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The results of this year’s Goodreads Choice Awards are finally in, and while it’s always fun to see what others are reading, we have to say that they are a little disappointing.
Let’s rewind a bit first, though. If you’re unfamiliar with the Goodreads Choice Awards, this is the 13th year the awards have been held, and the winners are chosen by Goodreads members voting in two rounds. The first round includes 20 books with a 3.5 or higher rating that are chosen for each of Goodreads’ categories—which include different genres like Fiction, Horror, Romantasy, and Historical Fiction, as well as Debut and Audiobook. Then members vote on finalists, and then finally on the winners.
Below is a sampling of the winners for the 2024 Goodreads Choice Awards:
The book list above looks pretty solid, and the process for choosing them sounds kind of democratic, right? So why are we disappointed?
For one, they are overwhelmingly by white authors—out of 15 books, there are only two by authors who are non-white or mixed. Now, if you’re thinking that the winners are just a matter of being the people’s choice, it’s a little more complicated than that.
Not only does publishing favor white authors, they also tend to only want certain stories from non-white authors. In addition to that, and perhaps most importantly, books by white authors tend to get bigger marketing budgets. Another way to look at this is to look at the Goodreads Choice winners and see how many books are by very well-established authors compared to lesser known and debut authors. Over half of the books on the list are by mega bestselling authors—like Emily Henry, Alice Oseman, Stephen King, and Sarah J. Maas—some of whom have even had their works adapted into movies or shows.
On top of all of that, there have been many instances where it was found out that authors of color were review bombed, which would affect their book ratings, which would have therefore affected their ability to be nominated for a Goodreads Choice Award in the first place.
These points are all made with no shade to the winners—we do, of course, love to see books being celebrated—we would just like to see more of a variety of stories told, by diverse and as-yet-unknown authors alike.
Click here for the full list of the 2024 Goodreads Choice Award Winners.
Find more news and stories of interest from the book world in Breaking in Books.