On January 30, Goodreads will no longer display book information that comes from Amazon

[reviews_and_ramblings]

I'm not really sure what is happening but I thought others wanted to know. I have more than 3.000 books on Goodreads, mostly Gay Romances, and when I read about this news, I went to see how many of my books were affected: 160. Well that is a good share, and I noticed they were mostly from Ravenous Romance, Amber Quill and Total-e-Bound. My impression is that, publishers who are not so active on Amazon are in danger of seeing their books deleted from Goodreads since they didn't find any alternative source other than Amazon to retrieve the book details.

From this link:

http://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/776968

there is a link to the list of books in your library you can "rescue"; I rescued all mine, simply confirming Title, Author and an official link (Author's website or Publisher's website). In this way, from what I understood, all the reviewes I posted for those books are safe. I suggest you to do the same, then, if later one you want to complete the details, you are always in time.

As I said I don't know what is happening, before Goodreads I used LibraryThing, and still am, and LibraryThing is still using Amazon search engine to retrieve the books details and covers. My major effort is in maintaining that library up to date, Goodreads is more or less a back-up, so for me is not an issue if they don't link Amazon, at worst I will not record some books. But if you use Goodreads as your main library, than this could be a problem for you.

Comments

[chrysalis1975]

Is LibraryThing easier to use than GoodReads as a library? I have a couple thousand books (I haven't uploaded all of them yet to GR), but I don't have a xml file or anything of that nature, so importing them anywhere is a problem. Just curious. Thank you for the info on GR :)

Tame

[elisa-rolle.livejournal.com]

If I remember well, the first time, some years ago, I imported the first book using my excel archive, I had all the ISBN in a column and simply cut and paste it in the import facilities. In any case LibraryThings accept: TEXT, CSV, XML, HTML, RTF, tab-delimited, etc. 2MB max. Here is the import page:

http://www.librarything.com/import.php

[janedavitt.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the heads up! I have 20 or so; will rescue tomorrow :-)

[semioticwarrior.livejournal.com]

It looks to me as if they're not deleting the books from their databases, but rather deleting the information about the books that comes from Amazon, and replacing it with the same information from another source.

But I could have misread.

[elisa-rolle.livejournal.com]

Yes, BUT if they don't find an alternative source other than Amazon, and the book is markerd as May Be Deleted or May Be Merged, it will be deleted or merged.

For famous edition or US books it's probably not a problem, but I went through the trend. What is happening is mostly this:

I had a out of print book in hand. I searched it with Goodreads. Goodreads defaulted the search engine on Amazon and since the book was listed retrieved the basic data. They were all right so I, as librarian, didn't edit it but, for example, the cover was different. I decided to change the cover, scanned it and uploaded. Now the book is in the May Be Deleted list since the basic data are retrieved by Amazon. I don't rescue it. The book will be deleted as it will be the cover I uploaded.

[stormcloude]

Hmm, I can't access their link to see which of my books are at risk and I can't leave a comment on that post. :( Seems like they don't really care about me as a user.

[elisa-rolle.livejournal.com]

I found out the link is only for librarians (you can be a librarian, you have only to ask) and that is a group, so to comment you need to join (I cannot either since I haven't joined)

[corneliagrey.livejournal.com]

Yes, I have the same problem... now, off to figure out how to request librarian status :)