Goodreads Librarians Group discussion

Goodreads will launch a new book status system on October 11, 2022 to better manage the growing books database. [Edit: It has been launched.]

In an effort to improve Goodreads’ database and customer experience, the new book status system adds three status types: 1. “Public” (the default status), 2. “Invalid” (replacing the prior “NOT A BOOK” behavior), and 3. “Deleted”. All three statuses can be set by Librarians using the updated Edit Book page, and the Librarian Manual will be updated to reflect these changes.


Public Books
The default status of a book is “Public”. Public books can be shelved, rated, reviewed, and appear on Goodreads anywhere a book may be shown.


Invalid Books
The new “Invalid” status exists so that books that don’t meet Goodreads policies as a valid book record are preserved if they have member shelvings. This status will not delete member shelvings, ratings, or reviews. However, the book won’t appear in select locations, for example search results, recommendations, or lists.

Invalid books can not be shelved, reviewed, or rated once that status has been set, but will still appear on a member’s shelf if the the book was shelved or reviewed previously. An “Invalid” status book will have a book page that can be directly navigated to, but will not appear in other locations on Goodreads. All books currently assigned to the “NOT A BOOK” author have been updated to have the “Invalid” status set.


Deleted Books
A deleted book won’t appear on Goodreads, and the book page will return a ‘not found’ error if the previously valid URL is directly navigated to. When a book edition is set to the “Deleted” status, any user activity associated with the deleted edition will be moved to the work’s default edition. If the book to be deleted is the default edition, a new default edition will be chosen for the work.

If the book edition is the last book in the work, it can not be deleted if there is any user activity associated with the book, which would be lost. Librarians will see an error message if they attempt a deletion. The last edition of a work can only be set to “Invalid” (not “Deleted”) if it has member shelvings, so as not to delete any member activity associated with the last remaining book edition.

If a Librarian attempts to add a book in the “Deleted” status using the Add a New Book page that matches an existing ISBN13/ISBN10 or ASIN, an error will prompt that the book already exists with a link to the “Deleted” status book edit page where the book can be set to “Public” to restore the deleted edition to the Goodreads database. Setting a “Deleted” book to “Public” will not move any member reviews or ratings, or change the best book ID when set back to the "Public" status.


Changes related to the Author Page
On the author page, only “Public” status books related to an author will appear.

If a Goodreads administrator has set the status of a book edition to “Public”, “Invalid”, or “Deleted”, Goodreads Librarians will not be able to change that status. The status will not be selectable, with a note on the book status. If a Librarian feels this was done in error for a specific book, please Contact Support and provide the book link to request changes to the book's status.

Thank you to all our Goodreads Librarian volunteers for your support and hard work maintaining the quality and accuracy of the books database.

If you have any questions or concerns, you are welcome to submit them via the Contact Us page.

Added FAQs about the Book Status System

To help our Librarians with navigating the new Book Status System, we thought it would be helpful to share some updated information based on some questions we’ve received. If you have any other questions, please contact our Goodreads Experts.

1. What happens to an authors page when there are no “Public” books related to the authors profile?
An author page will not display if they have no books with “Public” status in the Goodreads catalog. Authors are required to have a published book (or a soon-to-be published book) that can be found in our database to appear on Goodreads. In the case of an author with no “Public” books and a Goodreads user profile, their author page will now redirect to the user profile page.

2. What happens to a work when all book editions are set to “Invalid”?
In cases where all books associated with a work are set to “Invalid” or “Deleted”, the work is also deleted. “Invalid” books will preserve member shelvings even when the work has been deleted. Deleting a work removes books metadata across Awards, Characters, Photos, Places, Series, and Related Books. This work data will not be restored if a book edition is later reverted to “Public” status.

3. What if I notice issues in the Goodreads catalog that require a large number of updates?
If you notice a significant issue with catalog data quality that spans a very large amount of records (for example if a data-feed from a publisher created hundreds of thousands of blank notebooks), please contact our Goodreads Experts and provide a sample book or author ID.

4. Are the previous limits still in place for Librarians and Superlibrarians to delete books?
Yes, if a book edition has over five shelvings only a Superlibrarian can set the book status to “Deleted”. This is to prevent accidental deletion of editions with many shelvings. Superlibrarians are unable to set the status to “Deleted” if a book is the last book edition of a work, and in these cases can only set the book to “Invalid” to prevent member data from being deleted.