Goodreads’ ‘unfair’ rating problem
The Documentary Podcast
BBC
4.3 • 2.6K Ratings
🗓️ 24 September 2025
⏱️ 20 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
BBC Trending investigates how negative ‘pre-read’ and pre-publication Goodreads ratings are leaving writers - and readers - mystified. Goodreads is a popular website that invites users to track and share their reading habits – through ratings and reviews. But before they even hit the market, some books have attracted negative ratings, leaving authors mystified about who is behind them. So where are these ‘unfair’ ratings coming from - is this the work of individuals with vendettas or bots? And what can be done to stop them? This episode of The Documentary, comes to you from BBC Trending in-depth reporting on the world of social media.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, podcasts. |
| 0:05.6 | Imagine you're an author. |
| 0:08.0 | You've spent years laboring over your latest story idea, |
| 0:11.7 | fine-tuning your characters and the plot. |
| 0:14.8 | You're excited to put your work in front of the public, |
| 0:17.8 | hoping that your carefully ordered words will resonate with readers. |
| 0:25.1 | But before your book is even out, it's given a low rating on the influential book review |
| 0:30.4 | website, Goodreads. Why would someone leave a bad rating? For a book, they've not even read yet. |
| 0:37.3 | And I know they haven't read |
| 0:38.1 | the book because the book has not been published yet. It's not out there. It's not available to be read. |
| 0:43.3 | So where do these reviews come from? And why are they persisting on the platform? Does Goodreads |
| 0:49.4 | have a fake review problem? So when I saw it, when I saw that they had reviewed all nine of my books, I thought, |
| 0:54.5 | oh gosh, this feels like someone with a personal vendetta. And that just feels like a very strange |
| 0:59.0 | thing to me. Welcome to the documentary from the BBC World Service. I'm Jonathan Griffin with |
| 1:05.9 | BBC Trending. We do in-depth reporting on the world of social media. |
| 1:19.1 | Today, we're looking at the influential book review site Goodreads in how ratings, called Unfair, by authors, can mislead potential readers. |
| 1:30.4 | Goodreads launched in 2007, and despite being bought by Amazon in 2013, much of it has remained unchanged as a user experience since. For many, the slightly clunky interface doesn't get in the way of their enjoyment. In fact, |
| 1:36.8 | the website hosts an estimated 150 million accounts, according to Penguin Random House. |
| 1:43.2 | Signing up for Goodreads is an easy process. |
| 1:46.4 | Logging in can be done with an Amazon account, and very few details are required, all of which |
| 1:51.8 | makes tracking legitimate reviews and ratings more challenging, according to Craig Silverman, |
| 1:57.6 | co-founder of Indicator, a newsletter and website investigating digital deception. |
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