Goodreads Librarians Group discussion
Requests for Superlibrarians
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[COMPLETE] Duplicate Paperback Edition: The Inconsolables (+ minor date cleanup)
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Prepared for merge: https://www.goodreads.com/work/editio...paperback without ASIN/ISBN (1808 shelvings)(https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1...
to be merged with paperback with ASIN/ISBN (5 shelvings)
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1...
After the merge to be recombined with
https://www.goodreads.com/work/editio...
(Kindle)
Please escalate this to the Superlibrarians folder in view of the many shelvings of the edition to be merged/deleted.
Emmy wrote: "Prepared for merge: https://www.goodreads.com/work/editio...paperback without ASIN/ISBN (1808 shelvings)(https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1...
to be merged wit..."
Moved to the proper folder.
Not merged, the covers are not identical.
I'm sorry! I did not notice the difference (and I guess neither did the requestor).
David wrote: "Not merged, the covers are not identical."The one that doesn't have a praise quote is not an actual published cover but a pre-release version of the cover. If I had to guess, the edition with no praise quote was added to the site manually, but the edition with the proper cover that does have a praise quote is the proper edition manually added by Amazon.
I can confirm that there is only one existing paperback edition of this book and it does not have any alternate cover art editions. As such, it still needs to be merged.
Indeed, the cover without the praise line was added manually by a librarian. When you say "I can confirm...", in what capacity are you confirming it? We need to hear it from the author or the publisher.
David wrote: "When you say "I can confirm...", in what capacity are you confirming it?"Every single copy of the book I have seen both in person and online has the praise quote on the cover. There is zero evidence of the pre-release cover existing in physical form at all.
ARCs might have gone out without the comment, and it actually makes sense that they would. Only the publisher can verify that ARCs were not sent.
David wrote: "ARCs might have gone out without the comment, and it actually makes sense that they would. Only the publisher can verify that ARCs were not sent."So, I'm guessing that the TLDR here is that merging is a no-go?
Also, just in case this makes any difference: the publisher did post pictures of advance copies before the book's release, and they had the praise quote on the cover. https://twitter.com/bad_hand_books/st...
Drace wrote: So, I'm guessing that the TLDR here..."The bottom line is that a librarian should not do the merge. You can always contact support. They can contact the librarian who uploaded that image and ask.
David wrote: "Drace wrote: So, I'm guessing that the TLDR here..."The bottom line is that a librarian should not do the merge. You can always contact support. They can contact the librarian who uploaded that im..."
Alright. Three more things before I let this thread die:
1. Is the fact that the ARCs do not have the cover without the praise quote (as seen in the Twitter link in Post #26) not enough proof that the quoteless cover does not exist and is a duplicate?
2. If it's not going to be merged or marked invalid, could you please either change the date on the ISBN-less edition to June 19th to match the other paperback or delete the date entirely? None of these books came out June 6.
3. I'm going to reiterate a comment I made in a thread from earlier this year where there was a similar duplicate problem and other librarians gave me a similar response:
In my opinion, when it comes to cover art, the burden of proof should be on the person or people claiming that certain cover art is valid than the person or people claiming it's not. We all know that pre-publication art exists. Librarians don't make new ACEs for "coming soon" placeholder images on the off chance that just maybe a book was published with a grey cover and nothing but the publisher's logo. If I had the time and resources for a road trip, I could visit libraries, indie bookstores, and the houses of people who own the book around the country and prove that every single physical copy of The Inconsolables I can track down has the praise quote on the cover. There's far, far less evidence for the quoteless cover existing in physical form.
Thanks for your time.
I just realized that the bot has also uploaded a cover without the praise line, for the Kindle. This suggests that at one point the praise-less cover was valid.As for your questions:
1. It might be, but we have no way to make certain, so we prefer to err on the side of caution. Sadly, the librarian who added that cover did not open their mailbox to correspondence, so I can't ask them. Support can.
2. Done
3. I'm happy to hear other librarians follow policy. The policy is that unless we are 100% certain that a cover was never used, we do not delete it. In the case of an obvious placeholder, or when the author/publisher says so (an example), we are 100% certain and so we will replace a cover or merge an edition.
David wrote: "I just realized that the bot has also uploaded a cover without the praise line, for the Kindle. This suggests that at one point the praise-less cover was valid."We all know that the bot is constantly making mistakes, is one of the least trustworthy technical aspects of this entire website, and other librarians are constantly cleaning up after it, so I don't think the bot doing something is any kind of evidence in favor of a Goodreads decision. If the bot (or even a Goodreads librarian) uploaded a pre-release placeholder cover made by a publisher (for example: https://www.harpercollins.com/cdn/sho...), would the librarians leave it up as an alternate cover edition just because there's a tiny possibility that a single person in the world might have a book that says "COVER TO BE REVEALED" on the cover?
Anyways, I've said my piece and don't see any more progress being made here re: the pre-release cover art. Thanks for your help with the date. I'll mark the thread complete.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1...
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1...
Please merge these two editions. Thank you!
(Additionally: the Original Publication Date for the book needs to be set to June 20. Let me know if you'd rather I start a thread for non-merge cleanup once the merge is done or post other follow-up issues in here.)