Goodreads has launched the opening round for their yearly awards for the best books just recently. I skimmed through the categories myself, yet already saw quite mixed reviews about the suggestions for this year’s nominees.
Some categories like poetry and children books were removed (yeah, you can say that children ain’t a target audience for the Goodreads yet this platform always seemed to be well rounded).
Graphic novels is also something that was removed unfortunately. Although these ain’t my cup of tea, I’m almost sure it must be upsetting for a large group of people.
by NecessaryTwist7
1 Comment
It’s obvious that this whole award thing targets almost exclusively younger women who are really into the currently social media popular books.
We have categories for romance, YA fiction, YA fantasy, fantasy and romantasy. They are all either exclusive to or heavily dominated by… essentially, books popular with Tiktok/Instagram/bookstube using women.
The changes in categories are obviously made so they can give an award (and nomination) to multiple books that are essentially the same. Like… Let’s be real, Leigh Bardugo, Rebecca Yarros, Jennifer L. Armentrout, Cassandra Clare, the 3 “mythology updated for 2013 sensibilities” nominated in fantasy, etc. are read by the same demographic. If they were all in the same category, only one would get an award and only a few would be nominated.
This way they can multiply that number.
There is no issue with creating an award for a certain demographic. Go ahead. But stop pretending that it’s a legit, all-encompassing award when it is obvious they are edging out everyone else.