Daniel’s Reviews > It's a Setup > Status Update

I was thinking about that... we peons can no longer add books to the database, or it would already have been done. Let me ask a librarian friend of mine if they can do it...

All part of GR's ongoing efforts to make itself more hostile to users who aren't spending 100% of their time writing free advertisements to pump up corporate profits!

I used to have librarian status on my old account, but I've never tried to get it on this one. I assume they don't hand it out as easily as they used to.

My understanding is that nowadays you have to take a timed test and then wait months to hear back.

Spam may be part of that. Goodreads is not a super high value target, but it is a target nevertheless.

That makes sense. I think the very least they could do is bring back the import from amazon via ASIN function now that amazon actually owns them. I can understand when there's no entries for fanfic or original AO3 stuff, like this, lots of those authors don't want their stuff here, but if I start running into legit books I bought off amazon and can't find it to add here that's going to be a tipping point for me.

Apparently things have been changed so that the Amazon database automatically loads books into the GR database. Which has resulted in all kinds of duplications. Plus those occasional title abominations along the lines of Gone Home: the most thrilling, heart-pounding novel you'll read this year!. God I hate those. I refuse to buy books that have advertising copy in the title.

At any rate, I've arranged for It's a Commitment to be added to the system. It should happen tomorrow morning, European time.

Ugh, I haven't come across that yet. Though lately I seem to keep finding books on amazon itself where the the paper and kindle editions are linked to completely different books by different authors. I don't know if it's incompetence, bad automation, ASIN reuse, or scam "authors" taking advantage somehow. On here I've seen a few cases where some of those advanced excerpt freebies are showing up as separate editions of a book, which annoys me no end.

Teal wrote: "At any rate, I've arranged for It's a Commitment to be added to the system. It should happen tomorrow morning, European time."

Yay!

Daniel wrote: "Ugh, I haven't come across that yet. Though lately I seem to keep finding books on amazon itself where the the paper and kindle editions are linked to completely different books by different author..."

Basically, things are a mess. Amazon really doesn't seem to care much, whether it's wearing its own hat or its Goodread hat.

Yeah. I end up using google with site:amazon.com to find stuff on amazon a lot of the time now. I saw someone claiming Amazon's not interested in selling stuff anymore, just letting everyone else do it through them and taking a larger cut via sponsored search results, and honestly, yeah, that's what it seems like.

Sadly, I don't see anyone else stepping up to do a better job anytime soon. And that AI search stuff is such a dumpster fire I can't believe Microsoft hasn't pulled it yet. I expect discoverability is going to be trending worse for a while before anything gets better.

I suspect you're right. I'll have to try your google trick, see if that makes searching any easier.

Okay, here's the link:

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1...

A series page has been created for the two books, but it's still in weird GR limbo. My librarian friend says that based on her recent experience it may take a week for it to show up properly. But at least the book page exists now!

Excellent, thank you :)

Also, Trigger is definitely who my brain was dredging up when it saw "Scratch".

They've gone all out with nicknames on that team. I'm glad you figured it out.

I have a hard enough time remembering one name per character. As a child, except for my budgie, no pet smaller than a guinea pig got a name. Mice, hamsters, gerbils? WTF they need a name for, not like they're going to come when called. I can't remember if my rabbit or ferrets had names.

I'm one of those people who name everything. All my electronic gadgets have names. They don't come when called — well, except for Siri and Alexa, I suppose — but it's how I keep them straight in my mind. Like, not "old iPad with the cracked screen that still works for some purposes" and "new iPad," but Milo and Niles. Pets have multiple nicknames, and are always acquiring more. I'm sure that if I'd had mice, every last one of them would have had at least one name. 😂

lol, I probably wouldn't have even named the larger animals if I wasn't pressured into it. the computers get names because it's mandatory and for some of them useful, but I'd have go into the settings to see what I named my windows laptop.