SOS: Serious Overload of Series discussion

So, stunning letter from GR this morning (BTW, it is 1/29 in my corner of the world, so there was a rather LOUD shocked exclamation...) My letter says 0 books...click the link and that's not the case at all! So, check your mailbox, and check out if you have endangered books!

Will post again after I run my rescue mission...hopefully it'll be easy!


Dear Judithe,

We want to let you know about a change on our site that is impacting some of the books on your shelves. It's important that you read this and take action by Monday, January 30.

For years, we've used Amazon's data for information such as the book title, author, and publication date. Unfortunately, the terms required by Amazon have now become so restrictive that we decided it makes better sense to work with other data sources. However, the deadline to make the transition is Amazon's, and they have told us that we must stop using their data by January 30. We have to meet this deadline.

We've been adding data from other sources and now know which books still need help. You are receiving this email because we need new sources for 0 of the books on your shelves.

First, please be assured that none of your reviews or ratings are in danger. Not a single review, comment, shelving, or rating will be lost in this transition. We have a system in place to preserve your reviews and comments for any books at risk until we can find new sources. That's the most important thing—your data is 100 percent safe.

What can you do? The good news is you can rescue your books. Saving a book is easy. Just click the "Rescue Me!" button next to each book edition that needs help, and fill in the information on the following page. A few keystrokes can help preserve these books for millions of future readers.

Rescue your books!

It takes only a few clicks, and you will be doing your part to make sure these books remain available for other readers like you. We appreciate the passion you bring to Goodreads, and we apologize for the short notice. If we could have prevented this inconvenience in any way, we would have done it. Ultimately, this change will be better for the members of Goodreads and long-term success of the site.

If you don't want to rescue your books, you can also export your books to a spreadsheet so you have a record of them.

All the best,
Otis & Elizabeth
Goodreads Founders

Your Books At Risk

So...it's fairly easy, but takes a few steps (more tedious than difficult). I'm not sure how to add photos...but I'll apparently be able to "save" the titles.

Of the 23 I needed to rescue, 7 were from smaller publishers or very old editions; the remainder were foreign language editions...really glad I didn't go crazy adding my Japanese books, now! Adding them once is fine, having to track them down a second time is a real pain in the b*tt!

Happy search & rescue everyone!

Yeah, I had four books I had to rescue. I had to go find them in my shelves since they all dated from the 60s and 70s. One was copyrighted 1962 . Thank goodness there were only four.

Jealous....

New Japanese word for the day, "mendokusai" which means "bothersome, tiresome, nuisance, pain-in-the-b*tt, etc." and I've been muttering it for the last hour or so....

You guys are lucky, I started with 850 books, finished those the other day and have been rescuing other people's books since then, including 1 of yours Judithe, I left the Japanese ones alone. LOL

Thanks for the rescue, Sandra! I got all the J-ones done today...the rest are potential "merges" so no big deal!

I guess those with more books got notices early? 850~OMG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Librarians have been working on this for nearly a week.

Maybe I'm lucky, but I didn't get an e-mail and I don't see any "Rescue Me!" buttons. Where would they be? Am I in the clear?

Only just found my email. Luckily I only had 2 books to rescue and 8 potential merges.

@ Lisa, I only got to the page with the "Rescue Me" buttons via a link in the email I received. Maybe just check back every now and then and see if you still get an email as well.

You know at the top when it says do you have a copy (physical or ebook etc.), does that exclude the ones from Amazon? The ebooks are from Amazon and I own them but it says do not get your info from Amazon.

Go to the publisher's page, rather than Amazon. They do say something about that...not a bookseller, rather the author's page or publisher's page or something like that...

Hmmm....reading the letter again, and thinking about the rush makes me a little bit more unhappier with Amazon...

I don't know the details, but considering GR has a HUGE market for them, you would think they would work with the site to make the change smooth and not alienate readers, aka customers. Everything I've heard about the timeline puts it at "very short" for the data shift...but hopefully it will be better for us all in the long run.

Judithe, that's exactly what I thought when I read the email. It sounds like Amazon is being anal about it but the main point is when I buy books from Amazon it is 9 time out of 10 based on Goodreads.

Me, too! They're the only "local" (with a Japan-based office) bookstore (which saves on shipping charges and such), and I haven't had problems...just don't like some of the corporate attitude....

Josie wrote: "You know at the top when it says do you have a copy (physical or ebook etc.), does that exclude the ones from Amazon? The ebooks are from Amazon and I own them but it says do not get your info from..."

If you own a kindle edition that is fine, just treat it like any other book you own.

Thanks Sandra! Then I can rescue the books since they're mainly smaller independent authors who don't have a website and only sell through Amazon :)

Good, they'll be the tricky ones to rescue for people who don't own them. If you rescue them all the better :)

I just spotted this email (from GR) and your post, Judithe. Thanks for sharing! Thankfully, I only had 1 book to rescue and just c/p from the author's website. I felt all Librariany b/c it even let me put in the description in. LOL!

You were clear when I checked, so it must of been one the kindle type books, they came out later.

:)

Silly question most likely but whatever...

I've never given though how books are added on Goodreads and I noticed that some series that I like are missing upcoming releases or simply non existent. I just dislike that I can find the next in a series on fictfact but not on GR. Is there a suggestion box on GR that I have not found?

Valerie, we've just gone through a major overhaul of the GR db, that was particularly hard on the to be published works.

Everything from Amazon was trashed, so whilst some books would just be unknown, some have been deleted.

If you've got a list I will reinstate them for you, no problem.

And as to how books get added to the db, we the volunteer librarians do that. Suggestions can be made in the Feedback group, which is one of the official GR groups.

Ok, I put my request for the 2 books. They are not out yet so there is no rush really.

Good; Paula, is a Super Librarian, so you were in great hands. She knows her stuff.

Yeah...and fictfact.com doen't apparently.

Well, they do it voluntarily themselves too. A bit like GR, so its understandable if they make mistakes. There are plenty here. LOL

No,No...you Librarians are perfect!

ROFL

Sandra, are the Librarians the only ones able to edit book information? Due to the whole information-db-reinstating situation (obviously not GRs fault) and the fact that recently I've been reading less well-known/read authors, there are some books missing from series or incorrectly labelled etc. I don't know if you want to edit it or you want me to put it where Val listed hers?
Here's some that I've come across:

(how it should be, taken from Candice Hern's website)

[The] Regency Rakes [Trilogy]


Country House Party [Duo]


Also A Gift for Kit isn't listed as part of Psy-Changeling - from Nalini Singh's website it is down as #5.5

I noticed that was obviously taken from Amazon. Can this be deleted and have the "book cover image not on hand" thing put up at the very least instead? I've tried finding an original image but I couldn't find one (I'm surprised authors don't try to make it easier).

That's about all at the moment lol. Just let me know if you want me to post this somewhere. Hopefully, in time, GRs will be back on track! Especially book covers - it really bothers me when they're not the same size lol ;)

EDIT: I found a cover for Mate for Life, not from the amazon (or the author unfortunately): Book Lending, Mate for Life
You can find it also on GRs images

Yep, only librarians can edit. I'll be back in a moment to check into these Josie :)

All fixed :)

The Candice Hern's may take a day or two to show up cause they are cached but if you click on the book it will show up as being in the series.

Thank you, Sandra! That's awesome :D
In future, do you mind stuff like this coming to you or would you like it to be posted to the Librarians in general?

Here is fine, I like doing the Librarian stuff :D

Cool, will do :D