Alternate Cover Edition Problems

[Vyrania]

Okay, I'm getting very frustrated with this practice of just creating new editions instead of changing covers. I recently had "Alternate cover editions" creates for my books, and I went through the process of setting the new ones as the "primary edition". In some places - primarily my author dashboard - it looks to have worked, but in others, only one of my book covers has been updated.

I don't want the old covers showing up. Those "editions" of the books are not available anymore, so having them displayed at all is misleading. Is there any other way to do this, because the way it's done now isn't working?

Thank you,
Vyrania

[Debbie's Spurts (D.A.)]

Vyrania wrote: "Okay, I'm getting very frustrated with this practice of just creating new editions instead of changing covers...Those "editions" of the books are not available anymore, so having them displayed at all is misleading. ..."

I think it's only misleading for someone trying to buy the book on a retail site who would get the older cover when expecting the newer cover (or vice versa)-- but it's exactly what's needed for goodreads members trying to catalog editions they have or are using who would find it very misleading to have their cataloged bookcovers changed on them. Goodreads is not a retailer; it's more a library or card catalog of published works.

As the author, you can edit the edition with cover you want featured/default/primary and set it to be the primary edition. That will make that edition show in search results, casual browsing, your author page, applicable series pages, etc.

Some readers never look past the default edition shown to them so you effectively hide the older books/covers from them once you set a default (some readers choose to select specific editions). Both are allowed; published works and published bookcovers don't get removed just because product pages change.

What you cannot do as an author is vandalize a reader's catalogs or activities here to remove a bookcover they may have used. Many readers here consider that almost the same as the author of an out of print hardcopy edition of a book breaking and entering into a reader's home to yank a no-longer-in-print-with-that-bookcvoer book off a reader's real life bookcase.

Just because sites like amazon allow you to update a bookcover without obtaining a new asin or isbn doesn't mean every site handles the same way.

Just because a book (or a book cover) is no longer available or no longer in print -- doesn't mean it can't be cataloged on goodreads. Out of print is allowed here.

Goodreads doesn't have product pages showing books currently for sale. Nor product pages showing just the bookcover currently for sale. Book data pages are here; if it was ever published, it's cataloged even if no longer available or no longer in print.

[By reader activities, that includes updates, discussions, group challenges, listopia adds/votes ... If a reader shelved (or used) a specific bookcover that was at one time published, it gets to stay on their bookshelves; if they used a bookcover in a group challenge or review challenge requiring a cover meet certain criteria you don't get to disqualify them or their team just because you updated your product pages on retail sites...]

ETA: for typos and to add that directions for setting your default/featured/primary edition are at https://www.goodreads.com/help/show/3... -- if an author doesn't set, goodreads uses the most popular edition as the featured one. Once set, can take 10 minutes to 72 hours for cache to populate it out to all areas of goodreads (thumbnail heavy areas usually take longer and that estimate is when cache is running normal speeds -- right now I believe they are tweaking search and other features where there are some additional cache delays).

[Vyrania]

I stated above that I have set the new editions to default/primary, yet they are not updating in search engines, save one. I would also prefer if the primary editions didn't have a note saying that they are "alternate cover editions", but I cannot edit this note. It doesn't show up when I go to change details.

[Debbie's Spurts (D.A.)]

Vyrania wrote: "... In some places - primarily my author dashboard - it looks to have worked, but in others, only one of my book covers has been updated. ..."

If the bookcover shows updated on your author page, it's updated. The changes just haven't been populated out to all areas/features of goodreads; data on the almost billion books here gets pretty heavily cached.

If it's been more than 72 hours, then something might be wrong and you should contact goodreads support/staff. (Not something librarians can help with; librarians cannot even set the default edition for you much less deal with cache issues or other site bugs.)

[Vyrania]

Alright, I'll try that.
Thank you.

[lethe]

The "alternate cover edition" note is a service to the readers, in case they search with ISBN or ASIN and find an edition with a different cover than they have.

It also helps against inadvertent merging. It is possible though to move it to the end of the description, if you so wish.