I know this is not the "correct place" for this but this is the best place I can think of right now. I looked at 3 shelves this morning and while they had great deals I did not order from them. Here is why.....

Shelves that have missing book cover pictures and/or descriptions will not move as fast as those that do. Take a few minutes a day and update 1 or 2 of your book listings and I will bet that you will see your books moving so much faster.

You can find alot of the info you need out there on the internet or just scan the cover and type in the book cover info. Use the links at the bottom of every page to add covers or update book data. 

Thanks for letting me suggest!

You are right, Betsy, on finding the info on the 'Net. So many people think they have to scan their books or type all the info for every blue image or nondescribed book. How wrong that is. I find there are very few books that someone isn't trying to sell out there somewhere badly enough that they will put up a pic and the description for me!

Just put the ISBN in the search engine, and then browse the sites that have it listed, like Alibris, Abebooks, Biblio, etc.

You won't always find in in the main listing at the top. Scroll down the page, and you will often find a pic and a description. It will really help move your books, folks. Who wants to order a blue icon that they know nothing about? The pic doesn't draw me in, and there's no description to hook me!

Want to get rid of your books and get some credits for them? Sell them to the requestors!!! I don't mean for money, I mean with their information. They won't sell themselves if there's nothing there, make them stand up and talk!  :)

I have been doing that to mine. Shooo... LOL It takes time and patience to find some of those books. Thanks for telling me how to do it though, it does look a lot better.

Most of the books that don't have pictures/descriptions are pre-ISBN. I don't even bother listing my pre-ISBN books here any more because they never move off my shelf. Amazingly, they move like hotcakes off my BookMooch shelf...

Bren, there are lots and lots of books with ISBNs that have no cover or description, it's not nearly "mostly the pre-ISBNs". Matter of fact of the books I have corrected in the past month, I believe only a couple were non-ISBN, and I've uploaded a lot of covers and descriptions this past several weeks.

I have one book I cannot find an image for. I tried all the sites listed above- alibis etc, no one has an image! It's from a children's book club, I noticed a alot of these books don't have images, is that common?

I try to add the images and so on when I get new books that have just come out. I think it is a very good idea for all of to try and do this every day or whenever we log on.

I agree, I will not order a book without a description. The title is not a seller!! I've never put in any images because I'm computer illiterate!!! The only thing I do on the computer is get on this site. If I need anything I ask my 16 year old daughter to do it for me!! I'm going to see if she can help me get some images though.

Christa

Rachel, your kids book now has a cover in the upload que. It should show in a couple days or so. I found it on ebay. Had to touch up the photo a bit, and undistort it, but thanks to my graphics designer son, I know how to do those things :)  I was going to upload a cover for the other book, by Benoit, but I see there is one already in the que. So, your shelf is mighty colorful now!

You also now have descriptions on all your books, since I add the last two without them. Very good! Thanks for your help!

Christa, you don't have to be too computer literate to get images, they are on the Internet. Search for the ISBN of your book in Google, and try to find a nice, large, copy of the cover. If there is no white space around the book, and it looks good, save it to your hard drive. You don't have to do anything to it if it's good, then just click the blue image in your book's detail page, click the "browse" button, find the image on your hard drive, and upload the image. No scanning necessary. I actually scan very few images and type very few descriptions. Much easier to find them on the Internet, already done! Hope that helps.

Thanks for the tip.  I have listed books published in the UK and Australia that had no coresponding isbns so no covers were shown.  I always try to write a description when I have to manually enter info.  I have been able to upload a couple images today but some of my books  I'm having a heckuva time trying to locate any pictures!  A few I have found but the size has been too big and I've tried cropping them but it hasn't changed the size of file at all....any sugestions?

Size should no longer ever be a problem, Michelle, you can now upload images up to 5MB, There's no way you are going to find an image for a book already on the Internet that large! The only reason it is set that high is so that people scanning them, don't have to work so hard to resize them. You find the cover on the Internet, and it looks good, and is cropped to the actual image of the book, upload it just like it is. (Be sure to open it on your hard drive after downloading to be positive of the cropping)

For books with no ISBNs I search for the title and author (putting the title in quotes). You can often find them that way!

OOPS!!  I was reading it as 5kb, not 5mb!!  My bad!!  That may solve some issues!  Thanks Sherry!

I tried taking your advice and adding pictures but I had a problem because they kept saying image skipped because a pending image is already being looked at in the system..  Also how do you add a description I am new to this site and am trying to get my account set up I would appreciate any help.

thanks

carey

Carey,

I found this on Club Member thoughts by Trinity P

Here's how you edit book data:

1.  Find the book that needs something changed

2.  Double click on the ISBN to highlight it, and then right click - "copy"

3. Scroll to the bottom of the screen and click on "Edit Book Data"

4. Right click - "paste" - the ISBN into the box

5.  Edit whatever is necessary.  The more info you have the better, but if you do not have it all, that is ok!

6.  Click submit!  - That's it!

I also personally find myself shying away from deals that are only on specific books because I don't feel like constantly double checking a shelf to see if one of those books is "OK". To get books moving you may want to trying offering a deal for several days on your entire shelf.  I hope you don't mind me offering a little advice, I've noticed you've been trying to get credits and no one has been responding.  Good Luck.

Juli

I've tried to put in the proper binding when it says unknown binding, but when you bring up the edit page there's no spot to do it. Do you just write it in the description so a moderater can fix it?

Carey, when did you get this msg? If it was before just a couple days ago, you should try again. There was a programming error that was preventing larger pics from being uploaded. This has been corrected, and they will go now. It's also possible you are uploading a cover at the same time as someone else, if it happens to be a book that was spotted by someone else too. Give it a few days, and then try again, if it doesn't go up within a few days the next time, send me a PM and I'll work with you to see if we can find the problem.

Juli, thanks for the post, and everybody should be sure to check out the Help Center on this, type the word  WRONG into the search slot, and read the entries:

If the book cover image on a listing in the database is wrong...

If the information on a book listing in the database is incorrect....

Michelle! Yep, you are going to have a real problem finding an image that will be under 5Kb hahahaha You will have MUCH better luck now :)

Marie, as a general rule, we cannot change the binding listing. If you have one that you've searched the Internet and it only comes up with a different binding than what is listed, then you can submit the request thru feedback to see if the database can be changed, but as a general rule, that will not be done. I think if it says, UnKnown, you can probably use it for whatever version you have. I could be told I'm wrong, but I've used it, and not had any problems so far. Now, PB or HC must match but to me unknown will match anything.

thanks for the help everyone I will try again and see what happens. if not I will let you know sherry

Thanks Sherry for stepping up and answering all the questions. This is just one of my pet peeves and I know we can make a big difference if we all do a few!

this helped me a whole lot thank you for the tips :)

Can someone tell me how long it takes for a cover to show on your shelf?  I uploaded a bunch yesterday and of that I only see 2 that have been aded.

I was wondering the same thing I uploaded some covers and some descriptions and they say they have to be approved how long does that take??

carey

Make that 3 of us wondering.  I uploaded about 17 images yesterday and about the same number of descriptions today.  I certainly don't expect them to be up immediately, but it would be helpful to know if we should wait a day, a week or longer for approval.  Also, if an image is rejected, will we be told?  My inclination woud be to submit again if it didn't show up after a week or two and I'd hate to be wasting someone's time doing that if there is a problem with my submission.

Sandy

I uploaded cover images yesterday also. The ones I did earlier in the day appeared but the ones I did last evening aren't there yet. I was told that it usually takes a day or 2 for images. The people doing the editing seem to really be fast but it might take a few days also.

That is fast.  Thanks for the info. :-)

The people who approve and upload are all volunteers as far as I can tell so it gets done as sson as they have time. Let's keep them busy!!