I just deleted the five-star ratings I left myself on Goodreads.

I’ve heard mixed things about this practice. Some authors argue that if you genuinely feel your work is that good, you can rate it as such and demonstrate the pride you have in your writing. So, when Son of the Siren came out, I rated it 5 stars, and used the review space to list content warnings, just as I’d seen other authors on Goodreads do. I admitted it was cringe to rate my own book, but that I stood by the work. This rating stayed up for almost two years.

Yesterday I rated The Name and the Key five stars after spending a couple hours rereading the book in its entirety in its final, printed form. I also thought the work was deserving of five stars.

And then I thought about it and remembered a reaction I’d seen from a BookTuber investigating a controversial author. One of the things she did was go to Goodreads, find that the author rated her own work five stars, and rolled her eyes and counted it as a red flag.

I decided to do some research about the practice of authors rating themselves, and the consensus is to not do it.

According to responses on the Goodreads forums, readers say it’s tacky and reeks of desperation on the author’s part. According to Goodreads’ own guidelines, while they technically allow authors to rate their own works, they warn against artificially inflating a book’s average rating, and doing so may decrease the visibility of the book on Goodreads. In my situation, I hardly have any ratings, so giving my books five stars actually bumped up my score on both books (at the time of writing) to a 4.19. Now that I’ve removed my five-star ratings, my score is going to go noticeably down. It’ll still be in the 4-star range, thank goodness, but the numbers after the decimal will change.

The Horror Writers Association has a public Facebook post where authors weighed in on self-rating. The writers there say it’s unprofessional and arrogant, called it “Amateur Hour 101,” that it demonstrates insecurity, and that they would never buy from an author who rated their own work.

On the famed website “Smart Bitches, Trashy Books,” writer SB Sarah states,

I’ll be honest: I pretty much always roll my eyes when I see an author giving each of their books a five star rating, not the least of which because it’s disingenuous.

After consulting these sources and reading people’s opinions, here’s what I have to say:

• I don’t want people thinking I’m desperate
• I don’t want people thinking I’m arrogant or self-righteous
• I don’t want people to avoid my book just because I think it’s five stars
• I don’t want people thinking I’m an amateur

Because here’s the thing…even though I think my book is worthy of being rated five stars, I know that I’m not desperate, arrogant, self-righteous, or an amateur. I may be still in the early stages of my career, but by 2027 I’ll have written four books (maybe even a fifth!) and that’s nothing to sneeze at.

Probably the biggest thing is that I don’t want readers to shoot down my work before they’ve even given it a try. I just don’t think that’s fair. But…maybe they weren’t my readers to begin with anyway.

All in all, I made the decision to delete my star ratings, let my scores go down, and let only other readers speak for the work. Going forward I’ll only use the review space to list content warnings or any other important notice, but that’s it. I won’t score myself.

However, I do not personally have an issue with other writers giving themselves five stars. I think they should love the work they’ve put out there and stand by it.

But this is my final decision about it. I’m going to stop. It seems like the consensus is that it does more harm than good.