Goodreads Librarians Group discussion

Hello -

I can't find a policy anywhere on whether or not an expansion of a work should be combined with the original work. For example, an author posts a free short story of 15 pages or so, and then later uses that short story as the beginning of a trad published novella of over 100 pages. Do these belong together or not?

I'm not seeing anything about this in the librarian manual or by searching past threads and it doesn't seem to be covered in the post about how abridgements/adaptations are handled.

Thank you.

My understanding from that thread (and other discussions which I can't find right now) is that currently they are dealt with as different editions if up to a certain percentage is new wordage/figures etc. If over that point, then it counts as a new book. This has come out of reverse discussions, when authors have been calling X a new text, but the PTB have stated that there was not sufficient new material to count as a new title, just as a new edition.

As a rough statement, I would say that a 15 pg short story is definitely a separate work from a 100+ pg novella. However, since one is the source of another, I would put a Librarian note and consider linking between the texts, so that readers would be aware that A is based on B, and vice versa.

Thanks Emy. If anyone has it, I'd love links to past discussions about what percentage qualifies something as sufficiently different. Or even better I'd love to see this info officially posted somewhere.

There is no specific percentage. We review on a case-by-case basis.

rivka wrote: "There is no specific percentage. We review on a case-by-case basis."

Ok, so the one I ran across last night is this:

Super Sock Man - approx 15 page short
Super Sock Man - 118 page novella

From the author's blog: The novella has a pattern. You know, for the socks on the front? So no. The short story and the novella aren’t really the same thing. The novella was written for all of the people who wanted to see what happened to Donnie and Alejandro AFTER the short story ended – along with some character development beforehand. And, as I said, there is a tragic glimpse of Chase from someone else’s point of view – always a plus, if you liked Chase’s story, right?

So, different. Sort of the same, but no. Mostly different. Just sayin’.

The two editions are already combined and there's a librarian's note not to separate them that links to the abridgement/adaptation post. I don't actually see how that posts applies in this situation which is why I'm asking. To me it seems they should be separate works since there is approx an 750% difference in the text.

I assumed some discussion had gone on in 2012 when the librarian's note was first posted but I see no record of it.

I am not familiar with that particular case. However, I will mention that as a general rule, posts in a group (or in the Goodreads writing section) are not books by Goodreads standards.

rivka wrote: "I am not familiar with that particular case. However, I will mention that as a general rule, posts in a group (or in the Goodreads writing section) are not books by Goodreads standards."

In the case of the short story, it was posted in the group but also published as a book by the group (still a short though).

Who/where should I ask to see if this is correct as is or should be separated?