Goodreads Librarians Group discussion

Hello fellow librarians!

I have a tricky question about book covers to which I cannot find an answer.

I don't know if this happens with editions in other languages, but for editions in Russian it's a quite common thing: there are book covers that (I assume got to the GR before librarians were esteblisged, so they) are labelled (mostly) with the logo of ozon.ru, which is somewhat similar to Amazon, but in Russia.

On one hand:
ozon.ru is not among Acceptable sources for covers and book data, so presence of such covers explicitly violates the established rules.

On the other hand:
Replacing or removing the cover of an existing edition, including the covers of advance reader copies, is in violation of Goodreads policy, because these editions do exist and the covers match them exactly.

Here is an example of such edition: The Rise of Endymion by Dan Simmons

A cover image can be removed if the image itself is in violation of Goodreads policy.

Thank you for your opinion. I personally would be replacing such covers with identical without logos, but this is against the rules.

Furthermore, as we all know: "a law has no retroactive effect".

It's not against the rules to replace an invalid image with a valid one, as long as the new source is usable.

It's not against the rules (I do think they should rephrase that phrase). The point of this rule is that readers see the cover they shelved, and not some other one.
And this doesn't really apply to Russian editions, since there is no ACE there (in most). They release new covers with a new ISBN.

In this case, if you can find this cover without the bookseller's watermark (I think AST publisher shoud have one), fell free to replace it. Write the reason for the change in the comments. I usually leave a comment like "replaced with a better quality cover". You can also replace blurry or small ones.

P.S. If you want, you can write me private messages in Russian.

P.P.S. There are several threads in the "Looking for a Project" folder that really need the attention of a librarian who understands Russian (here is one - https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...). If you can help, we will be very glad.

Thank you for the information. Since two librarians confirm it is ok I feel myself relieved.

P.S. Ok. Thanks. 😉

P.P.S. You might not believe me, but I already "found" at least 7 big "projects" for a Russian speaking librarian myself not taking into account arranging my library as one of them and I expect the number to grow 🙈🫣.

Oh we believe it! :-)

SeerBlade wrote: "P.P.S. You might not believe me, but I already "found" at least 7 big "projects" fo..."
Nice to see another help here. If you have time for my big projects in "Looking for a Project" folder, just let me know :)