting as I'm listening so: 1) I feel like GR has said that they're not going to add half-stars (ever) which is disappointing. 2) Agree with what the person said about how GR is turning into an arm of publicity. In the past few years, I've stopped trusting the ratings of newer releases (especially in romantasy, romance, thrillers, and mystery) and stuck to reviews to see if it's something I'll enjoy. I also agree with Elliot in regards to ratings in some genres being skewed one way or another. In addition, imo ratings in some genres tend to feel more like a popularity vote/ rating as per enjoyment (not wrong or anything) as opposed to a more constructive and unbiased rating (which I prefer) and so I rely on UA-cam or Reddit for recs in those genres. 3) The GR awards are a mess but I like seeing what's been popular that year in genres I rarely read but am interested in. I also used to not vote if I'd not read more than a couple books in a category, but this year I voted even if I'd read only one contender. 4) Very interesting idea about counting votes of both rounds differently. Never thought of that but it makes so much more sense! 5) The GR app is rubbish. I use the website even on my phone.
I think goodreads should have a readers choice winner, and a ratings winner for each category. that way we could see who the readers pick... but we could also see what books are actually rated the highest on the website in general as well. I also think ratings for different things would be great. So each book you read you could rate it in 5 categories. Writing, plot, pacing, enjoyment... etc. i think this would be really interesting info, then they could just average them out for the overall rating.
I agree that a DNF shelf should be integrated in the default shelf options, but on the full website (not the app as far as I know) you can create a shelf and indicate it to be exclusive (so it won’t appear on Read, Currently Reading, or Want to Read). I don’t know if books added to the shelf will be included in the annual goal or not.. I could see how people might want that either way!
On the app, you can make either a shelf or a tag, and a shelf will be exclusive while a tag is not. The thing I've noticed with Goodreads is that their website experience is 10x better than the app. If they tossed some money into their app, especially the Android one, it would fix a lot of problems. But the website has always been a pretty good experience for me.
responsee to all the 'its a popularity contest' claims: yeah thats kind of the point, this is the people's choice awards for books. if you want awards thats are based more in skill than popular opinion, then go to like the hugos or nebula awards. like yeah they should fix the fact that unreleased books are considered, but like its absolutely just the PCAs for books.
Sometimes, that 1-star rating comes from the reason why the book was a DNF. I've DNF'd stories when I say "I don't care what happens" or the writing is so full of errors (self published books with abundant wrong words that suggest the author just used spellcheck and took the first option whether or not it made any sense--so there's confused hear/here, they're/their, and so on). I mean, if the 50 pages I *did* read are a steaming pile, there's no reason to think it's going to be any different in the rest of it.
Mandatory comment highlighting how Amazon owns Goodreads and will never meaningfully improve it in order to keep as much attention on Amazon site book reviews as possible, so if you're unhappy with Goodreads please abandon it for something else because that's the only way we'll ever get a better alternative.
And if the choice is ever, "Amazon or something else," it's probably a good idea to go with something else. Just in terms of trying to make the book landscape more diverse and less predatory.
Love how you created context around YA books - especially that they may be the first introduction a new reader has to fantasy. Many of the people I often discuss books with kind of look down on anything labeled YA, and I always want to tell not to dismiss a book simply because it's YA, but I haven't always had the language to articulate why. Very helpful insights into how to have meaningful discussions with genres or age-ranges you're not as familiar with/ only believe stereotypes about. 😊
I’ve tried to make the switch but I’m just not enjoying it. Maybe it’s just the app that’s not the best? My biggest problem is that when I want to read reviews I can’t just look at 3 star reviews or 1 star reviews. They are all mixed, and from what I’ve seen there is no way to organize them in the app?
@AshCerto Yeah, that isn't currently an option, but I think it's coming in their next round of updates. If you search 'StoryGraph roadmap' you can see everything they're working on. They're still quite a small company, so updates take time, but they really value their users and keep us in the know about everything that's going on with the app.
I've been using GR for so long but have started using Storygraph and Fable and really like both. The review systems both have more detailed options other than *type your review here and publish*. And they both have 1/4 stars which I greatly appreciate.
They can still collect them under one heading so all reviews are in one place (with a note of which edition is being rated), and then you could choose an edition from a dropdown menu or something similar.
for the idea of submitting books for the choice awards, it would be cool if it was something more built in. Maybe something like upon marking a book as read you get a button or pop up with something along the lines of 'I nominate this book for the Goodreads Choice Awards' it gives the option for more user input without it being a whole process. They can draw information from whats popular or whatever their metric for deciding what to nominate is, but adding multiple sorces gives a more diverse pool of books
I don't know if this would actually work well or not, but I think Goodreads limiting your first round of votes to only books you've read before they announce the nominees might be a good way to cut back on some of the bots and intense fans creating multiple accounts. Maybe also having a requirement that your account be a certain number of days old or having activity requirements of like 30, 60, or 90 days before the second round of voting begins?
This year I’ve voted for a book I haven’t read. Made a good guess as to who will come second and I’m hoping to outvote the absolutely awful book I did read that is extremely likely to win 😅 that one I did read and I have no regrets for doing this 😂 The Teacher and When the moon hatched were the worst books I’ve read this year and seeing them win will hurt.
I do rate by my emotional reaction, because I struggle to be objective, and struggle with knowing how to be critical. I think it's tricky with popular books, because sometimes people can just love a book that happens to be popular, but you can't always trust that. I also think not everyone is trying to be a professional reviewer and just want to show their love or hate for a book. There is a comment thread still going on for one of The Keeper pf the Lost Cities books where most agree with the reviewer's review, but there are also people who comment saying the other people are wrong. I find this ridiculous, because these are just opinions, and I don't like it when people say "you're wrong" about your opinion. There is no right or wrong just people having an opinion.
First off, love your videos. Found numerous book suggestions just from watching your vids. As for Goodreads, you mentioned they're "associated" with Amazon which is true as they are OWNED by Amazon; so, yes they're going to push buying over anything else. They're hoping you'll read a review then buy the book from them. I won't have anything to do with GR and I've started looking into Storygraph based on comments here.
29:00 this happened to me. i made a review on a book and I gave it 3 stars and said what I didn't like about it (mainly that for a YA series that mentions multiple times to be spice-free they still had a kinda spicy scene in the LAST BOOK which came as such a shock to me) and then got someone writing a positive review and mentioning ME by NAME as giving a stupid review and what not. i then replied to them and told them it was rude this was just MY OPINION but they didn't care. and what's weirder Is that this user had only ever rated this book which was weird as I said it was a 3rd book of a trilogy so I was pretty sure it was the author and I replied to them saying that and guess what? they actually deleted the review after... incredibly sus and because of all of this I left Goodreads. it sucks because I didn't export all my reviews beforehand or said goodbye to any of my friends there and I kinda miss them. also this book series was actually one of my comfort ones like I legit loved the first 2 (I gave both 5 stars) and having the literal author offending me for giving her last book 3 stars was pretty heartbreaking, I cant reread the first 2 anymore because of that or read her newest ones... alas this was long but this was my main issue with Goodreads and why I left and am only using StoryGraph now. sure it's not social but I'm fine with it, I write my opinions, give pretty accurate ratings (they have quarter stars) and enjoy looking at the stats. ALSO the way Goodreads Choice Awards just removed Middle Grade, Graphic Novels and Poetry is INSANE. they were literally my favorite categories, loved voting them and getting new recs from there but poof they're gone now... what even is the point aymore???
My Goodreads complaint: It feels like they ignore very large sections of there own website. For example, the "groups" portion of the website. Why don't we have more promotion or interaction (like we have with with all the articles and lists recommending books) with this side of things. There are many things they could do with this but again it's all about selling the books so these things don't seem to matter to them. I used to be very active in some of the groups. This is a very very active user base that is effectively ignored by Goodreads.
I can occasionally get the Recommendations function in Goodreads to work for me, but often it tries to push really random stuff. Like I read a folklore graphic novel, suddenly it's suggesting Big Nate books. Excuse me? Or if I read something and rate it low, GR wants to suggest things based on my having read it at all. A more complex recommendations forumla would be so cool. People who liked Book A and B and didn't like Book C also liked... They have the raw data to pull it off, but it's hard work so they'll probably never do it.
In terms of the star rating system in goodreads, the goodreads uses that for their recommendation algorithm. Adding half star options would potentially require them to update their recommendation algorithm, which might be harder than we all think it is. That's the only reason I can think of for why they haven't already given us that half star option.
I think you should be able to turn off notifications for books, authors and possibly genres you don’t want to see. I hate scrolling through my Goodreads feed because certain books, authors, and genres continually pop up just because they are trending, popular, or your friends are reading them. I want my feed to reflect what I enjoy, and recommend books I would be interested in reading.
I so agree on the DNF button! I try to never give a rating when I DNF a book, but I still like to at them to my read list. Also because sometimes I read a lot from the book, but DMF it towards the end. So it would be great to be able to click on DNF. And yes the website needs half star ratings. Sometimes I find it so hard to rate a book. So half stars would help me a lot.
I started to use StoryGraph because of how much Goodreads irked me. My personal experience went up 10x at least 😅 I love graphs and data. If you have plus account it's even better. I rather support them as a small team doing their best (often times more than hide company like Goodreads). The experience is also better if you read in different languages. Adding other edition of books is easier. Other editions matter - they have info about translators in other languages, plus even in the same language the book content isn't always the same.
You can already make a DNF shelf and easily change editions. And the Goodreads Choice Awards are, by definition, a people's choice award 😐 There are plenty of other book awards out there with different criteria. But yeah, it's crazy that you can vote for books that aren't even released yet!
One thing I wish goodreads would do is link to Libby, the Amazon link was fine but I don’t buy many books from Amazon. Other than that I actually specifically chose good reads for its simplicity, large catalog, and I like a good ol popularity contest - just to know what’s going on I don’t read many popular books 🤷🏾♀️
i'm an author and due to some issues with the printer, i had to change the colours of my cover. for some reason, even though i was given special permission to edit my book's details on goodreads, it doesn't let me delete the cover i uploaded to replace with the new one.
"EB1B2D12 C09D 40C2 9608 1938BA238CE7" I don't know why your title shows up like this to me. It's the second video where the title is like this, hence I have no idea what the video is about. Is this some kind of code I don't know about or is an issue with YT ?
I’ve never used goodreads but now that I’m reading a lot more than previously and being more analytical about my reading I would like to use something to track, rate and reflect on what I’ve read. Maybe there’s a good app for that? I tried to look through goodreads’s setup and got myself super confused. I couldn’t figure out how to write myself private notes vs leaving a public review. I totally felt lame, I’m not even old so I don’t have that excuse 😅
I think seeing your friends updates are fun, friends accepting new friend requests? I dont need to see that lol especially when some are booktubers or booktokers so it's like... So many a day and literally fills your entire feed haha
30:49 Yes! Watching my GR friends vote for books that they haven't actually read yet is depressing. Like, what is the point of the awards if we're voting for books we haven't read?
Yes, they really should add half star ratings!! So many times I'm like, ok, this isn't a 3 but not quite a 4 and it would be amazing to have the half star option. For DNFs I made a shelf for them so I can keep track but also not rate them. So my 4 are the usual 3, read, currently reading, want to read and DNFed. It would be cool to just have that an option with the star rating though.
The gr awards eligibility period is always available in the rules section. The first round always goes live the day after the eligibility period ends. The 2025 awards will start Nov 12, 2025
I like that the Goodreads Choice Awards gives the majority of their prizes to women writers unlike the Booker Prize, almost all the winners in the fiction category over the years have been women, including last year's Yellowface by R F Kuang. Weyward last year's winner of Historical Fiction and Debut Novel was a fantastic read, I probably wouldn't have picked it up if I hadn't heard about it through the Goodreads awards.
arround the 19minuet mark, i absolutely hate it when publishers do this. one if there are more books in the series let me know just in the front material of the book, and guess what, I'll go buy those other books first, you get more sales. if i have a feeling that a book might be part of a series I'll just not buy it now until I've gone back home and found out, book shops including online are pretty bad at sorting by series especially for authors like brandon sanderson, not that there are many authors like brandon sanderson. in the front of the uk editions of any realm of the elderlings books it tells you the other books of the series in order, why can't all other books that are part of a series just have this, it should be the default. you shouldn't feel like you have to reserch books online before you commit to buying something in a bookshop. sorry about my spelling and grammar on this post. its early and i cant be bothered to fix it, i promise I'm not a moron just being lazy.
good reads begin owned by amazon could prove that you've read the book on kindle or listend to the audio book, can't do anything for phisical though. around 31min mark
Unpopular opinion: If people are still clinging to Goodreads when much better apps are (and have been for years) are available - Storygraph and Fable leap to mind - that's on them at this point. That's like hanging onto a briefcase-sized cell phone and clutching your pearls as someone says "Here's a smart phone" and ignoring it. Both apps make it easy to import your Goodreads data over, too, so it's not even a matter of losing your reading data, it's a matter of resisting change. 🤷♀️
Not an unpopular opinion. Just one that doesn't consider all factors. for example the fact that many of us have friends on Goodreads who don't have storygraph 🤷🏻
these new apps have a very limited archive of non-english books. my native language is persian and there were so many books that i couldn't find in there and had to add it myself which is a pain in the ass.
Just an obvious point: Elle’s question was specifically about Goodreads, not other platforms. Of course people talked about Goodreads. She didn’t ask about Storygraph or Fable. The better analogy is this: someone asks, “why are your thoughts about apples?”, people answer, and then others respond, “But why didn’t everyone discuss the pros and cons of bananas?”
@@michaelmasiello6752 Correct. I understood her points; however, I am saying that complaining has proven ineffective with Goodreads. They know them. They know they are an orange. People have said for years "Hey, orange, you'd really be better if you could capture some of the creaminess of the banana." And Goodreads doubles down and ignores. They have literally millions of dollars and developers at their disposal to change things, yet they CHOOSE to do nothing about it. So it's tone-deaf to think at this point - after years of these complaints - that they're going to do anything. It's time to move on. Fable and Storygraph are MUCH smaller companies and yet they are constantly LISTENING to their users' feedback and making improvements. Goodreads has become like a toxic relationship: people want to complain but they also don't want to give it up despite Goodreads stating over and over, "I'm just not that interested in you, you'll get what I feel like giving you."
I've stopped using Goodreads at some point because it just wasn't worth it. Too slow, too confusing when it comes to translated books, 5 star rating system is too rigid, book challenges turn reading into a soulless productivity race, and it just looks bad. Switched to documenting my reading on insta and never looked back. I kinda admire people who look at that mess of a service and see something worth saving.
I use romance io for books too. I use it more for tropes / themes that could be uncomfortable for me to read. I also think it's interesting because you can also click for tropes or themes you more so like. (so example: sapphic.) so its nice because you can avoid discomforts, while also factoring in things your more keen/interested in reading. I like this too because It doesn't really spoil the book for me. (It is mostly romance, but I've seen even Brandon Sanderson's books on there. And I know his books aren't heavy romance leaning.) They also have a lovely spice rating system too. I find with goodreads now with books, a lot of people spoil main plots to a book. Like you can find out who dies, who falls in love, who is the one everyone is supposed to hate, etc. (example, Fourth wing reviewers. >.>;' ) Which is fine if its just people sharing their excitement, but I find too no one gives a spoiler warning, so if your looking to see if a book would suit your interests, it gets completely ruined prior to you even reading it. (I feel like communities in some ways lack spoilers now? Sorta a "not my problem, should've read it prior to looking online" attitude I've seen more recently.)
17:33 Goodreads bookshelves can be edited to include a DNF shelf (or any shelf you want) by marking it as 'exclusive' in the settings. It will appear in the button just like 'want to read' or 'read,' etc do. But yeah, it should've been included by default.
I found out about it this year, after using the app for 9 years..... I knew about the tags though.
I just found out about this very recently. I knew about tags but didn't realize I could add custom shelves. Now I have the standard 3 and then a soft DNF of books that I have started but need to revisit/restart, and then another shelf of books I'm well into but not in the mood for.
Goodreads also elevates the exposure of books featuring minority protagonists over ones with white protagonists(especially if they're male). Political correct DEI trash is super absurd these days. :/
@@Dizaster977 you do realize that white authors and white characters are promoted WAAAYY more than any minority protagonist or writer so Im confused as to why you have a problem with DEI.
@Sarasstorytime22 - most prominent authors, at least in the past, were white and many protagonists written by whatever writer tends to have a lot of personal trends with their own protagonist. The honest thing to say is that your own protagonists tend to lean towards what you are because people tend to write what they know....... which would be their own race. What I am saying is that more and more white men are self publishing and more and more man hating cnts are literally posting online to "don't support white authors and ignore stories with white protagonists". Which has literally been happening in fkn movies and tv shows and comics and all kinds of video games... which is probable fkn reality. So WTF are YOU on about, Sweetpea?
I’ve had Goodreads for a long time. I’ve been trying story graph the past 6ish months. I really like the story graph stats features and how it tracks my personal reading. I really don’t like other features like the lack of social, how reviews are buried. I also find the UI to be excessively minimalist in reaction to Goodreads opposite approach. I feel like I have to click through 10 different menus to do basic tasks. So while I like the stats and summaries story graph makes on my reading, I find Goodreads to be a much more useable and valuable website despite the many problems, old formats that need updates
Have you used Fable? I find it the most social of the 3. It's basically like Facebook but with books/TV. I'll see random people who I don't know IRL but are reading books I've read/saved. I also will see bookish posts, like what are your favorite books for fall, etc. It's really promoting just bookish discussion which I'm really enjoying and don't see that happening on GR or Storygraph. I do like Storygraph for the data, and just use GR as a habit of having it since my 20s.
@@brendanl8390 YES to the buried reviews and click through 10 things to get where I need to be! I have both Goodreads and StoryGraph on my phone and I use Goodreads more than I use StoryGraph. I will only track a book on StoryGraph so I can have the chart/graphs.
I agree, it looks cleaner but I hate the interface on storygraph. The personal tracking is good, but you can do that elsewhere as well. I use notion and created my personal book tracker. Fully customisable and I love it.
1000% same. I’ve tested SG too and came to the same conclusion. GR just works. I like that I can get really granular with it. Yeah the stats are cool on the other apps but that doesn’t make the day to day experience of using them easier.
Yeah I really didn't like Storygraph's UI. I was using it alongside GR for awhile and ultimately I just like GR better for the purpose of tracking my books and looking at reviews.
I don't think I'll ever stop using goodreads just for the simplicity of it for me, but I've tried Storygraph and Fable. Fable is a bit overwhelming to me because of all the social stuff, but I like the stats and graphics it gives and the streak features keeps me motivated. Storygraph was nice and had goot stats as well, but something about it put me off and I proceeded to forget to log books for a bit and just never went back.
I liked seeing my friends updates on Goodreads. I don’t like seeing the ‘popular in fantasy this week’ on the homepage bc it’s never helpful for me lol
I will never understand why people endlessly complain about awards being popularity contests. It’s like complaining about something like the B&N bestseller list being full of the most sold books.
Personally, I do not think that choices should pull from any shelf but the read shelf. Just because a lot of people what to read a book, doesn't make it a good book.
YOU CAN CHANGE THE VERSION YOU ARE READING IN A BOOK ON GOODREADS.
1) search for the book you want
2) go to its homepage
3) hit the button near the top that says ‘Book Details’
4) then click versions (there are over 2,500 versions of War and Peace on there!)
5) then scroll until you find the one you want (audiobooks are also here) and add it to whichever shelf you’re intending (want to read, currently reading etc.)
That’s it! Enjoy 😊 ❤
I can confirm! I often do this. Though I think it’s only possible via the browser version (not the app)
@@lululala4658 It definitely works in the app for me too, my friend
@@lululala4658the app also has it! 85% of the time I need to switch bc of the default cover not being the one I picked up..
@@lululala4658 You can do it via the app as well! You have to swipe left on the book icon and you get to "more details and editions". :)
@@lululala4658you can do it on the app! I do this all the time because I must get the correct version I read for an accurate page count
I got annoyed sometimes when people complain about goodreads being the way it's always been instead of seeking out a platform that suits their needs better. every app has good and bad things I personally use 3 and a spreadsheet but you can always just pick the one that meets more of your needs. personally I feel like the choice awards are like Christmas I love it. if it was taken away because you can never make everyone happy I'd be crushed. I wish we could have multiple choice awards a year and celebrate more authors.
39:43 you CAN change this in your settings!
I have mine set so that I only see reviews in my feed.
I don't know that you can change which of your activities come up on your friends and following people's feeds though, they would have to change those settings for themselves to not see your page updates or want to read adds
Only about halfway through, but so many of these complaints are things Storygraph does.
Half stars? How about quarter stars.
Want to make a DNF? Go for it.
All reviews aggregated regardless of edition? Yep. Will even tell you if you're reading a review from a different edition. Also extremely easy to browse editions. There's a button for that.
Also thought that! Storygraph is my holy grail
I love Storygraph too! Even when writing a review they have different sections about the tone, pace and characters that you can answer very easily without writing anything
I also love StoryGraph! I love that you can also do custom reading challenges, buddy reads, and book clubs in the app. And the developers actively seek out and act on feedback from StoryGraph users. ❤
I was about to write this! Everything is already in StoryGraph and with a much better user experience 🩵
@@brittanyallemanayers3447 Oh, I didn’t know there were clubs on StoryGraph! The only edge I felt GR had on SG was the social aspect of groups and message boards. (I’m trying out Fable for this reason.)
People who want to predict their rating can leave like… notes? That’s part of the app
Huh, the title is odd a bunch of letters and numbers, idk if it’s a problem with my phone or with the upload (thanks for all your great videos Elliot! Just writing this in case it’s helpful to identify a problem)
think it's a problem with auto translated videos, I have the same problem
This has been happening to me as well with her last few videos. I think it has something to do with UA-cam's auto-translation...
Ahh i’m a native spanish speaker, so it’d make sense for it to auto translate. Weird. Thanks guys!
On my side it says "Item Code:" in Italian and random letters and numbers😂
Same for me french UA-cam
I only use GoodReads to keep track of the books I read. I don't trust the reviews after the scandals.
There’s a whole lot of “I hated reading this in school so I’m giving it a low rating” reviews, which are people’s personal experiences, but which are more like revenge than actual reviews. And are often books that are a totally different reading experience for a more mature audience. So it’s a game of “is this rating reflective of the book or the failures of the school system and the reader being too young?”
Every award I've ever heard of has inspired endless discussion about how it awards the wrong things, and I often think they award the wrong things, so I've just concluded that awards don't matter to me, whether it's goodreads, the Oscars, whatever. It's nice if something I like get an award, but otherwise, it's not worth worrying about. I don't use "want to read" on goodreads. There are so many books that i want to read, if i filled out that list honestly, every time i saw it, i'd feel a little bad about all the books i haven't read yet, and i don't need that. I rate high on purpose, for two reasons: 1. It means I don't have too worry about how "good" the book is and keep track of its flaws, i can just enjoy it; and 2. hopefully it helps to balance out all the too-low ratings like "I loved this book it was awesome can't wait for the next one, three stars."
I loved Goodreads when it existed back in like 2011 as an entity that wasn't pushing sales for Amazon. It felt like such a solid community of people who loved to read, give good feedback, critically look at literature, have book club discussions.. Amazon really destroyed a lot of it, and it's truly just a place where people go now to either hand out five star reviews or don't bother reviewing because they don't want to be "too mean".
I'm commenting as I'm listening so:
1) I feel like GR has said that they're not going to add half-stars (ever) which is disappointing.
2) Agree with what the person said about how GR is turning into an arm of publicity. In the past few years, I've stopped trusting the ratings of newer releases (especially in romantasy, romance, thrillers, and mystery) and stuck to reviews to see if it's something I'll enjoy. I also agree with Elliot in regards to ratings in some genres being skewed one way or another. In addition, imo ratings in some genres tend to feel more like a popularity vote/ rating as per enjoyment (not wrong or anything) as opposed to a more constructive and unbiased rating (which I prefer) and so I rely on UA-cam or Reddit for recs in those genres.
3) The GR awards are a mess but I like seeing what's been popular that year in genres I rarely read but am interested in. I also used to not vote if I'd not read more than a couple books in a category, but this year I voted even if I'd read only one contender.
4) Very interesting idea about counting votes of both rounds differently. Never thought of that but it makes so much more sense!
5) The GR app is rubbish. I use the website even on my phone.
I think goodreads should have a readers choice winner, and a ratings winner for each category. that way we could see who the readers pick... but we could also see what books are actually rated the highest on the website in general as well. I also think ratings for different things would be great. So each book you read you could rate it in 5 categories. Writing, plot, pacing, enjoyment... etc. i think this would be really interesting info, then they could just average them out for the overall rating.
I agree that a DNF shelf should be integrated in the default shelf options, but on the full website (not the app as far as I know) you can create a shelf and indicate it to be exclusive (so it won’t appear on Read, Currently Reading, or Want to Read). I don’t know if books added to the shelf will be included in the annual goal or not.. I could see how people might want that either way!
On the app, you can make either a shelf or a tag, and a shelf will be exclusive while a tag is not. The thing I've noticed with Goodreads is that their website experience is 10x better than the app. If they tossed some money into their app, especially the Android one, it would fix a lot of problems. But the website has always been a pretty good experience for me.
responsee to all the 'its a popularity contest' claims: yeah thats kind of the point, this is the people's choice awards for books. if you want awards thats are based more in skill than popular opinion, then go to like the hugos or nebula awards. like yeah they should fix the fact that unreleased books are considered, but like its absolutely just the PCAs for books.
I love these videos so much. I've been looking forward to this one in particular
Sometimes, that 1-star rating comes from the reason why the book was a DNF. I've DNF'd stories when I say "I don't care what happens" or the writing is so full of errors (self published books with abundant wrong words that suggest the author just used spellcheck and took the first option whether or not it made any sense--so there's confused hear/here, they're/their, and so on). I mean, if the 50 pages I *did* read are a steaming pile, there's no reason to think it's going to be any different in the rest of it.
Mandatory comment highlighting how Amazon owns Goodreads and will never meaningfully improve it in order to keep as much attention on Amazon site book reviews as possible, so if you're unhappy with Goodreads please abandon it for something else because that's the only way we'll ever get a better alternative.
And if the choice is ever, "Amazon or something else," it's probably a good idea to go with something else. Just in terms of trying to make the book landscape more diverse and less predatory.
Love how you created context around YA books - especially that they may be the first introduction a new reader has to fantasy.
Many of the people I often discuss books with kind of look down on anything labeled YA, and I always want to tell not to dismiss a book simply because it's YA, but I haven't always had the language to articulate why. Very helpful insights into how to have meaningful discussions with genres or age-ranges you're not as familiar with/ only believe stereotypes about. 😊
Elliot have you ever tried Storygraph? I made the switch two years ago and never looked back!
Storygraph is SUPERIOR! You can also make suggestions and they reply❤
Just installed the app at your recommendation two times. It kept freezing. Lol i guess ill use the website on my laptop.
I’ve tried to make the switch but I’m just not enjoying it. Maybe it’s just the app that’s not the best? My biggest problem is that when I want to read reviews I can’t just look at 3 star reviews or 1 star reviews. They are all mixed, and from what I’ve seen there is no way to organize them in the app?
@AshCerto Yeah, that isn't currently an option, but I think it's coming in their next round of updates. If you search 'StoryGraph roadmap' you can see everything they're working on.
They're still quite a small company, so updates take time, but they really value their users and keep us in the know about everything that's going on with the app.
I've been using GR for so long but have started using Storygraph and Fable and really like both. The review systems both have more detailed options other than *type your review here and publish*. And they both have 1/4 stars which I greatly appreciate.
The different editions is important because they can have different page lengths which matters for tracking your reading.
They can still collect them under one heading so all reviews are in one place (with a note of which edition is being rated), and then you could choose an edition from a dropdown menu or something similar.
for the idea of submitting books for the choice awards, it would be cool if it was something more built in. Maybe something like upon marking a book as read you get a button or pop up with something along the lines of 'I nominate this book for the Goodreads Choice Awards' it gives the option for more user input without it being a whole process. They can draw information from whats popular or whatever their metric for deciding what to nominate is, but adding multiple sorces gives a more diverse pool of books
24:00 no the predictive ratings are bizarre. If i were an author id be mad if someone just said "i didnt read this yet but its getting 1 star..." LMAO
I don't know if this would actually work well or not, but I think Goodreads limiting your first round of votes to only books you've read before they announce the nominees might be a good way to cut back on some of the bots and intense fans creating multiple accounts. Maybe also having a requirement that your account be a certain number of days old or having activity requirements of like 30, 60, or 90 days before the second round of voting begins?
This year I’ve voted for a book I haven’t read. Made a good guess as to who will come second and I’m hoping to outvote the absolutely awful book I did read that is extremely likely to win 😅 that one I did read and I have no regrets for doing this 😂 The Teacher and When the moon hatched were the worst books I’ve read this year and seeing them win will hurt.
I do rate by my emotional reaction, because I struggle to be objective, and struggle with knowing how to be critical. I think it's tricky with popular books, because sometimes people can just love a book that happens to be popular, but you can't always trust that. I also think not everyone is trying to be a professional reviewer and just want to show their love or hate for a book. There is a comment thread still going on for one of The Keeper pf the Lost Cities books where most agree with the reviewer's review, but there are also people who comment saying the other people are wrong. I find this ridiculous, because these are just opinions, and I don't like it when people say "you're wrong" about your opinion. There is no right or wrong just people having an opinion.
First off, love your videos. Found numerous book suggestions just from watching your vids. As for Goodreads, you mentioned they're "associated" with Amazon which is true as they are OWNED by Amazon; so, yes they're going to push buying over anything else. They're hoping you'll read a review then buy the book from them. I won't have anything to do with GR and I've started looking into Storygraph based on comments here.
29:00 this happened to me. i made a review on a book and I gave it 3 stars and said what I didn't like about it (mainly that for a YA series that mentions multiple times to be spice-free they still had a kinda spicy scene in the LAST BOOK which came as such a shock to me) and then got someone writing a positive review and mentioning ME by NAME as giving a stupid review and what not. i then replied to them and told them it was rude this was just MY OPINION but they didn't care. and what's weirder Is that this user had only ever rated this book which was weird as I said it was a 3rd book of a trilogy so I was pretty sure it was the author and I replied to them saying that and guess what? they actually deleted the review after... incredibly sus and because of all of this I left Goodreads. it sucks because I didn't export all my reviews beforehand or said goodbye to any of my friends there and I kinda miss them. also this book series was actually one of my comfort ones like I legit loved the first 2 (I gave both 5 stars) and having the literal author offending me for giving her last book 3 stars was pretty heartbreaking, I cant reread the first 2 anymore because of that or read her newest ones... alas this was long but this was my main issue with Goodreads and why I left and am only using StoryGraph now. sure it's not social but I'm fine with it, I write my opinions, give pretty accurate ratings (they have quarter stars) and enjoy looking at the stats. ALSO the way Goodreads Choice Awards just removed Middle Grade, Graphic Novels and Poetry is INSANE. they were literally my favorite categories, loved voting them and getting new recs from there but poof they're gone now... what even is the point aymore???
My Goodreads complaint: It feels like they ignore very large sections of there own website. For example, the "groups" portion of the website. Why don't we have more promotion or interaction (like we have with with all the articles and lists recommending books) with this side of things. There are many things they could do with this but again it's all about selling the books so these things don't seem to matter to them. I used to be very active in some of the groups. This is a very very active user base that is effectively ignored by Goodreads.
I can occasionally get the Recommendations function in Goodreads to work for me, but often it tries to push really random stuff. Like I read a folklore graphic novel, suddenly it's suggesting Big Nate books. Excuse me? Or if I read something and rate it low, GR wants to suggest things based on my having read it at all.
A more complex recommendations forumla would be so cool. People who liked Book A and B and didn't like Book C also liked... They have the raw data to pull it off, but it's hard work so they'll probably never do it.
StoryGraph doesnt have these issues at all and their recomemandations are super accurate, its great
In terms of the star rating system in goodreads, the goodreads uses that for their recommendation algorithm. Adding half star options would potentially require them to update their recommendation algorithm, which might be harder than we all think it is. That's the only reason I can think of for why they haven't already given us that half star option.
I think you should be able to turn off notifications for books, authors and possibly genres you don’t want to see. I hate scrolling through my Goodreads feed because certain books, authors, and genres continually pop up just because they are trending, popular, or your friends are reading them. I want my feed to reflect what I enjoy, and recommend books I would be interested in reading.
I so agree on the DNF button! I try to never give a rating when I DNF a book, but I still like to at them to my read list. Also because sometimes I read a lot from the book, but DMF it towards the end. So it would be great to be able to click on DNF. And yes the website needs half star ratings. Sometimes I find it so hard to rate a book. So half stars would help me a lot.
You can create a DNF tag.
Just create a shelf and set it to DESIGNATED. Don't ask me how, I did it years ago.
I started to use StoryGraph because of how much Goodreads irked me.
My personal experience went up 10x at least 😅 I love graphs and data.
If you have plus account it's even better.
I rather support them as a small team doing their best (often times more than hide company like Goodreads).
The experience is also better if you read in different languages. Adding other edition of books is easier. Other editions matter - they have info about translators in other languages, plus even in the same language the book content isn't always the same.
why is the title a bunch of letters?
You can already make a DNF shelf and easily change editions. And the Goodreads Choice Awards are, by definition, a people's choice award 😐 There are plenty of other book awards out there with different criteria. But yeah, it's crazy that you can vote for books that aren't even released yet!
One thing I wish goodreads would do is link to Libby, the Amazon link was fine but I don’t buy many books from Amazon. Other than that I actually specifically chose good reads for its simplicity, large catalog, and I like a good ol popularity contest - just to know what’s going on I don’t read many popular books 🤷🏾♀️
i'm an author and due to some issues with the printer, i had to change the colours of my cover. for some reason, even though i was given special permission to edit my book's details on goodreads, it doesn't let me delete the cover i uploaded to replace with the new one.
"EB1B2D12 C09D 40C2 9608 1938BA238CE7" I don't know why your title shows up like this to me. It's the second video where the title is like this, hence I have no idea what the video is about. Is this some kind of code I don't know about or is an issue with YT ?
It seems to be UA-cam auto-translate malfunctioning
@ oh, thanks for answering.
Ratings are arbitrary unless you’re familiar with how a particular user rates things 🤷🏼♀️
I’ve never used goodreads but now that I’m reading a lot more than previously and being more analytical about my reading I would like to use something to track, rate and reflect on what I’ve read. Maybe there’s a good app for that? I tried to look through goodreads’s setup and got myself super confused. I couldn’t figure out how to write myself private notes vs leaving a public review. I totally felt lame, I’m not even old so I don’t have that excuse 😅
I think seeing your friends updates are fun, friends accepting new friend requests? I dont need to see that lol especially when some are booktubers or booktokers so it's like... So many a day and literally fills your entire feed haha
I agree with your points
I'm going to give Story Graph a try.
List creation should be much easier in the app.
This whole video could just be an advertisement for StoryGraph which is significantly better!
I really enjoy StoryGraph. Much better than GR.
30:49 Yes! Watching my GR friends vote for books that they haven't actually read yet is depressing. Like, what is the point of the awards if we're voting for books we haven't read?
Audible integration!!!!
Yes, they really should add half star ratings!! So many times I'm like, ok, this isn't a 3 but not quite a 4 and it would be amazing to have the half star option.
For DNFs I made a shelf for them so I can keep track but also not rate them. So my 4 are the usual 3, read, currently reading, want to read and DNFed. It would be cool to just have that an option with the star rating though.
The gr awards eligibility period is always available in the rules section. The first round always goes live the day after the eligibility period ends. The 2025 awards will start Nov 12, 2025
I don't like the app on my phone. It looks like it needs a huge update. It kinda reminds me of a DOS program from the '90s 😅
I like that the Goodreads Choice Awards gives the majority of their prizes to women writers unlike the Booker Prize, almost all the winners in the fiction category over the years have been women, including last year's Yellowface by R F Kuang. Weyward last year's winner of Historical Fiction and Debut Novel was a fantastic read, I probably wouldn't have picked it up if I hadn't heard about it through the Goodreads awards.
arround the 19minuet mark, i absolutely hate it when publishers do this. one if there are more books in the series let me know just in the front material of the book, and guess what, I'll go buy those other books first, you get more sales. if i have a feeling that a book might be part of a series I'll just not buy it now until I've gone back home and found out, book shops including online are pretty bad at sorting by series especially for authors like brandon sanderson, not that there are many authors like brandon sanderson. in the front of the uk editions of any realm of the elderlings books it tells you the other books of the series in order, why can't all other books that are part of a series just have this, it should be the default. you shouldn't feel like you have to reserch books online before you commit to buying something in a bookshop. sorry about my spelling and grammar on this post. its early and i cant be bothered to fix it, i promise I'm not a moron just being lazy.
good reads begin owned by amazon could prove that you've read the book on kindle or listend to the audio book, can't do anything for phisical though. around 31min mark
HALF STARS HALF STARS HALF STARS 😤😤
Unpopular opinion: If people are still clinging to Goodreads when much better apps are (and have been for years) are available - Storygraph and Fable leap to mind - that's on them at this point. That's like hanging onto a briefcase-sized cell phone and clutching your pearls as someone says "Here's a smart phone" and ignoring it. Both apps make it easy to import your Goodreads data over, too, so it's not even a matter of losing your reading data, it's a matter of resisting change. 🤷♀️
Not an unpopular opinion. Just one that doesn't consider all factors. for example the fact that many of us have friends on Goodreads who don't have storygraph 🤷🏻
these new apps have a very limited archive of non-english books. my native language is persian and there were so many books that i couldn't find in there and had to add it myself which is a pain in the ass.
Just an obvious point: Elle’s question was specifically about Goodreads, not other platforms. Of course people talked about Goodreads. She didn’t ask about Storygraph or Fable. The better analogy is this: someone asks, “why are your thoughts about apples?”, people answer, and then others respond, “But why didn’t everyone discuss the pros and cons of bananas?”
@@michaelmasiello6752 Correct. I understood her points; however, I am saying that complaining has proven ineffective with Goodreads. They know them. They know they are an orange. People have said for years "Hey, orange, you'd really be better if you could capture some of the creaminess of the banana." And Goodreads doubles down and ignores. They have literally millions of dollars and developers at their disposal to change things, yet they CHOOSE to do nothing about it. So it's tone-deaf to think at this point - after years of these complaints - that they're going to do anything. It's time to move on. Fable and Storygraph are MUCH smaller companies and yet they are constantly LISTENING to their users' feedback and making improvements. Goodreads has become like a toxic relationship: people want to complain but they also don't want to give it up despite Goodreads stating over and over, "I'm just not that interested in you, you'll get what I feel like giving you."
@@daria_gl Get them to join you in switching over! Grassroots movement is how we effect change!
I'll never respect goodreads until they add the half stars
😂
Has anyone ever won a give away?
I have a handful of times!
@BaileeWalsh I've applied so many times. Never won. I was beginning to wonder.
Good reads is a joke. Booktubers are infinitely more valuable than whatever that mess is.
I've stopped using Goodreads at some point because it just wasn't worth it. Too slow, too confusing when it comes to translated books, 5 star rating system is too rigid, book challenges turn reading into a soulless productivity race, and it just looks bad. Switched to documenting my reading on insta and never looked back. I kinda admire people who look at that mess of a service and see something worth saving.
Wait--Goodreads is _still_ a thing? 🤨
I use romance io for books too. I use it more for tropes / themes that could be uncomfortable for me to read. I also think it's interesting because you can also click for tropes or themes you more so like. (so example: sapphic.) so its nice because you can avoid discomforts, while also factoring in things your more keen/interested in reading. I like this too because It doesn't really spoil the book for me. (It is mostly romance, but I've seen even Brandon Sanderson's books on there. And I know his books aren't heavy romance leaning.) They also have a lovely spice rating system too.
I find with goodreads now with books, a lot of people spoil main plots to a book. Like you can find out who dies, who falls in love, who is the one everyone is supposed to hate, etc. (example, Fourth wing reviewers. >.>;' ) Which is fine if its just people sharing their excitement, but I find too no one gives a spoiler warning, so if your looking to see if a book would suit your interests, it gets completely ruined prior to you even reading it. (I feel like communities in some ways lack spoilers now? Sorta a "not my problem, should've read it prior to looking online" attitude I've seen more recently.)
Am I the only one who sees "EB1B2D12 C09D 40C2 9608 1938BA238CE7" as the title?
Someone mentioned, in another comment, that it is from the auto translation. UA-cam is havin issues with it on her vids lately.