More than a few people have asked how to contact a BookLikes librarian about issues they've found with books. Here's how:

On every book page there's a small flag icon next to "report". Click that.

In the small window that appears, there's a dropdown menu and a comment box. The dropdown menu allows you to report any of the following:

Wrong title - speaks for itself. Occasionally a book goes to print with a different title than it was announced under, or someone buys the foreign rights for the book and releases it under a different title. More rarely, two books are conflated in a database somewhere and get imported that way. Please use the comment box to tell BookLikes' librarians what the correct title is and if you can, please include a source they can use to verify the information. You'd be surprised how many people try to vandalise book records.

Wrong author - also self-explanatory. Much more common though: I suspect that when BookLikes created their book database it wasn't well suited to deal with initials (i.e. J.K. Rowling) and as a result a lot of authors that use initials were shunted to the next closest author that used a full name. Sometimes next closest author was rather arbitrary. Please use the comment box to include the correct author name as it appears on the cover of their books. Authors with initials get '.' - so JK Rowling gets changed to J.K. Rowling.

Wrong/no cover - missing covers, place-holder covers, or wrong cover for that edition. Can also be used if the cover quality is really crap and you know of a better one. PLEASE INCLUDE SOURCE address. Most librarians won't change covers without a valid source (publishers / libraries / NetGalley / Amazon), because lots of people care less about data accuracy than they do about pretty covers.

Wrong ISBN/ASIN - this will occur more often with invalid ASIN numbers than it will invalid ISBNs. Invalid ISBNs are rare, but there are massive numbers of invalid ASINs in the database. This is because Amazon imports include marketplace listings. They're a pain, but if you report them, librarians can get rid of them.

Wrong/no description - Reporting this is pure philanthropy. It's frustrating to look at a book a BL friend mentioned only to discover the description is empty. So if you have easy access to the book synopsis and feel like doing a good deed, please use this flag to let librarians know where to find it, or paste it in the comment box if you have it handy. Please also let the librarians know if you find a book description that is filled with reviews or sales/marketing fluff. Nobody wants to read that stuff, they want to read what the book is about, and reviews/marketing fluff are against BL policy, so if you report it, the librarians will get rid of it.

It's a duplicate or needs to be combined with other editions. This is the most often used of the flags and lets the librarians know one of two things:
1. There are two or more book records with the same ISBN/ASIN number, or multiple book records for older books that are exact duplicates. These records need to be merged together so that only one record exists for each edition.

2. There are multiple editions of the same book that aren't connected to each other in any way. Editions are tied, or combined, together so that all the reviews for that book will be available on all the edition records, and so that the ratings over all the editions are included in the average rating. It also makes author records much tidier, as each book will only be listed once under the author's name. Exceptions to book combining include: editions that are meaningfully different from the original (i.e. a toddler board book edition of Jane Eyre), books that have screenplay adaptations, annotated versions, graphic novel/comic versions, and cliff notes.

If you run across a book that has duplicate editions that need merging, or editions that need to be tied together under one record, please use the comments box to include the URL address of the books that need to be merged or combined. You'll save the librarian heaps of time and earn many karma points if you include both addresses (i.e. both duplicates, or all the address of the separate books that need to be tied together), because they won't have to go looking for them.

Other - this is the flag option you use when you want to report anything else. If you notice books tied together that shouldn't be (different episodes of a comic, for example) use this to report it. If you think a book record has been vandalised in any way, please use this option and explain what has been vandalised. If you have the book in hand and want to contribute information to the record (narration time for audiobooks, publication date, etc) but don't feel comfortable editing the record yourself, use this option, including the new data in the comment box, or include a valid source address so a librarian can find the information.

That's it. Hit "Send Report" and it will be added to the librarian queue for review and action by the librarian.

If you have any other questions about the report flag, let us know below and we'll try to answer them ASAP.