You may or may not know, but I currently have a giveaway running through Goodreads where I’m offering two signed ARCs of Tears of a Clown. One of the great things about doing these contests through the site is that people will enter (huzzah!) but also they read the synopsis and many will add your book to their “to-read” list, which is pretty cool. I’m not sure how many consult their lists to see if books come out but it’s still nice to see it interests some folks.
The other day I was checking to see how many people have entered so far when I noticed I suddenly went from a 5 star rating to a 4.43 rating. Now a 4.43 isn’t a bad rating by any means, but I know who has copies of the book and I started to see that people were rating the book three and four stars when I *KNOW* they haven’t read it.
What’s up with that junk?!
I asked around a little and found out that people are starting to use the star rating system to rate the books they want to read, rather than what they thought of the book. So a five star book is one they really want to read while a three star is lower on the list. While I love the idea of rating the “to-read” list, it should be a separate entity than the regular rating system because now it’s messing up my scoring!
I do think it’s quite a bright idea to rank your “to-read” list, especially when you’re like me and have well over a hundred books on it, but there needs to be another system put in place so it’s not bringing down your rating when they haven’t even read the book. I don’t think that’s fair to the authors and it may confuse other potential readers. Before asking around I had no 
idea people were doing this. If I wasn’t in the know, I’m going to guess there are many others who don’t know this practice is going on either.
Perhaps we can ban together and contact Goodreads and see if they have anything in the works to rank the “to-read” lists without harming an author’s star rating. We need something that will benefit the reader, but not harm the author in the process.
That’s terrible! You should definitely write to Goodreads and express your concerns. They should do something about it.
I did and suggested they make a separate rating system for the to-read books and they said it was a good idea they’d take under consideration but I guess we’ll see if anything comes from it.
Perhaps you could set up a “group” as a petition to encourage others to join as a statement of agreement since most people wouldn’t take the time to write a note to Goodreads.
That is a good idea, perhaps I’ll look into it. Thanks!
that is too bad! but I think its just one of those things out of the control of the author. Its great you made a suggestion to goodreads tough. I figure once people start reading the book … all the real reviews will overpower any of that nonsense so it won’t matter so much!!
heh Hopefully, but I do think the idea of it is a good one so maybe they’ll do something with it.
that’s too bad! but once you get real reviews piling up when people read the book, they’ll overpower all that nonsense anyway.
WordPress seems to hate me, MB. Testing to see if this posts.
Bad wordpress! Don’t hate my friends!
I know! I have interesting things to say in relation to your topics. Now I wonder how many other comments I made here didn’t get posted.
I realized something too. Instead of rating the books, those readers can just make new shelves and label them high, medium or low priority.
Good point! I should do that. I don’t have many shelves.
I had no idea! This is good information.
I don’t think many people did.
I think it’s easy to hit the stars by accident, or so I’ve heard. But now I’m wondering … how can I make people more excited to read my books before the books exist? I would imagine this is more of an issue with the thrilling conclusion to a trilogy. It would be cool if GR had a “new hotness” type of charting thing, where people could rate the excitement.
New hotness would be awesome!
Giveaways via goodreads is a great way to generate excitement as well 
Wha-what?! I didn’t realize people did this; though I can see why they would. I don’t think this has affected my ratings too much as an author, yet – but I’ll be on the lookout. I am also about to e-mail Goodreads about this issue. The more e-mails they receive, the better! Thanks for posting on this issue!