Teleute

We’re happy to announce that Goodreads has reached a new milestone: We are no longer dependent on Amazon for book information. Ingram, the largest wholesaler of books in the U.S., is our new primary data partner, and our agreement with them will ensure accurate and reliable information for the foreseeable future. In addition to Ingram, we are working with dozens of other open data sources, such as libraries, to find book records from all over the world (see below for a list). This is an exciting moment, and we’re confident that this change will be better for the members of Goodreads and long-term success of the site. What has changed? Not as much as you might think. Fewer than 2 percent of our 7 million users have books currently affected. However, you may notice some missing cover images. We are still in the process of importing millions of images from several sources, so please be patient—most of those images will be back very soon.

I use GoodReads purely to log reading, LibraryThing is where I catalogue all my books. Years ago when I started cataloguing my books I played with the idea of using both, but never got round to filling the bits in on GoodReads. Once I did start using GoodReads I pretty soon shelved (aherm) that idea as it follows a “social media” approach vs LibraryThing’s “anal retentive detail freak” & we all know where I sit on the groovy versus dullard fence ;P Frankly GoodReads just seems to get worse and worse with its UI. An example: I’m reading a lot of ebooks at the mo, so I have the “review page” of whatever book I’m reading bookmarked on my Kindle so I can easily fill in the progress along the way. That’s all fine, until I finish the thing. You would think putting “100%” in progress would make it go, “Oh that means finished” and would, you know, move it into the read pile and log it as finished. No. No, you have to navigate to the home page, yes the HOME PAGE, NOT THE SPECIFIC BOOK’S page, to click on “I’m finished”. I mean, why would anyone want “I’m finished” as an option on the book’s page, that would be stupid right?!? Only, the magic “I’m finished” link, doesn’t seem to be showing up as an option on the mobile version of the website now (which of course because I’m doing it from the Kindle, is the version I’m using to view it!). So yeah, already doing my head in when I just want to say I’ve finished reading a book. I log in and discover all the book covers I’ve carefully matched to the editions I’ve read, have vanished! I don’t have a problem with the why, but seriously, mentioning it in a blogpost (with the truly fascinating title of “Goodreads Transitions to New Data Sources”) rather than a wee notification to users “Your covers may be missing, see here for a reason why” is piss poor?! There’s a message system built in. Use it! I found the blog post explaining what was going on entirely by accident. Thankfully that’s not my entire library I now have to go back and sort covers for (LibraryThing, I