Goodreads has launched the opening round for their yearly awards for the best books just recently. I skimmed through the categories myself, yet already saw quite mixed reviews about the suggestions for this year’s nominees.
Some categories like poetry and children books were removed (yeah, you can say that children ain’t a target audience for the Goodreads yet this platform always seemed to be well rounded).
Graphic novels is also something that was removed unfortunately. Although these ain’t my cup of tea, I’m almost sure it must be upsetting for a large group of people.
My thoughts when scrolling through.
I feel we should skip 2023 winners and spend 2024 reading the nominees and announce 2023 winners and 2024 nominees at the same time, end of next year. Or even announce nominations and keep voting open for 6 months or something.
I’d rather be behind so we actually have time to read them.
What you don’t consider is that this is Goodreads being paid to SELL to you. Nobody actually really cares what we think. Big publishers pay, websites advertise. Same with the articles Goodreads has that’s all just “books we were paid to sell to you right now”. Sure, sometimes they cover it in whatever feel good cause (disabilities visibility month or Native American heritage week or whatever) and maaaaybe they sprinkle in some author we are supposed to think of as an underdog.
But it’s really just an ad.
That makes a lot of sense. I feel like I can see that especially with what’s trending book wise right now. Makes me sad that a lot of arguably better books are left out just because of sales.