How Do Goodreads Members Rate Books?

Some time ago (April 2016 to be exact) Goodreads hit a milestone of 50 million reviews. That's a lot of feedback! The first review was written by Otis Chandler (founder of Goodreads) on September 4, 2006. The gang at Goodreads analyzed the reviews and they showed some interesting data about how the ratings breakdown. Here it is:

If you calculate the average, it works out to 3.98. I was, not unsurprisingly, interested about how my own books stacked up against the site-wide average, and Robin was nice enough to do some number crunching for me.  Here are the results:

Title	5-star	4-star	3-star	2-star	1-star	Total	Average
Theft of Swords	13,529	12,433	4,269	937	360	31,528	4.20
Rise of Empire	11,718	9,451	2,546	332	99	24,146	4.34
Heir of Novron	13,439	7,610	1,984	307	109	23,449	4.45
The Crown Tower	7,325	6,007	1,679	289	120	15,420	4.31
The Rose and the Thorn	5,510	4,236	1,057	105	34	10,942	4.38
The Death of Dulgath	2,055	1,706	415	42	18	4,236	4.35
The Crown Conspiracy	4,495	4,232	1,807	410	152	11,096	4.13
Avempartha	2,791	2,438	768	124	21	6,142	4.28
Nyphron Rising	2,366	2,032	592	75	14	5,079	4.31
The Emerald Storm	1,974	1,684	552	70	10	4,290	4.29
Wintertide	2,619	1,700	450	62	20	4,851	4.41
Percepliquis	2,803	1,291	302	43	15	4,454	4.53
Age of Myth	1,913	1,541	437	90	27	4,008	4.30
Total Reviews	72,537	56,361	16,858	2,886	999	149,641	4.31
% of Reviews	48.5%	37.7%	11.3%	1.9%	0.7%
Difference with Average	+11.5%	+3.7%	-9.7%	-4.1%	-1.3%

I'm pleased to say that after almost 150,000 reviews (for the Riyria books and Legends of the First Empire) the 5-star and 4-star reviews have been much higher than most books, and the 1-star and 2-star reviews were much lower.

It's always great to take stock and see how people are receiving what I write, and I'm so glad that you all seem to like the books! Thanks for reading, and if you rated one (or several) of my books on Goodreads, thanks for that as well.