The thing about browsing in a bookstore (or a library) is that you can’t actually see the cover unless it is on display. Most of the books I can only see the spine. So I guess I judge the book by the spine, or maybe the title? And when I have them home on my shelf, I am only seeing the spine so cover doesn’t really matter for most genres.

In romance, however, the cover is (was?) a way to determine what kind of romance book one could expect. For example, cartoon covers or bright colors with a single object indicate something different than the clinch covers, shirtless man covers, dark covers, covers with swords and raised lettering, etc. Then someone got involved and started putting cartoon covers on many types of ‘romance’ books which means I likely avoid books I would have liked because of the cover.

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).

Goodreads doesn’t really share its algorithm, but it is based on how many times the book is shelved (read/to be read) and it has to have at least a 3.5 star (I believe) average rating. So it is basically how many people are interested in reading this book (and therefore a popularity context) and of those books, which do people like the most.

(No one ever mentions that if you list a book for a Goodreads giveaway, anyone who enters the giveaway automatically gets the book added to their to be read shelf. So ‘interested’ has caveats).

They used to have a separate category for science and tech books. I don’t know why they cut it (I can understand cutting food/cookbooks, but also if the goal is to sell during the holiday season, then they should have kept that too).

I’d probably keep history and biography together, but split memoir/autobiography into celebrity and non-celebrity simply because celebrity ones are popular based on the person, not the actual book. And I’d cut humor --if it is a memoir put it in memoirs, and the rest can go in general nonfiction.

Goodreads ‘choice’ is very much a choice awards (e.g. Teen choice/viewer choice) so it doesn’t really try to be the ‘best’. I think we all know it is 100% about popularity. The problem is that it isn’t really a choice because they got rid of the write ins years ago, and keep cutting categories people want and keeping categories that are not useful. Cutting science (1-2 years ago) makes general nonfiction a mix of science and self help that feels odd. Cutting poetry this year doesn’t make sense. And since adults write, publish, and choose/buy the children’s books for children, it makes sense for adults to vote on children’s/middle grade books. (It is a genre for children that is adult-curated).

Adding romantasy feels like a recognition that romance needs more space ( they used to have a paranormal romance category), but the romance category is completely contemporary romance (with at least 2 books that are not romance shoehorned in). So no historical romance, romantic suspense, paranormal romance, or anything with mass market printing is represented).

In summary they are always awful because the readers are not really given good choices to choose from, but this year they pushed themselves to be extra bad.