Goodreads Librarians Group discussion

I added http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/90... to my library. If I look at My Books in Table mode I see this cover.

http://d.gr-assets.com/books/11793483...

Looking in Cover mode I see

http://d.gr-assets.com/books/11793483...

These both match the cover of the version that I own. So all is good there. But when you look at the book detail you see the cover.

http://d.gr-assets.com/books/11793483...

Which is totally different.

Can the correct matching cover be applied for all three images so I can either keep this version as it's correct, or change to the correct version.

thanks.

Found another two. This book

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/90...

Has two thumbnails of the cover, but no detailed cover.

This one has the detailed cover different to the two thumbnails.

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/89...

Might stop listing these and wait to see the status of my librarian application. Out of 208 books that I've catlogued I've got 45 with some sort of cover issue, or not being listed at all.

Some features and pages at goodreads show the primary edition for the bookcover (the edition you see on author page and when searching just by title instead of a specific edition).

Primary edition is set by author or defaults to the most popular edition.

If my books is not displaying the edition you selected, and it's just messing up on certain books versus displaying primary edition bookcovers for the rest of the shelf as well, I'd check two places. On the my books page make go down left column and "find duplicates" (odd duplicates happen if ever clicking green button or other activities) in case you shelved more than one edition by accident. Or from my books when you see the wrong cover, click it to go to book page. If book page wrong edition, click "Other Editions" and see if you need to switch.

Librarians, incidentally, cannot set the primary / default / featured edition so librarian status won't help if that is the issue.

If the "wrong" covers you see are not the same covers that show on author page, I'm wrong and will need to try and figure out something else.

Errrr...by thumbnails I assume you mean when on a book page with a largish bookcover at left over at the right there are thumbnails? Those thumbnails belong to other editions.

If you actually click the words "other editions" you can switch to whichever edition you like. No edition gets to have multiple book covers; no published book cover, even by a librarian, is supposed to be changed—if a book was reprinted with different cover or an ebook cover changed an "alternate cover edition" gets created and appears with all the other editions/thumbnails. But not changed.

Thanks for the reply Debbie. Yes if you're searching for a book only the primary edition shows up. But these are for books that I have added to my shelves.

Here's an example.

This is a version of Sharpe's Siege. The number 564536 in the URL is a unique number that will identify this particular edition.

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/56...

Now if you look at the image URL that shows up in your table list view if you add this edition to your books you'll get the image at the following URL.

http://d.gr-assets.com/books/13481848...

The number 1348184804 is a number that will identify either a particular book, or a group of books. Hard to say without knowing more about the database. the number 564536 identifies the cover. The letter 's' between the two numbers identifies the size of the image 's' for small thumbnail. If you change the s to an 'm' or an 'l' you will get the medium thumbnail and the large detailed image. These images you will see in table view, cover view, and book page respectively.

Now with websites that I have designed and supported in the past the 's' and 'm' images are generated automatically from the 'l' image that gets uploaded when the book is created. What it seems from the three examples that I've posted in my previous posts is that originally the correct cover was uploaded. The 's' and 'm' images have been created automatically correctly but at some point the 'l' image has been changed and the two smaller images not updated.

All three images for a particular version 's', 'm', and 'l' should all be the same image, just different sizes. Otherwise depending on what view of the book you're looking at, you're going to see a different cover which is inconsistent.

So, your shelves and my books are okay but the small, medium, and large images you see when you go to a particular edition's book page, click the cover to and the three sizes of covers do not all show the same covers?

If so, that is a bug that staff will have to fix when they get back to work on Monday because you are right and the small, medium and large sizes are supposed to just get created all from the same uploaded file.

It's actually also something a librarian won't be able to fix; will take staff.

I'm going to try two things; if neither work to show images accurately for you, I'll also post this over in the bug section in the feedback group.

The two things I'm trying are to re-upload the exact same image in case that regenerates accurate thumbnails (Possible). And, because there are bug issues posting over in feedback section that are fixed by manually refreshing book stats, refreshing stats (don't think that has anything to do with cover issue but is a known bug and won't hurt anything if I try). No outside data feed is supposed to overwrite bookcovers or other data, but, I think there were some bugs with that also and I did see some ingrams and onix entries in library change log - if it's that, a bug to be reported also but outside librarian control.

That's all I can think a librarian can do. Any other librarians viewing thread have an idea? Or remember seeing anything on the threads? Please chime in.

(Off to try)

I tried; is it displaying accurately for you?

(The gr-assets is the new content handler goodreads is using but you should have to be deliberately choosing to open the images into a new tab or window to be seeing those addresses, just viewing or clicking the images shouldn't be showing that url which also makes me think it is a bug).

I'm looking at the page source to get those URLs, I've worked as a web designer in the past.

I've cleared my internet cache and restarted my browser to ensure that I'm not looking at any cached images locally.

The three books I've listed still have the same problems. It's easy to demonstrate. Add any of these three books as want to read, then click on More Editions on the right hand side. Check the cover that appears on the book page, to the cover that appears as the book you've marked in the list of more editions. The book page cover is different to the edition list cover.

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/90...
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/90...
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/89...

Actually, a few of us have come across this particular bug before. What usually causes it is the importers overwrite the images for the large, and sometimes medium thumbnails but occasionally miss the small one. What you see here is the result. I'm not aware of any such cases where the image is uploaded by an user. The only way to fix it is to identify the correct image, download it, delete the current one (so all the sizes get cleared) and re-upload the cover.
ETA: This bug has been occurring long before the content delivery network was established, so I don't think that that's what causing it.

thanks lafon. I'll fix those if my librarian application gets approved, unless someone else gets to them first.

@Eric, posts over in feedback group (including mine at http://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/1... ) are also saying that it is a known bug.

A temporary fix apparently is for librarians as Iafon said is to have a librarian reupload the exact same image.

Anyone know if we are supposed to be sharing the problem book links or other information with staff or out in the feedbacks group?

Woo hoo my librarian application was approved so I've fixed those three. I deleted the cover, then reuploaded the cover. The cover version I set was what the smaller thumbnails were showing as 1. That was the cover that originally the books had before something changed and 2. That was the cover that I physically own.

Just keep in mind that if the cover you have is different from the one shown (even if thumbnails or main image broken), you have to make a new edition for yours—covers don't get overwriiten unless correcting image problems with a fixed or better quality file of the exact same cover.