But I think they are a decent indicator of how well-known a particular book is among the general reading population. So there is limited predictive value to these calculations. The winner was the book that placed 2nd. In 2020, the eventual winner of the 2019 Best Novel award had placed 5th out of 46 in 2019, 16th out of 45 in 2018, 27th out of 48 and in 2017, 26th out of 34. Last year, the shortlist consisted of the books that had been 1st, 2nd, 19th, 25th, 30th, 32nd, 40th, 48th, 54th and, er, 56th out of 56 on the equivalent table for the 2020 long list. They are Project Hail Mary, by Andy Weir Cloud Cuckoo Land, by Anthony Doerr Fugitive Telemetry, by Martha Wells A Desolation Called Peace, by Arkady Martine and Empire of the Vampire, by Jay Kristoff. There are no less than five books which are in the top 25% of all four columns. Enthusiastic yet small fanbase? Or simple self-promotion? Member participation is a great thing, but it would be good for the outputs to be a bit more useful.Įight of the 74 books long-listed have no owners at all on LibraryThing, and seven of those have fewer than ten owners on Goodreads. Quite likely (judging from what I've seen of Hugo nominations) two-thirds or more of those long-listed books have only one vote. I'm aware that there is a very long tail. (Previous years had 56, 46, 45, 48 and 34 books on the long list TBH I think anything more than a couple of dozen is pushing it.). First, 74 is really way too long for a long list to be useful with a deadline of a few weeks. I'm going to call attention to a few points. They are ranked by the geometrical average of Goodreads reviewers and LibraryThing owners. I have bolded the upper quartile (19 out of 74) in each column. Nwhyte My other notes on this year's BSFA long lists:Īs usual, now that the BSFA long list is out, I've gone through it and counted how many people are recorded as reviewing each book on Goodreads, and owning each book on LibraryThing, and the respective ratings on each system.

Goodreads cloud cuckoo land