Online platforms have shifted the power dynamics between readers, authors and traditional gatekeepers—with readers able to share their emotional, moral and political reactions in real time. Do Goodreads reviewers now exercise too much power over publishers, or the right amount?
Reading is creative, active, and social; it is one of the ways people form and challenge their moral views. But these dimensions of reading haven’t always been visible. They have happened at home, at a book club with friends, or in the audiences of writers’ festivals. Then social media came along and now, from curated #bookstagram photos to Twitter threads to Goodreads and Amazon reviews, readers globally can share their views on books, authors, literary culture and the publishing industry. Some readers do this a little, some don’t do it at all. Some are highly active with a presence across multiple platforms and substantial followings of their own.
These new online spheres for readers bring with them a shift in power dynamics, and, inevitably, discussions over the appropriate use of these newly-amplified voices. In 2016, Harlequin distributed advance review copies of The Continent, a young adult novel by Keira Drake. Distributing ARCs is a standard marketing strategy to build buzz for a major new release, but it didn’t play out that way this time. Many readers used social media to criticise the book, objecting to its depiction of a white girl who brings peace to warring tribes and its use of stereotypes associated with Native American and Japanese cultures. The Continent was pulled, and its author willingly undertook revisions before a new version was released 18 months later. Were these readers exercising too much power? Or the right amount?
New online spheres for readers bring with them a shift in power dynamics, and, inevitably, discussions over the appropriate use of these newly-amplified voices.
To understand how readers exert influence, it’s important to appreciate the distinct styles of different social media platforms. The most public of these controversies play out on Twitter, but the most specifically bookish site is Goodreads, a platform designed for readers. Launched in 2006, the site has over 100 million members who use it to track their reading, participate in reading challenges, discover recommendations, catalogue their libraries, and write reviews.
These activities produce data for the book industry—new information about what readers really think. This has economic value—Twitter, Facebook, and Goodreads, which since 2013 has been owned by Amazon, profit from users’ engagement on their sites. We don’t know exactly how Amazon uses all its data, but Goodreads ratings, for example, feed into library recommendations software. The economic implications of readers’ online activities are also at the source of the new power relations of twenty-first century book culture; readers’ views expanded reach and weight.
While publishers have always theoretically been attentive to the desires of readers, these readers have typically been conceptualised in abstract, somewhat passive, terms. But now readers can directly influence the publishing industry. And compared to established tastemakers and gatekeepers, these readers are more likely to be young, to be women, to be people of colour; not necessarily already well-networked or located in metropolitan centres of London and New York.
About 75 per cent of Goodreads users present as women. Their agency redresses the persistent gender inequity in book culture, where those who speak have often been men. Writers’ festivals, for example, are most likely to have men on the stage and women in the audiences. In 2014, a panel of children’s authors at BookExpo in the US did not include any women or people of colour; Korean-American author Ellen Oh launched the #WeNeedDiverseBooks campaign in response. Social media upends the distinction between active and passive participants in book culture, expanding the authority of people otherwise marginalised by literary gatekeepers.
Social media upends the distinction between active and passive participants in book culture, expanding the authority of people otherwise marginalised by literary gatekeepers.
Partly, this new power is possible because online book culture—despite the risks of trolling, discriminatory algorithms, and prevalence of unpaid labour—hasn’t yet been closed off to marginalised groups in the way that traditional publishing and criticism have been. Social media allows for a new directness and immediacy in the relationships between readers, authors and publishers; one that is not dependent on mediators.
The directness of social media empowers readers to respond critically to statements that an author makes. One of the most striking examples of recent years is the response to J.K. Rowling, who wrote tweets that undermined transgender people, supported anti-trans activists and mocked trans-inclusive language. Rowling was criticised by readers on Twitter and on Goodreads—in reviews for Rowling’s 2020 novel Troubled Blood, readers objected to the stereotyping involved in Rowling’s creation of a cross-dressing serial killer, and linked this to her views on trans women.
At times like these, reader responses may move from individual moral judgements to collective political action. The term ‘cancel culture’ has been used—in increasingly bad faith—since 2016 to describe mass online actions against high-profile figures. Such actions are political because they are directly, consciously about the exercise of power: who has it, and how it should be used. For readers, this can involve efforts to counter the influence of an author, such as Rowling, who they see as doing harm. It can also mean taking action that defends readers’ rights to speak online. In April this year, author Lauren Hough posted a series of tweets criticising Goodreads ‘assholes’ who gave her book a four-star (rather than five-star) review. ‘Grow up,’ she posted, above a screenshot of two readers debating whether to round a 4.5 star review up or down. In response, thousands of readers gave her book one-star reviews.
An outpouring of one-star reviews might look like a disproportionate reaction. Perhaps some of the people leaving them didn’t even read the book! But not reading is part of the moral repertoire of readers too. Readers, like other social media users, adapt platforms for their own purposes—using stars to express interest in a forthcoming book or to respond to an author’s behaviour. The wide array of practices used by readers online exceeds the protocols of professional critics, and constitutes their own form of engagement with book culture. The one-star reviews for Hough’s book were an assertion of readers’ freedom to express themselves without interference from authors. Goodreads reviews are written for other readers, and it is poor form for authors to comment upon them—not least because authors are perceived as already having power in book culture.
But many authors do not feel very powerful. Published authors may have more prestige than readers, but most are also financially insecure, vulnerable to the decisions of risk-averse publishers and apprehensive about the effects of reader criticism. Authors who are used to treating social media as their own peer support network might not appreciate the ramifications of criticising a reader online.
Authors may have prestige, but most are also financially insecure, vulnerable to the decisions of risk-averse publishers and apprehensive of reader criticism.
This structural vulnerability goes some way to explaining the controversy that surrounded author New York Times-bestselling author Sarah Dessen in 2019. A local newspaper had run an article about Northern State University’s ‘Common Read’ program (in which all students read a book chosen by organisers). The article quoted a former student who said she had joined the organising committee specifically to stop them choosing a book by Sarah Dessen: ‘She’s fine for teen girls… But definitely not up to the level of Common Read.’ Dessen posted a screenshot of the quote (with the student’s name scribbled out) and called the student’s criticism ‘mean and cruel,’ writing ‘Authors are real people.’ Other authors responded to Dessen, including one who wrote ‘Fuck that fucking bitch’ (to which Dessen replied ‘I love you’). The online debate that followed included a defence of teen girls and their reading, but also criticism of Dessen, who was seen as punching down by singling out a reader (the name of the student was easily discovered and shared online). Dessen later deleted her tweet and apologised: ‘with a platform and a following, I have a responsibility to be aware of what I put out there. I know this apology doesn’t change what happened, but I am truly sorry.’
Is any of this censorship? To think of readers as censors requires seeing them as a mob of vigilantes, or a mass that turns the cogs of capitalist machinery. But the full picture is more nuanced. Periodic outbreaks of collective action are just one component of how readers exert influence through their aesthetic, moral and emotional judgements. Readers do more than get angry—they also express love, humour, and interest.
To think of readers as censors requires seeing them as a mob of vigilantes, or a mass that turns the cogs of capitalist machinery. But the full picture is more nuanced.
As part of my research over the past few years, I’ve read thousands of Goodreads reviews. Some are funny; some show curiosity or resistance; some are deeply personal. In many of them, emotion runs high. In a study I did with DeNel Rehberg Sedo, we found that around a quarter of Goodreads reviews used the word ‘love.’ In another study, Emmett Stinson and I found that reviews of Alexis Wright’s The Swan Book were suffused with feeling, including expressions of shame associated with Australian colonisers’ treatment of First Nations people.
Goodreads is clearly not just a commercial phenomenon, and not just a platform for political activism. Readers also use it to share their experiences, their aesthetic, emotional and moral responses to books, with an implied community of other readers that is imagined as intimate and non-hierarchical.
All of this is quite different to how professional book critics operate. Where professional critics write in a formal, objective register and aim to situate a given book within the larger context of literary culture, readers offer personal responses. The two forms of criticism are complementary, but given the shrinking outlets for professional criticism and the still-growing power of social media platforms, it is reader reviews that may end up being more influential. And so, perhaps the most profound effect of readers’ conduct online will be the personalisation of book culture, as social media networks publicise these individual reactions. Readers today have the capacity to express themselves more fully than ever before, including as moral actors and through collective engagement. This may mean more criticism of authors and publishers. But it also indicates a bigger shift in our understanding of books as deeply personal objects—ever more meaningfully entwined with readers’ emotions, beliefs and lives.
