Goodreads is Annoying Me

~ Jenny

So seven years ago, Audible got the rights to publish Lavender’s Blue in audio, which of course never happened because we didn’t have a finished book until last month. But they still put a post on Goodreads and five people rated it. In spite of the fact that it didn’t exist. And since we’re still not sure about audio, it’s not going to exist even after the ebook and paper go live. So I asked Goodreads to take down the mistake. And they told me they don’t take down published books, that prepubs are good things. So I wrote back and said, “This is a MISTAKE not a prepub.” Then I went to the listing and changed the title of the book to Lavender’s Blue THIS BOOK DOES NOT EXIST IN AUDIO and left this comment:

Lavender's Blue THIS BOOK DOES NOT EXIST IN AUDIOLavender’s Blue THIS BOOK DOES NOT EXIST IN AUDIO by Jennifer Crusie

I don’t know what people thought they were reviewing, this book was never published seven years ago. It’s coming out for the first time at the end of July, but not in audio, but Goodreads won’t delete this. Very annoying. Sorry for the confusion. ARGH. Jenny Crusie

Of all the frustrating things we’ve been going through trying to self-publish this book, this is the most annoying. But I’m calm now. Really I’m fine.

Argh.

11 thoughts on “Goodreads is Annoying Me”

  1. A headline in either the New York Times or Washington Post (online versions) said that Goodreads was a good, useful site until Amazon bought it. I didn’t read the article because I’m in complete agreement.

    Without spending hours ranting, I’ll just say that organizations which used to collect data, organize it to be useful, and review it regularly to make sure any changed standards were reported just don’t exist anymore.

    I think it’s a myth that customer reviews are the best and only way to evaluate fill-in-the-blank: books, hotels, doctors, or anything.

  2. Not being heard is frustrating!

    You and Bob have a 5 beat of coming events:

    1 Jenny move July
    2 Bob move ???
    3 Release day Lavender’s Blue 7/25
    4 Release day Rest In Pink 8/22
    5 Release day One In Vermillion 9/19

    The way time flies these days all will be accomplished soon and y’all can breathe easy!!!

  3. Wow that is super annoying!

    And happy Independence Day to all my American friends on this site!

  4. Darn it, I was going to wish all you northerners a Happy Canada Day, but I am LATE TO DO SO! 🙁

    Well, happy Canada Week, then. You guys rock!

    1. Oh, and I just finished reading that article in the Washington Post about Amazon and Goodreads, and it was every bit as damning as any connection between Amazon and anything else would lead you to believe. Bought it thinking it would allow them to support one of their other products, then realized it would take work to bring it up to date so why bother?

      I will do ANYTHING rather than doing something that would benefit either Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk.

  5. That, that right there is why I prefer reading romance and fantasy fiction or watching superhero movies. The problems are solved, if not HEA, at best HFN. Real life sucks the marrow from me, alas not vice versa. (Warning – My poetic turn-of-phrase is back.)

    Your story would make a Reader’s Digest “Life’s like That” feature. Reminds me of times US cable companies won’t cancel a contract unless the owner did so, except the owner has crossed the River Styx and is unavailable to attend to the beauracracy. 👻

    1. Back when I was married, we had cable (Comcast) and Showtime added a series I wanted to watch, so I called and added Showtime. Several years later I was no longer interested in anything on offer, so I called Comcast and said I wanted to cancel. I was informed that I could not cancel anything since my husband’s was the only name on the account. Funny how that didn’t count when I wanted to spend money with them!

  6. Goodreads is notorious for allowing reviews of unpublished books. George RR Martin has over 11k reviews for one unpublished book, and 2k for another.

    Many authors have tried to get them to take down bad reviews of books that haven’t been published (how do these people find the time?) but the only way to do so is to have the “publisher” step in- whoever put the book up in the first place.

    They won’t do it for indies, but if a big company tells them to take it down, they seem to be a little more cooperative.

  8. And someone gave your non-existent-at-the-time book a one-star review. That is so weird.

    Goodreads used to be a lot better than it is. They only host giveaways for North America now, AND they charge for it. A lot.

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