Authors: Rescue your Books on Goodreads

[aruna]

I found this quite by accident on the "edit" page for my books:

At Goodreads, we make it a priority to use book information from the most reliable and open data sources, because it helps us build the best experience for our members. To that end, we're making a major change.

On January 30, Goodreads will no longer display book information that comes from Amazon.
This includes data such as titles, author names, page counts, and publication dates. For the vast majority of book editions, we have imported this data from other sources. Those few remaining editions for which we haven't found an alternative source of information will be removed from Goodreads.

All my books on Goodreads need to be "rescued" -- that is, I have to fill in all the book details manually. The "edit" pages for them are all blank and waiting to be filled in. I only had time to do one today; I'll do the rest tomorrow. When I finished I got a screen saying "thank you fo rescuing this book" -- so it sounds asif it WOULD Have just disappeared.
I'm not sure what will happen if I don't do this -- will they just disappear? Do other authors know about this?

 

[Perks]

So Goodreads is upset with Amazon? Long queue of those who are. Do we know what the particular gripe is in this case?

 

[Deleted member 42]

http://absolutewrite.com/forums/showthread.php?t=235356

 

[Perks]

Ah. I see. Thank you!

 

[Cathy C]

I don't really spend any time at Goodreads. I know our books are over there, but have no way of knowing if they need to be rescued. How would I find out?

 

[Deleted member 42]

Go search for your books.

If they need rescuing there's a very large easy to see notice.

 

[CaroGirl]

If I go to my book and there's no notice about needing to be rescued, I don't have to worry, right?

 

[aruna]

Go search for your books.

If they need rescuing there's a very large easy to see notice.

NO! Not necessarily! That's the scary bit. I was actually trying to figure out why one of my books disappeared from my author page after I edited the blurb, and so I went to the Edit page of another of my books. ANd only then I saw the notice -- it was on the edit page. In no way was I informed by Goodreads that this would happen -- and I go there almost every day.

ETA: OK, I take that back, after double checking. There IS a notice, at the top of the page, but it is no way very large. It's actually rather small, and I totally missed it. I'm sure that there are thousands of authors who never check their book pages, and even if they do, they will miss that notice, as I did. Scary!

If I go to my book and there's no notice about needing to be rescued, I don't have to worry, right?

YES! You do have to worry! Go to one of your books and click on "edit details" that's what I did, and only then did I get the information.

I hadn't seen the other thread in the SP forum, so maybe it's a good thing this is posted here, where we all congregate. It's not just an issue for self-published authors. Those books of mine are HarperCollins books; out of print, perhaps, but still trade published. And I was not informed that this would happen.

 

[Nazurelle]

Thanks for the heads up! I already manually add my books to goodreads but I think my publisher might not be adding his so I'll pass this along.

 

[KathleenD]

All of my books seem to be okay, even though all but two of them originally came from Amazon data.

I had wondered why the "search Amazon for the book you want to add" thingy wasn't working

 

[aruna]

Hmmm.... somebody has been busy!
I went back to my page today to rescue my two other novels -- and it had been doen for me! Someone from AW? Whoever it was, here or not -- thank you!