From Ratings to Reviews: Understanding Reader Behavior

Goodreads is one of the most influential platforms for readers to discover, evaluate, and engage with books. As a large-scale repository of user-generated ratings and reviews, it provides valuable insights into reading preferences, literary trends, and patterns of audience engagement.

This study analyzes Goodreads data to examine book performance, genre distribution, author influence, and review behavior, with the aim of understanding the factors that shape reading dynamics and the reception of literature in a digital context.

I performed cleaning and analysis directly in Power Query, correcting date, removing duplicates, replaced empty cells with "Null value", filtered rows, Created two new tables and split columns.

Total Books: 12.54k

Total Users: 18.80k

Total reviews: 1.14M

User / Author trend: There was a peak in the amount of readers and amount of books published (1295 novels, 14316 users) then steep fall after that and an increase in non-fiction books.

Top Author: Angie Thomas

Top Book: The way of kings, Part 2 by Brandon Samderson produced in 2010 with a rating of 4.82

The hunger games is the most reviewed with 157K reviews (by Suzanne Colins)

The Awakening has the highest 1-star ratings

The most rated book is Hunger Games

Fantasy books have the highest average pages

Children books have the lowest average pages

Fantasy is the most common genre

Fiction has the most 5-Star ratings

J.K Rowlings has the highest amount of ratings

Sthephen King is the most prolific author

Most rated genre is the children genre

Review volume by rating: Books with average ratings near 4.0 have the highest number of reviews ( up to 165K) .

very low rated (below 3.1) and high rated (above 4.6) have much fewer reviews.

widely read and reviewed books tend to have decent ratings while scarcely read and reviewed books tend to have extreme positive or negative ratings.

answer: Angie Thomas, Brayn Stevenson, Haruichi Furudate, Sarah Noffke, T Kingfisher, T.M. Frazier

Answer: Yes, books with more reviews tend to have decent ratings while books with lesser reviews tend to have more extremely high or extremely low ratings

Answer: 20 books

Promote Hidden Gems: Curate and market the 20 underappreciated books to attract adventurous readers and boost engagement.

Diversify library: Expand non-fiction and sustain strong Fantasy & Children’s genres to meet evolving reader demand.

Leverage Bestsellers & Mid-Rated Titles: Continue promoting popular authors/franchises while spotlighting books around 4.0 ratings to drive higher review activity and community interaction.

The analysis reveals that the book market experienced a peak in both readership and book releases, followed by a decline, with a noticeable shift toward non-fiction interest. Fiction, especially The Hunger Games and works by authors like J.K. Rowling and Stephen King, remains dominant in terms of reach and engagement, while Fantasy holds strong in depth and popularity.

Reader behavior shows that books with balanced average ratings (around 4.0) have the most reviews, indicating that readers gravitate toward widely relatable titles rather than extremes. Children’s books stand out for general appeal, while hidden gems (20 identified) highlight unexplored potential. Authors like Angie Thomas achieve consistently high ratings, pointing to the growing value of reputation and trust in reader choice.