As far as I understand it, goodreads bases their awards on readership on their own platform. That’s why most people say it’s a popularity contest. It has little to do with authorship at all. Look at who is reading and their social connections. Unfortunately, that puts men on the lower end.

Edit: A lot of people did read these books actually. Or at least bought them. But every year I have to skip certain genres when voting because there are just too many books to read and too little time.

Definitely buy the book at that point. Also, some of those books have software that prevents printing.

Edit: Certain sellers such as Amazon are only selling you access to the file, not ownership itself.