meltem

Last week the STGRB started sending out web spiders (a.k.a. web crawlers) to crawl our new Booklikes blogs.  This was the notification I got from my IP tracking software when they tried to hit mine:

(Click on image to enlarge)

So why are they telling their adoring, but oh-so-clueless, supporters that they are not following us, when they know full well they have set up a database back-end to store our user content, and have web crawlers to capture it?

<

“We love having authors on Goodreads. But, we are a site that's focused on readers.  If there is a choice between what is best for readers and what is best for authors, we will always err on the side of readers.” 

"I've watched us deal with many author flame wars over the years, and they all started with an author commenting on a negative review of their own book first." 

She plagiarized Nora Roberts. Shame on Zebra for continuing to publish her.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janet_Da...

This morning I wrote a blog 

Otis Chandler on Censorship & Goodreads being a site for Readers First, I forgot a very relevant link of GR's sales presentations showing how our data is of no. 1 prime importance to them, and how we as readers are only now valued because we can supply this data they can make money from.

Have a look at this: 

Goodreads Marketing Presentations

There is nothing about keeping us happy, no concessions to us that we would like if it conflicts with their revenue stream. I know Goodreads is a business, but we've been deliberately manipulated into thinking of it as 'our' site, 'our' online bookclub that we have participated in, in our thousands, adding and editing millions of bits of book data as 'librarians'. Every damn thing we did, from putting in our email addresses when we registered up to and including writing carefully-considered, very detailed reviews was just more product to be sold.  Unpaid volunteers for a billion dollar company, I suffer from cognitive dissonance as much as the next person so I don't want to call myself stupid, but...

I feel like I gave myself spoilers. I hope I will be wrong about this :|

"A sexy novel about two seventeen-year-olds—one a victim of human trafficking; the other the son of the man who enslaved her..."

For some one not giving a rat´s ass you guys were following JennyJen and other reviewers around for quite a bit, weren´t you? Making screenshots to prove her "wrong doing", posting her friends list - the old guilty by association you are so fond of - and creating sock accounts to intimitade her. And now a thread of physical violence. 

Your mommy must be very, very proud of you.

Just when you thought it couldn't get any sillier.

Someone (*cough*Moira*cough*) built an author page for Goodreads' own Otis Chandler, to feature some pertinent quotes:

“We love having authors on Goodreads. But, we are a site that's focused on readers first. If there is a choice between what is best for readers and what is best for authors, we will always err on the side of readers.”

Sadly, I didn't screencap it, and so I can't quote the other two exactly - because within about half an hour the author page was deleted, and the quotes with it. Now, it was about 11:30 PM that it disappeared here, on the East Coast, so it was about 8:30 PM at Goodreads Central. I don't believe I've ever seen any glitch or problem attended to at that hour; they seem to be pretty solidly 9-5. When it's not something guaranteed to cause further disgust amongst us rabble.

Was this one of the quotes? Either way, it's funny.

"I agree that it’s a shame some books have to suffer ratings that clearly are invalid. However I can’t think of a way to prevent it, and I didn’t see any ideas in the thread either (I did skim though). I hope you’ll appreciate that if we just start deleting ratings whenever we feel like it, that we’ve gone down a censorship road that doesn’t take us to a good place."

Not ha-ha funny, you see, but O-Lord-the-irony funny.

Then there's:

"We’re in the media business today. We’re in the business of helping authors and publishers market their books to readers. And that’s where we make our money. We sell book launch packages to authors and publishers and really help accelerate, build that early buzz that a book needs to succeed when it launches and accelerate that growth through ads on the site."

That would be AmazOtis talking, that.

There's also this, posted by Jennifer on the Big Giant Thread of Fail:

I've watched us deal with many author flame wars over the years, and they all started with an author commenting on a negative review of their own book.
Author Participation Thread, March 2, 2011

It's time for Thursday Release and it's a feature many of you requested :-) Now when a given book doesn't fit any default status on your Shelf (Read, Planning to read, Currently reading) you can create your own exclusive book status.

How? You can create and organize your books with new statuses in several ways.

Go to your Shelf Page and create your new status with your name, e.g. Not finished. New status will be added and visible at once on your Shelf.

You can also create exclusive status directly in book pop up, select it and Save for a given title. The book will receive new status immediately. 

If you want to reset previously given status (Read, Planning to read, Currently reading), click on it and Save. It should go white (inactive) and notion "On Shelf" will appear instead. 

You can also create exclusive status on Table view of your shelf (the entrance is on Shelf page). It is also a place where you can re-arrange your books one by one:

or move several books at once:

You can still create thematic shelves which will be added to your Shelf on the left and organize them the same way in table view. 

Google Analytics is a great way to monitor who is visiting your site, what they are viewing, and all other kinds of goodies.  Best of all, it is free!!

Follow these steps to add Google Analytics to your Booklikes.com blog. It takes about 24 hours for the data to start flowing in, so give it some time.

Step 1 (if necessary)

If you don't have one, create a Google account at  www.google.com/account

Step 2

Sign up for a Google Analytics account at www.google.com/analytics

<!-

From Tumblr

(Source: Overdrive)

So true.  <3