"NOT A BOOK"

Goodreads obtains most of its data from volunteered user data and mass-importing of records by ISBN alone, generally through Ingram and Amazon.[3] This brings in records for non-book items, including films, television series, vinyl record albums, rough drafts, board games, video games, plush toys and a variety of other items that do not qualify as "books" by Goodreads's definition. NOT A BOOK is also applied for the purpose of segregating books known to be plagiarized. Because the ISBNs would inevitably be re-imported again if deleted entirely from the Goodreads database, segregating them to NOT A BOOK keeps them out of general records without removing them entirely. Volunteer Goodreads members known as "Librarians", as well as supers (Librarians with special editing privileges), members of the Goodreads Author Program, and Goodreads staff members, have the ability to strip metadata by replacing it with NOT A BOOK.

The usage of the NOT A BOOK moniker to weed records has drawn criticism from both Goodreads users and Goodreads authors. Some authors have pointed out the invalidity of book records created by the automatic importation of an ISBN, noting that many contemporary titles, especially self-published works, are rough drafts and titles unintended for general access, and that the ISBN alone should not be used to create a record without manual review and further research into the title's background. Goodreads users have complained that books in their own lists and collections have inexplicably at times been moved to NOT A BOOK, causing user confusion and altering developed user information. Most notably, a number of Audible titles were marked as NOT A BOOK, and then later restored. Nate Hoffelder of The Digital Reader pointed out, "this week they decided to follow through on their belief by purging all “Audible original” titles from Goodreads. So far they have nailed a Stephen Fry title, a storytelling series, an audiobook about Malcolm X, an interview series, and Cut and Run, a comedy with Meg Ryan in the cast."[4]

NOT A BOOK has also been criticized as being used by Amazon, which owns Goodreads, to weed out politically-offensive titles from the Goodreads database. In 2021, William Luther Pierce's The Turner Diaries was completely stripped of its metadata, and Librarians who attempted to restore the original metadata were punished with the removal of their editing privileges. This later was revealed to be the result of Amazon removing the title due to its connections with the QAnon movement and the 2021 United States Capitol attack. Amazon and its subsidiaries AbeBooks and The Book Depository had removed all new and used copies of the book from their platforms, as well.[5][6][7]

• Goodreads
• Metadata
• Lists of banned books