📚 Back like they never left

After many, many years of user requests, Goodreads now allows half-star and quarter-star ratings. How’s everyone feeling about it?

I sifted through thousands of comments on Instagram and Reddit, and here are the top sentiments being shared:

⭐ Hooray!: There are a lot of party popper emojis in the Goodreads Instagram comments, but it’s not all celebrations…

🌟 “Alexa, play ‘Too Little, Too Late’”: The most-liked comment is, “girl it’s been 89 years,” and the third is, “Truly bananas it took you this long to listen to your users.”

⭐ Keep going…: Users are still begging for basic functionality upgrades for the apps and the desktop version, including dark mode and the ability to easily switch between editions (like audiobook vs. print).

🌟 Have you tried the StoryGraph?: Readers are quick to point to reading trackers that have had this functionality for ages, including the StoryGraph, which has the added bonus of not being owned by Amazon.

⭐ Now I have homework: Some readers jumped to update their entire back catalog of ratings to reflect this new functionality. And some just had one rating in mind: “Immediately went and changed the rating on the book I hate most to a quarter star.”

🌟 Do we really need a 20-point scale?: Over on Reddit, users are debating the merits of half- and quarter-star ratings, which turn a five-star scale into a 20-point scale. Some comments say readers just need to commit more, instead of fussing with fractions: “Half-stars are for cowards.” —DE