Goodreads - Last Minute Plea

[CWatkinsNash]

An update for those who are concerned but don't want to dig through the endless posts on GR -

I've received a couple of friend requests, and both of you are now on my priority list for data re-population once the dust settles.

You may notice you are suddenly missing a bunch of book covers on your Goodreads shelves. That is because Amazon-sourced covers are being deleted. Over the next several days, Goodreads is importing new cover images from several sources, including millions from Ingram. Once Goodreads tells us the imports are done, the Librarians will start looking for usable cover images for any that are still missing.

Librarians will also be trying to replace any of the non-essential data that goes missing once the Amazon data is fully pulled tomorrow night. This data may include descriptions, page counts, pub date, and so on. (It's called non-essential only because it was not needed in order to save the book record, we know that information is important. )
This is the data re-population I mentioned above. My own efforts will focus first on my Goodreads friends, then my own books.

If you use Goodreads but don't really get involved over there, feel free to use me as your contact. If you have any questions, I'll try to answer them if I can, and as a librarian I can also help with book issues. Again, here is my Goodreads profile if anyone wants to reach me over there. I will do what I can.

Edited to add: I'm just a volunteer Librarian, and I do not represent Goodreads.

[Ajax]

Originally Posted by jgaiser

I'd kill for 56K. 11 miles of crappy copper. Nearest cable connection is about 3 or 4 miles back down the road and very little chance of it reaching those 3 or 4 miles any time soon. Yes, I live in *very* rural Oregon with a 21.6K connection this evening.

I've looked into the a couple satellite services. Way too expensive. My only hope is a rural WiFi service that is planning on putting an antenna on a county owned tower just down the road. I've got a clear shot from the corner of my property. Only need to lay about 50 yards of cable.

Mostly I just survive with the dialup, ignoring websites that take too long to load and getting into town to a couple local pubs that have open WiFi at a decent speed. Have dinner, drink a couple of beers and update my system and enjoy a little high speed. Don't want to get too spoiled.

I know exactly how you feel. For the longest time we could only get Satellite or dialup. Then we finally found a wireless tower we could see (took 5 different companies) and ended up paying $75/month for a 1mbps line. Last year we got some "junk" mail from a new company and they offered a 10 mbps option for only $40/month. You have to love getting 10x the speed for half the cost.

[CWatkinsNash]

Originally Posted by jgaiser

Oh my... Thank you. I was going to give a look this evening, but you've taken care of that. Karma.

You're very welcome, and thank you!

I won't lie, yesterday I was ready to be done with the whole Goodreads fiasco but then last night a fire seemed to have been lit beneath my posterior and now I just want to help as many people as possible keep their book info intact.

[wyndslash]

i don't understand why amazon is doing this though

[mldavis2]

Why is Amazon doing this? Simple - monopolistic market control.

From a practical standpoint, Amazon does not generate images, they obtain them from other sources such as publishers. While Goodreads cannot now obtain book information via URL links to Amazon, there is no reason that a user cannot obtain cover images from any source such as scanning or online images, rename the file and upload them. Let your conscience be your guide. There is no practical way to determine the origin of an image. If you do use an image from an online source such as a publisher, B&N or whatever, rename it and upload it. Stay away from Amazon images if you can but if that's the only source and you own the book or eBook, you should be able to use it to enter in your own personal library.

[elemenoP]

Does this mean anything for Calibre? I don't know where the book data comes from when you "get data" in Calibre. But I know book covers come from Amazon (among other choices). So will Calibre no longer be able to get any data or book covers from Amazon?

eP

[HomeInMyShoes]

^I would hazard a guess that you won't get that information anymore.

I didn't receive an e-mail, but the link said everything was okay for my books.

[anamardoll]

Originally Posted by CWatkinsNash

You're very welcome, and thank you!

I won't lie, yesterday I was ready to be done with the whole Goodreads fiasco but then last night a fire seemed to have been lit beneath my posterior and now I just want to help as many people as possible keep their book info intact.

Thank you for all the information. I got the email and rescued about 30 books before I ran out of free time last night.

I'm inordinately annoyed at Amazon for doing this, ESPECIALLY since I imagine this will make it very hard to fold in e-books only published on Amazon.

[kiwidude]

@elemenoP - it won't make any difference to calibre for the Amazon plugin. Both the Amazon and Goodreads metadata plugins scrape data from the web pages.

I am confident that Goodreads did not get their data by "scraping", they would have had some officially endorsed feed of Amazon data which is what has been turned off. So for Calibre users it won't make a blind bit of difference - it is only when Amazon changes their website that things get broken (temporarily until the plugin gets updated to match).

Likewise with the Goodreads metadata plugin for Calibre - it is at the mercy of what data Goodreads are able to visibly publish on their web pages. So for subset of books where there will no longer be covers (though that sounds hopefully short term) the plugin won't return one.

But it is usually best to have a few different metadata plugins enabled for coverage purposes and the likes of the B&N plugin usually gives better quality covers anyways.

[CWatkinsNash]

Originally Posted by mldavis2

Why is Amazon doing this? Simple - monopolistic market control.

From a practical standpoint, Amazon does not generate images, they obtain them from other sources such as publishers. While Goodreads cannot now obtain book information via URL links to Amazon, there is no reason that a user cannot obtain cover images from any source such as scanning or online images, rename the file and upload them. Let your conscience be your guide. There is no practical way to determine the origin of an image. If you do use an image from an online source such as a publisher, B&N or whatever, rename it and upload it. Stay away from Amazon images if you can but if that's the only source and you own the book or eBook, you should be able to use it to enter in your own personal library.

It's also about competition - Amazon owns Shelfari.

There is a procedure that should be followed here. Images (and other data) should only be sourced in the following ways:

-obtained from the author or publisher of the book

-obtained from a non-commercial site that GR now has an agreement with or who has an open data policy which allows such use of the image. (There is a list of many pre-approved sites in this FAQ thread.)

-from an actual copy of the book. For ebooks, covers can be "pulled" from the actual ebook by opening it in K4PC and screencapping the cover. This is the ebook equivalent of scanning or photographing the cover.

Simply downloading any file and then uploading it to GR without doing due diligence to ensure it can legally be used could be harmful to Goodreads. Also, the cover attached to the book must match the edition listed.

Originally Posted by elemenoP

Does this mean anything for Calibre? I don't know where the book data comes from when you "get data" in Calibre. But I know book covers come from Amazon (among other choices). So will Calibre no longer be able to get any data or book covers from Amazon?

eP

Kiwidude already answered this, but I can confirm that GR had a data usage agreement pertaining to data received via one or more of Amazon's APIs. While I've obviously not seen the agreement and I'm not privy to any details, this type of thing is a lot different than a) how calibre gets the data, and b) how the data is used.

[CWatkinsNash]

Originally Posted by anamardoll

Thank you for all the information. I got the email and rescued about 30 books before I ran out of free time last night.

I'm inordinately annoyed at Amazon for doing this, ESPECIALLY since I imagine this will make it very hard to fold in e-books only published on Amazon.

I got the last of yours rescued, so you're all done. I think all my "priority peeps" are now taken care of as far as books in danger of deletion. Edit: This is not true. Missed a couple of peeps. Working on that now.

I'm not too worried about the Amazon-only ebooks for a few reasons. One, the authors usually have book info on their own web site or blog, and that can be used as a source. Two, these days a lot of indie authors enter their books into the database themselves. Three, all that's needed to add it to GR (if one and two don't happen) is for someone to have a copy of the ebook.

ASINs are considered an accessible identifier the same way that ISBNs are, so that's not an issue either.

One upside to all of this is now we no longer have to deal with the all-to-often incorrect metadata from Amazon, and librarians will no longer have to worry about keeping up with the "not a book" items automatically showing up from the Amazon data feed. Goodreads is also no longer subject to the restrictions of using Amazon data. I believe that once the dust settles, this change is a net positive.

[anamardoll]

@CWatkinsNash, THANK YOU. You are so awesome. I mean I already knew that, but still.

Amazon owns Shelfari? WHY. It may just be me, but I hate their interface with the burning passion of a thousand tea light candles.

[Blossom]

The bad this about this is now the page count stats are going to be messed up. I am going through mine and changing the ebook edition to the paperback that are missing covers. I never got an email either so thank you for this thread!

Oh I found a way to figure out which titles are kindle edition. Export your GoodReads library using the export function and open the file in excel under Binding column you will see which edition you have. Makes it so much easier!

[MrsJoseph]

Originally Posted by anamardoll

@CWatkinsNash, THANK YOU. You are so awesome. I mean I already knew that, but still.

Amazon owns Shelfari? WHY. It may just be me, but I hate their interface with the burning passion of a thousand tea light candles.

Yeah, Shelfari is pretty crappy and horrible.

Just speculation BUT there's been whispers of Amazon wanting to buy out GR on some blog sites....there's also the fact that Amazon's Shelfari is hooked into their regular purchasing system whereas Goodreads was not. GR did not give Amazon any additional access to members than it already had (other than the required "buy" link listed first for all books shown on GR).

It was a good partnership for Amazon but they are getting bigger and hungrier everyday. Something has to feed the monster...

[Fbone]

Originally Posted by anamardoll

Amazon owns Shelfari? WHY. It may just be me, but I hate their interface with the burning passion of a thousand tea light candles.

Amazon also owns 40% of LibraryThing.