I like having Goodreads friends and I’m honoured when someone sends me a friend request. But today I’m going to talk about when I don’t accept friend request.
Your request will be rejected if:
You have more friends than books
This is a good indicator to me that you’re on Goodreads for networking purposes—not books or reading. These people are often authors (usually self-published), publicists, etc.
I used to accept all friend requests but I soon learned that if someone has more friends than books, they do this to network. And in this case, “network” usually means sending tons of spam book recommendations (usually for the person’s OWN book), sending spam PMs asking me to read their book, sending out “event” invitations every few days for their own books, etc.
I found that my updates feed was getting spammed to death with posts and updates I didn’t care about.
And I love self-published authors—I do. I read a lot of books by them. But some self-published authors shove their books down peoples’ throats. And that often happens on Goodreads. I hate it when self-published authors send out mass book recommendations FOR THEIR OWN BOOK! It’s so spammy. It’s like mass DMing people on Twitter to say, “Hey have you seen that my book is free on Amazon today? Go read it!” No, no, no.
Actions like this are no different from spam emails, which everyone hates. Don’t push people away by spamming them on Goodreads.
You didn’t answer my challenge question
My challenge question is “Why do you want to be my friend?” I have it set to this as a kind of filter, again to weed out the spam. I don’t expect a long-winded response or an epic poem. I just want to know: why do you want to be my friend?
This can be as simple as saying:
- I read your blog and want to connect on here
- I saw you on Twitter and thought I’d add you on Goodreads
- I really agreed with your review of Invalid book: 0 and thought we could be friends!
Really what I’m asking is: how did you find my profile and why did you decide to click that “Friend Request” button?
If people don’t answer this question, it makes me feel like they don’t actually care and maybe they have an ulterior motive (like promoting their own book!).
We have no books in common
When I compare books with people requesting to be my friend and find that the only books we have in common are Harry Potter, I usually hit the “ignore” button. Now, if you answered the challenge question, things might be different. But if there’s no answer and we have no books in common, my first thought returns to: spam marketing. Because let’s be honest.. if we don’t read the same books and you’re not adding the personal touch to your request, why the heck do you even want to be my friend if not to send me spam marketing messages?
All your books are marked as “to-read” but you haven’t reviewed or rated any
Do you ever compare books with someone and see that every single book in their column is marked as “to-read” but they have zero ratings and zero reviews? Honestly, it’s just sketchy.
I want to be friends with people on Goodreads so I can read their reviews. If you don’t have any reviews on Goodreads, why should I be your friend?
Yeah, I get a lot of spam from Goodreads friends. I usually unfriend people like that. I added a lot of people in the beginning too. I still add people but I check them out first, see what books they have read and so on. I only accept author requests if I have read their books or I know them for some reason.
I have more friends than books though. I don’t mind it. I use goodreads to send out notices for my giveaways, so I want to provide that to as many real readers as possible. But that’s the only time any goodreads friends get an email from me though.
I’m starting to get that too and it’s really annoying. x) In the beginning I accepted everything but now I’m not doing that anymore.
I just compared our books, just for the fun of it and we have 203 books in common. x)
Eh, yes. Spam. I’m having a bit of trouble with my Goodreads friends always “recommending” me books. I’ve chatted to them, but all the recommendations are kind of crazy. I have SO MUCH to read already. I’m not sure what to do about that yet, actually…unfriend?
smae reasons here. I hate the spam that comes out. Great post.
I used to accept everyone too, but had to stop doing that for the same reason. I think having waaay more friends than books is a big one. Like, if the difference isn’t that much–say they have 300 books and 310 friends, that’s fine, but if it’s like. . . five books and a thousand friends? Yeah, no.
I’m sorry you had to experience all the spam from sketchy Goodreads friends =( Whenever authors/publishers try to force readers to read their books, I can understand the first few times because it’s not easy for them to market their work. But if they KEEP DOING IT, it gets on my nerves and ugh!! Can’t stand it!!
I do check the profiles of people who send friend requests to check, but not as thoroughly as you do! Maybe it’ll be good to set a Challenge Question as well, and why hadn’t I thought of “books in common”? Interesting post! =)
Alicia @ Summer Next Top Story
You have made me rethink accepting people on Goodreads. I have noticed I get hit with a lot of read me notices but I just ignored them. Makes me want to go and weed out my friends.
My biggest reason is definitely the numbers. You’ve listed 12 books as read and you have 2k “friends”?!? Um, no. I want people who read and list what they read so I can find more books to read. That’s why it’s called GoodREADS. *sigh*
Those are pretty much all of mine too!
I automatically ignore a request if they don’t answer my challenge question. It’s super easy and you can get away with only one word: “Where do you know me from?” The most common answers are from my blog, twitter, or a shared GR group. If someone doesn’t answer, I just assume they’re going on a friending spree. It’s usually authors who don’t answer. One author tried to friend me at least once or twice a week. The saddest part is it that we had interacted in a group, on Twitter, and I had read two of his books. It shouldn’t have been hard to answer.
If they do answer my question, I accept almost every request. I still deny authors who I haven’t read or interacted with before and people who clearly don’t read the same books as me.
GREAT post, Ashley! This is so right on. Just recently I got a friend request and they actually answered my challenge question (Why do you want to be my friend?) with this: “I like your avatar.” I was surprised because at least they were being honest, but ummm, is that really enough to want to be friends? I took a look at their profile and they were an author, so I ignored the request. Sigh.
There are times where I get so many spam-friends. Some even have 0 books added to their account.. and I hate it when people don’t answer my little question, it’s not that hard 🙂
Ugh, it drives me crazy when people don’t answer the question! I also have it set to “Why do you want to be my friend?” and how hard is that to answer??
THIS. So much this. I always compare our books to find out if we’re at least compatible and it baffles me to see people with 0 books and 1200 friends!
I get a lot of random people and authors wanting to be my “friend.” At first I accepted everyone, and was upwards of 500 friends – mostly people I didn’t know, or worse, authors who were spamming me with event invites and book recs. I started scoping out people first, seeing if they had an author site listed in their profile, if their books to friends ratio made sense, etc. I’ve cut WAY down on who I accept in the last year, and if they don’t answer my challenge question, unless I KNOW them really well? It’s a no go.
Mine is easy too – why do you want to be my friend? I’ve gotten nice, well-thought out ones from people who really want to connect, and then I’ve gotten stupid ones. One person wrote “I don’t know.” really?! Ugh. I’m on GR to talk about books and actually TALK to people, not just to network.
We pretty much have the same criteria for accepting/ignoring friend requests on Goodreads.
I always compare books before I accept. If we don’t have at least 75% of books in common, then I don’t accept. (This was actually a pain in the butt when I decided to delete a bunch of people, haha.) I also don’t accept if you don’t answer the “Why do you want to be my friend?” question. It’s not that hard of a question to answer!
Yep yep yep. It’s been smack down for me lately. Especially when they don’t even answer my question! Good point!
I used to add everyone, but I am getting more careful about who I do add. I’ve had to remove quite a few people because of the spam. I hate all the events, and the groups, and then there is this one guy who would invite me to vote in a poll every three days. It got old quick.
All of the points you list are the reasons why I would refuse someone’s friend request on Goodreads too.
Latest friend request was from an user who has one book added as to-read, no read books, 1 friend and is GR user since 2011. I honestly don’t have an idea why did they send a request.
Let me give you an author’s perspective on this. I am a book-a-holic and love to read as much as possible. I’m good for about 30-40 books a year. There are tons of books I’ve added to my TBR and one day I will get to them…it’s just that particular list grows faster than I can read them. Having four books of my own for sale and one big one on the way, I get tons of friend requests. Whether it be a fan that read and loved my books and requested the add, or a blog tour or some other promo I’m doing that generated a bunch of interest and even more friend add requests. Typically I add everyone because I never want to turn a fan away. I think because of that, I have way more “friends” than books that I’ve read. I never spam anyone or recommend books thru Good Reads. But I do however, get tons of book suggestions from all kinds of people so I can understand your frustration. Just be mindful of the authors that aren’t spamming and trying to use GoodReads as the way it was intended. If they have a lot of “friends” then that is surely a reflection of people loving their books and wanting to connect 🙂 xo
Yeah I totally get where you’re coming from. I think I just hope that if an author like that were to add me on Goodreads, they’d fill out my challenge question. That would add a more personal request and let me know how they found me and why they want to be my friend.
But when you combine more friends than books with ignoring my challenge question… it looks spammy. 🙁 But if that same person were to write me a sincere (but short is fine) answer to my question, I’d be much more inclined to accept!
GREAT post! I, too, used to accept every single friend request. I had over 1,000 friends at one point!
But I actually want to use my Goodreads for finding books, and I can’t do that when my feed is clogged with crap that doesn’t even interest me. I spent hours weeding through my friends list and deleting everyone that didn’t read the same books I do. The occasional weird random book I don’t know about is fine, but if more than maybe a quarter of them are, I don’t want that person on my list. I’ve also been trying to find others like you that have nearly identical taste in books…thus far, I’ve been unsuccessful. =/
I use a challenge question too, but I’ve found that 90% of people who request me don’t bother to answer. (And wtf, isn’t it a requirement to answer?!) It’s annoying!
I check the books in common as well, but now I usually compare them too, to see if we rate things similarly. I don’t want a massive amount of friends.
I’m also likely to delete people who send too many requests for anything. I used to send event invites for stuff happening on the blog, but I don’t do it anymore because I despise getting them. 9 times out of 10, I don’t care, and the notifications are annoying. I also delete people who fill up my whole feed adding books in a series…is it really necessary to add EVERY SINGLE book in a 15 book series, all at once?!
I’ve found I’ve gotten extremely picky when it comes to Goodreads friends. I now have only 169 of the original 1,000+!
Exactly the same here! I sat down and weeded out hundreds of my friends lol.
And I also used to send out event invites for things (mainly giveaways) on my blog, but I stopped doing that when I realized I was sick of RECEIVING them, so I didn’t want to be the person sending them out lol.
So true…I’m so sick of event requests!
Yep, the biggest thing for me is whether or not people answer my challenge question. I don’t have the standard “Why do you want to be my friend?” question because I know socially-awkward types like myself sometimes stress over how to answer that, haha. But I do use it as a form of spam filter so instead I ask what the last book you added to your favourites shelf is and why you did so. It isn’t hard, and it’s so frustrating when people choose to overlook it. It’s an instant decline for me.
I don’t accept quite a number of requests. The ones I immediately ignore are the ones who actually say “no, I haven’t read your about me”. UGH.
The books to friends ratio is the first thing I check when I accept a friend request- and that the amount of books is realistic for a reader.
I’ve been considering putting on a challenge question for a while, because I get so many random requests……maybe I should do that.
If I do accept a request and find that my updates is just full of updates I’m not interested in, I unfriend them. After all, isn’t the point of friending someone on GR having something in common?!
I do the same thing as you, and look at friends:books, as well as check whether they’re an author. If an author adds me I pretty much ignore it unless they write something in the box (it’s in my challenge question).
Although the last author to do so wrote that I’d enjoy his work because ‘he wrote it whilst naked’ so I’m not sure how well it’s working…
I don’t mind if we have very few books in common… although if we have NO books in common then I won’t accept because I don’t see the point. But I absolutely look at the books/friends ratio. I also just flat-out don’t accept author requests anymore. I have yet to come across an author who was actually interested in connecting reader-to-reader, and I’m not on GR to be marketed to.
I too added everyone in the beginning. It got to be so overwhelming trying to keep up with everyone and then getting spammed with stuff I have no interest in. I’m now much more peculiar about who I add/accept. I’ve never thought about the friends to book ratio but it is a good idea. Something that I do is go through every so often and delete those haven’t been active in the past couple of months. Active participation is important for me and if you haven’t posted in the past three months, sorry but I’m deleting you. The only exception to that is for the bloggers that I follow that have posted an update that they will be out of commission for awhile for whatever reason.
Ha, I’m SUPER particular about accepting GR friends right now.
All of the reasons you listed are part of it. I’ll add two more:
1) New member: I hate turning down new members, because they might be my bookish soul mate, but the problem is that I can’t tell if they are legit or not yet, and I feel worse removing someone from my friends list then denying them at this stage.
2) No books rated 1 star and/or most common rating is 5 stars: The way GR is set up, all friends will show up in the Friend Ratings section on book pages, and I use that to decide what to read. If I’m friends with people I can’t trust to give honest feedback or at least to be particular to a degree that’s helpful to me, then I’m not going to be friends with them. Maybe they really do love half of the books they read, but that still won’t help me because our tastes are so different. Eliminating people who won’t rate books one star is my way of avoiding the trolls, the people who will start shit if you decide you’re in the mood for hate-reading. And, on GR, it’s especially frustrating, since there one star is simply “I didn’t like it.” Some highly negative reviews are two stars because people feel bad and I think we should just embrace that it’s not to our tastes.
I feel the same about new members. 🙁 If I see someone with like 5 books and no avatar, they’re getting rejected. Maybe it’s “mean” but it’s a great way of filtering out spam.
If I were a new member, I’d work on building up my profile BEFORE sending out friend requests. I’d add books, upload an avatar, and work on my description/profile page. If people aren’t going to put in that effort, then they’re probably not the users I want to be friends with.
Yet another thing on my to do list: weed out my Goodreads wishlist, and review and purge friends I have nothing in common with. I hate getting all the spam notifications, even if people mean well. I have a few friends that are always inviting me to groups or recommending books, and they aren’t anything I’m interested in. I use Goodreads friends to compare book reviews and ratings, and rarely anything else.
YES! If we don’t have at least 30 books in common (my friend request question) then I ignore your request. I want to be “friends” with people that read the same kind of books I do. I use Goodreads to find new books to read not network. That’s what Twitter and Facebook is for IMO.
I hate it when people don’t answer my questions! They’ll say something completely different or ask me to review something in their message. Really? I tend to let my friend requests sit and fester until I’m absolutely certain what my answer is going to be. I’ve had requests sit there for months. I finally cleaned the last few out last year. But I tend to only accept someone if they say they follow my blog or if I already kind of know them.
Haha I’ve been doing that too! Sometimes it’s because I just can’t decide if I should accept them or not, so I just let them sit there forever until I can finally make a decision X_X
Me too!
Those are all the same reasons I won’t accept a friend request. And authors wanting to friend you when you have no books in common as well.
I’m not on Goodreads to collect friends. I’m on there to get book recommendations and if we don’t have any books in common then what’s the point?
Exactly! Why do those people even want to be friends? What’s even in it for them? Bleh.
I love this post! I know exactly what you mean, but I don’t think I’ve ever ignored a friend request, as I’m an author who can’t really afford to ignore potential readers [even sketchy spammy ones!]. That said, I don’t send friend requests, either, because I don’t want to look like a spammy author! LOL. The complexities. I do use GR to find out what people are reading, to share my thoughts on threads, write the occasional review . . . but one of my favourite things is to trawl through the reviews of others – so many make me laugh and I’ve found lots of great books to add to my TBR. Which, unfortunately, grows longer all the time, with little time to apply myself to shortening it.
I suppose there are a lot of spammy authors out there, many self-published, looking to network & advertise, but I don’t think it’s fair to assume that just because someone has a lot of “friends” on Goodreads that they’re a spammer.
I have a lot of friends because people add me all the time & I don’t think so highly of myself that I don’t add them back.
I have about 1700 friends, more friends than the 1,000 books on my profile. And I have many books marked To-Read, more than I have read.
But I am not an author looking for reviews. I am a book reviewer. I use Goodreads to network, yes, but that’s what Goodreads is…a social network for reading.
I use it for my reading constantly. I’m always reading and talking about books. And I rarely have problems with spam.
It’s unfair to assume things about people just because of how many friends they have.
And I think it’s pathetic that people ask others questions that must be answered correctly to be accepted as a friend. I find that narcissistic and sad. It’s a reading website! Get over yourself.
This article is so condescending and pretentious. I don’t know why anyone would want to be your friend.
Luckily you don’t have to be. 😉 Enjoy the random people on your friends list.
This is pretty much the same why I filter my Goodreads friends too. Good to know I’m not alone in my thinking. Thanks for sharing.
Haha. I loved this post and the hilarious words, (I don’t want an epic poem as response).. Indeed true.
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Niveditha Praveen
I’m totally on the same page with you. In fact, I found your post while searching for why so many people who try to friend me on Goodreads have 0 books but dozens – or even hundreds – of friends. Most of them do not seem to be self-publishing authors or even authors at all. I guess it’s nothing more than another social media networking platform for them. Anyhow I really appreciated everything you wrote in your post. Thanks.
I’m a new author and you just addressed my biggest fear – how do you get attention without spamming all your friends and acquaintances? I have a lot of friends who are authors and even I don’t want their spam! What I do want is a place for people who enjoy my writing to congregate. Your example of 4,392 friends but only 82 books – I’d be happy with that! It tells me someone wants to know what this author has to say. I’m a reader too and I have a personal account with a zillion books in all genres. I use it as a way to keep track of what I’ve read more than to read reviews.
My only advice is to friend the authors you are a fan of and ignore the rest. It can be called networking – but authors call it finding the readers who want what they write. If they don’t tell people about their books, they’ve wasted years of their life writing them. Goodreads is one of the best places to tell people.
Another thing – As a new author, I’m horrible at book reviews because I know how much effort goes into writing a novel. My standard these days is a 5 star for a book that surprises me or makes me cry. Everyone else gets a 3 or 4. If someone should never pick up a pen again, then I might give a 1 or 2.
I’m new at this and just wanted to show it from a different perspective. Happy Reading!