They will not be completely transparent about how it is done. But they used to give more info and said it was based on shelvings (read/to be read) with some eye toward number of ratings, and that it has to have an average of at least 3.5 stars.

So someone like Emily Henry (who will have 500,000+ ratings is likely to have even more shelvings) will get on the list before something with a higher average rating, but maybe only 50,000 shelvings.

It should be noted that when you enter a Goodreads giveaway they automatically add the book to your to be read shelf, so I think that also contributes to it. But it is very much what is popular (even if, it seems, it hasn’t actually been read).

https://www.goodreads.com/choiceawards/2023/rules

Someone in the other thread about it said that it’s based on how many people shelved the book as to-read.

Monkey and a dart board. It’s best not to take Goodreads too seriously, I basically just use it to organize my own reading

I wouldn’t be shocked if money played a role.

Users used to be able to nominate books, but they got rid of that a few years ago.

2023 Eligibility Books published in the United States in English, including works in translation and other significant rereleases, between November 17, 2022, and November 15, 2023, are eligible for the 2023 Goodreads Choice Awards. Books published between November 16, 2023, and November 14, 2024, will be eligible for the 2024 awards.

We analyze statistics from the millions of books added, rated, and reviewed on Goodreads to nominate 20 books in each category. Opening round official nominees must have an average rating of 3.50 or higher at the time of launch. A book may be nominated in no more than one genre category, but can also be nominated in the Debut Novel category. Only one book in a series may be nominated per category. An author may receive multiple nominations within a single category if he or she has more than one eligible series or more than one eligible stand-alone book.

Goodreads is owned by Amazon and is obviously a marketing tool. They use rating and statistics on their database from both goodreads and the amazon site review(connected). With booktok exploding romantasy these past 2 years, I wasnt surprise it got it’s own category and what books are chosen in it. They’ll continue to nominate books that brings in the $$$

I’m sure whatever sells well plus a sprinkpe of whichever publishers paid the most for advertising during the year

Wow… I can’t imagine whatever the criteria is is very good lol. I just checked out the Scifi nominees and… System Collapse has been officially published for only 24 hrs so far. I’ve already read it and enjoyed it because i have Murderbot brain rot but geeze, give them some time lol

They are not saying so explicitly this year but going by past years, it is related by total number of shelvings (reviews, ratings but also to-be-read shelving, but not sure if they all count the same. You can see to be read intentions in the book statistic pages).

There used to be a cut-off "Opening round official nominees must have an average rating of 3.50 or higher at the time of launch. " though that was meaningless, it was really unlikely a book already rated less than 3.5 at time of launch was so unless it was by review bombing. It is thought they remove books with a “low” rating at time of compilling the finalists https://www.reddit.com/r/Fantasy/comments/yz3r4k/yet_another_post_overanalyzing_how_goodreads/ but it is surely higher than 3.5 and they do not say so explicitly.

It used to be people could nominate books, but oh well, there were organized campaigns, and that is over.

Interesting detail: one book released on Tuesday made Tuesday’s list, the final cut-off for nominated books (and might even win its category), it was Martha Wells new Murderbot book https://www.goodreads.com/book/stats?id=65211701. Not sure if its publisher, Tor, was not gaming for that, since it was giving out (uncharacteristically for them) lots of Arcs of it. It has only 500+ reviews, but 36k want-to-read shelvings (it was out two days ago only…)