THE Group for Authors! discussion

I recently published a new book Black and White Volume I of the Lincoln County Law Trilogy and immediately added it to my books on my author profile on Goodreads. The book appears twice on my site. I am concerned that it might be confusing to people wanting to rate my book. The first has a rating and the second doesan't so I would like the second removed. I would appreciate any help you could give me with this.I

If you post your request in the Librarians Group someone can help you with your problem.

Combined editions, one is a kindle edition, the other is a paperback edition.

No, old published covers don't go away. If the author does not set a primary edition, goodreads displays the most popular edition.

See the Author FAQs at top of librarians group. #4 will also give you directions for making the new cover the primary/default edition (meaning the cover/edition featured on your author page, series pages, search results, etc,)

Published editions are not deleted even if no longer available for sale or in print (barring some legal issue that has to be taken up directly with staff).

You don't have any sales pages here. No product pages that get updated to reflect what retail sites show. Just a record in a library/database/catalog of published works.

In fact, attempting to remove older bookcovers/editions is considered vandalizing the goodreads library of books and individual reader catalogs. Nevermind the number of members who could get incensed because had used that edition in various book activities in goodreads versus author not wanting that older, published edition be seen anymore.

Setting a primary edition effectively buries older bookcover away from anyone not determined to find that exact cover/edition. Without vandalizing member book catalogs already shelving, group cover hunt challenges, cover listopias, etc. Some members don't care which edition they use; others are very, very, very OCD about it.

Goodreads keeps even out of print books. You can add (or have librarian add) a plain text, brief note on the older published bookcover edition in its description that it's no longer available or out of print.

ETA: typos and to add this direct link to author FAQs https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

The official wording:

"Deleting published books from our system is against policy. Goodreads is striving to be a complete database of all published works, including works that are out-of-print. We like our members to be able to add their exact edition to their virtual shelves. Just as a library would not remove a record from its catalog, so do we not remove books from our database..." -- https://www.goodreads.com/help/show/2...

"Goodreads policy is to keep all editions, even out-of-print ones. Authors may wish to indicate that such an edition is out of print. That is acceptable, as long as all of the following guidelines are followed:

1) The information should be listed in the description field, not the edition field or the title field.

2) This information should be added to any existing description. It should not replace it.

3) The information should be listed discreetly. No all-caps, italics, or bold, please.

4) No sales links or other external links. A link to another edition on Goodreads is fine." -- https://www.goodreads.com/help/show/3...