How Goodreads Reviews Can Tank a Book Before It’s Published

The vitriol can also fly in the opposite direction. Recently, the author Sarah Stusek posted a video on TikTok criticizing a Goodreads reviewer for leaving a four-star review of her forthcoming novel, “Three Rivers.” In the video, which was later removed because it violated the platform’s community standards, Stusek berated the reviewer for ruining her five star average. After the Goodreads user amended her review to note that the author was attacking her, fellow Goodreads members rose to her defense and flooded “Three Rivers” with around 600 one-star reviews.

Stusek’s publisher, Sparkpress, announced on Twitter that it was parting ways with the author, and the novel, which was going to be published in September, disappeared from the publisher’s website. Stusek said in an email that her video was intended to be a joke, and that she is planning to self-publish the novel this fall.

More often, though, a negative spiral is set off by readers.

When Gretchen Felker-Martin sold her debut novel, “Manhunt,” about trans women trying to survive in a world where a virus is spreading among people with higher levels of testosterone, she knew some would find the horror story distasteful. But she was blindsided by what felt like an organized campaign of review bombing on Goodreads, she said.

People who objected to the novel’s premise “went ballistic, and bombarded the thing with hundreds and hundreds of negative reviews before anyone had read it,” she said. Felker-Martin, who is transgender, said she had asked Goodreads to remove some of the more personal attacks, and asked friends to report hateful comments, but never got a response, although a couple of reviews were taken down.

“I don’t think Goodreads has an economic incentive to be any better,” she said. “It would be just a gargantuan job to significantly monitor the kinds of abuse that’s being heaped onto people every single day, but there’s certainly some middle ground between breaking your back trying to deal with all of it, and dealing with none of it.”

Audio produced by Kate Winslett.