55-485: Goodreads is an American social cataloging website and a subsidiary of Amazon that allows individuals to search its database of books, annotations, quotes, and reviews. Users can sign up and register books to generate library catalogs and reading lists. They can also create their own groups of book suggestions, surveys, polls, blogs, and discussions. The website's offices are located in San Francisco . Goodreads
110-705: A Wall Street Journal interview, "He's taken shots at me for years. It's fine, but my approach is to do the opposite with him—to heap praise." Legal thriller writer Lisa Scottoline said in a review of Patterson's Kill Alex Cross , "They used to say that 50 million Elvis Presley fans couldn't be wrong, and James Patterson makes 50 million fans look like a good start. He has sold more than 230 million books, and his fans aren't wrong, either." In 2013, Patterson took out ads titled "Who Will Save Our Books? Our Bookstores? Our Libraries?" in Publishers Weekly and The New York Times Book Review , which employed
165-481: A "complete psychological breakdown", saying she would be going into rehab and apologizing profusely to not only those authors she had disparaged but a friend who had defended her initially against the accusations. Some of the authors said she needed to do more to make things right. Jane Friedman discovered a 6 listings of books, probably written using AI generative models ( LLM ), fraudulently using her name, on Amazon and Goodreads. Amazon and Goodreads resisted removing
220-451: A brand that focuses on making money than an artist who focuses on his craft. In an interview for USA Weekend , Stephen King said Patterson was "a terrible writer but he's very successful." King also implied, when asked on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert about how many hours it takes him to write a book, that Patterson needed only 12 hours for two books, noting he and Patterson had "a mutual respect—sort of." Patterson said of King in
275-480: A first-look deal with Entertainment One . In June 2022, Patterson set off a controversy when he said in an interview that older white males find it difficult to find work in film, theater, television and publishing, and that the problem is "just another form of racism." Patterson's publishing house, Hachette, has a workforce that is 65% white and 78% of senior positions are filled by whites. Following publication of data confirming that white males are overrepresented in
330-467: A form of cyberbullying and targeted harassment of authors. Author Gretchen Felker-Martin's debut horror novel, about a trans woman , was review-bombed in what she suspected to be an organized campaign. Young adult fiction authors Keira Drake and Amélie Wen Zhao delayed publication of their fantasy novels after facing a tsunami of criticism on Twitter and Goodreads from users who deemed their fantasy universes to be racially insensitive. Elizabeth Gilbert ,
385-421: A former U.S. president can offer. Patterson has often said that collaborating with others brings new and interesting ideas to his stories. Of his process, Patterson has said that he is simply more proficient at dreaming up plots than crafting sentence after sentence. In September 2009, Patterson signed a deal to write or co-write 11 books for adults and six for young adults by the end of 2012. Forbes reported
440-423: A job as an advertising executive at J. Walter Thompson . After Patterson retired from advertising in 1996, he devoted his time to writing. Patterson later said that his greatest influence was probably Evan S. Connell 's 1959 debut novel Mrs. Bridge . In 1976, Patterson published his first novel, The Thomas Berryman Number. The novels featuring his character Alex Cross , a forensic psychologist formerly of
495-444: A presence on Facebook , Pinterest , Twitter , and other social networking sites. Linking a Goodreads account with a social networking account like Facebook enables the ability to import contacts from the social networking account to Goodreads, expanding one's Goodreads "Friends" list. There are settings available, as well, to allow Goodreads to post straight to a social networking account, which informs, e.g., Facebook friends, what one
550-422: A rating system of one to five stars, with the option of accompanying the rating with a written review. The site provides default bookshelves—read, currently-reading, to-read—and the opportunity to create customized shelves to categorize a user's books. A popular phenomenon on the site is the so-called reading challenge, where users commit to reading a certain number of books per year and track their progress through
605-476: A result of Goodreads' acquisition by Amazon , Goodreads began using Amazon's data again. In 2012, after a receiving a poor review on her novel The Selection , author Kiera Cass encouraged her Twitter followers to "knock [the review] off" the front page of Goodreads' section on the book. This sparked public outrage and started a discussion on the relationship between authors and reviewers on Goodreads. That same year, Goodreads received criticism from users about
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#1732780435378660-492: A single author – 67 – which is also a Guinness World Record . His novels account for one in 17, roughly 6%, of all hardcover novels sold in the United States; as of 2010, Patterson's novels had in recent years sold more copies than those of Stephen King , John Grisham , and Dan Brown combined. His books have sold approximately 305 million copies worldwide. In 2008, Patterson replaced Jacqueline Wilson as
715-539: A user has written a work, the work can be linked on the author's profile page, which also includes an author's blog. Goodreads organizes offline opportunities as well, such as in-person book exchanges and "literary pub crawls". Goodreads offers a "My Year in Books" report in which a user can review their reading history from the prior year. The Goodreads tradition, created by Fionnuala Lirsdottir in 2014, encourages users to reflect on their past reading, by offering statistic of
770-455: A variety of co-authors, such as J.D. Barker , Candice Fox , Maxine Paetro , Andrew Gross , Mark Sullivan , Ashwin Sanghi , Michael Ledwidge , and Peter de Jonge . In May 2017, it was announced that Patterson would also co-author a crime fiction book with former U.S. President Bill Clinton . Patterson said the novel, The President Is Missing , would provide a level of detail that only
825-467: Is a yearly award program, first launched on Goodreads in 2009. Winners are determined by users voting on books that Goodreads has nominated or books of their choosing, released in the given year. Most books that Goodreads nominates are from verified Goodreads authors. The final voting round collects the top 10 books from 20 different categories. Critics have assailed Goodreads' lack of development and maintenance, coupled with its dominant position in
880-547: Is an American author. Among his works are the Alex Cross , Michael Bennett , Women's Murder Club , Maximum Ride , Daniel X , NYPD Red , Witch & Wizard , Private and Middle School series, as well as many stand-alone thrillers, non-fiction, and romance novels. Patterson's books have sold more than 425 million copies, and he was the first person to sell one million e-books . In 2016, Patterson topped Forbes 's list of highest-paid authors for
935-706: Is hosted by Ning . The website is inspired by methods Patterson used with his own son, Jack, who had been a reluctant reader. Patterson has also set up the James Patterson Teacher Education Scholarship in the schools of education at Appalachian State University , Michigan State University , Florida Atlantic University , and the University of Florida . Patterson also runs the College Book Bucks scholarship program. Recently, his JP Entertainment company signed
990-498: Is reading or how one rated a book. The Amazon Kindle Paperwhite (version 2) and Kindle Voyage feature integration with Goodreads' social network via a user interface button. Book catalog data was seeded with large imports from various closed and open data sources, including individual publishers, Ingram , Amazon (before 2012 and after 2013), WorldCat and the Library of Congress . Goodreads librarians improve book information on
1045-553: The American Library Association , told the Tampa Bay Times she was writing Patterson a thank-you letter. In 2017, digital humanities scholars Simon Fuller and James O'Sullivan published research showing that Patterson does not do much actual writing when collaborating with other authors. O'Sullivan writes: "Patterson is all about story... 'author', in its widely accepted sense, isn't always
1100-615: The Goodreads' API into their sales pages, effectively posting book reviews that many in the Goodreads community know to be false, and nothing more than an act of revenge against an author; real-world sales decisions have been made by consumers based on these reviews. Regarding the 2013 Amazon acquisition of Goodreads, The New York Times said that: "Goodreads was a rival to Amazon as a place for discovering books" and that this deal "consolidates Amazon's power to determine which authors get exposure for their work". The Goodreads Choice Awards
1155-457: The May 2024 publication of her own upcoming science fantasy debut novel, Crown of Starlight ; her agent dropped her as a client. After initially denying the documented accusations, she blamed them on a friend and then finally accepted responsibility. On X (formerly Twitter), she attributed her actions to worsening depression and the attendant alcohol and substance abuse that had recently culminated in
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#17327804353781210-490: The Washington D.C. Metropolitan Police and Federal Bureau of Investigation who now works as a private psychologist and government consultant, are his most popular and the top-selling U.S. detective series of the 2010s. Patterson has written more than 200 novels since 1976. Patterson has had more than 114 New York Times bestselling novels, and holds The New York Times record for most #1 New York Times bestsellers by
1265-531: The Year. He is the first author to have No. 1 new titles simultaneously on The New York Times adult and children's bestsellers lists, and to have two books on NovelTrackr's top-ten list at the same time. In 2019, Patterson was awarded a National Humanities Medal . He appeared on the Fox TV show The Simpsons (in the episode " Yokel Chords ") and in various episodes of Castle as himself. Patterson works with
1320-454: The announcement, noting Amazon's business reasons for the move: Where authors were threatening a mass account cancellation to protest the bullying, many of the reader users who commented on the announcement are now threatening the same thing. And while much of this might seem like nothing more than petty playground behavior between children who honestly do not have a clear good guy or bad guy, keep in mind that several e-book retailers incorporate
1375-421: The author of Eat, Pray, Love , was flooded with negative ratings on Goodreads for her not-yet-published novel The Snow Forest from users who objected to its setting in 1930s Russia. Cecilia Rabess , a Black author, was flooded with negative reviews on Goodreads for her debut novel Everything's Fine , which focuses on a young Black woman who falls in love with a bigoted white fellow employee at Goldman Sachs ;
1430-497: The availability and tone of reviews posted on the site, with some users and websites stating that certain reviewers were harassing and encouraging attacks on authors. Goodreads publicly posted its review guidelines in August 2012 to address these issues. After Amazon's acquisition of Goodreads, this policy was modified to include deletion of any review containing "an ad hominem attack or an off-topic comment". Several news sources reported
1485-492: The book-review marketplace. For example, Goodreads' recommendation algorithm was increasingly seen as primitive. The StoryGraph was established in 2019 as a competitor to Goodreads. Goodreads' review system is more easily "gamed" than other online book-review platforms, although Goodreads remains by far the most popular website for book reviews. Amazon.com does not allow reviews to be posted for most books that have not yet been released, and Amazon book reviews indicate whether
1540-428: The catalog and user edits as open data . In December 2020, Goodreads deactivated API keys more than 30 days old and said it would no longer be issuing new API keys. In January 2012, Goodreads switched from using Amazon's public Product Advertising API for book metadata (such as title, author, and number of pages) to book wholesaler Ingram. Goodreads felt Amazon's requirements for using its API were too restrictive, and
1595-438: The combination of Ingram, the Library of Congress , and other sources would be more flexible. Some users worried that their reading records would be lost, but Goodreads had a number of plans in place to ease the transition and ensure that no data was lost, even for titles that might be in danger of deletion because they were available only through Amazon, such as Kindle editions and self-published works on Amazon. In May 2013, as
1650-427: The company opened its application programming interface , which enabled developers to access its ratings and titles. In 2011, Goodreads acquired Discovereads, a book recommendation engine that employs "machine learning algorithms to analyze which books people might like, based on books they've liked in the past and books that people with similar tastes have liked." After a user has rated 20 books on its five-star scale,
1705-666: The deal was worth at least $ 150 million, but according to Patterson, the estimate was inaccurate. Patterson founded the James Patterson PageTurner Awards in 2005 to donate over $ 100,000 that year to people, companies, schools, and other institutions that find original and effective ways to spread the excitement of books and reading. The PageTurner Awards were put on hold in 2008 to focus on Patterson's new initiative, ReadKiddoRead.com, which assists parents, teachers, and librarians in finding books for their children. The social networking site for ReadKiddoRead
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1760-585: The digital age to find books they might want to read. Before gaining much traction, Otis and Elizabeth Chandler grew the platform through their friends of friends where it reached 800 users. Eventually, it gained attention through the media such as Mashable and other various blogs. During its first year of business, the company was run without any formal funding. In December 2007, the site received funding estimated at $ 750,000 from angel investors . This funding lasted Goodreads until 2009, when Goodreads received two million dollars from True Ventures. In October 2010,
1815-704: The fraudulent titles until the author's complaints went viral on social media, in a blog post titled "I Would Rather See My Books Get Pirated Than This (Or: Why Goodreads and Amazon Are Becoming Dumpster Fires)." Social cataloging application Too Many Requests If you report this error to the Wikimedia System Administrators, please include the details below. Request from 172.68.168.151 via cp1112 cp1112, Varnish XID 939977957 Upstream caches: cp1112 int Error: 429, Too Many Requests at Thu, 28 Nov 2024 07:53:55 GMT James Patterson James Brendan Patterson (born March 22, 1947)
1870-806: The insurmountable." There were mixed reactions from Goodreads users, at the time totaling 16 million members. Goodreads founder Otis Chandler said that "his management team would remain in place to guard the reviewing process" with the acquisition. Chandler continued running Goodreads until 2019. The New York Times noted that Goodreads, at the time of the acquisition, had a more reputable reviewing system than Amazon's. Noting that some authors had been "too aggressive in their self-promotion" (as Goodreads admitted in an email) and that some readers had responded with aggression, in September 2013, Goodreads announced it would delete, without warning, reviews that threatened authors or mentioned authors' behavior. As of April 2020,
1925-425: The member base having doubled in one year. In March 2013, Amazon made an agreement to acquire Goodreads in the second quarter of 2013 for an undisclosed sum. Amazon had previously purchased the competitor Shelfari in 2008, with the Goodreads purchase "stunning" the book industry. The Authors Guild called it a "truly devastating act of vertical integration" and that Amazon's "control of online bookselling approaches
1980-646: The most appropriate term for his role within the writing process." O'Sullivan later conducted the same analysis on The President Is Missing , a collaboration between Patterson and Bill Clinton ; here O'Sullivan concludes that Patterson did most of the writing, aside from the end of the novel. In March 2023, Patterson's Maximum Ride series were banned from two elementary school libraries in Florida's Martin County School District and placed in their middle school libraries. Patterson criticized
2035-738: The most borrowed author in Britain's libraries. He retained this position at least until 2013. In 2018, Patterson worked with Stephen David Entertainment on the true crime television series James Patterson's Murder Is Forever . Patterson's awards include the Edgar Award , the BCA Mystery Guild's Thriller of the Year, the International Thriller of the Year award, and the Children's Choice Book Award for Author of
2090-534: The move, calling it a "borderline absurd decision". He encouraged readers to "send a polite note" to Florida Governor Ron DeSantis in response to legislation passed to seek community input on school library materials. Patterson and his wife, Susan, live in Palm Beach, Florida in Palm Beach County , Florida . They have a son, Jack, who was born February 8, 1998. In 2015, Patterson established
2145-537: The negative reviewers had not read the work, yet deemed its premise to be racist. Some scammers and cyberstalkers have used "review bombing" threats as part of extortion campaigns, threatening to flood a work with poor reviews unless an author pays. Goodreads said in 2021 that it takes "swift action to remove users when we determine that they violate our guidelines" and were developing technology to "prevent bad actor behavior and inauthentic reviews in order to better safeguard our community." However, authors have criticized
2200-651: The number of pages read; the number of books read; the user's average book length and their average ratings. The website facilitates reader interactions with authors through the interviews, giveaways, authors' blogs, and profile information. There is also a special section for authors with suggestions for promoting their works on Goodreads.com, aimed at helping them reach their target audience. By 2011, "seventeen thousand authors, including James Patterson and Margaret Atwood " used Goodreads to advertise. Users can add each other as "friends", enabling them to share reviews, posts, book recommendations, and messages. Goodreads has
2255-443: The platform. Recent research in literacy studies shows that such challenges encourage participants to read more in their free time. Goodreads users can read or listen to a preview of a book on the website using Kindle Cloud Reader and Audible. Goodreads also offers quizzes and trivia, quotations, book lists, and free giveaways. Members can receive the regular newsletter featuring new books, suggestions, author interviews, and poetry. If
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2310-481: The publisher of the Los Angeles Times , Otis Chandler . Goodreads was founded in 2006. The idea came about when Otis Chandler was browsing through his friend's bookshelf. He wanted to integrate this scanning experience and to create a space where people could write reviews regarding the books that they read. Goodreads addressed what publishers call the " discoverability problem" by guiding consumers in
2365-606: The publishing field, Patterson apologized on Facebook for his accusations of racism. "I apologize for saying white male writers having trouble finding work is a form of racism. I absolutely do not believe that racism is practiced against white writers. Please know that I strongly support a diversity of voices being heard—in literature, in Hollywood, everywhere." In March 2023, Patterson signed an exclusive first-look deal with Skydance Television . Patterson has been criticized for co-authoring many of his books and for being more of
2420-460: The site had more than 150 million members. Goodreads founders Otis Chandler and Elizabeth Khuri Chandler first met while studying at Stanford (Engineering and English respectively). After university Chandler initially worked as a programmer in on-line businesses, including dating sites, and Khuri Chandler as a journalist. Chandler and Khuri both grew up in California. Chandler is a descendant of
2475-410: The site will begin making recommendations. Otis Chandler believed this rating system would be superior to Amazon's, as Amazon's includes books a user has browsed or purchased as gifts when determining its recommendations. Later that year, Goodreads introduced an algorithm to suggest books to registered users and had over five million members. The New Yorker ' s Macy Halford noted that the algorithm
2530-412: The site's guidelines still state that "reviews that are predominantly about an author's behavior and not about the book will be deleted." In January 2016, Amazon announced that it would shut down Shelfari in favor of Goodreads, effective March 16, 2016. Users were offered the ability to export data and migrate accounts. In April 2016, Goodreads announced that over 50 million user reviews had been posted to
2585-468: The text: "If there are no bookstores, no libraries, no serious publishers with passionate, dedicated, idealistic editors, what will happen to our literature? Who will discover and mentor new writers? Who will publish our important books? What will happen if there are no more books like these?" Patterson called the ads an attempt to "stir the pot a little bit." Digital Book World called the ads "refreshing, really. And brave." Maureen Sullivan , president of
2640-574: The third consecutive year, with an income of $ 95 million. His total income over a decade is estimated at $ 700 million . In November 2015, Patterson received the Literarian Award from the National Book Foundation . He has donated millions of dollars in grants and scholarship to various universities, teachers' colleges, independent bookstores, school libraries, and college students to promote literacy. James Patterson
2695-587: The user leaving the review purchased the book. By contrast, any registered user on Goodreads (which Amazon purchased for $ 150 million in 2013) may rate or review a book, even before publication, and even without receiving an advance copy . Goodreads' system, as well as lax content moderation , has been criticized. The moderation system is manual and faces a backlog of flagged reviews. Manipulative reviews (" review bombing ") have occurred, with novels flooded with negative (one-star) reviews, sometimes even before publication. Such "weaponized" reviews have been described as
2750-571: The website's lax moderation; fantasy novelist Rin Chupeco has noted that authors from marginalized groups are often a target, saying that Goodreads only enforces its rules against reviews that specifically target "the authors with big enough marketing and publicity teams to demand these removals." Late in 2023 author Cait Corrain was discovered to have created fake accounts that posted negative reviews of authors with upcoming debut novels, many of them women of color. Her publisher, Del Rey , cancelled
2805-506: The website, including editing book and author information and adding cover images. Goodreads members can apply to become volunteer librarians after they have 50 books on their profile. Goodreads librarians coordinate on the Goodreads Librarian Group. User data becomes proprietary to Goodreads though available via an application programming interface , or API, unlike similar projects like The Open Library which publish
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#17327804353782860-477: The website. On the Goodreads website, users can add books to their personal bookshelves, rate and review books, see what their friends and authors are reading, participate in discussion boards and groups on a variety of topics, and get suggestions for future reading choices based on their reviews of previously read books. Once users have added friends to their profile, they will see their friends' shelves and reviews and can comment on friends' pages. Goodreads features
2915-542: Was born on March 22, 1947, in Newburgh, New York , the son of Isabelle ( née Morris ), a homemaker and teacher, and Charles Patterson, an insurance broker. The family was working-class and of Irish descent. Patterson graduated summa cum laude with a B.A. in English from Manhattan University and with an M.A. in English from Vanderbilt University . Patterson was a PhD candidate at Vanderbilt when he took
2970-578: Was founded in December 2006 and launched in January 2007 by Otis Chandler and Elizabeth Khuri Chandler. In December 2007, the site had 650,000 members and 10,000,000 books had been added. By July 2012, the site reported 10 million members, 20 million monthly visits, and thirty employees. On March 28, 2013, Amazon announced its acquisition of Goodreads, and by July 23, 2013, Goodreads announced their user base had grown to 20 million members. By September 2023,
3025-565: Was not perfect, as the number of books needed to create a perfect recommendation system is so large that "by the time I'd got halfway there, my reading preferences would have changed and I'd have to start over again." As of 2012, membership was required to use but free. In October 2012, Goodreads announced it had grown to 11 million members with 395 million books cataloged and over 20,000 book clubs created by its users. A month later, in November 2012, Goodreads had surpassed 12 million members, with
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