Goodreads - Last Minute Plea

[GA Russell]

I have received this evening an email from Goodreads starting that as of January 30 they will not be using Amazon's data.

My email stated that none of my books were at risk of being lost.

However, I clicked on their link, and found that in fact two were at risk, including one given to me by our own Neil Marr of BeWrite Books.

I assume that all Goodreads members will receive their own email about this, and I urge everyone to click on the link to verify how many of your books are at risk of being lost, and to rescue those books as called for.

[Fbone]

Fortunately, they will give us the ability to manually add the data. No review or rating should be lost.

Kindle exclusives will disappear unless rescued. I'm surprised Amazon and GR couldn't work out a solution. You can only purchase these at Amazon anyway plus the extra visibility helps out the indie author.

[issybird]

Thank you for the alert. My email also stated that none of my books were at risk and I wouldn't have bothered to click on the link without your heads up. In fact, two of my books were at risk and while one could be merged, the other would have been deleted. It is a book I had added to GR myself; fortunately I own a hard copy and can retrieve the data.

[wyndslash]

thanks for the heads up

[wyndslash]

what was the title of the email? i don't believe i've received one yet...

[paulsalter]

I received this email also, it said I had zero books at risk

clicked the link and had about 20 to rescue, which I have now done

[Hamlet53]

Originally Posted by wyndslash

what was the title of the email? i don't believe i've received one yet...

Nor have I. Then I don't even understand what this is about. Goodreads is just a way to track books one has read and what one thought of the book. That and books one hopes to read. So how does a book become lost?

[spindlegirl]

Originally Posted by Hamlet53

Nor have I. Then I don't even understand what this is about. Goodreads is just a way to track books one has read and what one thought of the book. That and books one hopes to read. So how does a book become lost?

This is confusing to me too.

I have put a lot of books on my "want to read" list, all because of Goodreads. Is Goodreads saying that certain publishers won't allow their books to be listed on their site? This is going to be quite confusing to general users like me who enjoyed looking at what my friends are reading and making reading decisions based on that.

[Shack70]

No email yet...

[tilia]

Originally Posted by Hamlet53

Nor have I. Then I don't even understand what this is about. Goodreads is just a way to track books one has read and what one thought of the book. That and books one hopes to read. So how does a book become lost?

I haven't read the details of it, but some books have been imported into Goodreads from Amazon(using the ASIN, I think). If info on these books aren't updated they will get deleted when Amazon cuts Goodreads off at the end of January. Goodreads have been importing info from other sites to update some of these books, but many have to be done manually by users.

Originally Posted by Shack70

No email yet...

Maybe they're only sending the e-mail to librarians? You have to be one to change book-details. But anyone with x number of books can become one...

I only had one book to save, but some have hundreds

[melanti]

Here's the link to check: http://www.goodreads.com/rescue_books/at_risk

Even if you checked before, check again! As of Wednesday, I had no books to rescue. As of yesterday, I had three - all Kindle books. I checked again today and there were two more. Again, Kindle versions. The issue appears to be mainly with ebooks with no paperback versions.

Sure, you can manually add the books later, but if you don't know the title and author and didn't write a detailed review, how will you know what book to add? I'm not sure what data they CAN keep.

[issybird]

The book I own which will be deleted from the database without my action I suspect I entered the exact same way I have to redo it, by copying the ISBN and other publication data from my copy, which was published in 1964. Certainly it's not a Kindle book.

[CWatkinsNash]

A brief explanation: Amazon was a major data source via their API. They've increased the restrictions on how this data is used, and while most details are not publicly available, Goodreads essentially had to choice but to discontinue use of the data. Amazon is cutting them off tomorrow (1/30). Initially, Amazon was going to provide a feed of data for Kindle & CreateSpace books, presumably because they function as a publisher for many of these rather than just a retailer. However, in a last minute change, it was decided that this would not be the case.

As of yesterday, anyone can now rescue books, not just librarians. Over 99% of the books on Goodreads have already been saved, mostly by data imports from other, more open data sources, and many by Goodreads librarians. Many of those remaining are Kindle editions and CreateSpace books because these were not originally on the rescue list.

While you cannot use data from the Amazon web site to save these books, you can rescue them using data from the ebook itself. If you no longer have it on hand, it seems that a downloaded sample would suffice as long as it contains the title and author information, which is the minimum required to rescue a book.

In the Goodreads Librarian group (which is public and open to anyone, not just librarians) there is a FAQ thread with information on other acceptable sources of book information that can be used. There is also additional information in that thread that may be helpful.

I hope this helps anyone who wishes to assist in the effort.

[RainingLemur]

Lucky enough, no books at risk.

[Fbone]

All mine have been rescued. Several missing page numbers but I can not add them.