For FFDO Goodreads group members: @natanna @annie @lauraeno @johnwiswell @nocdar @liminalfiction @jmstrother @estrellaazul @tvansant

Goodreads recently stopped using the Amazon API to get its book information and is drawing from several other sources. According to the Goodreads Blog the reasons include, ”Quality book information—such as titles, authors, publication dates, and cover images—is the life blood of a site dedicated to book discovery and literary discussion. Since its inception, Goodreads has relied on Amazon’s public API for much of this information, and while Amazon data was free, it came with many restrictions. For instance, we couldn’t use their information for our mobile apps or link to competing bookstores.” [The whole post is at http://www.goodreads.com/blog/show/338-goodreads-transitions-to-new-data-sources

They expected a slight disruption in displaying certain book covers and authors, primarily e-book only titles and books published outside the US, while they rebuild their database. I just looked on my GR shelves and all the book information is intact. I have a relatively small number of books though [only 92] and they all have paper editions. While I have e-reader apps on my iPod Touch and laptop, and I’ve downloaded several e-books that I intend to read, the truth is that I’ve used those apps very little and never bothered to add the titles to my GR shelves.

I’m curious whether any of you have noticed problems with the transition? Do you have an e-reader and has that changed the way you interact with Goodreads? Any other points we should discuss?

P.S. I just looked at the page I had set up with our GR shelves on it and it no longer displays the info. I’ll have to go look at the widget code and see what changed. Do any of you display Goodreads info on your blog, website, or Facebook page? Has that changed recently?