Heads up to all authors with Kindle Editions and to Goodreads users

[annathepiper]

I started spotting notices on various editions of books on Goodreads last night talking about how as of January 30th, they’re going to stop using book data from Amazon. Affected book editions are showing notices at the top of their pages that look like this:

Goodreads Data Alert

If you click on the Learn More button a new page pops up talking about Goodread’s reasons for doing this, and displaying a form where you can fill in data from other sources to make sure that the book doesn’t vanish out of their database.

AUTHORS: Go check your books on Goodreads and make sure you’re not about to lose your only entry in their database. ESPECIALLY if your only listed edition is a Kindle Edition.

GOODREADS USERS: Check your bookshelves and see if you’re about to lose any Kindle Editions out of your various shelves. You do NOT need librarian access to rescue a book–anybody can fill in the form, apparently. But you should rescue any obvious Kindle Editions in your lists. All you need is a legitimate source of data about the book, from somewhere other than Amazon.

Mirrored from angelakorrati.com.

Comments

[mmegaera]

Thanks. Apparently Repeating History's Smashwords version is what's in there, so I'm not getting that message.

[annathepiper]

Yeah, any book that got its data from a non-Amazon source will be fine, like Smashwords.

[mmegaera]

Also, since I am not getting that message, is it possible to get a direct link to their reasons? I'm curious.

[annathepiper]

Here is the link that shows when I click through off the Kindle Edition of Faerie Blood (which I don't need to rescue given that there are other ebook entries in the database for it).

The pertinent data is down the left hand side of the page. It's talking about Goodreads wishing to use reliable and open sources of data--and the key word there for me is "open". I strongly suspect they've had some sort of dispute with Amazon about how they can use Amazon data. Hard to say, though, given that I haven't seen a formal announcement from Goodreads about this, just the buttons that are popping up on the affected books, and the page that the buttons link off to, like the one above.

[mmegaera]

Hee. The link says I don't have permission for this operation, whatever that is [g].

But thanks for telling me what it said. I appreciate it.

[annathepiper]

Huh. I wonder why it didn't work? But okay, here's a direct quote of the text:

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.

[mmegaera]

Thanks!

[annathepiper]

You are welcome! It'll be interesting to see if any of the titles on my shelves have changed now--the data was supposed to have switched over today.