Samantha Baugus is an avid reader. This year alone, she has read 108 books, from science fiction and horror to nonfiction and poetry. Part of the reading process that Baugus enjoys is logging and rating the books she has finished reading. She has been using the platform Goodreads for more than 10 years.
Founded in 2007, Goodreads is a social cataloging platform now owned by Amazon. Users can search for nearly any published book title, log and review books they’ve read, connect with friends, and create “shelves” for books they want to read in the future. Baugus has been using Goodreads casually since about 2014. In 2023, she was one of more than 150 million users of the platform, according to data published by Penguin Random House.
Goodreads is one of several media tracking platforms. StoryGraph is another, newer platform for tracking books. Letterboxd, launched in 2011, is for tracking movies, and Discogs, launched in 2000, is for tracking records. There are countless other platforms, accessible via desktops and smartphones, that allow consumers to search, track, and rate their favorite (or least favorite) media. And since the pandemic, they’ve grown in popularity.
From 2011 to 2019, the number of registered Goodreads users grew from five to 90 million, according to Statista. And then that number rose to over 150 million by 2023. In just four years, between 2020 and 2024, Letterboxd’s membership grew from 2 million to 12 million, according to GQ Magazine.
Consumers want to keep an eye on their consumer goods. But why?
Holly Holladay, an associate professor of media, journalism and film at Missouri State University, has been a Goodreads user since 2019. She uses the platform primarily to keep track of what books she’s read, rather than to leave ratings and reviews. Speaking to the News-Leader, Holladay laughed about her “Goodreads finger,” which means that the first thing she does after she finishes reading a book is log it on the platform.
The desire to catalogue and look back on “your story” is the reason for the popularity of media tracking platforms, according to Holladay.
“I think there’s something to be said about how it works, especially for ‘collectors.’ It’s a way of collecting and cataloging and looking back at history to remember what you liked and what you didn’t like,” Holladay said.
In this respect, these platforms are like a digital diary.
“It’s like a slice of who we are,” Holladay continued. “The media we consume obviously says something about who we are as people, and it’s nice to look back on that.”
For Baugus, Goodreads serves as a beacon in the oversaturated media darkness.
“It’s a lot easier to find other things you like because there’s so much,” Baugus said. “Instead of having notes or a document on your computer, when you’re at the bookstore, you can flip through on your phone and say, ‘Oh yeah, these are the books I want to buy.'”
And like other, more traditional social media, media tracking platforms allow users to connect with others who share similar interests.
Blake Tucker has been a Letterboxd user since 2019. He uses the platform daily and uploads films two to three times a week. For the 33-year-old, the platform evokes a feeling of nostalgia and reminds him of message boards from the 90s.
“There were message boards about specific topics, different niche groups, and this (Letterboxd) feels like that, but on a much larger scale, open and very welcoming and fun,” Tucker said.
Common social media platforms tend to encourage one-sided relationships between regular users and developers/celebrities, whereas media tracking apps are known to do the opposite.
Directors Martin Scorsese and Sean Baker, actress Ayo Edebiri and actor Kyle MacLachlan are just some of the A-list celebrities who use Letterboxd.
Tucker not only follows the views of bigger names like Scorsese, but also those of film critics.
“There are a lot of different critics that I like to follow,” Tucker told the News-Leader in May. “Especially now that the Cannes Film Festival is happening, they’re kind of putting out their first reactions to things that are coming out that aren’t widely known yet, like Francis Ford Coppola’s ‘Megalopolis,’ which is getting a lot of buzz. That’s something that I’ve been really interested in, so I can follow the critics there (on the Letterboxd accounts) to get first-hand … how they rate the film and whether it’s worth it for me to watch and seek it out.”
As for Goodreads, countless authors use the platform to access reader reviews or even use it for personal use.
Holladay represents this dynamic on a local level. In 2023, she published “Parks and Recreation,” a scholarly media analysis of the television sitcom. The book is available for readers to rate, review, and add to their “shelves” on Goodreads and The Storygraph. As of Tuesday, the book had 11 ratings with an average rating of 4.45/5 stars and four written reviews on Goodreads.
Because of the academic nature of the book, Holladay said she can understand why not many people have marked the book as “read” on Goodreads.
“Most people who read it know me and say ‘five stars,’ but then there’s this little three-star review and they didn’t say anything,” Holladay said. “I don’t even see that as a negative.”
Holladay is not fazed by this less than satisfactory review, but rather reminds him of the platform’s large user base.
However, Baugus knows several authors who have exploited their position as authors on Goodreads.
“What happens … is that someone leaves a review, particularly a negative review of a book. They give it one star. And then the author shows up and starts spewing hate at that person for leaving a negative review,” Baugus said. “This is very inappropriate for a number of reasons. The biggest reason is that it almost creates a fear in some people about posting an honest review because they know that authors are lurking in those comment sections reading reviews. The author, if they are not emotionally prepared to deal with negative criticism, probably shouldn’t be reading reviews.”
Goodreads users have been discussing this issue for years on the platform’s open forums. Goodreads allows users to report reviews and comments that violate the platform’s policies.
In the more than 10 years she’s been using Goodreads, Baugus says she’s taken breaks from the platform on and off. Goodreads’ interface has remained largely the same since its launch, which Baugus and many other users don’t like.
About three or four years ago, she stopped using the mobile app because she said it was “unusable.” Although she re-downloaded the app, Goodreads continues to have issues with slow speeds, glitches, and crashes.
In recent years, Baugus has moved toward using The StoryGraph more, but she still uses both platforms.
Goodreads has been offering annual reading challenges for years. Users can set a goal for how many books they want to read in a year. Then, as they log the books they read, they are automatically added to their reading challenge countdown. When reviewing their challenge, users can see if they are “on track,” “ahead,” or “behind.”
Holladay said she put a lot of pressure on herself to meet the reading challenge goals she set. In 2023, she only missed her goal by two books, but it had an impact.
“I put so much pressure on myself to reach this damn goal,” Holladay said. “When I saw that little ‘three books behind,’ it really stressed me out. There’s nothing bad about reading. There’s literally nothing bad about it. I think overall it’s a net gain, but the only downside I see is that internal pressure. I really felt like a failure for reading 48 books instead of 50.”
To overcome that pressure to achieve a “successful” reading challenge goal, Holladay said one of her friends set her reading challenge goal to just one book. But it seems Holladay still enjoys the challenge. As of Tuesday, her Goodreads reading challenge for 2024 included 52 books.
Source: Penguin Random House, Statista, GQ Magazine
