Voters
C
M
M
K
T
+243
Powered by Noora
248
Author stats
Long-term
N
Nadia

Users are very keen to know more about the authors they are reading: where they're from, how they identify across a range of dimensions, including race and sexuality.

We need to do more planning and research before we roll out something like this. It's very likely that the first stage will be more information-rich, highly-curated author pages, built up by our volunteer librarians.

Comments
A
angisnowflake
Jan 10, 2024

Hi I am posting here because I really do miss just having an author page. Honestly the only times I go back to Goodreads is when I need author info and I know they don’t always have it as well but just a link to their official website is sometimes really helpful and and overview of their series.
Do you plan to do the pages so that authors can verify themselves and add their own information or are you planning to leave that open to the whole community?

2
N
Nadia
Jan 10, 2024

angisnowflake Yes. There will be author pages with bios/photos, etc., and authors will be able to claim them. https://roadmap.thestorygraph.com/requests-ideas/posts/author-pages

4
H
hzmt
Jan 6, 2024

I want this so bad

1
C
Caroline_N
Aug 30, 2022

I completely get that it would be really difficult to track author nationality (especially when it comes to those with dual nationality) but as a compromise would it be possible to publish a map where the original publishers are based? It might begin to provide an insight into the diversity of our reading using information that may already exist without being intrusive to the authors. It may also encourage people to read books from a wider range of publishers, especially books that were originally written with a different audience in mind. This might distinguish between (as an example) books written by a Japanese author that were written for Japanese readers before being translated and read throughout the world, compared to a book by a Japanese author that was written with a western audience in mind and first published in English by a UK or US publisher.

7
B
biatdias
Jul 4, 2022

I would love a feature like this, as the one reason I still catalog books in a private spreadsheet besides storygraph is to keep track of author's nationalities. (I want to avoid having USA/UK as more than 50% of the authors I read). But I understand that implementing it right would be quite a challenge, and not because of the coding ^^'

4
A
alexishall
Feb 2, 2022

I just wanted to say, with my author hat on on, that while I can see this on the one hand being really valuable to readers, unless it's implemented really carefully it has the potential to be quite invasive for authors, especially because we're dealing with complex aspects of identity.

Of course I don't want to speak on behalf of communities that aren't mine, but in LGBTQ+ circles alone there's been situations where people have been forced 'out' before they were ready due to reader scrutiny/hostility. You've got situations where authors have been deemed not [x] enough, where [x] is a particular marginalised identity, simply because their experiences don't match the specific expectations of some readers. More complicatedly still, you've got the issue that writers maybe be dealing with aspects of their gender identity in ways that may affect how they publicly identify: and having a public record essentially charting these changes might not feel kind or useful to the author in question. Although, of course, that's a very personal and subjective thing.

I hope this doesn't sound negative or selfishly author-focused. I just wanted to note some of the complexities in play here when it comes to the marginalised community with which I have experience.

19
N
Nadia
Feb 3, 2022

Hello! Your comment is exactly why we haven't touched this feature at all despite it being one of our most requested features of all time. I spoke about exactly this in an Instagram live show Rob and I did last weekend. The discussion on it starts at 31:38: https://www.instagram.com/p/CZZJ1JEIIWo :-)

7
A
alexishall
Feb 7, 2022

Ah, this is super interesting - thank you so much for your nuanced and thoughtful take on this issue. I really do see the reader-side of this one but, as you said in the discussion, it's really complicated.

2
T
thehappylittleelf
Aug 11, 2022

alexishall This is an excellent point, and one I personally worry about, too. On another point, I understand people wanted to diversify their reading, but turning it into a "stat" feels a little.... objectifying. Like marginalized people are Pokemon and you "gotta catch 'em all". I cringe at the thought of people bragging about their "diverse stat" like it's a video game. I appreciate Nadia's thoughts in the in the instagram link below, and I'm glad it's being taken seriously, but... I dunno about the feasibility about this idea. I'm all for people reading more diversity, but I don't like turning people's identities into something for people to collect.

10
N
Nadia
Aug 11, 2022

thehappylittleelf Thank you so much for weighing in with your thoughts!

1
C
cheesepuppy
Jan 13, 2022

I wonder if an mvp of this could be allowing users to tag authors in a similar way that we can tag books. I’d love to tag authors to help myself and others not have to look up nationality, sexuality, and other details because I’ve forgotten. Then this info could be used help users trying to read own voices books and to help build the author pages mentioned

4
M
maggies
Oct 14, 2021

I'm a huge fan of this idea!

0
D
digitalgord
Aug 19, 2021

This would be awesome!

0
C
cheesepuppy
May 6, 2021

Very neat! As a work around, I actually created a challenge to this. https://app.thestorygraph.com/reading_challenges/3a91e110-c5a9-48c1-a589-35f0aa63c0fd

1
M
mizato
Mar 10, 2021

IIn general I think author pages will open up the option for a lot of interesting features, so I'm looking forward to this.

One of the features I would like is the ability to mark an author as incorrect, even if the name is right. For example, sometimes when I click on an author's name, I get books I know they didn't write. (I think when books are added it is hard to pick the 'right' author if it is a common name. ) So if users could flag problem authors for the librarians to go through, that might be useful.

5
J
jaymii
Mar 5, 2021

YES. I really want to track how diverse the authors I am reading are and be able to find more local Authors.

6
S
snslayer
Mar 4, 2021

I am very very excited about this potential feature!

2
N
Nadia
Feb 28, 2021
Set the status to
Long-term
0