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The outcomes of this yr’s Goodreads Alternative Awards are lastly in, and whereas it’s all the time enjoyable to see what others are studying, now we have to say that they’re just a little disappointing.
Let’s rewind a bit first, although. In case you’re unfamiliar with the Goodreads Alternative Awards, that is the thirteenth yr the awards have been held, and the winners are chosen by Goodreads members voting in two rounds. The primary spherical consists of 20 books with a 3.5 or greater ranking which can be chosen for every of Goodreads’ classes—which embrace completely different genres like Fiction, Horror, Romantasy, and Historic Fiction, in addition to Debut and Audiobook. Then members vote on finalists, after which lastly on the winners.
Under is a sampling of the winners for the 2024 Goodreads Alternative Awards:
The e book checklist above appears to be like fairly strong, and the method for selecting them sounds form of democratic, proper? So why are we disillusioned?
For one, they’re overwhelmingly by white authors—out of 15 books, there are solely two by authors who’re non-white or blended. Now, for those who’re considering that the winners are only a matter of being the folks’s selection, it’s just a little extra sophisticated than that.
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Not solely does publishing favor white authors, additionally they are inclined to solely need sure tales from non-white authors. Along with that, and maybe most significantly, books by white authors are inclined to get larger advertising budgets. One other approach to take a look at that is to take a look at the Goodreads Alternative winners and see what number of books are by very well-established authors in comparison with lesser identified and debut authors. Over half of the books on the checklist are by mega bestselling authors—like Emily Henry, Alice Oseman, Stephen King, and Sarah J. Maas—a few of whom have even had their works tailored into films or exhibits.
On prime of all of that, there have been many cases the place it was discovered that authors of colour have been overview bombed, which might have an effect on their e book scores, which might have due to this fact affected their capacity to be nominated for a Goodreads Alternative Award within the first place.
These factors are all made with no shade to the winners—we do, in fact, like to see books being celebrated—we might similar to to see extra of a wide range of tales instructed, by numerous and as-yet-unknown authors alike.
Click on right here for the total checklist of the 2024 Goodreads Alternative Award Winners.