Confusion regarding Editions and "Get a copy"

[Steve]

Hi,

I'm a new author on Goodreads, and my novel Coffee Crash was just listed here. I'm having difficulty understanding how the Editions of my book interact with the "Get a copy" feature in the listings.

I have four editions of this book, which are already combined:
1) Paperback (currently available only on Amazon)
2) Kindle
3) ebook (Smashwords edition, which also seeds it to the iBookstore, Sony Reader store, Kobo, and a few others)
4) ebook (Barnes & Noble edition, which uses the BN ID number, not the actual ISBN)

Because each of these editions has a different ISBN, if I click on the "Get a copy" buttons, unless the seller I happen to pick corresponds to the exact edition currently being viewed in Goodreads, the seller's link comes up unable to locate the book.

For example, if I'm viewing the paperback edition in Goodreads, and click the "Get a copy" for Barnes & Noble, the BN site returns "Sorry, we could not find what you were looking for," even though the Coffee Crash ebook is actually on the site (just not at the ISBN for the paperback).

Compounding this problem is that a Goodreads user has absolutely no way to tell, for example, that the edition for Barnes & Noble is actually for Barnes & Noble because it's just generically labeled by Goodreads as "ebook". (The same issue applies to all the other editions, except for the "Kindle" edition, which is clearly going to be linked to the listing on Amazon.)

Furthermore, if a Goodreads user goes into the "More..." area of "Get a copy" and chooses to search by Title, unless the specific ISBN edition being viewed is available at that specific seller, Goodreads returns the message, "That book link won't work for this book," even if the Title is actually listed at that seller. (In other words, "Find This Book At:" searching by Title does not work correctly.) Exacerbating this problem is when the message "That book link won't work for this book" appears, it always takes the user back to the default edition of the book (in my case, the paperback) even if the user was viewing a different edition prior to entering the "More..." area.

I find all this behavior very confusing and frustrating, as a Goodreads user who wants to buy the book at a given seller that has it, is led to believe that the seller doesn't have it.

Is there any way to link the correct edition to each seller, such that clicking "Get a copy" leads to whichever edition is listed by that seller? I'm willing to set up such links manually if Goodreads gives me a way to do it. The need for that behavior of "Get a copy" seems obvious to me. Maybe it's already possible, but if so, I can't figure out how to do it.

[Paula]

Nope, what you describe is how the links function.

In addition, the buy links are customisable by user not by book / author so you and I are likely to have different links.

Edit: GR policy is to use ebook for all ebooks irrespective of bookseller / type of ebook.

GR is in the main a book cataloging site not a bookseller and it is setup for those purposes

You can provide links in your author profile if you so wish but sales links are not permitted in the book description or in the URL field.

[Steve]

Hi Paula,

Thanks for your reply.

I understand that which buys links appear (and in what order) is customizable by user, but the actual URL generated when a user clicks one of those links doesn't appear to be customizable. The URLs shouldn't be customizable by users anyway, but I guess what I'm asking is whether Goodreads can make them customizable by the author or librarians.

[rivka, Former Moderator]

Steve wrote: "whether Goodreads can make them customizable by the author or librarians."

Sorry, but no.

[Steve]

If the links can't be made to function in a useful manner, they why have them at all?

As they are, most of the "Get a copy" links provide erroneous results if a book has multiple editions. Surely I can't be the first person to encounter this problem. And I find it hard to believe that anyone considers the current functionality to be desirable.

If Goodreads doesn't want to make the link URLs customizable by authors or librarians, than it could:
- Have the "Get a copy" links simply go to the home page of a seller (e.g. www.bn.com) rather than generate links that attempt to locate specific ISBNs or titles which the current links fail to do correctly much of the time.
or
- Allow authors to completely remove "Get a copy" links from listings of their own books. If indeed, as Paula stated, "GR is in the main a book cataloging site not a bookseller and it is setup for those purposes", this option would make perfect sense. I'd prefer to require users to go to seller sites on their own rather than have them falsely informed that a title isn't available when it actually is. (Bad information is worse than no information.)

[rivka, Former Moderator]

This group is not the place for requests for changes to features, as librarians have no control over that sort of thing. We can help you configure book records to work as best as possible with the existing system, but that's about it.

[Steve]

OK. I'll raise the issue in the Feedback group.

Thanks.

[Elizabeth (Alaska)]

The search at a bookseller's or library site is by ISBN. If the ISBN of the edition being searched isn't located at that bookseller or library, it will logically return search not found.

[Steve]

Elizabeth (Alaska) wrote: "The search at a bookseller's or library site is by ISBN. If the ISBN of the edition being searched isn't located at that bookseller or library, it will logically return search not found."

I understand that's what's happening. The core problem is that book readers don't care about ISBNs, they care about books. Yet readers don't have a way to know which ISBNs or editions are associated with which sellers (other than Amazon Kindle). And the search by Title is not working correctly (as described in my first post).