Explaining My Recent Decision to Leave Goodreads

So, yesterday I made the announcement on Twitter that I’ve decided to delete my user account on Goodreads. My published titles will remain there, as well as my author profile. First off, and most importantly, to all of you who have posted reviews praising my work, those are still on the site, and I continue to thank you for them. And from now on, anybody who reads and enjoys and wishes to post a review, absolutely go for it, and you will have my unending gratefulness.

And for my fellow indie authors, I am sorry that my ongoing support of your work won’t be seen in that venue. Please know that I do stay in your camp, and look forward to reading more of your titles, and in the future, I’ll be posting indie review posts on this blog (which you are more than welcome to share with every single person you know and tell them The Invisible Moth endorses folks buying your books).

But for me, Goodreads is not a positive platform. As much as I enjoyed seeing my friends’ updates and some of the book discussions we had — and I will miss that — the overwhelming atmosphere of not being allowed to disagree with other people’s opinions, of being put into a category of “bigot” or “intolerant” simply for holding one’s personal religious views, of people boycotting your books based on even a polite expression of dissent with a currently hot-button political or social topic, and of the general lack of appropriate critical thinking applied to what are supposed to be literary reviews…it was all getting to be way too much.

I’ll be brutally honest — what put me over the edge was seeing a review for one of my own titles that didn’t even make sense, it was so contradictory, and it significantly decreased my GR ratings for that title, and — well, I know star ratings shouldn’t matter so much, but to me, they do. I’ll admit, I wanted to completely throw all Christian morals of “loving our enemies” and “turning the other cheek” out the window. At least for a little bit.

Now, I’m not blaming my decision entirely on one other person. No, it’s the accumulation of too much hate on too many different reviews, mine and my friends’, too many soapboxes, too much nonsense.

And the sense of competition became fierce. I’d constantly compare myself to other authors, indie authors, trad pub, authors that have only been published recently, ones that have been at it for a while. I was seriously worried about their stats versus mine, and how pitiful mine seemed. I was beginning to wonder, “Why doesn’t anyone new want to read my books? Is my writing that bad?”

It was keeping me awake at night.

So, it was time to make a change.

If I’m not even a GR user, I won’t be as tempted to stalk my stats and angst over them. If I start to lose track of what those numbers might be, they’ll eventually mean less. I can convince myself that what other people think doesn’t matter if I don’t know what they’re thinking.

While this was actually not a fun thing to do — pressing the “delete” key and clicking the button that confirmed this action — it was necessary. And it was in fact painful — I felt sad all day after taking that final step. Yet I know, in my heart, that if I hadn’t carried through, this morning I would’ve woken up and wondered what fresh horrors awaited me in notifications.

The other major reason to cut the cord from this particular platform was the intense pressure it put on me to read hyped books I’d normally never go near, like what everybody else liked, and compete with my fellow online bookworms. Other people were finishing 100 new releases in a year, so I’d strive for the same. I’d race to the library 3 and 4 times a week to pick up holds, scour the shelves for authors I’d never heard of, force myself to believe I’d have my life changed by reading a genre I naturally shy away from.

It began to suck the joy from one of my favorite pasttimes. Something I do to relax after a long day.

Getting reviews up on GR in approximately 2 hours after closing a book became a priority. I’d wake up at 5 a.m. and be composing the review in my head. And when it was all on the screen, I’d realize just how much I couldn’t stand that title…and the idea of having wasted the past 72 hours of my life on it started to make my heart hurt.

As I went through my Goodreads TBR, I found that 95% of the titles on there were only listed because I saw someone else had chosen it. My true desire to engage in the novel did not exist.

So, finally, I drew the line. I culled my library holds, my Barnes and Noble and Amazon carts, and felt a great weight being lifted from my soul.

Now the emotional aftermath is somewhat bittersweet, but as I’ve seen my pleasure for re-reads return, and my potential bank balance stay way up, I know I’ve made the right choice. I can breathe again.

And I will put much more stock in the praise I already get from my friends and loved ones about the quality of my writing — and believe that it is worth it to press on.

Numbers need to matter a lot less. Money is one thing; self-esteem is another.

So, while it may seem to some an anti-productive choice to become inactive on a site that catalogs and shares authors’ publications, I’m content with it.