Goodreads Librarians Group discussion

The cover image is incorrect. This ghastly purple image has been on the Barnes & Noble website for years. However, the actual cover is orange (and shows up correctly at Amazon.) I tried to replace the cover image but got an error message saying that I didn't have librarian status and couldn't do so. Yet as an author, I'm supposed to have librarian status, right? What gives? (By the way, I can upload my own image of the actual cover, so Goodreads doesn't have to get it from Amazon.) Thanks!!

Authors have limited librarian abilities, not librarian status. The only way to get full librarian privileges is to apply to be a librarian.

As for the cover, was the book ever published with the purple cover? If not, we can correct the error. If it was published with the purple cover, we'll need to create an alternate cover edition.

No, being an author does not automatically make you a librarian. (At least, that's my understanding.)

As for the cover image, just like libraries don't remove out-of-print books or books with old covers from their shelves, neither do we. But we can add an alternate-cover entry for the book. Would you like for us to do that?

LOL. By the hatred of the purple cover on Barnes and Noble I would say it was never published as purple.

Like the others said you would need to apply for GR's librarian status in addition to having claimed your author page.

If you don't want to do this, but want the above fixed by us, we can do that. Just let us know if the purple version was ever published and we will make an alternate cover edition and combine it. If it was never published we can replace it with the orange one. You can provide an image via your own website, or other page as long as it is not a booksellers website. I always suggest uploading it to imgur and sending us the link if you want to supply an image that is not located on a non-booksellers website.

Krystal109 wrote: "LOL. By the hatred of the purple cover on Barnes and Noble I would say it was never published as purple."

I guess I'm confused as to how the cover could have been on the site for years and not have been published with it in anyway.

Who knows. I agree that it seems odd, but if it was ever put in wrong it gets propagated by other sites that use that as a database.

It was just an observation and I would wait for the author to clarify it.

Thanks guys. The answer is that it was never published with the purple cover. The cover is actually a reproduction of a painting by artist/scientist William Hartmann and I believe the money for it came out of my advance, so it's doubly annoying to have it distorted so badly.

I don't know how Barnes & Noble got this picture. I tried to contact them very early on and they never replied. I think that my editor also tried, for whatever reason it never worked.

I would appreciate it very much if you could at least delete the purple picture so that I could upload the correct orange one. Or alternatively, if both of those changes need to be done by a librarian, please give me a way to send you the correct picture so that you can make the replacement.

I don't really care about applying for librarian status, because this is the only change that I need to make (I hope...)

Thanks so much for your help!

In that case, the purple cover is now gone. I'm not sure of the extent of author's abilities, so you may be able to upload the correct one now; if not, your options are to either upload it to your account as a photo or to give us a link to the cover at a non-bookseller site so that a librarian can upload it.

Good news! I just noticed that the Kindle edition has the correct cover art. So if you can just copy the art from the Kindle edition onto the hardback edition, then we'll be all set.

Mmmkay. Uploaded.

Thanks to all of you. Looks great.

Np. Thanks for clearing up the purple cover issue.