Huh? What happened?

[Katie]

Overnight, I lost one rating on my books, so I went from 303 to 302. It must have been a good rating, because my overall star rating average fell. Fair enough. Someone left Goodreads or decided they'd made a mistake and fixed it. What I don't understand is why the star average on ALL my books fell as well. Surely if I only lost one rating, I should only have lost 'marks' on one of my books? It doesn't make sense. :(

[Michael Cargill]

It's possible that the reviewer had more than one account, and so if they were deleted by GR for abuse, all the associated reviews and ratings were deleted as well.

GR often takes a day or two for everything in its database to sync up properly, so you may find things change again.

This is all pure speculation, mind.

[Will]

I've seen similar things happen. The GR system sometimes has a bit of lag in it. Hopefully it should settle down fairly soon for you.

[Rosen]

That is really odd. Unless somebody who'd reviewed everything you've written deleted their account and somebody else reviewed all but one book, I can't see how it would be statistically possible.

That's not likely though, is it? I'm going to go with the GR system lagging.

[Katie]

So if it's lagging, does that mean I've lost more ratings and my overall rating is going to fall even further? !!!

[Rosen]

I don't know. I hope not - The Troll Trap is in there! ;-)

[Katie]

I think The Troll Trap is the only thing holding my rating up at the moment!

[Rosen]

Weird. I wouldn't worry too much about Goodreads. It's lovely to have positive feedback (and a few good ratings is positive feedback even if they later disappear) but in my experience, readers don't pay them that much attention.

[Katie]

I try not to worry, but I've had a whole string of one and two star ratings in the past month, so it's a bit disconcerting.

[Rosen]

Just ratings, no reviews?

Remember when somebody on here found a reader who used to use the one star rating option to create a 'to-read' list?

[Patti (baconater)]

I think readers who don't interact with authors don't realise the importance of ratings to authors.

And why should they, I suppose?

People will use Goodreads as it suits them.

[David]

Patti (baconater) wrote: "I think readers who don't interact with authors don't realise the importance of ratings to authors.

And why should they, I suppose?

People will use Goodreads as it suits them."

Often I get the impression that there are some authors out there who think the reviews are just for them, not for other readers.

I first started using GR, for example, to help me remember what books I'd read and what I'd thought of them for my own reference, so my star ratings were intended for me alone.

[Stuart]

I find the star ratings handy for knowing that my books are still actually out there being noticed. It's like getting a letter from the school saying your child is badly behaved - at least it's proof they're attending...

[Andrew]

At some point in the last few months, Goodreads caught up with Story Of My Escape, and linked it to the French and Italian editions. Suddenly I'm getting 2 and 3 star ratings from people who have absolutely never read my book.

This isn't a complaint, by the way, if anything it boosts the overall visibility of my translation and is a Very Good Thing. But it does go to show that Goodreads moves in mysterious ways ;)

[Katie]

Stuart wrote: "I find the star ratings handy for knowing that my books are still actually out there being noticed. It's like getting a letter from the school saying your child is badly behaved - at least it's pro..."

Well put, Stu. I'm getting so few sales these days, it's good to know that people are at least reading my books when they pick them up free. Sadly, they don't seem to be enjoying them any more...at least not on Goodreads. The books are still getting the occasional review on Amazon and they're still fine there. But maybe, as David suggested, people use the stars on here for their own system of marking books. I'll try and relax a bit.

[Jamie]

Well ive been a member of this site for ages and have, as a result of this topic, just learned I have a star rating. How very exciting. Apparently its 4.07. Means nothing to me but I like the pretty red stars.