ed2drobinski

Here's an excerpt from a post on the web by Zoe Desh. It may be found in its well written entirety under whygoodreadsucks. com or a number of other sites beginning with Zoe Desh. THIS IS OF NO INTEREST TO READERS. In fact, its better that they are kept in the dark about such goings on. BUT IT IS REQUIRED READING FOR ANY AUTHOR who would like not to be personally maligned and simultaneously be accused of maligning other authors; legal ramifications threatened.

Zoe's post very competently covers most areas my personal, one year, Goodreads experience endured. I might take the liberty of adding that, while I cannot present evidence acceptable to a court, it became LOGICALLY apparent to me that when I ran afoul of one or two of the GR librarians or super-librarians. I sometimes have doubted the things which happened to me inferred; thinking that I may have been dreaming up reasons  why my books didn't approach the sales levels of Rick Riordan, though in truth I was very briefly one of Kindle's top 20 and once three of my books simultaneously occupied numbers 8, 13 and 15 on their ever changing list. When I was deleted from GR I also has over 300 four and five star reviews deleted from the author page I could no longer access. You may have trouble believing this, but I don't give a flying fuck about the effect on my income. Unless a book goes movie the writer gets chump change; and its always been that way. The average indie author grosses under $500 per annum and the average number of sales of an indie book are 100. Yeah, I know that the web is full of writers who say that they are selling 200,000 books per year and will tell you how to join in their success if you buy their book. I have three words for them; bull-fucking-shit.

So, why do I bother to write crap like this you brightly ask? The fact is that I really don't give a damn if anyone ever again looks at one of my books. That's not meant to sound offensive. I'm 66 and enjoy writing them as a hobby.  I did some posts here similar to this one, which I deleted, after here, encountering an oh-so-sweet GR librarian. The butter would not melt in her mouth as she told me how the GR librarians don't even have the power to do what I claimed they did.

Read this and more of Zoe's post. Then find 10,000 other people saying similar, if not exactly the same thing. My purpose is to expose that Goodreads-Amazon site or what it is; a mis-managed, useless bullshit business. OK, many of you might say; "Tough shit, hack. Its a competitive world and you got on the shit end of the stick. Whine at somebody else." To them I repeat that I really don't give a flying fuck about my personal income give or take the $500 per annum effect on my life. I don't care if anyone ever again sees one of my books. What I am saying is that pre-Amazon, Goodreads was a site for READERS to exchange thoughts, find new books to read, and read reviews of little known books. Now, the exchange of thoughts is severely inhibited by the censorship policies and the decaying thought of the failed authors on the threads, trying to advertise the brilliance of their shit books. If a reader seeks recommendations the search engine is apparently unable to come up with anything other than that which was once on some best seller list. The rating and reviewing system there has become totally irrelevant. Yes, you can still get a fair rating or a fair review, in fact thousands of them, of well known books written by Hemingway, Fitzgerald and Salinger. Thanks for the information. However the garbage which goes on there has made it impossible to get an honest assessment of Leon Scrudato. GR is big; that's all.

The powerful and sensitive GR librarians are invariably also reviewers, and in many cases jealous authors. If you say something which annoys one of the sacred cows, you will be amazed at how many detrimental things will happen to your information. If you write GR to complain they'll either say they can't do anything or completely ignore it. This can also branch over to your Amazon account.

So authors, read this short excerpt from Ms. Desh. If you find it interesting there's lots more where it came from.

"Since Goodreads has a lean corporate structure, who does all the trench work to run the forums and groups? Volunteers of course. And there is one particular volunteer above all other volunteers that wields enormous power on the website, the Librarian. As an author, you need to understand the power of the Librarian.

The hierarchy at Goodreads is as follows: above all is the Librarian, queen bees in the hive. Under no circumstances ever challenge a Librarian. Never! They maintain absolute, dictatorial control over each of your Book Description pages, once you have submitted them and a direct line to the Goodreads gestapos in the front office. I'll discuss how that affects you as an author in the next section dealing with your author information."

By the way, I'll close with a way in which any malcontent can screw up the GR system. Its the job of no more than 30 employees to review every flagged post. If a lot of people start flagging every one, it'll drive them nuts.