A couple weeks ago Goodreads announced that they’re about to lose their access to Amazon’s databases. I would hope you’d heard about this already, but to be honest I just read about it on Friday. Here’s why they’re parting ways:
Amazon’s data has been great for us for many years, but the terms that come with it have gotten more and more restrictive, and we were finally forced to come to the conclusion that moving to other datasources will be better for Goodreads and our members in so many ways that we had to do it. It may be a little painful, but our aim is to make it as seamless as possible for all our members.
Goodreads wasn’t getting the contents of books from Amazon, but they were getting the metadata, including things like titles, author names, page counts, and publication dates. At least some of that data is at risk, and Goodreads wants your help in rescuing it.
You can check on the status of your ratings and reviews here. But don’t put too much work into rescuing the books right away; Goodreads will be integrating a new source later this week. A lot of the books that need to be rescued now will probably be covered by the new source.
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Laura Hazard Owen at paidContent has had this report out for a couple of days on this. The story is here: http://ow.ly/8KnOp Their main data partner now will be Ingram.
As regards the concern about losing records, Owen has this:
Goodreads stresses that most book records will be safe: “Not a single review, comment, shelving, or rating will be lost in this transition. That’s the most important thing—your data is 100% safe.” It’s calling on “Goodreads librarians”—users who’ve applied for and received permission to edit data in the catalog—to help verify data for some titles that may be deleted otherwise. Here are the books that need to be “rescued”—including many foreign-language titles. Books that are only available through Amazon, like Kindle editions ands self-published Kindle books, have no alternative data sources. “We anticipate keeping these, and will bend over backwards for all our authors who publish via Kindle to make sure their readers on Goodreads have a smooth transition,” the company says.