My Goodreads librarian status just got revoked

[Angela Korra'ti]

Well, _bugger_.

Apparently Goodreads gets cranky if you try to update the cover on a book. Apparently you have to create an alternate cover edition. And I didn’t know this.

But apparently it’s enough to get my librarian status revoked.

Relaying this so everybody knows, and those of you who have librarian status are aware of this in the future.

Anna

[Andy Bunch]

Wow, that is cranky. First offense too.

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[Angela Korra'ti]

What really pisses me off, too, is that a) I didn't get a warning, just an immediate boot, no chance to go 'oops my bad I will fix it appropriately', and b) the mail I received talked about librarian status as a privilege, which, if used 'inappropriately', will be revoked.

As if I were a teenager who'd gone out joyriding in her parents' car or something. >:|

Sent from my iPad

[Andy Bunch]

Yep, I encountered a lot of difficulty changing my cover in places. My audio books, I forgot my narrators name on the cover. That took about two weeks to fix. I think this is another example of the book industry not keeping up with the times. They act like it's a huge thing to update when the author should be able to decide when they have made enough change to call it a new edition.

[Courtney Pierce]

I'm so sorry, Angela! I had no idea that changing the cover would cause so much trauma. VERY frustrating. Having an old cover out there at any level is just confusing to readers. You'd think that Goodreads would want to make it easier.

Courtney

www.courtney-pierce.com

Check out my books at Windtree Press or buy them in print at Amazon.com!

[Angela Korra'ti]

Thanks, Courtney.

To be grudgingly fair to Goodreads, I _do_ understand why they have the policy of "create an alternate cover edition"--they want to document a book's history as accurately as possible. And I totally get that if they're going to give you librarian access, they're totally within reason to expect you to treat their data properly.

However, people _screw things up_ sometimes. I totally acknowledge that yes, I should have remembered what their policy was. I even abided by it when I put out Faerie Blood's second edition--creating new records for the second edition rather than just overwriting the previously existing records. I _should_ have remembered that.

But smacking down a person who makes a legitimate error and telling her she's "using her privilege inappropriately"? Not cool.

[Ron Hepner]

Not cool at all. No rebuttal. No time to refix. Whether policy or not, act fair.

[Amber Cook]

Anna, there's obviously been a big round of sudden clean-up by the Goodreads admin, because about the same time as my cover change disappeared, hundreds of Goodreads authors were on the Librarian group asking about their missing covers.  

If you don't mind, I want to write them and object on your behalf.  Goodreads runs on volunteers, and number one rule, you treat your volunteers really well.  You don't kick them off because they made one mistake, which obviously many other librarians have also been making.  That should say there's a need to address the issue, not give the boot.

And I encourage you to write in protest as well.  Sometimes companies make mistakes, but if they hear enough push back, they relent and correct the mistake.

[Angela Korra'ti]

_Really_? I didn’t know about the scale of cover changes like that disappearing. Wow. I wonder who all got booted off of librarian status besides me. One of the other authors on the Here Be Magic loop I’m on says she got similar snarky mail sent to her for _changing her own cover_.

You’re welcome to write in and protest on my behalf if you wish, and I thank you for thinking of me. I’ve been thinking about whether to do a public blog post on the matter—I’ve vented about it to this mailing list as well as a couple others, and I put up a filtered post on my personal Facebook wall. I’ve been pondering whether it would be appropriate for me to publicly complain about it, and if so, how to phrase it.

I’m just thinking about all the drama that went around last year about the “Stop The Goodreads Bullies” campaign, and the sheer notion of starting any public Goodreads drama kinda makes my head hurt.

On the other hand, I’ve also thrown Goodreads several hundred dollars of my money this year for advertising my books, and I’m still cranky about getting that letter from the mod.

Anna

[Angela Korra'ti]

Screw it. I’ve just posted this:

http://www.angelahighland.com/2014/09/20/open-letter-to-goodreads/

Mostly because I didn’t want to clog their support form with this, since I’m not actually asking for help or support, and mostly because I want this publicly out there so that if somebody from Goodreads actually happens to read this, they’ll maybe think twice about how to handle their remaining Librarians.

I tagged the @goodreads account with it on Twitter.

Anna

On Sep 20, 2014, at 4:54 PM, Amber Cook <unchan...@gmail.com> wrote: