Cozy Mysteries discussion

I received the following email from Goodreads today and decided it was good info to share here.


We will be phasing out the following content:

Creative writing
Members will no longer be able to upload new creative writing stories effective July 5, 2022. The creative writing feature will be removed from Goodreads on Sept. 1, 2022. If you are interested in sharing more of your writing with readers, we encourage you to learn how Kindle Direct Publishing can help you.

Favorite authors
We are simplifying how you can stay updated on authors whose books you love. We will be removing the favorite authors list on Sept. 1, 2022 and instead encourage you to follow your favorite authors. Select ‘follow’ on your favorite authors page or on each author’s profile page. This will ensure you get news about these authors and updates on their new books.

Updates to reviews creation
To streamline the review creation page on desktop, we will no longer include the options of who recommended a book and who to recommend it to after July 5, 2022. If you would like to recommend a book to a friend on Goodreads, you can do this easily from the recommend a book page. If you would still like to record who recommended it within the book review, we suggest you add this directly to the review or in the private notes section on the review edit page (learn how to add a private note).

Owned books
As part of streamlining our reviews creation page on desktop, we're phasing out the option to add details about owned books such as condition and purchase date on July 5, 2022. Members will still have the option to mark a book as owned within the 'more details' section when writing their review on desktop. You can later view a list of your owned books by adding the owned books column in My Books (learn how to customize the My Books page). Visit our help center to learn how to create and add books to your 'owned' bookshelf.

Friend stories, Quizzes, Trivia, and/or Adding a photo to a book
Goodreads will no longer support the creation of new quizzes, trivia, friend stories in the friend list, or photos to a book page effective July 5, 2022. These features will be removed from Goodreads on Sept. 1, 2022.

To learn more about these upcoming changes or for help downloading your data, please visit our help center.

Thank you for being a member of Goodreads and being part of our global community of readers!

The Goodreads Team


Obviously their links did not copy, so I’m going to leave a link to their “help” page:
https://help.goodreads.com/

That email sounds like it was specifically tailored to the features you use, Heather. I got an email too, but it only included the paragraphs about Favorite Authors and Update to Reviews Creation. Now I wonder what other features (that neither of us use) are being discontinued.

Barb— From comments made by people in another group, it does sound like it was tailored to users. Which makes you wonder why they couldn’t just send out one email encompassing all changes. And though I may have used all of these features at one time, I no longer do. Some functions only work (or are easier to use) if you access the site with a computer, which I have not been able to do for about five years now. My phone or tablet work well enough for the majority of how I utilize the site.

If anyone received an email that included a disappearing function not included in my original post, please let us know. Thanks!

Well that explains why my email from them outlined zero features. I use none of the ones mentioned above. I literally got an email saying "we're stopping features blah blah blah, if you want your data request it" with zero detail about the features. Naturally, this made me concerned I actually WOULD lose something I used, so I requested it...apparently for no reason.

Here is a link to all the features that will be removed in the next few months:
Why are you removing multiple features on Goodreads?

Thanks for sharing the link, Julesy!

Thank you for sharing, Julesy. I've received almost the same email than Heather.

Thank you for sharing. Did it mention anything about sharing reviews to other sites? I haven't been able to share with Facebook this past week.

Tammy — I haven’t seen anything about it. The problem I’ve encountered the last few weeks is not being able to view individual book info pages. Their flawed “beta” pages they now default to always say “an error has occurred” whenever I try to find out more about any book. Irritating me to no end! 😐

Not surprised it's irritating you Heather. I'm dreading when they go to Beta my end! So far I'm still on the way it's always been. They take no notice of the objections from the people who are actually using the site!

Tammy wrote: "Thank you for sharing. Did it mention anything about sharing reviews to other sites? I haven't been able to share with Facebook this past week."

Contact Support on the sharing to Facebook problem.
Someone else asked about it but there was no answer.
Contact Support
(Note: They are aware of the issue according to message on top of the Contact Support page.)

Heather L wrote: "Tammy — I haven’t seen anything about it. The problem I’ve encountered the last few weeks is not being able to view individual book info pages. Their flawed “beta” pages they now default to always ..."

Let's hope they will fix these issues.

Julesy wrote: "Tammy wrote: "Thank you for sharing. Did it mention anything about sharing reviews to other sites? I haven't been able to share with Facebook this past week."

Contact Support on the sharing to Fac..."
Thank you Julsey I sent a message.