Goodreads Librarians Group discussion
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An Important Note About Kindle & CreateSpace Books
Thanks for letting us know, Patrick. Clearly the timing isn't your fault.I hope Amazon is aware of the HUGE book sales audience they've completely alienated with their actions and demands. I'm pretty much ready to boycott them in protest at this point. There are a lot of potential customers who are pissed off at you, Amazon.
How soon will these books show up in the rescue lists?
Please, I started boycotting them when I heard about the treatment of their employees at the Pennsylvania warehouse.
Patrick (and GR powers that be), where should we acquire Kindle information in order to rescue the Kindle editions? Isn't Amazon itself considered the publisher?
I believe the Kindle and CreateSpace books will begin appearing on rescue lists tonight or early tomorrow.As for where to get the data, I think the author or publisher websites (if they are not self-published) are your best bets. Hopefully our email to authors will help with this, as they are really the ones who can make the biggest dent in this.
If I get word of any good, acceptable sources for Kindle books, I'll post it ASAP.
Wow, what a kick in the crotch.
Is there some reason my library is not a good source for a kindle edition? I understand availability varies.
Hm, Amazon is taking a good hard swing at killing Goodreads. I would love to be alienated, but most of my reading is on the Kindle...Having been through this experience once already with Visual Bookshelf/Living Social, I'm starting to wonder whether these kinds of sites/communities are worth it.
For the Kindle books that I own, if I still have a copy -- either on my Kindle or in my archive at Amazon -- can I use my copy as the source?
Betsy wrote: "For the Kindle books that I own, if I still have a copy -- either on my Kindle or in my archive at Amazon -- can I use my copy as the source?"I don't see why you can't. I mean, the rescue page does have the option of saying you got the information from an on-hand copy of the book...or ebook in this case. As far as I know, this would just mean that Amazon doesn't want anyone getting that information from their site, your copy of the book or another website is entirely out of their hands.
Audrey wrote: "Patrick (and GR powers that be), where should we acquire Kindle information in order to rescue the Kindle editions? Isn't Amazon itself considered the publisher?"
You can see if the author has a website, often the details will be posted there, and you can use that.
Specifically, can you confirm we don't need an "ISBN?" If the Kindle edition only has an ASIN, which is Amazon-specific, the author website might not necessarily list that, I assume.
If we already "rescued" our Kindle books, will we need to do so again? And for those of us who are self-published only with KDP and Create Space, what info will be accepted? Both my ISBNs are either ASINs or Create Space assigned. I'm hoping I have nothing to worry about--I really enjoy Goodreads and also like having my books on here for readers to see. Thanks for the info.
Reina wrote: "If we already "rescued" our Kindle books, will we need to do so again? And for those of us who are self-published only with KDP and Create Space, what info will be accepted? Both my ISBNs are eithe..."Once rescued, forever rescued. =)
Experiment wrote: "Reina wrote: "If we already "rescued" our Kindle books, will we need to do so again? And for those of us who are self-published only with KDP and Create Space, what info will be accepted? Both my I..."Thanks! That's what I was hoping. :)
When rescuing and adding new Kindle books, is it okay to use ASINs as the unique identifier where the Kindle edition doesn't have an ISBN, or will ASINs be off limits from now on?
CreateSpace books are not showing up yet. I rescued a lot of my books using CreateSpace but my record is still showing no books at risk.Re Kindle, I have some friends that will be very adversely impacted. I know one of the groups I co-mod has some books on our shelves that are Kindle edition only, so I guess those will be lost.
I'm feeling extremely negatively about Amazon right now. No real notice at all, in my opinion.
What a shame.
Thanks for the information, Patrick, even though getting it is so disheartening.
Reina wrote: "If we already "rescued" our Kindle books, will we need to do so again? And for those of us who are self-published only with KDP and Create Space, what info will be accepted? Both my ISBNs are eithe..."No, if you already rescued the Kindle books, they should be safe, as we now have another source of info for them.
I'm not sure what to say about the books written by authors who are not on Goodreads. If any of you have a contact for them and want to spread the word about this, we'd be grateful. We're hitting every author who is a member of the site and has books at risk with an email very shortly. That should save a bunch of them.
Patrick, I don't suppose there might be anything to be gained by asking Amazon, etc. for an extension, for more time for Goodreads to import books from other sources or to do the necessary edits/rescues? I don't know how these things work but I wondered if Goodreads might ask for a more reasonable deadline.
Lisa wrote: "Patrick, I don't suppose there might be anything to be gained by asking Amazon, etc. for an extension, for more time for Goodreads to import books from other sources or to do the necessary edits/re..."If this were possible, we'd have jumped on it. At this point, we just have to meet the January 30 deadline.
Patrick, do we have until the end of the day Jan. 30th or does it go down 12:01am on Sunday night/Monday morning? I know that's a technical/nitpicky question, but a lot of people aren't around on weekends.
P.S. Also, thanks to you and the GR team for working long hours on this Amazon fiasco. Your time and efforts are much appreciated.
Patrick wrote: "If this were possible, we'd have jumped on it. At this point, we just have to meet the January 30 deadline."Ah well. It's an extremely unreasonable deadline and I don't understand their thinking. My estimation of them has gone way down. Way, way down. It's truly an untenable situation that they've created, and they must know that. I don't understand what they hope to gain from the way they've treated Goodreads, and perhaps other sites as well.
Audrey wrote: "Patrick, do we have until the end of the day Jan. 30th or does it go down 12:01am on Sunday night/Monday morning? I know that's a technical/nitpicky question, but a lot of people aren't around on w..."That I'm not sure about. My guess is it's not actually a specific time, but that at some time on Monday they'll just cut us off. I'll do a little research tomorrow afternoon and see what I can find out.
Thank you guys for working on rescuing books! This is a difficult situation, but we'll get through it, and the site will be better for it.
I'm going to get some sleep, but I'll check back in tomorrow and give you updates, if there are any.
Thanks, Patrick. Yes, get some rest.And, I think unless you find out otherwise, we'd better assume that as soon as 1/29 is over that the books will be gone.
Thanks for all your hard work, Patrick, and the rest of the admin people...much appreciated:)
Bum! I'd been happily thinking that at least my shelves would now be okay even if they didn't all have pics come 30th. Question -
I have kindle versions, on the rescue page it said 'own a copy of e-book' so I can open my kindle and quote off that?
Looking at my 'read' kindles, their book page doesn't have any sign of needing rescuing. Does this mean people have beaten me to it and I just keep searching, or that it hasn't been programmed yet?
Would indicate that someone has already got them IF you post a link to one - I ll check
Edit: Posted in another thread 5 hours or so ago by Patrick from GR
"To clarify, Kindle & CreateSpace books will show on the rescue list eventually. We took them off because we thought we'd have info for them. It may not be until tomorrow morning. "
Msg 1254
http://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/7...
SO presumably as I'm in the UK the morning hasn't arrived. I'll go eat lunch and check later.
This is quite distressing. It took me about 4 days to go through my entire list (84 pages), and note the title and author in the review boxes. I have a lot of older books that were supported by Amazon. This is just ridiculous.
I'm just joining your group, although I see that this discussion is also fairly new, so forgive me if this question has been answered elsewhere. May I ask what the rationale for the decision to separate from Amazon is? Perhaps that will help me adjust to it, knowing just why GoodReads felt the need to do this.As a createspace.com and kindle indie author I'm concerned that this is due to what I perceive to be an ongoing tussle between some major main-stream publishers and the kindle product, ie. excessive prices on their authors' kindle books.
Barbara, it was the other way around really. All info can be found here: http://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/7...I believe there's also a discussion in the Goodreads Authors group, where you'd find more information specificly author orientated.
Lobstergirl wrote: "Please, I started boycotting them when I heard about the treatment of their employees at the Pennsylvania warehouse."I don't buy from their US or Canada sites anymore for English language books, but if I want to get books in German or in French, I am often SOL unless I use them (I do check ABE books, and use them for older, out of print books, but for current German books, I basically have to use Amazon).
Mitch wrote: "Hm, Amazon is taking a good hard swing at killing Goodreads. I would love to be alienated, but most of my reading is on the Kindle...Having been through this experience once already with Visual B..."
They are worth it, it is the unscrupulous, depraved book-buying sites like Amazon and Barnes & Noble that are worthless and need to be kicked in the butt. Don't support corporate bullies!!
I agree with someone above. this looks like a direct shot at Goodreads.
Barbara wrote: "I'm just joining your group, although I see that this discussion is also fairly new, so forgive me if this question has been answered elsewhere. May I ask what the rationale for the decision to sep..."Thank you Jan for your prompt response, but I've looked at this discussion list, and even read Otis and Patrick's responses, and still don't see the rationale. Ie, what onerous demand(s) was amazon.com making?
I come at this issue from a slightly political side, I'm afraid, not just as an amazon author. The attack on amazon as an American company has been considerable in the past year and a half, from states demanding tax income to publishers over-pricing their books in kindle format.
Again, please explain the key reason(s) you had for leaving this book-service, so that I'm not left with the impression that this action is just another extension of our insane and destructive political divide.
Many hundreds of people work for amazon. We keep attacking and tearing down our finest businesses with no thought to where the people working for them will go.
Gundula wrote: "Lobstergirl wrote: "Please, I started boycotting them when I heard about the treatment of their employees at the Pennsylvania warehouse."I don't buy from their US or Canada sites anymore for Engl..."
Treatment? What treatment. Being a thriller/suspense/mystery writer all sorts of terrible possibilities are passing through my mind.
Sigh. I hate this. Sorry I've emoted on your site. But thanks for all the info.And to Lobstergirl: You were right. 110' would kill me.
"Some workers at Amazon.com’s Allentown, Pennsylvania warehouse are reportedly willing to contend with working at a brutal pace in dizzying heat so long as it means having a job.Only one out of 20 Allentown-based current or former Amazon employees interviewed by The Morning Call reported that the online retailer was a good place to work. During summer heat waves Amazon had paramedics on standby to treat any employees who couldn’t stand the heat, the paper reported." The article is from the Lehigh Valley Morning Call via Huffington Post.
But in defense of all warehouses, I suspect they can't be environmentally and effectively air conditioned or cooled due to loading and unloading operations.
Barbara wrote: "Again, please explain the key reason(s) you had for leaving this book-service, so that I'm not left with the impression that this action is just another extension of our insane and destructive political divide."I found this news article from yesterday, titled "As Goodreads Ends Sourcing From Amazon, Users Fear Lost Books" that explains it a little:
http://paidcontent.org/article/419-as...
Thanks for linking this article, Sheila. I have linked it to my Facebook page with the note that I will be boycotting Amazon as much as possible. I'm sure my local bookstore will appreciate it.
Thanks for posting that link, Sheila! It explains a little bit about why this is all happening.
Barbara wrote: "I've looked at this discussion list, and even read Otis and Patrick's responses, and still don't see the rationale. Ie, what onerous demand(s) was amazon.com making?"It is my impression that Amazon's rules for using their API were getting stricter and stricter, and it was getting to the point that staying with Amazon was restricting further growth Goodreads wanted to make. I don't think it is at all political, just practical.
Given we're now pulling data from over a dozen different sources, I'm sure there's also a bit of "don't keep all your eggs in one basket" in there, as well.
By the way, I imagine the staff is legally obligated not to explain certain things in detail.
Going forward, I think this is a good choice. The limitations of no use on mobile devices pretty much paints GR into a corner - seeing how the future is pointing to most browsing happening on mobile devices (tablets phones etc)
mlady_rebecca wrote: "Barbara wrote: "I've looked at this discussion list, and even read Otis and Patrick's responses, and still don't see the rationale. Ie, what onerous demand(s) was amazon.com making?"It is my impr..."
Of course, you're right, Rebecca. I think I'm over my snit-fit at yet another of life's unruly changes.
Thanks.
mlady_rebecca wrote: "Given we're now pulling data from over a dozen different sources, I'm sure there's also a bit of "don't keep all your eggs in one basket" in there, as well."I just wish Goodreads didn't have to learn this lesson the hard way. All of my books have been rescued, but I dislike seeing book pages so devoid of everything but the title and ISBN/ASIN. Ugg, we seriously need more Librarians to refill all the holes the Amazon API has left.
The restrictions on becoming a librarian are REALLY easy to meet (add 50 books and don't be a crappy person who screws things up on purpose, like people on wikipedia—I think the latter is implied)... If you go into the GR Librarians group, on the right side, you can invite people to join the group. So invite all your friend and tell them to invite their friends... and pass it on!
mlady_rebecca wrote: "It is my impression that Amazon's rules for using their API were getting stricter and stricter, and it was getting to the point that staying with Amazon was restricting further growth Goodreads wanted to make. I don't think it is at all political, just practical. Given we're now pulling data from over a dozen different sources, I'm sure there's also a bit of "don't keep all your eggs in one basket" in there, as well.
By the way, I imagine the staff is legally obligated not to explain certain things in detail. "
Thanks, Rebecca. I found everything in your post helpful for my emotional health.
I think everyone is going to need a super hug once this is all said and done! :)
This topic has been frozen by the moderator. No new comments can be posted.
We have just opened up the rescue books page to all users, and later tonight (Friday) or early tomorrow (Saturday), we will be sending an email to all authors with a book at risk, as well as to all users with books at risk. We are continuing to import books from WorldCat and several other sources, which will help a bit.
Thank you for all your efforts in helping us with this transition. We’ll continue to keep you updated and please don’t hesitate to let us know if you have additional questions.