Should Book-lovers Be Boycotting Goodreads?

Amazon may be a disaster for the book industry, but giving up Goodreads isn’t necessarily the answer.

A few days ago I was informed by Goodreads that I have completed 82% of my reading challenge for the year. And this email prompted me to think about the platform.

During the Covid-19 pandemic, there has certainly been one winner who has profited from the crisis — Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon. So far, he has made $24 billion just during the crisis, and there have been numerous calls within the book community to boycott Amazon for good — and in some respects, rightly so. It’s been years since I purchased a physical book from Amazon, but I don’t think I’ll ever be able to pry myself away from Goodreads.

Goodreads was required by Amazon in 2013 and has over 90 million users worldwide. It’s the only widely used social media for everything literature related which allows users to track their reading, browse book reviews and gain specific genre recommendations. It is also widely relied upon by authors who claim it can make or break the success of a newly published book.

Although some alternatives are beginning to emerge to challenge the hegemony of the platform, such as Booksloth, will it ever diminish in its power and influence? And should it?