Covers: Better, Bigger, Blanks, Defaults and Statistics
Casual visitors are often surprised to learn that LibraryThing members have contributed more than 800,000 covers, for use when Amazon doesn't have the right cover. It's time to make the most of this strength!I've added a five new features related to how LibraryThing handles covers. I hope you like the changes!
- Choose member-created "blank" covers for every book.
- Choose your default cover.
- Better cover "guessing"
- Cover Statistics and links to different cover types.
- Member-contributed covers now available in all sizes.
- Member-contributed covers now available in maximum quality.
It's hard to understate the care that some members lavish on projects like this, exercising their creative side and helping other members out. Check out the image credits, available under the display and when you roll over the images.
Choose your default cover. The same member-covers are also available as default covers, the cover you get when you have no other cover. You can change your default cover from every book's change-cover page, as well as from your Cover Statistics.Better cover "guessing". This feature caused some members consternation when it was released provisionally a few days ago. Suddenly members got a whole bunch of new covers, some of which they didn't want, with no way to opt out. I've added powerful opt-out options, so it's time to reintroduce the feature.
The feature takes advantage of LibraryThing's 800,000 member-uplaoded covers. If you have books from more than a few years ago, like I do, a lot of your books don't have Amazon covers. Before now, you could choose these covers manually, replacing our "blank" cover with your own or someone else's uploaded cover.
Now were taking that data—the covers people choose for a given ISBN—to "guess" at the covers for coverless books. In general, members choose the right cover for their edition, especially when LibraryThing can look at many members' decisions. In the case of my books, LibraryThing found 69 covers. Only one is dead-wrong, with two others being subtle variants of the cover I have. Of course, you can easily switch to a different cover, a blank cover or no cover.
Cover Statistics and links to different cover types. I've added a page for Cover Statistics. It shows where all you covers come from, with a link to all the books in that category. It's a great way to go through your blanks or confirm LibraryThing's new "best guess" covers.The Cover Statistics page also has a link to change your default cover. (In case you're wondering, I'm working on a all-encompassing "preferences" page. One thing at a time.)
Member-contributed covers now available in all sizes. Until now, LibraryThing only displayed two sizes for member-contributed covers--tiny and medium. For the last eight months we've been saving large versions, but we didn't use them. Storing all the sizes or making them on the fly scared us.
A new server and some technical changes have given us the opportunity to show covers at whateve size they're needed. The result is a much more attractive and even Cover View, which scales from teeny to upsettingly large (see image).
Member-contributed covers now available in maximum quality. As said, we were not previously taking advantage of original images, but only two presized versions. Although early-on we didn't store them—server space was just too dear—we have been storing original versions for about eight months. This amounts to some 300,000 out of 800,000 covers. (Of course, not all "originals" are actually large; some are thumbnails.)
The result is that some member-contributed covers can now be sized to elephantine dimensions within your catalog, and look great on work pages, which use medium-large images. Unfortunately, some covers look a bit "pixelated" at these large sizes. The examples below illustrate both effects:
A final word. I want to thank members who pushed me on this feature. Although the general change has been planned for some time, it received impetus from a "bug fix" that introduced many best-guess covers. Without an easy way to "opt-out" of guesses—without choosing another cover—a few members went bananas.
The were right to do so! It created a weird situation, one I realized the more when I spent an hour "gardening" my covers. Once again, it was a pleasure to work through the issue with members. I've very pleased with the feedback, and as I rolled out some of these features over the weekend.
Maybe some day I'll write a book about working with and for you guys. But you're doing the cover.
Labels: book covers, new feature
posted by Tim at 12:04 PM
27 Comments:
I've been putting a ridiculous amount of thought into selecting the appropriate blank covers! Red for "radical history", lavender for "glbt", that lovely tooled leather binding for "bookbinding", an art nouveau for books by/about Beardsley and others, and so it goes. Am I being too obsessive? Well, if so, I'm enjoying the obsession.
The one difficulty I've encountered since the above changes is that I'm no longer able to upload a clearer cover image of my own (ie, one that has better graphic resolution)if a member-uploaded version of my cover already exists.
Other than the above quibble, kudos for the improvements!
* CLANG * * CLANG* * CLANG *
Sorry - my irony meter went off the scale when I saw "One thing at a time."
Looking forward to working with all the pretty covers when I get back to entering new books when the 'add book from users copy' is returned to the way it was.
Nice, if only LibraryThing wasn't so slow...
Lilithcat, I did exactly the same thing - and realised none of the covers scream science fiction, or childrens book to me.
I spent a while yesterday puzzling over default cover, sicne it was obvious we were going to be able pick one, but I couldn't find where. Glad that's now sorted.
I was really delighted to click on cover statistics and see the amazon count, as I'd previously been using the size change to find them, and that work around isn't going to work anymore.
And the best guess statistic caught another correct cover for me - on a book I'd failed to tag as needing a cover.
Would a count of how many user covers we personally had uploaded be possible?
Though I like the new better guessing of covers, PLEASE allow deselecting the cover found taht way in favour of default cover.
>Though I like the new better guessing of covers, PLEASE allow deselecting the cover found taht way in favour of default cover.
We do! We do! Go to change the cover and choose "Use your default book cover."
>The one difficulty I've encountered since the above changes is that I'm no longer able to upload a clearer cover image of my own (ie, one that has better graphic resolution)if a member-uploaded version of my cover already exists.
Really? Can we move this to talk and we work through it. It shoudl be fine.
>Lilithcat, I did exactly the same thing - and realised none of the covers scream science fiction, or childrens book to me.
Make a new cover for us then :)
lilithcat, you're not trying to judge a cover by it's book, are you?
This is great! A great new tool! I had stopped using Amazon covers when I read they had a bad habit of changing, and began uploading my own. I was startled to see how many Amazon covers I'm still using.
I agree with aquila1nz:
"Would a count of how many user covers we personally had uploaded be possible?"
Hey Tim -
Loved your blog on the new covers. I am glad to the see that the member-created blank covers are now available. I have really been looking forward to that. I am very visually oriented, so I prefer looking at my library in the Cover View. This will just make it all the nicer to search! I, for one, would happily buy your book about your LibraryThing experience and I am sure with all the creative people here, a cover would be a snap! Kudos for all the great work you do.
Excellent! I think that with my older library, the guesses aren't as accurate- but then again, 90% of my non-amazon covers I'd already selected myself.
I just took a look and it is so slow in general that twice the server timed out, and twice it just gave up and said it wasn't able to open the page, so I got a partial page but no covers (on the change cover page).
Also some of my books that had covers, now don't, and some of the 'chosen for me covers' were new covers for books that already had them (they were correct before, but now were not).
In particular Conn Iggulden's Emperor: all the options are based on the UK cover - I can tell just by looking at them they are not US covers. I tried twice to load the US cover off amazon and it wouldn't list in the pictures at the bottom (.jpg) but ended up with a blue box and question mark. I got the cover finally from Amazon on my book. but it comes in smaller and who knows how long it will stay. Since it doesn't seem to be in the list. I tried to use the grab a URL and I got a new white page, and 4 or 5 lines of error code in red.
The cover for Daywatch, Sergei Luchenko (SP?) was also changed to a UK cover, though the correct US one - which the book had to start with, was listed.
It seems to be changing covers, and it seems to be only picking the UK covers. I have the correct US ISBN for all my recent books, and both Daywatch and Emperor are recent.
The covers also seem to be blurry and in some cases the color is muted.
>slow
Okay, we'll look at it. It's not surprising that the first look at a cover would be a little slower, but it should NOT be timing out.
>Also some of my books that had covers, now don't, and some of the 'chosen for me covers' were new covers for books that already had them (they were correct before, but now were not).
The current algorithm is the most complete. While it's possible covers changed, we're doing the best with the data that Amazon and members provide.
>In particular Conn Iggulden's Emperor: all the options are based on the UK cover - I can tell just by looking at them they are not US covers. I tried twice to load the US cover off amazon and it wouldn't list in the pictures at the bottom (.jpg) but ended up with a blue box and question mark. I got the cover finally from Amazon on my book. but it comes in smaller and who knows how long it will stay. Since it doesn't seem to be in the list. I tried to use the grab a URL and I got a new white page, and 4 or 5 lines of error code in red.
How were you trying to "load" it? Uploading the cover or choosing the cover in the list. The URL business sounds like you sent it an HTML page, which it won't read because it's text.
>It seems to be changing covers, and it seems to be only picking the UK covers. I have the correct US ISBN for all my recent books, and both Daywatch and Emperor are recent.
It's not biased in favor of UK covers.
>The covers also seem to be blurry and in some cases the color is muted.
Nothing is worse that it was before. Some covers are large and therefore the problems with the original image are more noticeable.
The covers are scrolling side-to-side (ewwww) in IE 7.
See http://www.librarything.com/work/2261/covers/3655005 for an example.
Please fix!!
Thank YAG. Got it!
Tim,
UK Covers:
The only covers listed as options for Emperor were/are UK based covers. Haven't gone back to see if mine took or not. A few had the UK cover with foreign words, but it was still the UK image.
I have no idea if your algorithm finds the UK covers and then stops looking, but there were no US cover choices. Many books from the UK are published first there and then in the US.
I have no idea if the rest of my books are correct or not. I only looked at the blanks and those that were chosen automatically.
But as I loaded my books I went through and picked/checked all the covers that were in my library, either from Amazon, from the user uploaded options, or I found them and uploaded my own.
Not all were correct because I made the choice to have covers rather than blanks were I could. But that was for older and out of print books. I don't want the wrong ones there for recent books that do have other options.
Changing covers:
What does your algorithm have to do with books that already have covers ? Why are you messing with books that have covers ? Isn't it stored in the record somewhere that there is a cover? Shouldn't it skip the records that have books and only be applied to those books that are coverless ?
Uploading:
I saved the picture I wanted to my desktop (.jpg) then I hit the first button, Choose file, and it listed what was on my desktop, I selected the picture and the file name showed up on the change cover page then I clicked on Upload. The picture appeared on the book in the upper left, but not in the picture list below. There was the small blue box with the ?. I know from previous experience that just because a book has a cover it doesn't mean it will stay there. You have to click on the one in the list below and get the box that asks: Choose this cover. Then you say yes and your cover stays on your book. If you don't it will revert back to the old cover or the blank default when you go back to your catalog.
URL Grab:
My bad. I take instructions literally.
It says URL grab so I though it would go out and grab a URL. I didn't actually paste anything into it. If it had said Paste URL, then I would have done so before pressing the button.
I went back to the page with the covers for Conn Iggulden's Emperor and there were 2 small blue squares with question marks. Now they are gone and the picture of the US cover is listed there.
However there are still problems.
It says member uploaded covers (9) - there are only 8 listed now. It says Amazon covers (7) all from the UK
This is the amazon US Page: http://www.amazon.com/Gates-Rome-Emperor-Book/dp/0440240948/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1209421728&sr=1-1
How can that not be listed in the Amazon cover list ?
On the cover page to the right in the green box it says Popular covers and it shows six and underneath it has a link that says see all 12 covers.
A the link doesn't do anything that I can see and
B: 9+7 =16, 9+8=15 so where does the number 12 come from ? Does it mean that 12 of the 15 or 16 are popular and the rest are not, or are there an additional 6 covers it is not displaying ?
And finally your word verification is impossible for me to decipher. It is too thick and twisted.
>What does your algorithm have to do with books that already have covers ? Why are you messing with books that have covers ? Isn't it stored in the record somewhere that there is a cover? Shouldn't it skip the records that have books and only be applied to those books that are coverless ?
It does not change books that have covers. Sometimes a book will have a cover and lose it because Amazon removes the cover. It won't forget a member cover you set.
>I saved the picture I wanted to my desktop (.jpg) then I hit the first button, Choose file, and it listed what was on my desktop, I selected the picture and the file name showed up on the change cover page then I clicked on Upload. The picture appeared on the book in the upper left, but not in the picture list below. There was the small blue box with the ?.
It should be working now. Let me know if not.
>It says member uploaded covers (9) - there are only 8 listed now. It says Amazon covers (7) all from the UK
The stats are cached, alas.
>How can that not be listed in the Amazon cover list ?
I checked the database and it indicated that Amazon didn't have the cover last time it checked. Now it does. So I let it re-calculate that. It knows nw.
>On the cover page to the right in the green box it says Popular covers and it shows six and underneath it has a link that says see all 12 covers.
It takes you to the page you're on! (It's on every work page.)
>B: 9+7 =16, 9+8=15 so where does the number 12 come from ?
Cached, sorry.
>And finally your word verification is impossible for me to decipher. It is too thick and twisted.
Blame Blogger! :)
I stopped fooling with covers a long time ago because it seemed like when I changed the cover, it also changed the ISBN, and I'm just that obsessive - I want my records to have the correct ISBNs. Tim, is this still the behavior? Does changing the cover affect any other field? (I could be making it up entirely, I guess, as well, but that's what I remember...)
Tim, I'm having trouble with a lot of self-scanned covers because they look either bloated in catalog view (too large) or pixelated in the work pages. Is there a way to reduce it back down to the previous display dimensions?
When I first uploaded said covers I allowed for LT's display parameters, which sized the covers accordingly and gave a great result. Now that these parameters have changed all my covers are ruined because of the automated distorting effect! Do I have to re-scan book covers and upload them again? Or will there be a fix for this? Thanks in advance.
They're not distorted, they're sized. What's your user name?
Hi Tim, I didn't mean anything technical by "distorted." I just meant oversized. I've sent you an email.
As for the pixilation problem, there is a lot less of it then there was the last time you tried to make the change, and the change had to be made at some points. Thanks for all the hard work.
Shrike58
My list views are totally unusable if they contain covers (all self supplied) since the covers are somehow so huge. And this is tiny?
BTW the fact that the algorithm makes all covers the same size is just plain wrong - I scanned all my spines in the hope of mimicking my shelf layouts but scaling the oversize book covers - in fact al covers - tothe same size neatly derails the whole project again
Papalaz
Papalaz, I think your problem is a variant of mine, as outlined above. Because I took spinal shots as well, most of my book images tend to be small-widthed but tall. Because the new parameters expand the width to its maximum, the image height increases proportionally as a result - making the image very large indeed in list-view.
A fix would allow us to use the old parameters rather than the new, but that would involve some 'customization bloat' in the UI. Tim?
My blank covers aren't showing titles like I seem to remember they used to. Is that just a function of everybody messing with covers today? Otherwise, this is swell!
A small thing, but is it possible (or desirable) to have a thin black outline for covers? Any cover that is white sort of floats, a bit naked compared to the other covers. People may not want this, I realize. I think I would like it, so I just thought I'd mention it....
Post a Comment
<< Home