Goodreads Librarians Group discussion
Policies & Practices
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Should interactive fiction/CYOA be NOT-A-BOOKed?
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Mod
No, it is stand-alone, there's no ongoing subscription, no in-app purchases like some video games, just a one-time purchase, like any other book.But so I understand: would having an ongoing subscription fee be one of the reasons something shouldn't be on Goodreads? So an interactive story which is published for free would be okay, but one which requires a subscription wouldn't be? I guess that makes sense.
Any story that requires some kind of subscription is not valid for GR.
Scott wrote: "Any story that requires some kind of subscription is not valid for GR."What do you mean by "subscription"? I'm not sure how subscriptions are relevant to these interactive stories.
Something you have to sign up for.I was just answering your question.
Mod
Which confirms these are apps -- games -- not books.
Which confirms these are apps -- games -- not books."What? I said they *don't* have subscription features etc. How does that confirm they're games not books?
Mod
So what is the reason, considering that neither being a gamebook, nor only being published digitally, precludes other books from being on Goodreads? Please give us clear objective criteria that we can all use and apply.
These apps are gamebooks. They're games and they're books.There are a whole bunch of gamebooks on Goodreads. https://www.goodreads.com/search?q=ga...
All of these gamebooks are books; some of them are apps, but those apps are still books.
The guidance for NOT A BOOK do say that "video games" are not books, but there's a huge difference between Mario or Call of Duty and interactive fiction works like this one, which is a 123K word pure-text story.
We have lots of entries for printed CYOA stories, and we have lots of entries for books which have only been published digitally. I'd like to request that these interactive fiction works be allowed, as it seems unfair to exclude them while other interactive works which happened to be printed on paper get included. And it shouldn't necessarily be limited to purely text-only entries, illustrations should be okay too. The distinguishing feature should be whether the dominant medium is text.