Revisiting Librarian policy re: ASIN on old books

[Keith]

The librarian manual states:

"Do not add an Amazon-assigned ASIN to books that were released without ISBN numbers."

I've commented on this before (long ago in this thread), but a different angle just struck me. I don't have much reason to care whether Amazon makes money or not, but presumably they will only continue to permit Goodreads to exist as long as Goodreads makes a positive contribution to their bottom line, so I do very much care about Goodreads making Amazon money.

There are, so far as I am aware, only two things under Librarian control that drive Amazon revenue: the ISBN & ASIN fields that power the Amazon button. If a valid ASIN exists with the potential to drive sales to Amazon, isn't a policy forbidding that fundamentally a bad business decision in addition to being poor customer service? I don't understand why we actively prevent the inclusion of valid data that doesn't block more valuable data and which could be contributing to profitability on a social site where monetization is always the hard question.

[Paula]

I would not want to add ASIN to a book that was not published with it. It is incorrect book book data and as this is in theory a book cataloging site I want my book data correct not incorrect because it makes more money for Amazon.

[lethe]

I totally agree with Paula. Those ASINs are used by second-hand booksellers for print editions and do not belong to these books. They are not 'valid data'.

[lethe]

I had a look through the thread Keith linked to, and this is the link to Keith's comment: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

[Elizabeth (Alaska)]

I understand the thinking behind Keith's comment. However, as the largest site of its kind on the internet, I doubt Amazon would want Goodreads to cease to exist. The PR would be terrible. I often see "xxx 5-star reviews on Goodreads" and Amazon isn't going to cut its nose off to spite its face.

I think the existing editions with incorrectly attributed ASINs most often are duplicates and those editions should be merged and deleted.

[Krazykiwi]

I can see your point Keith, but I think it's just not worth the confusion it would cause.

ASIN's issued to books without ISBN's are vendor sales, so Amazon makes rather less than normal on them (only a tiny %) I suspect the actual amount of sales on such items via GR would amount to a few dollars a year.

Bear in mind most vendors only have a single instance of each item to sell, one second hand copy of the book, in this case, and once it's gone, the ASIN is effectively "dead"

Although some vendors reuse those ASINS for other products, they aren't supposed to. But they do, because Amazon doesn't catch it every time and it's actually worse. You might click the link and at best end up on a page for a different book, and at worst, one selling cookware or halloween costumes. Or cookware halloween costumes for dogs. After a few weeks, you're more likely to find a live copy of the book to buy as it is now, searching by title, than via a possibly dead ASIN.

That leaves the ASINS issued to vendor sales of second hand books with ISBN's - which in addition to the above all still being true, those are duplicates of the "real" edition that owns that ISBN (and they would still show up in the "see all copies, used and new" after searching for it via the ISBN.)

(Now you're going to think I just am stalking you to shoot down your ideas, I promise I'm not! You always make me think about these things, possibly more than I should.)

[Meg]

Hi everyone - thanks for all your points here, and Keith, thank you for starting a discussion on this. I agree with you that making book pages more functional for users would be great - and was ready to say so until looking into this a bit more. ASIN numbers are frequently swapped out, so as Krazykiwi points out, adding this information to book records on Goodreads could eventually result in broken links or links to items with recycled ASINs. While the accuracy of the database is important, it’s not really a dealbreaker here - the bigger issue is to ensure we’re supporting all readers on Goodreads. Adding the ASIN to these book pages could also get in the way of other buy buttons redirecting to the correct book, if it’s sold elsewhere. Given that, ASINs should only be assigned to items that can only be purchased on Amazon.

I’m sorry we won’t be able to implement this - it could potentially be very useful for some users. Thank you for bringing it up so we could all discuss!

Krazykiwi wrote: "You always make me think about these things, possibly more than I should."

Agreed!

[Keith]

lethe wrote: "I had a look through the thread Keith linked to, and this is the link to Keith's comment: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/..."

Thanks, lethe; I started this thread from mobile and could only hold so many things in the paste buffer at a time.

[Keith]

Thanks particularly to Krazykiwi and Meg for pointing out the ASIN recycling issue, of which I was unaware: I haven't seen that happen, and especially for books without an ISBN at all (e.g., those which were only printed between 1923 and 1960 and have never had an ISBN and probably never will) it seemed like a good idea. Now I understand why it's not.

And K, feel free to shoot sown any of my ideas if they're not good—that's why I tend to phrase them in the form of a question—especially if you provide the reason along with the ammo. ;-)

My question has been very adequately answers, officially and unofficially, so if the mods want to lock out this thread, I have no objection and nothing to whine about. Maybe I'll go click on some ads and let that generate some revenue instead. ;-)