Curious About GoodReads Reviews and Bullying

Preamble (Bullying is Bad, Try Telling the Bullies That)

Amazon and GoodReads are both prominent places to review books. – My Humble Opinion is to prefer GoodReads, since I don’t use Kindle.

I’ve written before about GoodReads: Wondering if people who read books more were less impressed by good books than people who weren’t as well read; and looking at GoodReads’ lists, remarking hwo snobbish some of the lists were. (Guess which books came under “didn’t finish”, “most hated”?).

So. Recently there’s been some controversy in romancelandia.
A quick glance at the GoodReads page for the book shows the reviews filled with at least a dozen 1-star reviews written since August (i.e. after Wendell’s letter.). Many of which even openly admit to not having read the book. – I don’t care how righteous your cause: if you review books as 1-star, without having read the book, you’re a bully.
– Fortunately, at the time of writing the book still has an average of 3.9/5, which is at least par for “really good book”, and about as high as many authors (in the romance genre, at least) are able to achieve. (And somewhat higher than the more mainstream unpopular books.).
– Counterpoint: What about if you borrow a book from a friend, read 1 page, then 1-star it; would that still be bullying? I do think “hate reading” is a thing: reading something knowing you’re going to hate it. Surely you’ve got to be pretty bitter to do that. – But even more simply, if you’re going into a book with that much prejudice.. I think you misunderstand the point of “books let you understand different viewpoints.”.

More importantly: does your giving a 1-star review benefit the community? Is it constructive to the community?
Of course I think there’s room for people to give 1-star reviews. The usual expectation is that they’ve read the book.

– Maybe worth noting is I couldn’t find this book by searching for its title. It’s unclear whether the name was too obscure, there’s a bug in the algorithm/index, the book was unlisted automatically for receiving 1-star reviews(?), the book was unlisted on request (for being too hateful, or for being a target of hate). Or it could just be me.

Questions; Can Reviews Tell Us Anything?

In any case. It would be fascinating to visualise some of this stuff.
Numbers don’t lie. (Interpretation of numbers does, but that’s a different issue.).

But, I mean, I’m not just curious about this controversy. Things I’d love to see:

• What has the average rating of this book been over time? Per number of reviews? What has the number of 5-star, 1-star reviews been over time?

• What has the average rating been for other RITA nominations, from publication to nomination, from nomination to awards, and after the awards?
  Compared to previous years, this would offer a control of what a typical RITA nomination looks like. Oh, comparing to a non-RITA book may be interesting too.
  “For Such a Time” is somewhat controversial. Is the data for “For Such a Time” different in an interesting way to show this? (Could you know, given reviews of a book, whether it’s similarly “controversial”?).

• Does a reviewer’s “average rating” (the average of the ratings they’ve given) follow a trend over time / over the number of books read?
  I would think it tends toward 3 or 4 over time.
  How similar would this be between readers?
  If some books do gain controversial attention, do the people giving 1-star, 5-star reviews share similar traits? (e.g. number of books read, average rating.).
  If some books do get extreme reviews (1-star, 5-star) from controversial attention, how anomalous does this look per the reviewer?

• What percentage of a books reviews are read by “fans”?
  Are books reviews at all by ‘fans’? (e.g. people who liked other books from the same author.). How consistent are authors? (If readers liked some authors book, is there a likelihood that a large proportion of readers will rate the books consistently?).

• Does the distribution of 1-5 star ratings for a book follow a trend over time?

…Do these things vary by genre? (Clearly I care only about Romance Novels here; and even then only some sub-genres.).
I’m not saying these questions are well-formed or anything. (And I clearly have suspicions about some things). But it’d be interesting to see some data related to this. (Though, if you have better questions, I would be interested to hear them.).

Trying my best, I think those who I disagree with might be curious about things like:

• Is there any association between words used in the blurb (hinting at content) and average rating, 1-star, 5-star ratings? Rationale would be, books with unpleasant content get more 1-star reviews.

• Do 1-star, 5-star reviewers tend to make use of the same words as each other?