Due to Goodreads’ new censorship rules where they will delete a shelf or a review that references an author’s bad behaviour, the Moonlight Library will no longer be accepting books for review from self-published authors unless Nemo already has a good relationship with said author on social media:
Due to this rule, we have recently joined Booklikes.
This contradicts and nullifies our previous policy of not reviewing books by friends, but we will only develop relationships with authors if they can separate themselves from their books and take criticism.
We were willing to give self-published authors a chance, and we did so. We opened our blog to self-published and small press authors and allowed them to ask us to read their books. We were forced to shut down due to overload.
However Goodreads’ new censorship rules means that we can no longer verify if an author will respond badly to a one star, two star, or even three star review. Yes, authors have thrown tantrums about three star reviews before now.
In the interest of preventing drama, rather than being forced to react to it, we are changing our policies.
We apologise to any self-published author who is well-behaved and respects reviewers. We know it is hard to find a blog to review your book and we wish it could have worked out differently. We were excited about sharing talented new voices in a digital world where authors can (and often do) self-publish sub-par work, and we were and are still very happy to sing the praises of a well-done self-published book.
To the authors who are still in our reading queue, we assure you we will get to your books in time. No books are being kicked out of the queue because they are self-published.
Thank you for your time.
~ Nemo
Why I’m Upset At Goodreads | The Moonlight Library
[…] of all, I’d like to (sarcastically) thank Goodreads for forcing me to change my reviewing policy on self-published books. This new rule designed to protect author’s feelings (who shouldn’t be reading reviews anyway, […]