Goodreads policy on what constitutes an author?

[Amanda]

I'm curious about something ... I'm noticing in my feed one or two books/authors that are unpublished. Not traditional, not indie, not published at all. Wrote the book for themselves, no ISBN, reviewed it (and their review is the only one) to say essentially "this book is not being sold anywhere, I just wrote it for myself." I'm wondering how these books got onto the Goodreads site at all, if they have no ISBN or publisher or ... anything but a title and a cover. If the policy is that writers are allowed to post unpublished work here, then fine, but if they're not ...

I don't want to make trouble for innocent kids. (The one I noticed today is clearly an enthusiastic and I'm sure innocent and sweet teenager who is so excited to be a writer, she posted all her unpublished stories here.) But I also don't understand why Goodreads would allow this in the first place.

So ... what is the policy? (I feel mean even making an issue of this, but I also feel like Goodreads should be a professional and accurate platform, so ...)

[lethe]

The policy is here: https://www.goodreads.com/help/show/1...
https://www.goodreads.com/help/show/3...

The problem is that anybody can add books (or non-books) to the site, there is no check on that. So books that should not be here remain on the site until they are discovered.

[Amanda]

lethe wrote: "The policy is here: https://www.goodreads.com/help/show/1...
https://www.goodreads.com/help/show/3...

The problem is that anybody can add books (or non-books) to the site, ..."

Ah, okay. I assumed there was some automatic check, like an ISBN check or something. I don't know why I thought it would be automatic ... I guess for that to happen, there would have to be librarians doing so manually!

[Elizabeth (Alaska)]

Amanda wrote: "I assumed there was some automatic check, like an ISBN check or something. I don't know why I thought it would be automatic ... I guess for that to happen, there would have to be librarians doing so manually! ."

The system does verify that ISBNs are valid. However, ISBNs are not required to publish a book, now or ever. ISBNs came in to existence about 1966 and they weren't consistently used for many years.

[Sandra]

Plus there are many, many books that were published before isbns were invented.

[Amanda]

Elizabeth (Alaska) wrote: "Amanda wrote: "I assumed there was some automatic check, like an ISBN check or something. I don't know why I thought it would be automatic ... I guess for that to happen, there would have to be lib..."

So there is literally no way for the system to know if a book has really been published or not. I guess I never considered that before.

And for older books, I don't even know what I thought ... that they must have been given ISBNs later? Or something? In any case, thanks for the education. :-)