Why some book fans are leaving Amazon-owned Goodreads in wake of the U.S. election

Hold onto your book reviews, because X isn't the only appthat some users are ditching in the wake of the U.S. election.

Some readers say they've left Goodreads, a popular platform for tracking and reviewing books, in favour of TheStoryGraph, which bills itself asan "Amazon-free alternative."

The app, built and run by CEO Nadia Odunayoand chief AI officer Rob Frelow,saw asurge of new subscribers the week after the election, up to nearly 25,000 in a single day by Nov. 12 which is 10 times more than usual. In a blog post, Odunayo said that by the end of the week, the app hadsurpassed threemillion registered users and was a spot ahead of Goodreadson the U.S. App Store chart for the top free iPhonebook apps (though Goodreads has since surpassed it).

Odunayoattributed The StoryGraph's surge to several popular social media posts.

Some on BookTok(the reading community on TikTok) called the switch a smallact of resistance, "to feel a little better about the mess we're in."

"Community and uplifting each other is going to be so vital, even more so, over these next few years, and this is something that so many of us in the BookTok community can do right now," said anotherTikTok user in a video with nearly a million views.

CBC News hasreached out to Goodreadsand The StoryGraph for comment.

How the U.S. election outcome ties in

Amazon purchased Goodreads in 2013. Jeff Bezos founded the retail giant in 1994 and was CEO until 2021. He remains the company's largest individual shareholder.

Bezos also owns the Washington Post, and in the lead-up to the U.S. election, the billionaire defended the newspaper's decision not to endorse a presidential candidate as "right" and "principled." He pushed back against any notion that he had ordered it up to protect his business interests.

That decisionto end thedecades-long practice of endorsing presidential candidatesreportedly led to hundreds of thousands of people cancelling their subscriptions, and protests from journalists with a deep history with the newspaper.

The Post's editorial staff had been prepared to endorse Democrat Kamala Harris, according to reporting done by the Post,before publisher Will Lewis wrote instead that it would be better for readers to make up their own minds.

WATCH | The Washington Post loses 10% ofsubscribers:

How the Washington Post lost 10% of its subscribers in 5 days | About That

25 days ago

Duration 11:38

Less than two weeks before the U.S. election, the Washington Post's owner Jeff Bezos said the paper would no longer endorse a presidential candidate, resulting in a loss of hundreds of thousands of subscribers. Andrew Chang breaks down Jeff Bezos's argument for ending a long-standing tradition at the Post, and explains why fact-based publications give their opinion at all.

After Republican Donald Trump's win, Bezoscongratulatedhim "on an extraordinary political comeback and decisive victory" on X.

The move awayfrom Goodreadsfor some is a smaller echo of what's currently happening with Elon Musk's X, whose main competitor Bluesky exploded in popularityafterthe election. Bluesky said in mid-November that its total users hadsurged to 15 million, up from roughly 13 million at the end of October.

The influx appears to be driven largely by former X users, upset by Musk's campaigning for Trump and the president-elect's naming of Muskto co-head government efficiency.

'Just because I'm Black'

As The StoryGraph CEOOdunayopointedout in her blogpost, many people said onlinethat they were leaving Goodreads for her platform because they wanted to support a business owned by a Black woman.

But she added thatshe was struggling with that reasoning.

"Of course I'm grateful for all and any support, and I love inspiring and rallying people, especially those who look like me, but I do struggle with the idea of people feeling like they have to use StoryGraph just because I'm Black,"Odunayowrote.

"I decided to deal with it the way I did when we exploded a week after George Floyd's murder [by police in 2020]and there was an outpouring of support for Black creators: Don't worry about why they came initially."

Odunayo launched The StoryGraphin 2019. Goodreadswas founded in 2006 and has more than 150 million members.

As of Monday afternoon, The StoryGraph wasNo. 14for booksapps in Canada, and GoodreadsNo. 4, behind Audible, Kindle and Libby. In the U.S., Goodreadswas No. 5, and The StoryGraph No. 12.

WATCH | Could X become a hard-right platform?:

Will a user exodus turn X into a hard-right platform?

10 days ago

Duration 6:44

X, formerly known as Twitter, saw its largest user exodus since the Elon Musk takeover after Donald Trumps election. The National asks two social media experts to break down whether X is becoming a platform for the hard right, and what happens when people only interact online with people they agree with.