Book Marks: Fixing Goodreads, Jarhead Ban

Has Goodreads "poisoned literature", as this article in The Telegraph claims? Using the case of Elizabeth Gilbert's latest book as a springboard, the writer dives into the reliability of Goodreads' rating system, which has been weaponised by blackmailers and review-bombers, most of whom may have never read the books they target.

How can the website remedy this? The writer suggests that "Goodreads and other online review sites could surely vet more carefully the reviews they host, or at least nip in the bud campaigns launched against a book before it’s even been published – after all, few authors can afford simply to chuck a book in the bin as blithely as Elizabeth Gilbert has. As a gatekeeper, Goodreads, as it stands, hardly seems fit for purpose."

The New York Times highlights some cases of review-bombing, and while it argues that, "As a social platform, part of what Goodreads is offering is conversation and user engagement, and controversies and debate can drive more comments and time spent on the platform," there's room for improvement.

However, author Gretchen Felker-Martin, speaking to the NYT, does not think "Goodreads has an economic incentive to be any better. 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.”

Kara Alaimo, an associate professor of communication at Fairleigh Dickinson University who writes about issues affecting women and social media, is optimistic that Goodreads can fix itself, even as its reviews "are quickly becoming unreliable." Good for authors, "but it would be all the more so for readers, because it would ensure we keep some of the power to determine which books break out."

The Washington Post, however, wonders if Goodreads will be able to fix itself, calling it a site "built on outdated technological infrastructure" that isn't worth the money and effort to overhaul by its owner, online retail giant Amazon, which seems to have other priorities. "Former employees said Amazon seemed happy to mine Goodreads for its user-generated data and otherwise let it limp along with limited resources."

Nor does Amazon seem keen on radically revamping the site, to avoid driving away Goodreads diehards. "One former employee compared Goodreads to Reddit, an 18-year-old internet forum where users are revolting because of modifications to the site," goes the WaPo report.

The outlook is kind of bleak, and I'm reminded of what is happening to Twitter. Goodreads is a great resource for books and opinions on books and at this stage, a stable, functioning online portal gives many comfort. If it ain't broke...

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In Ottawa County, Michigan, the Board of Education for Hudsonville Public Schools voted to ban Jarhead from a high school library. The 2003 memoir of a marine during the First Gulf War was branded an “extremely violent, vulgar, pornographic diatribe”.

Considering the types of books subjected to such scrutiny and restriction, the author never thought that his book would be targeted. And now that the U.S. is in a proxy war with Russia, "it seems like a good time to ensure student access to all points of view concerning warfare," the author writes in The Daily Beast.

His closing remarks is an echo of what critics of the bans have been trying to get across: "Make no mistake, they are banning books, but really they are restricting access to ideas. And when one small group of people ban a larger group of people access to ideas, we are in for a closing of the American mind."

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ByteDance, TikTok's parent company, is launching a publishing company to take advantage of TikTok's ability to make books viral. But will 8th Note Press end up marginalising other authors, favouring only those it wants to promote? Some authors are enthusiastic about the new imprint, because #BookTok is one hell of a soapbox right now. However, as The New York Times notes: "...ByteDance will likely face the same challenges as traditional publishers: Readers are fickle, and ultimately, viral videos won’t automatically create a blockbuster if the books themselves aren’t appealing."

And should a video platform be publishing books just because it helps to sell books? There are few doubts about the latter, as in the case of Shawn M. Warner, whose poorly attended book-signing event was spotted and later posted onto the platform by a TikToker. The video went viral and sent Warner's novel, Leigh Howard and the Ghosts of Simmons-Pierce Manor, up the charts on Amazon.


Other news:

• Novelist Ken Liu responds to a short story by Jeff Hewitt about a court case involving publishers and an AI author. There's a fair bit to unpack: can AI reach a stage where a machine can out-write humans in terms of output AND quality? Are human writers and LLMs more similar than different?
• The Libri Group, home of Hungary’s largest publishing house and bookstore chain, have been taken over by a private foundation closely associated with the country’s far-right prime minister, Viktor Orbán. The Mathias Corvinus Collegium (MCC), "has been likened to a training ground for future cadres of Orbán’s hard-right, populist Fidesz party," the Guardian reports. As a result, some of the writers published under Libri have bailed, while others have voiced concerns that this move is another step in the government's bid to exert more control over speech in Hungary. Eszter Kováts, an assistant professor in the Institute of Political Science at the University of Vienna, looks into this in detail.
• ELLE profiles several women in publishing, from authors to literary agents, who are taking the industry "in new and compelling directions.
• Richard Charkin asks ChatGPT what are the principal megatrends affecting the publishing world, and then sets it straight.
• While a librarian was away from a school library in New Zealand, a couple of books by a controversial publisher said to contain racist propaganda found their way onto the shelves. According to Stuff, "The books in question were printed by ... a Kiwi company that has produced three books on New Zealand history in the past year. None of the authors appear to have relevant qualifications as historians."
• Here it comes: Bloomberg reports that ChatGPT creator OpenAI is being sued for violating privacy laws by scraping material from the Internet, including books, articles, websites and posts. Another suit against OpenAI by two authors, Mona Awad and Paul Tremblay, alleges that their books were used to train ChatGPT because of the chatbot's "very accurate summaries" of the works. Will more suits follow?
• Want to read reviews of a book? Do it after you've read the book: "Reviews are not recommendations (or anti-recommendations) so let’s stop treating them that way. Let’s take the pressure off and stop expecting to love or hate a book because of what someone else says about it."
• Book cover model Fabio dismissed the emergence of the "cinnamon roll" male lead in romance novels as a "trend" and called the idea of male characters showing their sensitive sides "hogwash." The Messenger shoots back: "The genre now better reflects the diverse range of men who exist in the real world — men who exceed traditional gender roles by broadening the behaviors that define masculinity. There's nothing hogwash about that."