THE Group for Authors! discussion

John wrote: "Sorry, I just had to share this. This man/woman apparently recently joined Goodreads (or just created a new account) just to crap on my 2 books: link removed.
I'm in the process of trying to get ..."

Sorry to but in, but we removed the link to the specific user from your original post. Our rules specifically prohibit calling out members by name, please keep that in mind in the future. if you need to report a specific user’s behavior please email support at goodreads dot com”

D.A wrote: "Months ago,, goodreads did finally change their recommendations algorithm to not be based on books reader 1-starred (bloggers used to have a field day posting some of the more hilarious goodreads recommendations they'd get.). So the 1-star rating not good for that anymore.

The new sponsored book ads on the updates feed will supposedly show books as being shown because one of your friends/followed shelved or rated it -- doesn't say your friend rated it ★☆☆☆☆ or shelved it as "cannot believe I read this garbage" -- just that the book had activity by your friend."

There are some books here notorious for the reader/author drama that surrounded them. On the book pages for those books, the "Readers Also Enjoyed" list includes. . . other books also notorious for the same reasons. It's an ironic glitch in the algorithm, I guess.

HoneysuckleP wrote: "In the old days of the printed book, the finished book was set in concrete. The author never got the opportunity to change anything. However in the age of the ebook shouldn't we consider improvements of the original work after a reasonable time has lapsed? After 2 years of life on the electronic shelves should the book remain unchanged? It's one of the oldest arguments: when is something finished? Computer software programs get new features every year but the package name stays the same. Personally, as long as the reader is told that something is a reissue and why then where is the harm?
..."

I'm only addressing fiction in the following rant. Of course Non-fiction should update whenever there are significant changes to their subject matter or fields of study.

How odd to compare a story, a reading experience with computer software or to anything with a shelf life. By that logic should books over a certain number of years always be re-written? The smarter computer companies do not keep the same packaging (will keep some similar branding so packages are recognizable will still put a version # or catch-phrase to denote it's a new version. Heck, even laundry detergent likes to put a big splatty "new" on the packaging...).

I say it's very weird to compare books to technology. The book formats, sure; if Amazon came out with a whole new ereader and a whole new XYZpdqABc file format for that ereader then of course your book should be reissued in XYZpdqABc format.

Hardware device/system changes, competition and changes in technology all the time lead to software updates. However, the draft, alpha and beta versions of software don't get sold as if the final release. (Admittedly, some of those Facebook games sure have been saying "beta" for years — but, again, they're not masking or being sold as finished projects).

That's the big harm with reissuing published ebooks. Because they were sold to the consumer as if final product. They were not sold/offered as "beta" versions of your story. Customers were not told they were buying the uncorrected proof or beta read version. They were sold a published book.

Hardware and software = technical specifications hoping to meet user needs. So that when you buy a piece of software intended for use with Windows it should work well on Windiws or get upgraded to do so. If I buy a kindle edition, it should work well on my kindle or be updated to do so.

Other than that type of technical difficulty situation, books don't have users like software has users. Books have readers. Novels have your words in a story that readers ... well... read. Once I'm reading your words, you cannot upgrade what just entered my brain like you would a software package.

Software and hardware sees constant use so any good updates benefit the ongoing processes and benefit users. Users enjoying software games need new challenges/levels/goals. Readers enjoy your book likely want you to write more, not re-do the one they enjoyed.

Readers, particularly if they didn't like it to start with, are not going to keep "using" your book the way people keep using software. If a reader is re-reading your book, that's usually the exact opposite of needing an upgrade—that's a fan enjoying your words. Even if someone re-reads your book, even if re-read it a lot, they are not likely (outside of maybe your mom, loved ones or an obsessed stalker) to continually be re-reading and glad when they get an update.

If users of a software package really want more features or entirely new modules, cool. If your readers want more, hopefully you'll write more. That doesn't mean because readers want more of the story that you change the story they loved in the first place. Yes, can be reissued bundled with older/other works but that's not re-doing the original book/edition. That's not having sold a dozen beta versions before your update to unsuspecting customers who thought they had a final product.

Of course a novel/story should remain unchanged. How weird and confusing would it be if books three and four of a series were centered on two people dealing with having their baby kidnapped then book one was revised so that the baby was never born and they were never a couple? Won't you have confused readers/re-readers completely even if planning to eventually revise books 3 and 4?

You wouldn't buy a painting you saw in person before buying expecting to contact artist directly and asking them to please change or add something. If anything you'll want your money back or to commission a new piece. Novels are something for readers to enjoy just like they might enjoy that painting. Technology is something you use.

Even what are considered reissues (versus rewrites or re-imaginings by other authors) of classics tend to just have more footnotes, annotations, essays and fore/afterwords added to the original rather than re-writing the author's words.

If you want to sell/offer an unfinished/unedited/unproofed draft of a book in with published books and label it accordingly -- go for it on sites that allow you to do so. I don't think anyone downloading or reading the draft has any reason to then feel ripped off nor would they be justified in writing a bad review of it unless noting they were reviewing the draft version.

Computer software has to keep up with all kinds of technology. Books need to have a good story that will hopefully be timeless and always resonate with readers (they can of course be reformatted to keep up with the in-use print and ebook formats).

Amazon and other retailers allowing you to upload new files whenever you want doesn't mean they aren't expecting that file to contain the final, published edition of your book. Certainly your customers are expecting to get the final edition.

Users buying/downloading beta versions of software generally do so for free or for discount (in some cases just want to be first to get or beta promised to fix a specific issue) and are fully expecting to get the beta version (which may or may not be upgradeable to final version).

Readers flat out are expecting to buy/download final book from retail sites like Amazon. They don't think they are getting your rough draft. Again,that's the harm even if you rewrite and reissue the thing to death for future readers—doesn't change the harm to the duped reader and certainly doesn't change the review (computer product opinion) they posted just because the next readers get an improved draft.

I just don't get the softwar to novel analogy or the "where's the harm." It's a form of consumer fraud, at best a misrepresentation of a product to the consumer. A really bad upload masking as if a published book causes me mental distress on top of the time I spent reading and downloading on top of price I paid for the thing (if not free).

I'm a customer trying to get a book to read. I'm not trying to aid an author in revising the book I read or tried to read. Unlike my software programs, I certainly don't expect a book I already read to catch up to some ... whatever the analogy was intended to imply that escaped me. Heck, I can still re-read Vernes and Poe and even Shakespeare without needing an up date to the work—not that ebooks have been around long enough to gain that "classic" standing or that I expect anything to be just like those. I wouldn't want my non-classic reads updated either, not even to fix the few typos that escaped the editor's eye.

HoneysuckleP wrote: "In the old days of the printed book, the finished book was set in concrete. The author never got the opportunity to change anything."

No, publishers were known for publishing revised editions of fiction works.

Personally, I upload new versions of my books when the front/back matter changes (mostly with every new book coming out). Although I try to get my books as error-free as I can, even edited books have typos. Fixing typos is not 'changing the book' IMO, because the story itself is not changed.

Michael wrote: "A.W. with all respect, I have to disagree with you. An unbiased review from a reader can offer a plethora of information for an author to aid in developing his craft, making their current book(s) better"

Some SPAs just don't get it. The book should be polished before it is published, not after. Paying customers are not your editors or critique partners.

Obviously we are on different paths. I treat self publishing as a business, I seek editorial and critical feedback before I publish. That feedback is incorporated in the final version that is published. I don't revisit a book. I move on to the next project. If readers want to engage after a book is published, I let them initiate contact.

Martyn V. (aka Baron Sang-Froid) wrote: "No, publishers were known for publishing revised editions of fiction works ..."

Not true. Traditionally published print works have almost never revised. By which I mean "rewritten" or even "corrected."

Reissuing, yes. Even a bad habit back in the 70s of reissuing with a new title. Reissuing with an added foreword (often for an anniversary, an author's passing, now made into movie, new release in that series or not, etc.) or other added material like stills from movie it was just turned into sure. Reissuing as an anniversary edition, sure. Reissuing a now notable author's works they had put under a pseudonym to show the notable name in place or or in addition to pseudonym, yes. Reissuing in an omnibus of that author's or a mix of other authors works, sure.

Having to recall a print run almost immediately because of technical errors like missing pages, twisted pages, ink bleeds, etc. — sure.

Extremely rare that a traditionally published hard copy work of fiction was actually revised and re-released. Even when some of the re-issues said "revised," "revised edition" or "updated edition" (for example, all those Penguin Classics usually said "revised edition" but meant new formatting and new front/back material — not that the full text classic novel itself by a deceased author had been re-written).

Yes, I do know a handful of print published works that did get revised but those are the exceptions rather than a common occurrence. Mostly from authors who have been bestselling in their field for more than a quarter of a century redoing an old draft of a concept used in later books or even re-doing their very first book published (sometimes as an exercise in what-I-didn't-know-then in a class or writer's workshop that they got convinced to publish).

To my knowledge, none of the traditionally published print works ever had draft versions intentionally sold as if the final, published edition. Nor were any of them published with plans to revise constantly based on reader input. Nor published to collect funds to get a more marketable book cover. Nor to collect funds to pay for editing or other services. What got published was intended to be the final product.

Re-issues, fairly common. Re-issues adding extra notes, forewords, bonus material, etc. that might be labelled or get labelled as "revised" -- fairly common. Revisions to the actual story, only common with this new upsurge of ebooks and self-publishing authors.

And, sure, for the next print run a traditional publisher would take that opportunity to correct a typo on book cover, possibly even correct a couple of interior typos that escaped. But not a rewrite, not an after publishing editing, not significant changes based on reader input, not a revision.

I don't expect any book, indie or traditional published to be flawless and 100% typo free. It very rarely occurs no matter how careful or how well edited. But, I do expect the published book to be completely error free in the minds of the author/publisher before it goes up for sale -- not to go up for sale so that readers can edit the drafts for them to continually revise for next paying customers.

D.A wrote: "Re-issues, fairly common. Re-issues adding extra notes, forewords, bonus material, etc. that might be labelled or get labelled as "revised" -- fairly common. Revisions to the actual story, only common with this new upsurge of ebooks and self-publishing authors."

I know that second prints and third prints of books often were corrected, but I'm talking about minor corrections like typos or punctuation.

Like you, I loathe the authors who publish drafts and use readers as beta-readers, something they should've done before publishing their book.

A.W. wrote: "Some SPAs just don't get it. The book should be polished before it is published, not after. Paying customers are not your editors or critique partners..."

You're absolutely right.

I don't think Michael necessarily disagrees with you. I think that he enjoys reading reviews because it gives you the reader's perspective of the work. And sometimes, you can find nuggets of valuable information in a review that might make you re-think your publishing strategy or your future story ideas.

I think that most professional authors can agree that you put out the best possible book - edited, formatted, beta-read, polished to a shine - and if you do that correctly, your reviews will often reflect the care you put in your publishing endeavours.

What I loathe is the 'authors' who feel creatively stifled if they have to go over their work again and again to remove the errors, instead of just plonking a rough draft unto an audience expecting a polished novel, and who then have the gall to complain about negative reviews.

If an author does a mediocre job putting out his book, they cannot expect stellar reviews.

Oh, I don't consider it rewriting the book to re-title book, series or even author name when an author finds it's being confused with other works — except for a few bad apples (not Honeysuckle) who used to attack goodreads librarians who combine with the original titles because they wanted to ditch the older draft books (sold to reviewers as if published) that had gotten so many negative reviews...

Plenty of books even get different title and series names when distributing to other countries. Some wording doesn't translate or connotate well (my favorite example is a U.S. focus group for a vacuum cleaner being asked about the slogan "Nothing sucks like an Electrolux" -- didn't advertise the vacuum well with U.S. audiences ...).

I don't mind the perennial new book covers book authors now do so long as they don't try to vandalize the goodreads book database, reader bookshelves, reader bookcover listopias, reader challenges and group activities, etc. that are using the older covers. Bookseller/retail sites give author product pages for their currently for sale edition. Goodreads has book data potentially in use by millions of readers and keeps book records of all editions even if not currently for sale. Well, I mind when authors sell drafts as if published books in order to fund perennial new book covers.

(Totally off topic for original post—if an author does not set a particular edition of a book/work to be the primary/default/featured edition goodreads just uses the most popular edition for author page, series thumbnails, search results, etc. Which usually winds up being oldest edition here longer because has had more time to get "popular" than your newly titled/covered edition. If an author wants their currently for sale bookcover/edition to be the featured one - edit that edition and midway down righthand column click to set it as the primary edition. For many readers that effectively hides older covers/editions but doesn't delete older editions or bother readers who deliberately shelved edition owned or used in various site activities. If you forget where you read this because off topic -- remember it's right up top of the librarian group in the Author FAQs, #4. I have that "#4" memorized from when I used to do librarian edits and felt like a broken record telling it to authors every time they wanted to update/overwrite a book cover here to match their retail product pages rather than make a new edition even if not a new isbn/asin. Can take 10 minutes up to 72 hours for the new primary edition to populate to all areas of goodreads, particularly thumbnail heavy areas like the series section on author pages -- which can be understandably frustrating.)

One author I think should change their name because it matches the writer of a set of controversial religion/cult books where he's always having to comment on reviews of his books "are you sure you have the right author or did you mean to review a book by the author of ...." -- some pretty unhinged characters seem to be after the religious author. Not that big a deal for him, I guess, because the reviews are so outside site TOS he can get them removed if their reviewer doesn't move them over to correct author.