Goodreads Reviews 188

I paid $120 to list my new book on Goodreads, hoping to get reviews. And I did a 100 e-book giveaway to jumpstart the reviews. 460 readers entered the drawing for the 100 e-book giveaway. In the end, four-readers read the book. Many who entered the drawing had thousands of unread books on their to-read list. Well… that’s my last listing on Goodreads!

The Warsaw Orphan

This book was by no means an easy read but the author kept you invested in the characters flaws and all. I couldn’t put it down it brought me to tears, made me laugh and smile but also shocked me to the realization of how cruel man can be to one another! A must read!!

This is a brilliantly crafted and beautifully layered memoire of young, adventurous travel and youthful romantic love in the mid 1980’s. It is much more than a straight forward narrative of the experience of travelling through some of the most remote areas of Fiji, New Zealand, Australia and Indonesia at that time. It is a multi faceted chronicle - both in style and content - lending it an extraordinary degree of depth and scope. A gripping tale of rough travel, with the reader being richly entertained by means of a fascinating series of brilliantly narrated digressions - a veritable feast of tangential jewels of knowledge acquisition along the way. Moreover, the author manages the narration of the story effortlessly and seamlessly through a telescopic frame of reference, ranging from private matters - through to social and cultural issues - to national and global issues and events. A compelling tale, and a thoroughly enjoyable reading experience, providing valuable insights into the problems and pitfalls of youthful rough travel- as well as it’s inherent thrills and excitement in the era before the Internet.

Strange trips and weird adventures is a great book to read very interesting my 9 year old granddaughter enjoyed reading it with me well done to the author

If this web-site is meant to help readers find books which may be of interest to them it fails miserably.

There is a paucity of categories in which you can express an interest for one thing. For instance You can say 'History' but not which period or area and Goodreads seems to think history begins and ends with the Second World War.

Books also end-up appearing in multiple categorises — the same ones show-up in History, Non-Fiction and Biography for instance.

A lot of the recommendations seem to be American as well. That isn't necessarily a bad thing but I'm more interested in my own country.

It's other function is as a place to leave and read reviews but these are obviously only as useful as somebody's opinion.

No monitoring, no support, and privacy violations on behalf of Goodreads staff when they do respond and decide to publish a private complaint in their forum that still includes identifiers (emails, names, etc). This is a violation of GDPR and California's Privacy law.

Really like this web site and all info that is listed on it, brilliantly layered and organised.
The most up to date and informative web site that I know of.
I really like that people are allowed to add books to their shelves and are able to 'name' those shelves anything they like.
Helping other people to look for books they might like because they can search for them.

They really want to know what you think before making updates.
Although, I think that the only update required is fixing something called "This page took too long to load..."

Great customer service.

As for the web site it is one of the best pearls in the ocean.

I purchased a book based upon glowing reviews. The book was utter tripe. I couldn’t understand all the glowing reviews. I wrote an honest review and it appears to have disappeared. Now I can see what’s what. Little wonder all the reviews are 5 stars. I did a little more digging, all the 5 star reviews received a free copy of the book or were friends with the author (easily investigated as Goodreads has visible friends lists).

It made me realise, I rarely find a book with low ratings on Goodreads. If the site is to believed we’re a planet of fantastic authors. All churning out Huckleberry Finn every weeknight and a couple of Citizen Kanes on the weekend to boot.

A pointless site seemingly set up to just be circular back pats between authors, their friends and people getting free books for “honest” reviews.

The Third Grace, by Deb Elkink
This is an amazing story and will take you from a primitive farm to the big city, and across the ocean, all from your easy chair. Deb's detailed story-writing brings the reader right on location with her extensive knowledge of what she's writing about and her descriptive prose. Whether it is scenery, customs, or foods, she nails it so well. The story encompasses many of today's twists and turns and subject matter. You don't want to miss this re-launch!

Great books catalog website. One of the biggest on the web.

Helpful to find my next read. Well organised site.

Negatives: There are often duplicates of books, particularly for kindle vs paper/hardback which is frustrating - ideally there would just be one book - the content is identical in the majority of cases. The site is international, therefore naturally tends to have a North American bias, due to the larger English speaking population representation i.e as someone from Britain, I struggle to find the best British reads, or topselling in the UK.

like most the reviews I was expecting a book not an ebook and I sent emails asking for a refund I recieved adament emails back say no refunds....I read Poppy's review on here and copied her letter and adapted it to my personal details and I got a refund almost immediately....this is the email I sent so if it helps anyone please use...but credit must go to Poppy (thank you)...

Your website gives the impression the books are hard copy books. No where > on your website does it mention the books are eBooks. Your website asks for > the my delivery address which further gives the impression that a book will > be posted to me. Once payment is made, you Sungoodbooks sends me an email > with a link to download an eBook. You are using misrepresentation by not > making it clear that they are selling eBooks. > > The website states all sales are final and you do not offer refunds. > However, in accordance with rights under the Consumer Contracts > (Information, Cancellation and Additional Charges) Regulations 2013, > customers have the right to cancel their contracts to buy items purchased > online > > Early October, I entered into a contract, online, to buy James Haskell > Flanker book, using your website. > In accordance with my rights under the Consumer Contracts (Information, > Cancellation and Additional Charges) Regulations 2013, I would like to > cancel the contract. > I require written confirmation from you that the contract has indeed been > cancelled and that you have refunded the payment of £7.30 in full to my > credit card. > > I am declining your offer of a coupon to use for a future purchase and have > sent two further emails, explaining this. > > I will be reporting Sungoodread to Google, Trading Standards and the Virago > Press Piracy Team if this is not sorted with immediate effect. > > Regards Rebecca Helm On Sun, 29 Nov 2020, 17:18 ,

Hello, > We are sorry that you are not happy with our service. > Please note we selling only e-books instant delivery to email after > purchase. > We have check and we can cancel your order if e-book is not good for you. > To cancel it please send your order number. > Full refund will be made in 24h. and you will receive it to your bank in > 4-7 days. > Best Regards > > On Tuesday, December 1, 2020 at 7:50 AM,

Good website for learning so much things.

DO NOT BUY FROM THIS COMPANY!
It is purely a digital edition that you receive. Nowhere on their site does it state this is the case. there are no refunds, despite having to comply with distance selling regulations. Based in the Far East judging by the language in their emails. Having to try and claim money paid back from the bank.
Completely misleading site and a scam!!

As both a reader and an author, I'm getting more and more disenchanted by Goodreads every day.

As a reader:

- Limited customization options for lists and shelving

- A million self-published authors all asking you to "please review my latest book!", usually by private message, which apparently Goodreads frowns upon, but who's going to regulate it?

- Bullying, trolling and political banter in the comments sections

- Sock puppet accounts inflating/deflating book ratings on purpose

- Bizarre rankings of top readers/reviewers (no way did anybody read over 3,000 books in a month)

- Counting audiobooks as "pages read" rather than time listened to

- Listopia and Goodreads Choice Awards just pushing the same bestselling stuff in readers' faces 24/7 (no, I don't want to read a Margaret Atwood or Alice Hoffman book!!!)

As an author:

- Inability to merge author pseudonyms into one common primary name, eliminating separate pseudonym accounts (apparently this is reserved for classic authors; even poor old Stephen King has to run a separate "Richard Bachman" profile).

- Rough drafts/review copies of books being put up on Goodreads just because they happen to have ISBNs

- Disambiguation issues

- GR Librarians abusing their power and deleting, adding, combining and merging things where they shouldn't be

- GR Librarians merging/linking pseudonyms to an author's profile when the author expresses a wish to keep the profiles separate

- Trans authors, authors who legally changed their names, authors whose name has been misspelled having two separate names and profiles rather than being allowed to have all their work linked under a preferred name

- Readers being permitted to leave ratings on unpublished books or books not yet released, which leads to Goodreads refusing to remove the books if they end up never being published for whatever reason.

- Readers leaving bad reviews for reasons relating to the author's conduct or personal life rather than the book itself

I could go on and on, but Goodreads has heard it all before, from numerous people with similar complaints. Goodreads pushes itself as both having the goal to be a global platform for books and reading, and also as a large catalogue of any existing books ever written. I think this downplays that, as the largest social media platform relating to books, and also as the very first place that readers look to when learning more about books, authors and genres, Goodreads has a great amount of corporate responsibility. It's not a library, as it displays many times when limiting itself purely to books only, so it should stop allowing anything with an ISBN to be added and should instead allow authors a bit more leeway in controlling what gets linked to their profile and what doesn't. I can see why they don't (there are authors who try to hide out-of-print books, for example), but as a reader, I've often found myself very confused with the content appearing on author profiles. One author and reviewer on Goodreads decided to use a separate pseudonym because a series of rough draft books intended purely for reviewing purposes only got leaked when her Createspace account was compromised; she took them out of print promptly, but they have ISBNs and keep popping up on Goodreads, even though they were unedited and unintended for publication at the stage they were in. Another author account has a profile with books featuring three separate author names on each book title because the author couldn't have her pseudonyms merged under one preferred name. There are deceased authors with multiple names, spelling variations and pseudonyms listed on separate profiles rather than merging them all under a common name, even though it's common knowledge at this point that the author(s) are all the same person.

And again, Goodreads: a fanfiction.net page is not a book. A blog is not a book. A rough draft is not a book. An ARC is not a book. Sure, what defines "book" is changing these days, and I'm not against Wattpad books or fanfiction officially published in a book or eBook format, but your "accurate catalogue" is a hot mess, and it's not getting any better.

More specifically to reading, I came to Goodreads looking for recommendations and like-minded readers, not to hear back-and-forth political bickering in the message boards and not to be told over and over again on Listopia that "The Hunger Games" is the best book ever. Goodreads doesn't function as an accurate catalogue of strictly published books alone. It doesn't function well socially, either. It used to be a lot of fun initially, but now I'm starting to see how flawed it is, and I find it more annoying than anything else. If there was a better alternative, I would just delete my account and move on.

Like keeping the account and journaling there about the books I read and the impression i received.

Goodreads site is misleading and corrupt. Another Amazon company you must pay to play, although the site claims to be free.

They are thieves. And no response. They have stolen or downloaded my book from amazon when it was free on special and published unlawful on their website. Scammers . criminals.

I only read the reviews of 3 stars and under. So many of the 5 star reviews got free books and then only give a long plot summary. That’s not an honest review. It seems to be a pay for reviews site. Not the only one out there to be fair.

As an avid reader I can say that I'm a fan of goodreads. This site has always helped me to decide on what I should read next. Lovely site!