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Sep. 18th, 2022 06:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mollyringleCouple of announcements:
First, an LJ one. I can no longer access my mollyringwraith LJ. I did not lose the password; I am a good password steward and I still had it! But when I tried to get in the other week after hearing it was subject to a security hack, LJ helpfully told me the password was too old and I had to change it. Which you can only do by email verification. And the email never arrived, so probably LJ had a defunct email of mine as the contact. And their FAQ says there is no other way to recover access if the above process doesn't work. So. That is now closed to me. It might get purged by LJ; I don't know. Copy and save any posts you want to keep from it.
Other announcement:
I am mostly letting my Goodreads account go dormant, as I am tired of the toxic atmosphere there. I’m going over to Storygraph instead. Find me under mollyringle and send me a friend request! I am new there and barely have anyone added yet.
When someone saw my post on GR that announced the above, they asked, in all innocence, “Why do you find Goodreads toxic?”
Here is my answer, and know that this is the short version and I could go on and on:
The worst is the cruel, snarky tone of many of the negative reviews. They often go beyond "what didn't work for me" and well into scathing, hateful rants.
Then, the site lets you upvote reviews, so people may like those snarky ones because they find them funny, but those who disagree or find them unhelpful have no way to downvote them. So such reviews often float to the top and are the first ones people see for the book.
Also, Goodreads puts the star ratings front and center, and sometimes the mere number rating is enough to turn people off from trying a book.
And finally, Goodreads is now owned by Amazon, which has not proven itself a great friend of the publishing trade on the whole. (That’s a whooooole other long post that I don’t feel like writing. But google it if you’re curious. Lots of publishers, authors, and industry pros have spoken on the subject.)
Storygraph, meanwhile, tucks away star ratings and reviews discreetly—you have to scroll a bit to find them at all—instead putting focus on the book’s genres, subgenres, tone, style, and pacing. It also, true to its name, makes some really cool graphs and charts of your reading habits once you’ve entered the books you’ve read.
And: yes! You can import your Goodreads reading history into Storygraph. It wasn’t hard for me to do at all. (You can google that too. That’s what I did.) So please find me there! We all deserve a calmer and less toxic reading discussion experience.
First, an LJ one. I can no longer access my mollyringwraith LJ. I did not lose the password; I am a good password steward and I still had it! But when I tried to get in the other week after hearing it was subject to a security hack, LJ helpfully told me the password was too old and I had to change it. Which you can only do by email verification. And the email never arrived, so probably LJ had a defunct email of mine as the contact. And their FAQ says there is no other way to recover access if the above process doesn't work. So. That is now closed to me. It might get purged by LJ; I don't know. Copy and save any posts you want to keep from it.
Other announcement:
I am mostly letting my Goodreads account go dormant, as I am tired of the toxic atmosphere there. I’m going over to Storygraph instead. Find me under mollyringle and send me a friend request! I am new there and barely have anyone added yet.
When someone saw my post on GR that announced the above, they asked, in all innocence, “Why do you find Goodreads toxic?”
Here is my answer, and know that this is the short version and I could go on and on:
The worst is the cruel, snarky tone of many of the negative reviews. They often go beyond "what didn't work for me" and well into scathing, hateful rants.
Then, the site lets you upvote reviews, so people may like those snarky ones because they find them funny, but those who disagree or find them unhelpful have no way to downvote them. So such reviews often float to the top and are the first ones people see for the book.
Also, Goodreads puts the star ratings front and center, and sometimes the mere number rating is enough to turn people off from trying a book.
And finally, Goodreads is now owned by Amazon, which has not proven itself a great friend of the publishing trade on the whole. (That’s a whooooole other long post that I don’t feel like writing. But google it if you’re curious. Lots of publishers, authors, and industry pros have spoken on the subject.)
Storygraph, meanwhile, tucks away star ratings and reviews discreetly—you have to scroll a bit to find them at all—instead putting focus on the book’s genres, subgenres, tone, style, and pacing. It also, true to its name, makes some really cool graphs and charts of your reading habits once you’ve entered the books you’ve read.
And: yes! You can import your Goodreads reading history into Storygraph. It wasn’t hard for me to do at all. (You can google that too. That’s what I did.) So please find me there! We all deserve a calmer and less toxic reading discussion experience.
