Is this the year the GoodReads Choice Awards die?

Issue 91

Dear readers,

For a while now, I have been contemplating how GoodReads, the social media platform for readers, has impacted our reading behaviors. So today, today I’d like to do something new and share some insights from analyzing the past GoodReads Awards and speaking with fellow readers.

GoodReads Choice Awards

Without a doubt, Goodreads has become the go-to app for many readers. It's easy to track books you've read, set annual reading goals, and see what your friends are reading and how they liked it based on ratings and reviews. Once you have over 300 books saved in your "To Be Read" pile (yes, guilty as charged), it's hard to switch to anything else.

However, the app's annual Goodreads Choice Awards, where community members vote on their favorite books by category, has become a popularity contest that has lost its relevance.

While there was strong growth in voting during the contest's early years and a boost during the COVID-19 lockdown, recent years have shown no clear growth. At the same time, the winning book in the main category—fiction—has received an increasingly high premium over the second-place book (see the chart below). This trend likely indicates that readers' tastes have become even more narrow and influenced by popularity and marketing.

“I think the voting is a little silly,” says Cheyenne, a reader and Goodreads user. “In order to truly vote, you should have read all the options, which I definitely haven’t done. So it’s really a popularity contest more than a vote of quality.”

Last year's winner received more than twice as many votes as any prior winner, while the overall number of votes has plateaued, further confirming the popularity thesis.

I am also concerned about the diversity in the list. The books skew heavily towards female authors, with only 3 of the 13 fiction winners over the years being men. Interestingly, the tightest race was in 2020, when Matt Haig's Midnight Library narrowly edged out Fredrik Backman's Anxious People by 5 votes. A female bias may seem great initially, as most other lists tend to skew towards male authors. However, on the flip side, about 9 or 10 of the fiction winners are white, with the remaining winners being Asian, indicating a general lack of diversity.

When investigating authors that have multiples books that made it into the fiction top ten category, a lack of diversity becomes even more apparent.

“I have voted in the past, but I don’t usually vote anymore,” confirms Briana, a reader and former voter. “Usually, I’ve only read one book, max, in each category, so I’m just voting for the one I read rather than making a real choice, which felt silly.”

With all this silliness, I believe the awards have lost their relevance and appeal. Seeing a friend’s rating of a specific book may be a lot more helpful than who will have won this year’s popularity contest.

My prediction for this year’s winner…

Having dug through the data, I think this year's winner will be Sally Rooney's Intermezzo. Several points support this: the propensity of former top-10 authors to reappear on the list, the significant marketing push behind this book, and the sheer echo chamber of Bookstagram and Booktok, which is making everyone believe they can't be a serious reader without having read Rooney's latest.

I quite enjoyed the book myself, though it didn't give me the intensity of emotion of Normal People or Conversations with Friends. And in my definition, a serious reader is someone who reads regularly, regardless of what they read or even how much they read overall.

Let me know which book you think will win this year in the comments.

Elsewhere on Substack: Pre-order books!

I have always known leaving reviews and ratings helps authors get attention, but another way to support your favorite author is by pre-ordering their upcoming books, here is a great write-up on how pre-orders help authors:

Do I pre-order or wait until a book is published?

Currently reading: Hood Feminism: Notes From The Women That A Movement Forgot by Mikki Kendall (buy link).

I wish you a great week ahead—and happy voting, if you are participating.

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