Any time I come here to "shop" I open Amazon or some other site to check out the info on books without any.  It seems as if all of a sudden if PBS doesn't have info neither does the other sites.

So where do you go to find this info?  Or even to add it to your book here?

ruthie

I use B&N, Amazon, AmazonUK, or try to find the author's website. If they do not have a description, I use Yahoo to see what else I can find.

I use PBS I can almost always find the blurb. If I cant then I'll check out B&N and add the blurb using the Edit Book Data feature so that when someone else comes across that book they wont have to look it up.

I've been to all the "name brand" book stores and find no cover and description.  I would like to update my bookshelf.  Again where do I look?

ruthie

I simply go to Edit Book Data, enter the ISBN, and type in the short description from the back cover.  For anything needing a cover, I scan the book on my scanner, crop the picture, and upload that also (using Upload Book Covers, not from the Edit Book Data page).

It doesn't take long to type out that description or scan and crop the cover image.  I think it's just as fast if not faster than searching the web for the info.  Most of my stuff that needs descriptions or book covers, the info isn't out there on the web anyway.

I have been scanning/typing mine by hand also. Sometimes since I have the ISBN on my clipboard anyway, I paste it into a few other sites to search, but most of the time I find it faster to just type it in.

I am still trying to remember to check other versions on PBS to see if they already have the description for me to copy.

alibris.com is where I find my info most of the time.  If I have the book on hand, I will type the info from the back cover myself.  If my book doesn't have anything on the back cover...for some reason some of them don't...then I will just put my own brief description of what the book is about.  I find that even 1 or 2 sentences is good as long as one can see some kind of description. 

Ruthie, the 3rd post in this topic, Want to help with Data & Images? Find help here, gives you a whole list of sites that carry the information on books.

Is there an easy, one-site always has the information answer? No way, sorry. Some books you just can't find out what they are about, all you find is the title and author, if you are lucky, we have some that don't even have the author.

If you are wanting to update your own shelf, the book is in your possession, if you can't find it on the Internet, your book is where to look. I have found a lot of the blurbs & info off of the book, on the Internet by typing in a phrase "enclosed in quotes like this" into Google along with the "title in quotes too" and I find 90% of the books I'm looking for. Sometimes, I have to look a little harder on Alibris, Abebooks, or Biblio, because the result will simply tell me it's in "one of the listings there" not which one! But, I find it and then I don't have to type it!

The final answer tho, if you can't find it off the Internet, is that you will have to manually type something in, if you want someone to know what your book is about. Hope that helps.