SciFi and Fantasy Book Club discussion
All About Goodreads
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Help! How Do I [Do That Thing] on Goodreads?
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How do I use html?
Click on "(some html is ok)" in the top right corner of the text box (on desktop version) as you're typing your post to see the html help. Or go to the html help page if you're not on the desktop version.
How do I use spoiler tags?
See above for how to copy the code.
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How to add books to Goodreads
Librarians Group -> Adding New Books ->
How to request a book to be added to Goodreads
How do I take a screenshot?
Depends on what device you're on! Start at https://www.take-a-screenshot.org/ and if you need more info, try googling "screenshot [device]".
How do I add an image?
How do I find out if a book is on the group bookshelf?
How group challenge trackers work
How to search someone's bookshelves
How to Change What You See From Your Friends On Your Home Page
How to Search Goodreads Reviews
How to Access the Desktop Version of GR on a Mobile Device
Working with the Group Book Spreadsheet in Google Docs
How to import/export Goodreads data
How to Pivot Table Your GR Data to Get A Most-Read Authors List (See above for step 1)
How do I put the lime in the coconut?
Just put the lime in the coconut.
What a great idea!!! Because I'm pretty clueless. Thanks!
I'm just being lazy. I've wanted to do a sort of help thread for years, but it's so much work and I haven't gotten around to it, because GR should do that, not me! This way we'll at least have all the things in one place so it's easier to find, and everyone can contribute as much or as little as they want :)
Oh, I'll add this to the starting post, but anyone answering, please remember that people on the iOS app can't see spoiler tags, or anything after an image. If you want to add an image in the middle of the post, putting it into spoiler tags lets iOS app people see the rest of the post, but obviously they still won't see what's inside the spoiler tags.edit: And if anyone wants to copy some of their brilliantly written instructions from other threads into this one, please do so, and I'll add those questions with links to the list above! :)
Or if there's something you notice lots of people asking, and want to write up a solution, you can even if anyone hasn't asked about it! Same thing, post it here and I'll add it to the list.
LOL about the lime and coconut! I’m so glad to have a reference for that, I keep forgetting how to do it. This thread is a great idea. I can’t think offhand of any Goodreads-specific instructions I’ve posted here, brilliant or otherwise, but if there’s something I’m forgetting, I’d be happy to copy it here if somebody jogs my memory.
Yup, I was indeed thinking of you when posting that part*, YouKneeK! You are amazing at instructions, and I know you've posted them several times. Besides unfolding and other cat related helpful hints, I'm pretty sure you've posted others. I don't remember what they are right now, but I'll let you know if I remember!* about copying old instructions, and sure also the coconut
LOL Michelle, I did actually remember the unfolding instructions, but I didn’t want to abuse Anna’s lovely new thread! Besides, the instructions lose something without the context of your typo which made it all much funnier than it would be otherwise. ;)My problem is that I tend to write instructions at the unfolding of a hat (which apparently happens more often than you might think), both at work and at not-work, so they all blur together and I don't remember them. It occurred to me to go back through my hosted images to look for instruction-like images though, and I dug a few up that way. I’ll work on re-posting them in separate posts.
Thanks YKK, you're a peach! ^_^ You don't have to, but I know you've helped people out a bunch, so it'd be great to have all of that in this thread :)(No, I don't mean 🍑.)
How to Change What You See From Your Friends On Your Home Page (the expanded edition)Look for the “Customize” button near the top of your feed.
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In the Content section, you choose what kind of updates you see.
● “Book updates only” includes reviews, book shelvings, and book-related status updates.
● “Reviews only” is what it sounds like.
● “Everything” means Goodreads aims a fire hose at you. Everything listed above plus what your friends like, comments they post, and non-book-related status updates.
In the People section, you choose which people you see updates from. This is pretty self-explanatory, as long as you know what a “top friend” is. More on that below.
Top Friends
You can specify whether or not a friend is a “top friend”. By default, if you’ve never messed with that setting before, all your friends are top friends. I’ve found over the years that sometimes my friends’ reading tastes change and they start reviewing things that don’t interest me, or for one reason or another I just might not want to see somebody’s reviews in my feed anymore, but I’m reluctant to unfriend them because then I’m making the decision for both of us. In that case, I might deselect them as a “Top Friend”. Then, since my home feed is customized to only see “Top friends and people I follow”, I no longer see their stuff on my feed.
Below are instructions on how to change this. One big word of caution though. After I first started messing with this setting, new friends I added were sometimes (but not always) added without the top friend checkbox so I wouldn’t see their reviews. And every now and then I find friends who I am absolutely certain I have not changed get deselected. In fact, I just went to check that now and found Michelle had been deselected! And I haven’t even been in there in months. So it might be safer not to mess with it, because it can’t be trusted, but it is nice to have the cleaner feed.
1. Click “edit friends”.
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2. Check/uncheck the “top friend” checkbox. But don’t uncheck Allison!
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How to Search Goodreads Reviews. Disclaimer: I don't know if this is an option on the evil app.
At the top of the “COMMUNITY REVIEWS” section on the book page, there’s a search box. In the below example, I’m searching for the word skirt in reviews for the book Blackout by Connie Willis. Why? I don’t know, Bonnie made me do it. :)
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(Also, I used to write manuals for techy stuff in a past life. Not as a professional tech writer, but as a colleague of a bunch of idiots. To this day I feel a rage storm come on when I start taking screenshots of things with the intention of explaining how to do something, and then often I stop there. Rage is not a helpful emotion when trying to help someone :D So I appreciate your patience and professionalism and super great and detailed manuals!)edit: I have to add that I don't feel ragey about helping anyone here! In fact I am happy to help, witness this thread as proof of that!
How to Access the Desktop Version of GR on a Mobile DeviceIf you’re logging into the Goodreads web site on your phone or tablet, by default it will put you in the mobile version which I believe is missing various options and features. If you look at the bottom of the page, there’s an option to switch to the Desktop version.
If you see the word “Mobile” here, it means you’re already on the Desktop version. Clicking "Mobile" will change you to the Mobile version. Why would you want to do that?!
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How to Pivot Table (yes this is a verb now) Your Goodreads Books to Get A Most-Read Authors ListThese were the oldest and last instructions I unearthed… from Feb 2019. To better understand the point of them and decide if they're worth your time, peek at the image at the end. That shows the final result. This was suggested as a replacement for the old “Most Read Authors” stat Goodreads used to have but then took away from us. Once you understand the concept, it can also be used for other things. For example, I recently used a similar tactic to find out that we have 12 books on our group shelf with 336 pages. ;)
Some Notes
1. These steps don’t include the “Additional Authors” column which may have other authors you’d like to include. That would take a little extra manipulation.
2. The instructions look long, but I timed myself and it took me 23 seconds from the time I opened the export, including bonus step #9, so it’s fast once you’ve had some practice.
The Steps
1. Export your books. I think most know how to do this, so I’m going to be a little skimpy on the details for this step: My Books / Import and export (under “Tools” a bit below your shelf list on the left) / “Export Library” button near the top. This will take a little bit of time, then you’ll see a “Your export” link below the button. Click that and open the file with Excel.
2. Make sure your cursor is in a cell with the data. If you haven’t done anything except open the file, you should see your cursor in cell A1 (where it says “Book Id”) which is fine. Then select Insert / Pivot Table.
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3. You should be able to leave everything on the defaults here and just click “OK”.
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4. Find the “Author” field in the field list, then drag and drop it into the “Rows” box. (You could use the “Author l-f” field instead if you would prefer to see them listed by last name first.)
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5. Drag the same exact field into the Values box. It should automatically change to “Count of Author” which is what you want.
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6. Now find the “Exclusive Shelf” field and drag and drop that into Filters. If you've only shelved Read books, you can skip this step. Otherwise, you’re probably going to want to filter out the to-read shelf. This will give you that option.
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7. If you did step 6, look at the top of the pivot table that’s been generated for you and you’ll find the filter you created. Click the drop-down button to the right of the All, and choose your “Read” shelf. If you have custom exclusive shelves and want to include more than one in your results, click the “Select Multiple Items” checkbox and then it will let you select multiple shelves. When done, click OK.
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8. Now right-click somewhere under “Count of Author” in Column B and select Sort / Sort Largest to Smallest. This will put your most frequently-read authors at the top.
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9. At this point you’re essentially done, but here’s a bonus step to make this a little more useful. Double-click on any author in your list. A “Show Detail” window will pop up. Select “Title” then click OK.
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The result of the bonus step 9 is that now you can expand an author to see which books you read by them.
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No problem Anna, I'm happy to do it! :)(Edit: I'm done spamming instructions now!)
And I'm done adding them to the list! Woohoo, thanks! ^_^
Anna wrote: "(Also, I used to write manuals for techy stuff in a past life. Not as a professional tech writer, but as a colleague of a bunch of idiots....
edit: I have to add that I don't feel ragey about helping anyone here!
"
I do by the way completely identify with and understand this, both your original comment and your added note! It really depends on the audience and what skillset they should have, at least for me.
At work I provide instructions both to end users of the software I support and to fellow developers/IT people. I’m always happy to help the end users at work, random people on the Internet, family and friends, and anybody who just wouldn’t necessarily be have a high level of computer knowledge or expertise with whatever specific thing they're trying to do.
But I start to get impatient with colleagues who should know how to do their own job, and who should have the skillset to work more independently than they do. A lot of the people I work with I work with have been working with our system longer and have been doing professional programming longer. Then there are other team members who are newer than I am, but after 3 or 4 years still can't solve problems independently. What constantly amazes me is when a programmer comes to me and tells me a program isn't working, or they're getting an error message they don't understand, and they haven't even tried debugging it! Sometimes I feel like they all think I’m their personal brain. I’ve even Googled solutions about topics I knew very little about for other IT departments who couldn’t figure out how to do their own job.
Thank you for listening to my rant, I'm going to bed now that I have all this off my chest. ;)
Yes, exactly that! I was constantly asked to make the instructions more detailed, and it felt like they were pranking me. I'm not exaggerating much when I say that some of the manuals started with "Turn the computer on by pressing this button [photo]." :S And yes, this was an IT company. If you have to explain to an IT professional how to use their computer when in fact you're trying to document parameters or something like that, it's just too much! Even my mom, who is pretty useless with computers, needs less handholding.Sleep well, you deserve it! Tell Ernest to chill and let you enjoy your well-earned rest :D
YouKneeK wrote: "How to Pivot Table (yes this is a verb now) Your Goodreads Books to Get A Most-Read Authors ListThese were the oldest and last instructions I unearthed… from Feb 2019. To better understand the po..."
Pivot tables are wonderful
and I too used to write detailed instructions for how to do things with software that my company used (complete with images and arrows and flowcharts, etc.
It helped that I worked with one person who couldn't think through how to do things using some of that software and who, if the menus changed, could make major problems for other users by still blinding clicking option 1 then option 6 then option 3 even if one of them said delete all records.... They once moved an entire computer drive under another drive 2 hours before an important meeting when everyone was desperately trying to put finishing touches on their powerpoints. Screams were coming out of offices up and down the hall.
Yikes, that sounds like a dream end user XD I've only had to deal with the ones who need to have a certain icon on their desktop that Does The Thing, and if it doesn't work they call helpdesk with "My [insert image here] doesn't work!" I once spent a week trying to figure out what the beach ball was supposed to do. The user literally knew nothing about it, not even what the software was, just that it was the beach ball on the desktop, and it Did The Thing. I did get it working, but that was only because I found the guy who'd set the beach ball up, and he was able to tell me what it was supposed to do.I do not miss my helpdesk days! I also do not miss colleagues who install things like this on end users' computers and don't document it!
This is a brilliant idea, but please, please, don't use jargon, or at least explain it. I stopped at 'unfolding' and 'spoiler tags'. Those of us who are struggling with Goodreads are likely not to know these things. I, for one, need my hand held.
My question is, is it possible to import reviews from elsewhere? And how do you add editorial reviews?
Anna wrote: "Yes, exactly that! I was constantly asked to make the instructions more detailed, and it felt like they were pranking me. I'm not exaggerating much when I say that some of the manuals started with ..."There is a definite dumbing down going on. We are spoonfed to such a degree that we need (or think we need) instructions for the simplest thing so we don't need our brains. I saw a packet of walnuts with the words 'contains nuts', and a handwash refill detailing how to get the stuff out of the packet and into your container. (Remove the top from the handwash and container, invert handwash refill over container and squeeze gently. When container is full, replace tops on both.) This wasn't it exactly, but near enough.
So I'm not surprised by the need to tell people how to turn a computer on!
People dont need to think anymore.
The unfolding thing is a joke, Michelle made a funny typo asking for help here.Spoiler tags are explained in the second post!
I've never done it myself, but you can import things into Goodreads. See this help page for the basics. The key thing is that the file has to be exactly right for it to work, and if anything is wrong it might mess up your Goodreads. I'd personally probably create a second account to try it out. Anyone successfully imported reviews into GR? Did you export first and add the review text, or how did you do it?
I don't know anything about editorial reviews, but if it's related to author stuff, then one of the author focused groups would probably be the best place to ask.
V.M. wrote: "This is a brilliant idea, but please, please, don't use jargon, or at least explain it. I stopped at 'unfolding' and 'spoiler tags'. Those of us who are struggling with Goodreads are likely not to..."
You can't import reviews written by other people. If you want to import your own reviews that were posted elsewhere you can copy and paste them. Editorial or commercial reviews are not permitted on Goodreads. You can add them to your blog.
Thanks Faith! I didn't even consider that it wouldn't be reviews written by the person wanting to import!
LOL Anna, Ernest must have listened to you because I didn’t hear anything from him last night. That’s crazy about the detail they required you to put on documentation for IT professionals! I think if somebody who works in IT needs the most basic steps explained to them, they’re underqualified for their job and catering to them in the documentation won’t help anybody. They need to take some personal time to get themselves up to speed if they want the job badly enough or seek out a different career path if they don’t.I was once trying to train a colleague (in IT) on a certain testing process. We didn’t have documentation on it and it was a bit complicated, so I told him to take screen shots and create a document as we went along so that he’d be able to follow it the next time. If I told him to do something like “take option 7” on a menu, he would take a screen shot and THEN type in option 7. So he was creating a series of screen shots that didn’t actually tell him what he was supposed to be doing on those screens. I pointed this out to him and he laughed, then kept doing the same thing. Needless to say, he had no idea what to do when he was asked to perform the steps again the next day. Sometimes I wish I could get inside people’s brains to understand what on earth they’re thinking.
Faith wrote: "V.M. wrote: "This is a brilliant idea, but please, please, don't use jargon, or at least explain it. I stopped at 'unfolding' and 'spoiler tags'. Those of us who are struggling with Goodreads are ..."
Thank you, Faith.
Ugh, why doesn't everyone's brain work the same way?! XD
I'm sorry to have derailed the discussion. And thank you, Youkneek for the detailed instructions!
Don't worry Michelle, you haven't derailed anything at all :)
Added!
My first question, and hopefully without typos 🐱 How does one link a thread from one topic into another? The reason I am asking is that someone is looking for the newsletter link, but they mentioned this in the Book Sales thread.
A link to a thread works like any other link (URL). Help for how to do that is under "How do I use html?" in the second post! :)
If you don’t want to add any fancy replacement text for your link, you can also just copy and paste it straight from the address bar when you’re on the thread you want to link. The above method will link from the beginning of the thread. You can link to a specific post within a thread by right-clicking on the date/time for that thread and copying and pasting that link.
So, now that the serious answers are out of the way….How do you pink a thread, you ask? Sort of like this. You basically take a screen shot of the thread, dump it in Word, then Insert Shape and choose a rectangle. Drag it around the screen shot, turn it suitably pink and slightly transparent, screen shot your new concoction into a single image, and save as picture.
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Or did you mean how to link bread? It seems to involve a lot of twisting prior to cooking the dough, but I have no cooking skills, so I’ll defer to somebody else on that!
I always think, when replying to help requests, that YKK would explain this much more thoroughly, but then I do it the lazy way anyway :) Thanks again YKK!(Can you imagine that I have thought IT skills to complete beginners? And was paid to do it? Yeah me neither :D)
Anna, I can definitely believe it, and I have no doubt you did an awesome job with it!
*mutters to self* I'm never going to live that typo down.
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I think it's likely the fabric of our grace will unfold in due time.
(I didn't. I was once in the lunch queue behind a group of people I recognized from my Intro to PowerPoint class, and they were talking about how their Advanced PowerPoint class wasn't going very well because "that girl who taught the intro class talked so fast and was so confusing!" Yes, I said hi to them :) I don't remember how many classes I taught in total, it was when I was a student and needed extra money, and it paid really well!)
LOL, I’m actually really bad about talking fast when I teach a group of people. It’s hard when everything is so clear and obvious in your own head to remember that other people need more time to absorb it.(Edit: Plus nervousness plays a factor, at least for me. I do NOT like public speaking, although I’ve gotten more comfortable with it as long as it’s a topic I know well.)
YouKneeK wrote: "It’s hard when everything is so clear and obvious in your own head to remember that other people need more time to absorb it."When someone asks me about something I just know how to do in my bones, it's really hard to know what level of information is required! I mean I am at zero level in so many things, and I know it's annoying when someone babbles at you and you have no idea what they're saying, but when the tables are turned, it's not that I don't try to remember and understand this, it just doesn't come naturally and sometimes I don't even grasp what the actual problem is, because I'm assuming something else.
Anyway, if my "help" doesn't help, feel free to ask for more information! Or just ask YKK :D
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I realize you all just said you don't like public speaking, so I'd be happy for volunteers, or I don't really ever mind talking, though I am 1000% not the most savvy. I can however handle the basics.
Great idea as long as I don't have to do the talking XD
The only problem I foresee is that you would need to do a How To for us Zoom novices. I'm not sure that Ernest could help; we might need to ask Youkneek.
YKK, any interest in starting a YouTube channel where Ernest teaches Goodreads skills? :)How to Undo GR with Ernest!
Goodreads Undone by Ernest?
SciFi and Fantasy Book Club
Books mentioned in this topic
Come, My Beloved (other topics)The Bone Wolf King (other topics)
Authors mentioned in this topic
Brian K. Fuller (other topics)Brian Fuller (other topics)
We're counting on other group members answering the questions, but there will eventually be a list of Q's and A's, so you'll be able to find the solutions easily.
Anything that has to do with book data, the Goodreads Librarians Group is the right place to ask. If it's a bug, we won't be able to help, so Contact Goodreads Support. And even though it's often pretty useless, there's Goodreads Help, so take a look. Maybe you'll miraculously find a solution there, it's possible! No? Continue reading this thread.
When asking a question, please tell us what device and operating system you're using (computer, tablet, phone, iOS, Android, Windows, Mac, etc.) and what version of Goodreads you're using (Desktop, mobile, app).
Anyone can answer, but please try to make your solution as clear as possible, so it can be linked to for future reference. Thank you in advance to all who have already acted as GR tech support, and will continue to do so in the future :)
If you're including images, putting them inside spoiler tags is a good idea, because people using the iOS app can't see anything after an image. They also can't see anything inside a spoiler tag, so adding a link to the image outside of the tag is also a good idea. (See "How do I use spoiler tags" for an example.) iOS app users also can't see anything in pre tags, so keeping formatting simple in general is probably best :)
If you're wondering about something that's more about this group than GR in general, check Current Events or ask in Questions about SFFBC? And of course make sure you've read Everything you need to know about SFFBC.