Goodreads Mistake Fixed!

Hello to my 2.5 readers! Thanks for stopping by 🙂

Back in January, in an eager attempt to get my book out there early, I created the Goodreads posting for my new early chapter book, THE LULLABY MONSTERS, releasing on June 30, 2020.

I didn’t have the cover file completed yet, so I naively figured I would just put this cute little bookmark there as a place holder. Bad idea.

I thought it would automatically crop to book cover size but….no! In fact, it looked incredibly silly because it was labelled as a book, but clearly, not the correct shape.

I scrambled to delete it, but found there was no possibly way to do such a thing. After some poking around the Goodreads website, I discovered that only librarians can make edits like this so I was in trouble.

I sent an email to the librarians, requesting the image be deleted. It was not a simple process. First, I had to upload the correct cover image. I didn’t have that completed for some time, so I had to wait and in the meantime, my book stayed there looking silly.

Finally, I had the cover image ready so I uploaded it with instructions for the librarians to replace the old cover image. Nothing happened.

After some further emails back and forth, I learned that my next step was to create an alternate edition. This worked, only the original edition remained there on Goodreads, like a sore thumb with the alternate edition only visible by clicking below.

My next step was to combine the editions into one. That was a bit of a complex process and I would advise you look for the directions on Goodreads and follow the instructions very carefully. When I first tried to combine the editions, it seemed as if my book had completely disappeared from Goodreads. I couldn’t search it anywhere!

And then, I tried to create a new book with the proper cover, but it wouldn’t allow me to link the ISBN, because apparently it had already been used! I panicked, thinking I didn’t want my book to be unsearchable and temporarily gave up. Back to the my problem in a moment…

Here’s a bunch of the books I’m excited about that have released or are about to release this year!

I had to do something, so I looked for other book websites comparable to Goodreads. I found The Library Thing, which I quite liked, and set up the book there which made me feel a little better. And it was easy to import my Goodreads library there so hooray for that!

After more thought, I figured it would be better to have my book on Goodreads without an ISBN than not there at all so I created a new book for myself, leaving the ISBN blank. Imagine my surprise the next time I opened Goodreads to discover my new book there WITH the ISBN attached and a review (that I thought was lost) along with the people who had added it to their to-read list! Whew!

So now, when you search for THE LULLABY MONSTERS on Goodreads, you WILL find it with the proper cover that you see below. I love Paula’s starry night sky, don’t you?

I hope you enjoyed the inside scoop on the life of an indie author and some of the behind-the-scenes things we do to get our books out there!

If you have a minute, I’d sure love it if you added my book(s) to your Goodreads to-read list!

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