Does anyone know if, during the pandemic, PBS will act on requests submitted  to edit data on existing books?   So many books no longer have a real verbal description.  I would be happy to add descriptions for titles on my bookshelf and submit them with the edit function. However, I am wondering if, given the current limitations of the website, whether these would be likely to get looked at and posted.  I don't want to invest this time if PBS does not have manpower to follow through on edits suggested by users. I would rather wait till a later date when things will hopefully revert to a more normal situation.  

Out of curiosity, has anyone submitted an edit for a book since the pandemic started and actually seen it go live?  

I am particularly sensitive about the "manpower" issue during the pandemic since PBS recently advised me they could not consider a request for reinstatement of instant credit because they currently do not have sufficient resources to perform the research needed.   

I do edits all the time. New book covers I submit appear very quickly, if one isn't already there. New covers to replace older covers usually appear within a week, less time than PBS warns you it might take.

As for description and other information edits, I find they take a week or so to appear. I usually only make edits for books I'm reading.

I submitted a book cover around the first of May and it still hasn't been posted. As most of the people who do book editing, book covers, etc., appear to be volunteers and do this from their home, as do those of us who submit the information, it would seem that there would be no difference now than before COVID-19 in these functions, but I really don't know. Pat

I agree Pat. Everything I have submitted in last 3 months seems to have quickly been updated. Maybe some of the volunteers have gone back to work as states have re-opened so they are more busy right now. I know just before the quarantine started I was told by one of the edit volunteers that they were really backed up. 

The edits stay in a queue to be looked at by the team when they have time. It doesn't matter when you submit the edit, it will be live when they have a chance to look at it. If you submit something today it will probably be updated sooner than if you wait. I am not sure if they have different queues for cover udpates vs other kinds of updates.

The cover image queue and the book data queue are separate.  Any PBS member can submit edits and/or cover images.
For each queue, there is a small team of volunteers (approvers) who review, complete, correct, approve or deny the edits submitted by the membership. This is all done online and from home, so the pandemic didn't affect the system in that sense.  How quickly or slowly the images and edits are reviewed is most affected by the volunteer's REAL LIFE, so personal or family illness, vacations, etc., all have an impact.

System changes and updates that have to be made from time-to-time, can and do cause delays, but when necessary, the PBS Team will make staff available to clear the queues.  

Currently, most images are reviewed within 1-3 days, and most data edits within 2-5 days.

Hi Sharon, this week I submitted both a cover and a description on a book for my first time and they were both done within 48 hours. Considering there was only one other wisher than me for the book I am guessing the likelihood someone else also submitted the same info is low so my experience was it was done pretty quickly. I think I may start doing this more, never realized just how easy it was 

Currently, most images are reviewed within 1-3 days, and most data edits within 2-5 days.

This is usually true, but the cover image I submitted in early May has still not be uploaded. 

Thanks for all the feedback.  It sounds as if people have had different experiences in recent weeks.   I have submitted many pictures of books in the past and those have quickly gone through but  generally I haven't sent in the full book description. Guess I'll try a few books and then see what happens. 

Pat, the image queue has been cleared many times since early May.  If your image (or a replacement) isn't showing on the listing, please resubmit. 

"Stuff" happens; one of the approvers could have lost power, or had a computer die when they were reviewing your submission, or, if they were having a really bad day, even hit the [Do Not Accept] button instead of [Accept] . 

We can usually recover an ISBN which allows us to find an image somewhere online and resubmit -- but sometimes gone means truly gone...

Thanks, Anna, for explaining what you volunteers do behind the scenes.  We know PBS couldn't survive without you!

Thanks, Anna, for explaining what you volunteers do behind the scenes.  We know PBS couldn't survive without you!

Ditto! 

Anna - thanks. I did re-submit the cover. It's sort of a strange one, and the original cover shown is just the book description from the back cover, and thought that maybe the actual cover was just too different to be shown. Pat

As long as the title on the cover image matches the title on the listing, it can be verified and approved.

THANKS for all the kind words!!  "Mostly" editing and approving are very enjoyable in and of themselves, but it's also very satisfying to know they are useful & helpful to others! 

Let me add my thanks as well to the nice things stated about our approval team - we really try and do the best we can because we know that it will help move those books! 

I would add if you DO submit Book Data Edits - especially if you have the "book in hand" - please supply as much missing data as you can, not just the book description. We love it when members are able to supply any other information that is missing or incorrect on a book's data fields - like measurements, page count, genres. By doing this, you can actually expedite the approval process because the Data Approver doesn't have to go searching for it, other than to confirm that the data is correct. 

Also, a lot of folks don't know this but we cannot approve data edits on pre-publications outside a 60-day window as so much can change about a book (title, page count, etc.) before it is actually released and we don't want to keep updating a listing multiple times. So if you've done so in the past and never saw any changes made to the listing, that might be the reason.

Please feel free to reach out to any of us on the Image or Book Data Approver Teams directly or on one of the Forums, if you have any questions or concerns - we're happy to help!

Oh, Paula, thats good to know about forthcoming books. I know sometimes I can find a listing for future books and sometimes I cant. 

Thanks for all the comments! A note about images, most of our printers now have a scan function, and if you can scan your book's cover, that works well. Then crop ALL the background off before uploading it. Or you can look online for a scanned cover image, copy it to your computer, and upload it here. Phone pics have "issues"   -- Phones almost always have a built in wide-angle lens that curves any straight lines in the cover, and it is soooo hard to take a straight image with a camera of any kind. (A  very few members manage. I've never been able to do it.) Images should also be cropped (no background at all attached), and there are some other things we look for, as well. (No stickers, stamps from other sites, or rips. Not too small to read the title. Stuff like that.)

When you submit an image, the approver will usually try to contact you if there's a problem or question. Some approvers will repair your image (crop it, or fix a rip or sticker), or substitute a better image that they've found, and may or may not contact you in that case. Once approved, the image will just appear on the listing in a few days. Often, when approving images or data edits, I'll write a Personal Message and set it aside on a browser page so that if another submission comes up from the same member, I can add any feedback to the same note rather than writing a new note. However now that the site logs us off is a page sits idle too long, I know I've lost some notes that I wrote. (Sorry, Pat, if that happened to you.)

If it's been a week or two since you submitted an image, and it isn't showing on the listing, feel free to re-submit, or send me a PM. Before you resubmit, take a second look at the image to be sure it doesn't have any obvious problems.)

If you are submitting a data edit to change the title on a listing, please don't submit the image at the same time. Title changes are tricky and can take time and research. Once the correct title is showing on the listing, then you can post the matching image.

It makes a huge difference to have a good image and clear description on a listing. Thanks to all of you who help with this!

Yes, I have discovered copying images from Amazon is best for me......I used to do the 'take a photo of cover with my phone' thing but found it difficult to crop the edges properly.

When I had some older books on my shelf I used to do my own pictures. Many were so old the covers were obsolete and I'd submit a picture that I'd 'photoshopped' to eliminate the creases, straighten the edges and correct the colors. Most times they were accepted. If not I tried to fix whatever they reject reason was. The small size of the thumbnails covers really hides a lot of problems with the images. 

Sometimes when I come across a member shelf with numerous covers missing I'll spend some time hunting them down to fix them. There are so many messed up covers that have come in from whatever source PBS uses that would not pass if they were submitted by one of us. I've actually found quite a few covers on google images when even Amazon or Abebooks, etc. only have the generic text style book cover. There are times that once you have the book description, if you search by unique keywords rather than just the author, title or publisher something obscure will eventually come up. But you might have to scroll through dozens of result pages.