Cover Image Question

[Deana]

I feel like this has been asked before, but I can't remember the solution and can't find the post.

I am in the process of putting my personal library on Goodreads, and got librarian status so I can doublecheck information like page numbers, publication dates, etc while I'm at it. I have a bunch of books where, when I search for them (by ISBN unless it doesn't have one), the proper cover is shown (small) on the search results page. But when I click on it, the actual BOOK page doesn't show the cover. But when I go to the edit details page to add the cover I've scanned, suddenly it is there again. And the proper cover shows up in the list when I click "my books" also.

Here's an example:
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/51...

How do I go about remedying this? I'd ask someone to fix it, but there are multiple books like this in my collection so it'd be easier if you just tell me what to do and I can fix them all.

Thanks in advance!

[Cait]

This happens because the cover images are actually stored as three different images, small/medium/large, for use in different places around the website. Sometimes one of the three images will get corrupted (the devs haven't been able to figure out what causes this, sadly) so you'll see, for example, the small image in the list but not the large image on the book page. When this happens, the only solution is to delete the book cover (this deletes all three images) and re-upload it. (You can save the largest working image and use that for re-uploading, or you can find a larger version of the same cover and use that.)

In your example book, if you click on the image in the edit page, you'll actually see all three of the images displayed:
http://www.goodreads.com/book/edit_ph...
In this case, we have small, medium, and lack-of-large.

[Deana]

Thanks Cait! That was a perfect explanation. I've fixed that one and will work on others ... probably over the weekend :)

[rivka, Former Moderator]

Cait wrote: "the devs haven't been able to figure out what causes this, sadly"

I think that's untrue. The reason is "Amazon's been messing with their API. Again."