The fault is not in our stars, but in Amazon. The time has finally come, for me to abandon (literally walk away, which I guess from the musical term andante, which means at a walking pace) Goodreads.
Goodreads was initially quite a reasonable idea: to be a website where readers reviewed the books they read. But, inevitably, Amazon bought the site, and now it is powered by the online bookseller, whose programmers are less interested in making the site (and its software) robust and easy to use, than it is in driving up the reviews of books that Amazon sells.
I headed up to Goodreads earlier today, hoping to leave a glowing review of Nancy Springer, the author of the Enola Holmes series of books about the younger sister of the fabulous Sherlock Holmes, the first two of which were adapted into a fine movie on Netflix, starring Millie Bobbie Brown. But I could not even find a reference to Ms. Springer, who is a celebrated author of fiction for young adults (and even their older cousins and aunts).
I suppose it could be that I was trying to navigate the site on my phone, rather than on a computer. Amazon's programmers write such clunky software that it's hard to believe that it's ineptness. No, they're trying to pull off some dastardly sneaky tricks on both their shoppers, and on these reviewers.
For years, they hosted reviews of their books right on their site. But now they vet the reviews, and remove both the insulting ones (in line with 'hate speech' principles coming out of Washington) and unflattering reviews, which discourage sales. All their books just cannot be excellent; at least some have to be clunkers.
I'm not clever enough to argue the case against allowing Amazon to police it's own reviews, but Goodreads is no longer any use to me.
No comments:
Post a Comment