Goodreads Librarians Group discussion

I listen to a lot of podcast fiction, and I want to start tracking it better in my GR profile. I see some of the podcasts in GR now, but one in particular that I don't see is Starship Sofa, and it may prevent some unique challenges for fitting it into GR policy.

From what I've read so far in the discussion group, a podcast is essentially an audiobook version of a print or ebook. I can see how this works for magazines such as Lightspeed, Clarkesworld, and Uncanny. Each has editions such as paperback, ebook, kindle, etc. The podcast may not include all the stories in the other editions, but there's a podcast for each issue of the magazine.

However, I am not sure how this could work for podcasts that do reprint audio productions of short stories which were printed elsewhere, e.g., Starship Sofa.

For example, "Folding Beijing," 2016 Hugo winner, is a novelette originally published in Chinese online in 2012 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folding...). It was later published in 2 magazines in China. Then was translated and published in English in Uncanny Magazine (http://uncannymagazine.com/article/fo...). It did not appear in the Uncanny podcast version of that issue.

Instead, the audio version was released as an episode of the Starship Sofa podcast (http://www.starshipsofa.com/blog/2016...).

Perhaps in this case, it should go back to the original standalone online publishing of the story in 2012. The Starship Sofa should maybe be an audiobook edition of that.

However, what I see in GR is the publication of the story as an ebook in the Hugo Voter Pack (https://www.goodreads.com/work/editio...), which is only available to those who joined the World Science Fiction Society that year, either with a $50 supporting membership, or actually paying for an attending membership for WorldCon.

Currently, the only GR entry I see for Starship Sofa is for the paperback publication of the transcripts from early episodes. Starship Sofa only publishes reprints, so works are usually either published in another magazine or an anthology. Sometimes there are multiple stories per issue/episode, but often there is only one fiction story.

(Short Stories on GR are not usually tracked individually. I generally find this problematic since I may read some but not all stories in an anthology or magazine, and it's really the stories I want to keep track of. I guess this would be my preference, but it's not consistent with GR policy as I understand it.)

I don't think it makes sense to list the Starship Sofa episode as an auidobook version of either the original 2012 ebook version, or the 2015 Voter Pack ebook version. Most of the Starship Sofa episodes include short stories that have been published only as part of a magazine (e.g., Uncanny). Some podcasts include a couple short stories that were published in two different magazines. So, they are really their own unique publications, more like how a story may appear in multiple magazines or anthologies.

I don't see standalone fiction podcasts being listed in GR generally. Maybe they're are, but I have not found them. Maybe it's been considered outside GR policy. However, this doesn't make sense to me, because I do a lot of my "reading" this way, and the experience is not much different than Audiobooks or than podcast versions of magazines that also have a non-podcast component.

I'm wondering if something like Starship Sofa should just be listed as an audiobook with no other editions? Even if there is a standalone publication of the story, as with "Folding Beijing," I don't think the podcast should be an edition of that standalone publication, because I think it only makes sense to treat all episodes of the podcast consistently.

Thanks!

Ralph