Polls for our souls discussion

Hey, Guys!!
Watashi wa Amy-chan desu
*bows*
I'm a Goodread addict and spend way too much time here, searching for books, voting in lists, upvoting cool reviews and interacting with friends so I notice right away when weird things happen. And you know what? Weird thing happens all the freaking time to successful AMYZING, AWESOMETACULAR authors who aren't part of the circle of the big five publishing houses.

Our case of study today is a little hidden gem that BTW I highly recommend to any fan of contemporary romance (clean) and TFIOS fans:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2...

So so good!
Okay, fangirling mode over and I'll explain it to you in detail. Most books out there have several editions with different covers. Goodreads staff, authors and librarians can establish their default edition. The default edition is the one that will appear in searches For this book the default edition up until last week was
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2...
so that, just as recently as last week, whenever you entered a search for Making faces the cover you got was this one


Beautiful, isn't it? As good as the book!!!

But guess what? Someone, a librarian or an employee changed the default edition. That makes the old cover of this book the default result.

That happens to be the smashwords edition. And guess what? The smashwords edition ISN'T AVAILABLE!!! Anyone who wants to get this book and clicks on the purchase links...WILL GET A BROKEN LINK!!! Besides every ebook in the KU program is an AMAZON EXCLUSIVE. It's not like whoever did this change didn't know that. The only place that should have Making faces as ebook is AMAZON!! No smashwords, no scribd, no Kobo. Amazon.
So this affects the flow of sales for Harmon sensei, and the availibility of the ebook for potential purchasers. And trust me, you don't want to miss a book by Amy Harmon, she's that good. Yet this little change done by someone affects the purchasing links. How's that?I Not cool!!!

So if among you guys there's a cool GR librarian please fix this. It's the right way to do it.

To tell you the truth, I think of cool librarians as an endangered species as it seems lately that the only people who get approved for librarian status or get hired for goodreads positions are the ones that favor the old ways: agents ruling the publishing world, traditional publishers ruling the reading trends... it's like weird things happen only to certain kind of books and publishers (KU and mass market paperbacks), never to the big five and their overpriced releases that Goodreads keeps trying to push down our throats...or our Newsfeed that's almost the same thing.

It could be a coincidence, the second "coincidence" a KU author has suffered in the past month. But okay, let's leave it a coincidence. I'll give you guys that. But can someone fix this coincidence before I start to think the worst?

Please anyone? any cool librarian here?


Dear librarian: Could you please fix this mess? ONEGAIIII!! Please Making faces default version should be the KU version because that's how things were just last week before someone messed up with the edition.

EDIT 4/30/2020 I learned after this post that librarians can't change default edition. Maybe a superlibrarian I'm still not sure, the staff can, the author can. I contacted Harmon sensei and asked her if she had done the change herself. Obviously no answer. But the default edition has changed recently so this isn't a coincidence.


Yours sincerly
A.M.Y. chan
Poll:
https://www.goodreads.com/poll/show/1...

Hey, I just wanted to let you know that the original cover came up for me when I did a search of the book. I don't know if it was changed back or what, but for me, it came up correctly.

Lori wrote: "Hey, I just wanted to let you know that the original cover came up for me when I did a search of the book. I don't know if it was changed back or what, but for me, it came up correctly."

Ts up Lori! Someone changed it again. I took this at 6 P.m. It's 11:37 now and it's still the old cover.

Update February 14th. 1: 45 p.m.
I checked an hour ago and the default edition was correct


should be default cover
Now it's back to the oudated cover, that it's out of stock in smashwords, that isn't as attractive to potential book buyers (see my poll) as the other edition, that provides a broken link.


shouldn't be default cover, it's out of stock
Coincidentally it's Romance week. Romance authors are tearing at each other's throats to get us, innocent readers, to purchase their books. If you still think this isn't the labor of either GR or other authors, give me your reasons, because I can't see how this wasn't done on purpose to keep readers away from ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS EVER during romance week.

Good catch, Amy. An irregular situation that not many people will notice right away because the older version was shelved multiple times. I just visited Harmon's profile and it seems that there's a glitch with the default edition. In her profile the default edition is but when I use the search engine, and the add book/author option the edition I get is .

The mismatch of default covers could be a glitch. As far as I know, librarians can't change default editions, it's only the authors and the staff who can do that. As much as you plead with librarians they won't be able to restore the in stock version as the default edition.

I know you're really passionate about the books you love, and I'm sorry your favorite book is affected but you can always switch editions so that your goodreads shelves don't get altered . The author herself won't get affected. I'm convinced this "glitch" will have an impact in both, the sales and discoverability of Making Faces, but it's likely Amy Harmon won't mind this drop of revenue much. She will release in late April and it's likely she'll top the bestselling lists again. When that happens her Kindle rank will go up and so will the sales of her previous books including her oldest releases. Amazon will send recommendations of Making Faces and her other books directly to our Kindles.

Update 2/17
Back in the old days I heard a librarian saying she had changed the default edition of another book, that's why I asked for help here, but I've been told librarians can't do that anymore so whoever did the change, if it's not a html malfunction is someone from the staff.Not cool!

If you log in you get one default edition that is out of stock. If you log out you get the edition I've been recommending for the past two years...it shouldn't be like that.

I informed Harmon sensei about this mess, but she's super busy so...

AMY (pronounced Ⓐh-ℳeⓨ) ♔♔Queen Of Fat Cats ♔♔ DIE YOUNG ADULT GENRE DIE!♔♔ wrote: "Update 2/17
Back in the old days I heard a librarian saying she had changed the default edition of another book, that's why I asked for help here, but I've been told librarians can't do that anymor..."

It's back to normal now.

Corinne wrote: "AMY (pronounced Ⓐh-ℳeⓨ) ♔♔Queen Of Fat Cats ♔♔ DIE YOUNG ADULT GENRE DIE!♔♔ wrote: "Update 2/17
Back in the old days I heard a librarian saying she had changed the default edition of another book, ..."

It's been normal ever since the end of Romance week. What a coincidence!!!

Just an FYI..as a Librarian, only the author can change default editions through their portal.

https://help.goodreads.com/s/article/...

Debbie wrote: "Just an FYI..as a Librarian, only the author can change default editions through their portal.

https://help.goodreads.com/s/article/..."

The staff can change everything.

Oh but the staff has a lot of power, they even edit reviews and updates of regular users. They also manipulate the average ratings. I've seen it with my own eyes and can provide evidence of manipulated ratings.

And it's been changed again. I was about to send recommendations using the search option and there it is the out of stock version

when just this week I sent recs to my friends using the official KU version


Yep, what a "coincidence", I can't believe so many people still believe everyone involved with this "coincidence" is innocent. What do you think Debbie?

It's been fixed again, but someone with the power to change default editions will make a "coincidence" happen again. BEWARE SMALL-PUBLISHERS!!

I have a question, is this page really anti indie authors?
I really love and support the ones who write my favorite genres.

Sonia N. wrote: "I have a question, is this page really anti indie authors?
I really love and support the ones who write my favorite genres."

This page? Cuz this group "polls for our souls" is very pro-authors, both indies and traditionally published. I've seen groups that are very anti-indies, but this one Polls for our souls small group is not one of them. ♥

You mean goodreads? Goodreads members in their majority aren't anti-indies, only a few trolls and certain people who are either disconnected of the new forms of publishing, or working for agents/publishers strike me as anti-indies.

The current staff on the other hand, changes constantly. In my opinion, some people of the current staff have an anti-indies agenda cuz they seem to get a lot of sponsorships from literary agencies and big publishers. The sponsored posts that appear in my feed recommending books "my friends have enjoyed" are never about cool authors, they're always about authors from the big five publishing houses. I've seen too many "coincidences" to think the staff is indie-friendly. Whenever I try to hype a book by an author outside the circle of the staff favorites, weird things happen. I have evidence that they have edited my reviews, merged without my permission, hid positive reviews, put on hold positive ratings/comments until a bad rating/comment/update goes live, that they recommend following reviewers that never purchase/review indie authors cuz they receive expensive hardcovers from the established authors.
It's not everyone in the staff, it's only a few rotten apples there, but they're annoying.

Have you ever scroll down and seen under COMPANY the option careers? Goodreads is constantly oppening positions. If you were a big publisher that needs to advertise in goodreads, wouldn't you send your staff to apply for a position? You could use that person to sabotage your competition and to give you inside information about millions of readers around the world.

Amy, thank you for the response! I tend to get confused, because I thought I saw a post that said anti indie authors.

Sonia N. wrote: "I have a question, is this page really anti indie authors?
I really love and support the ones who write my favorite genres."

Polls for Our Souls is a reader's group that doesn't discriminate authors. Wattpad, Unpublished, Indies, signed with literary agencies, self-published, small press, big press, everybody is welcome. If you take a look at the homepage, and the polls, you'll see a variety of books, genres and authors.

And it keeps going!!! Look at this!!!
WTF IS THIS?????