User talk:ErsatzCulture

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Time Traveler's Almanac 2021 TOC Comment

Hi. Thanks for adding the supposedly available 2021 Head of Zeus edition of "Time Traveler's Almanac" by the Vandermeers (http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?870284 870284).

I and a friend are tracking this version and attempting to get an updated TOC from Head of Zeus or the Vandermeers that matches the 100 stories listed on the 2021 cover.

So far, we have been unsuccessful, with conflicting answers. At this point in time, it's not clear if there is really a 100 story version or if the 100 stories listed was in error.

Assuming that we eventually get an answer, I'll circle back and let you know, and propose a further edit if needed.

Best wishes. Dave888 11:18, 4 January 2022 (EST)

Hi, feel free to make any edits to the contents you see fit - I added this one as part of my project to try to pick up as many as possible of the new UK pubs that Fixer misses, and just cloned the contents based on the publisher's site indicating this is just a reissue of an earlier pub which had the same page count.

I do see that it missed the Dec 9th pub date, but this doesn't seem to have been acknowledged more officially - all the sources I've just checked still have that older date listed.

I got the impression that that publisher was putting out a number of reissued anthologies in December, of which this and the tp of Simon Ings' We Robots were the only ISFDB-relevant ones. Looking at the Amazon UK page linked in this tweet, it looks like all except those two got published per the schedule :-( ErsatzCulture 11:58, 4 January 2022 (EST)

Thanks. I'll make an edit when I really know what is actually going on here, and I'll let you know. If I cannot find out anything more definite within a few months, I'll add a note regarding the uncertainty, etc.Dave888 22:40, 4 January 2022 (EST)

Self-approving

I am tired of approving your stuff... :) A bit more seriously - if you would like to go for self-approval status, you'd have my vote for it. Just as a FYI :) Annie 13:52, 26 January 2022 (EST)

Same -- JLaTondre (talk) 18:17, 26 January 2022 (EST)

Thanks both. TBH, I don't mind having to wait for mods to approve my edits (doubtless I'll come to regret saying that when a bunch of my edits get get rejected or stick in the queue for multiple days ;-) but that's easier for me to say than other editors, as I don't generally touch magazines or anthologies that require more involved edits. (Although I have dozens of Adam Blade ebooks to add, that I've been putting off for months, as I didn't relish the multi-step hassle of doing novel->novella conversions on the existing entries beforehand...)

I try not to overload the queue with my edits, esp. when it's gone well into triple figures, but I appreciate that seemingly endless UK ebook pubs can't be the most interesting things that come up when processing the queue, so I don't mind taking that dubious responsibility off your hands.

One thing that I am a bit hesitant about though, is dealing with "borderline" titles. For stuff that's unclear - e.g. horrors that are vague about being gothic/psychological vs supernatural - I try to add appropriate title notes, but I feel better knowing that (in theory at least) there's a second pair of eyes giving such additions further examination. (Granted, this isn't without occasional issues ;-) As things currently stand, I've got more than enough backlogged unambiguous pubs to keep me busy for a long time, but if I'm doing self-moderation, then I'm more likely to get round to unclear stuff like this or stuff that may or may not cross the "threshold". I don't know whether bringing these up for discussion too frequently on Community Portal (or other pages) might get tiresome fairly quickly? ErsatzCulture 19:57, 26 January 2022 (EST)

Your choice. :) If you decide you want to, post on the Moderator board and the process will get started. :) If you rather spend some more time with moderators approving, so be it. You’ll get my vote whenever you are ready.

The DB leans towards inclusion - if the book has a chance of being genre, add it and add notes. If you are really troubled about a book, you know where my page is. Not that i am the authority - but because of Fixer, chances are I’ve seen the book, especially the new ones. :)Annie 20:11, 26 January 2022 (EST)

The Outlandish Companion: Volume Two

The cover says Volume 2, not Volume Two here. Do you have access to a title page? In either case a note is strongly recommended when the cover does not match our title. Annie 19:05, 4 February 2022 (EST)

Perhaps I should have copypasted and tweaked the note from the ebook I added a couple of weeks ago? (Amazon UK only has a preview for the ebook, not this hc, or a tp that's on my todo list.) ErsatzCulture 19:35, 4 February 2022 (EST)

If there is a discrepancy, always always always add a note :) Annie 19:39, 4 February 2022 (EST)

EDIT: This OK? ErsatzCulture 19:40, 4 February 2022 (EST)

Yes. And it is not about placating a moderator. It is about our data not contradicting itself. :) Annie 19:41, 4 February 2022 (EST)

The Complete Short Fiction of Peter Straub: Volume 2

The subtitle separator is ":", not "," - we use "," only if the title pages does so and we determine it is part of the title and not a subtitle. In this case, there is no comma anywhere on that title page and the font change is a clear subtitle situation for me (if it was not, then there won't be any punctuation but just "The Complete Short Fiction of Peter Straub Volume 2"_. Fixed here. Annie 16:46, 11 February 2022 (EST)

OK ErsatzCulture 16:57, 11 February 2022 (EST)

I think you were so busy clearing up the Two/2 thing in the notes that you missed the comma that Amazon has in the title. Amazon does that a lot ;) Annie 17:11, 11 February 2022 (EST)

TBH I don't think I was particularly aware of any rule regarding separator, I think most of my infractions have been over number vs word vs Roman numerals. Plus on this one I had to have three goes at submitting it, first lacked an ASIN, and the second I selected the wrong ID type from the drop-down.

Any thoughts on how to handle that (apparent) original ltd hc I mentioned in the mod notes? I just looked it up on Goodreads, and that seems to only know about the ebook :-( It seems like it *maybe* dates from 2021-04-01 (based on the timestamp on a link to a lettered ltd edition on the publisher's site), but a Locus review states October, and info generally seems very scarce. In the absence of anything else, maybe add a note to the title record, perhaps? ErsatzCulture 17:33, 11 February 2022 (EST)

The Subtitles paragraph: "If the title has a subtitle, enter it, with a colon and a space used to separate the title from the subtitle.". It gets automatic once you get used to looking for it. :)

Numbered and signed editions can be... problematic info-wise. If the publisher says it exists and especially if we have someone reviewing the edition or other pieces of info elsewhere, we use that to add it and do best diligence of the date with a lot of notes on its provenance. Add it with the known details -- and when we find more, we will update. I'd use the Locus date here with a note - the timestamp of a page does not really tell you when the book came out, just when it was supposed to (not all publishers update pages...). There is also Signed/Lettered and yes - we want all of them. If ISBNs are unclear or not there (As issued or not), we leave these empty and if the date is particularly problematic as this Signed and lettered one, I'd use 0000-00-00... Or put it on my list and wait for it. I'd add at least the one that Locus reviewed though. Annie 18:01, 11 February 2022 (EST)

Just attempting to tidy up stuff, and have just added the $120 hc. Couple of quick (?) questions:

1. Given this seems to only be available as a set of 2 volumes, I added it as a single title/pub, rather than as 2 new pubs of the previously entered separate volumes for the ebooks. This seems to make more sense to me, but I dunno if there are any rules/standards for this?

2. I initially submitted that as an omnibus, but then I had a vague recollection of being told that omnibuses couldn't/shouldn't contain collections, so switched the title and pub to be collections. However, I've just gone and checked another compilation of two collections that I remembered seeing ages ago, and that is an omnibus, so maybe I was misremembering? ErsatzCulture 16:57, 6 March 2022 (EST)

They are separate volumes though - someone will split them on the secondary market. I tend to add them both as a set and as individual books in such cases but just the set is also ok.

Uhm. Omnibuses CAN contain collections. They often do when you deal with boxsets and collected works for example. We don’t go out of our way to make them omnibuses but if 2 previously published collections are combined in one volume, it is an omnibus and both the collection titles and the stories themselves are added. Same applies for anthologies - in case you wonder. They cannot contain chapbooks though - maybe that tripped you up? Annie 04:26, 7 March 2022 (EST)

One pedantic thought comes to mind - you say "*previously published* collections", but in this particular case it seems the physical set preceded the individual ebooks (Oct vs Dec 2021) - would that preclude converting the set from collection to omnibus and then importing the 2 separate collections? ErsatzCulture 13:48, 7 March 2022 (EST)

The "Set" contains two separate books. That makes them "simultaneously published" which in this case is sufficient. A box set will not be an omnibus only if all (or all but 2 anyway - if you have at least 2 non-chapbooks, it is an omnibus) of its parts are chapbooks - in any other case, a boxset will be an omnibus because it contains separate books - even if they are not officially sold separately when originally issued. :) Annie 14:58, 7 March 2022 (EST)

<dedent> OK, I've reverted the title and pub records from collection to omnibus, and imported the 2 collections. Will update the title dates for the latter to match the (apparent) earlier physical pubs, but hopefully that's enough to get them OK for the time being. ErsatzCulture 17:05, 7 March 2022 (EST)

Sounds like a plan. Having fun yet? :) Annie 17:09, 7 March 2022 (EST)

The Moon and the Sun

We are still missing that 2015-07-02 ebook. Do you plan to add it? Goodreads is usually a good place for hunting these: in this case or this one for example (Goodreads always splits kindle and epub records even if it is the same book) :) Annie 18:08, 11 February 2022 (EST)

TBH, it wasn't something I was looking to do - felt like too much relying on secondary (or arguably tertiary for GR) sources, and making assumptions about what happened in the past, which would probably be reasonable on 99% of pubs, but given the drawn out history of the film adaptation, I'd rather not presume that it didn't have a tie-in cover back in 2015.

(Plus I only noticed that this ebook still had "The Moon and the Sun" on the title page after I'd already entered all the details in to an AddPub for the variant title, so had to junk all that and redo it - which doesn't make me positively disposed towards this pub....) ErsatzCulture 14:21, 12 February 2022 (EST)

No worries. I’ll add it. Annie 14:42, 12 February 2022 (EST)

The Wars of Gods and Men

Can you check the ebook's cover here? I added the Amazon.com ASIN so we do not lose it but the cover seems weird everywhere. Annie 18:33, 13 February 2022 (EST)

I assume it's a publisher screw-up - going to "the source" at Gollancz.co.uk, the image is correct for the tp but not for the ebook. Maybe it'll get fixed for the actual ebook itself and/or the product listings before then? (FWIW, Kobo also has the wrong image.) I guess there's not much to do other than add a pub note and/or check once the book is out?

There is something at the back of my mind nagging me about something weird about this title and/or series though. Looking back, I think it's because it was one of my very early edits, and I was confused that there were two tps, rather than an hc and a tp, and made an incorrect presumption that the original physical was an export edition - I suspect the note on this could probably do to have the latter half of the final sentence removed? ErsatzCulture 19:11, 13 February 2022 (EST)

I'd remove the image in such cases - it will never get fixed in our DB as we use /I/ images (Amazon will just repoint to the proper /I/ leaving us pointing to the wrong one so if the image is visibly wrong or says "image to come" and so on, don't add an image to the book). I pulled the image out of that one and when someone gets a correct image, we will put it in.

Ah yes - the double paperbacks of UK ;) Always fun when that happens. Fixed now. :) Annie 19:20, 13 February 2022 (EST)

Thanks for sorting those pubs out. I was reminded of the pain of them a day or so ago, when I realized that I still need to go back and add the original UK tp for this. This was a confusing one where there had been an hc listed on some sites, then it seemed to turn into a Demi/Royal/whatever tp with a slightly later pub date, plus adding in the confusion from pandemic delays meant that I just deliberately forgot about it at the time ;-( ErsatzCulture 19:35, 13 February 2022 (EST)

No worries. And yeah - 2020/2021 was... interesting. I spent way too much time tracking dates and editions and what's not. Annie 19:40, 13 February 2022 (EST)

Tarzan's Quest and Other Tales

Moved the notes from the title level to the publication level here:

If this ever get reprinted with a different order, the note about the order becomes obsolete. ANY order notes belong on the publication order; the title level has contents only, not order :)
Contents-wise, we only merge/variant Omnibuses with the same contents. So all those notes on additional stories and contents pages belong to the publications and if one of these end up being different, it will need to be unmerged. In all cases, that's a publication note :)

Let me know if you have any concerns. Annie 14:36, 24 February 2022 (EST)

Yeah, putting stuff in the pub rather than title note did cross my mind - but as the series numbers "content" field is at the title level, I felt the note info was pertinent to that. Sorry for causing you work.

Is that rule about omnibuses having to have the same contents only applicable to them, not to collections? I have a vague recollection of adding a collection (possibly a Keith Laumer Retief Gateway ebook?) where the existing pubs had at least 2 different sets of stories, and the one I was adding was different again.

With collections we kinda have a bit of a wiggle room - we can note missing/added stories in the notes because we don't have the Contents field. With omnibuses... because we have it, it kinda makes it wrong to have different contents under it. :) As usual - YMMV between editors. I don't like merging/varianting ANY collections/anthologies which are different but then our translations will be orphans much more often so... Annie 15:09, 24 February 2022 (EST)

In a vaguely similar vein [*], I stumbled across this last night, and wasn't sure if it should be varianted to this? I didn't check thoroughly, but it looks like the former is a translation of roughly half of the stories in the latter.

Too many differences to be varianted. Annie 15:09, 24 February 2022 (EST)

[* Spotted whilst looking to see if a title entry for this imminent UK pub had already been added via any US/CA pubs. Seems not, but I've not seen any reviews or other articles that might indicate if/how much speculative material it might contain to justify submitting it] ErsatzCulture 14:52, 24 February 2022 (EST)

Even if it has a single eligible story, it is eligible. The only question is if it is non-genre (so partial contents) or genre (so full contents). And that's something we can adjust later. Annie 15:09, 24 February 2022 (EST)

One Way / Future Space

Careful when changing series names. Author named series are all well and fine but if people know the series under a different name, removing that name is not a good idea - even if an author never uses that other name. It is all about discoverability. And in this case, it is just a tentative name... Also - if you are radically changing a series name, ALL active PVs that hold books in the series NEED to be notified. As I restored the original name as part of it, that may not be as important but I'd still leave a note on the PV's page if I were you. Annie 14:46, 25 February 2022 (EST)

Understood. In my defence, I have a copy of the third book (which I haven't PVed, as I normally only do that when I actually get round to reading something - is that bad of me?) as well as the first one, and none of them list a series name, or (in the case of the third one) give any indication of being a continuation of the earlier books.

(TBH I thought I was the one who'd defined the series for these in the first place, although on examination of the edit history, it looks like they predate me being an ISFDB contributor - oops...)

I did consider leaving the first two and series as is, and making a parent series for them all, but it seemed slightly overkill for a 4 book series, especially as the quote I put in the note indicated they were sequential. Would that have been a more reasonable course perhaps? ErsatzCulture 16:14, 25 February 2022 (EST)

Nah :) Having one series is fine - just make sure you talk to the rest of the PVs. I don't generally mind even changing the name completely - but not with another PV not consulted (and based on a tentative name). I do a lot of "/" in series names in such cases while processing Fixer's catch - if people look under one of the names, they can find them -- and that makes the DB more usable (no variants for series). Maybe one day we will have "alternate name" fields added to allow for multi-names and other languages versions of series names (I really hope so) but for now, we do what we can :) Annie 16:18, 25 February 2022 (EST)

Self-approver flag set

The self-approver flag has been set on your ISFDB account. Congratulations!

From now on, creating a submission will take you to the "Approve/Reject" Web page which will let you approve your own submissions. Ahasuerus 15:59, 25 February 2022 (EST)

Thanks - although I wonder if, based on the conversations in the preceding few items on this talk page - whether Annie might be reconsidering her support for my request ;-) ErsatzCulture 16:16, 25 February 2022 (EST)

Keep dreaming... :) Congrats and now go and add some books. ;) Annie 16:20, 25 February 2022 (EST)

Amongst Our Weapons

When you have a chance, can you check the publisher here? Amazon is being annoying and has Orion (as it often does) and the rest of the sites are inconclusive but the ISBN is Gollancz (or Gateway - they don't have separate ranges) and I can use a second set of eyes. Annie 15:42, 28 February 2022 (EST)

Interesting - my initial thought was "of course, it's Gollancz", but now that I look at my scraped data for it (which goes back to November last year when it was listed as "Rivers of London Book 9: Pre-order the Brand New Book in the #1 Bestselling Rivers of London Series Now", I see both hc and ebook are attributed to Orion.

What's also weird is that I'm 99% sure there were features on the gollancz.co.uk site recently (title reveal perhaps?) but I'm not seeing any of that now. There is a listing for a Ben Aaronovitch hc on that site, but it's listed as "Untitled", but has a different ISBN and has no cover and a Monday pub date?!? https://www.gollancz.co.uk/titles/ben-aaronovitch/untitled/9781473224407/

To add to the mystery, here's an Orion Books tweet from Friday, that was RTed by Gollancz: https://twitter.com/orionbooks/status/1497168664197480448 - I'd have expected that to have come from Gollancz directly.

Some of the stuff that has gone on with Gollancz/Gateway/Orion recently is a bit weird (e.g. Masterworks books solicited as Gateway, and not listed on gollancz.co.uk, but having the Gollancz G logo on the title page), I wonder if this is some other artefact of that? Lemme see if I can dig anything more concrete out...

Also, I'd re-scraped some info on this earlier today, just to get up-to-date as I knew this would need submitting soon. I didn't notice the publisher value, but I did notice they've altered the typography of the author name on the cover compared to the prior Gollancz pubs. In itself I didn't think it was anything more than publisher design staff annoying customers who like consistent covers, but maybe that's another fragment of evidence that all is no longer as it was? ErsatzCulture 16:30, 28 February 2022 (EST)

Update: ARCs/promos have the Orion logo on them... ErsatzCulture 16:35, 28 February 2022 (EST)

Update#2: [1] Tip in sheets] also have Orion. ErsatzCulture 16:39, 28 February 2022 (EST)

Which is why I pinged you - I went from Orion to Gollancz and back about 10 times... and then figured I just need a second set of eyes. I think I will set it to Orion and then we can keep an eye on that... Annie 16:42, 28 February 2022 (EST)

I went back through his Twitter history to early Jan, and Gollancz tweeted about it then, but since then it all seemed to be Orion. Agree that on balance it seems to be Orion.

Re. Gollancz, I'm still wondering what's going on with this. I noticed shortly after submitting that some of the vendor sites only have the Ad Astra pubs listed, and not the Gollancz ones, so I assume the former are the ones that will actually come out.

Joint publication, a reselling of the rights, Gollancz used as a reseller for the non-UK market, someone is buying someone OR a subsidy of someone or who knows. We shall see what happens in the next few months/years. Annie 17:06, 28 February 2022 (EST)

And all that weirdness lately with these two makes me wonder if we won't hear of a new merger very soon - or maybe a joined imprint... Annie 16:45, 28 February 2022 (EST)

It's struck me for a while that Hachette UK has way too many imprints putting out SF - and seemingly adding to them - so who knows? I do recall that Aaronovitch's books were filed on the general/mystery fiction shelves rather than the SF&F&H ghetto in the library when I was in London, so maybe it's a marketing/audience repositioning thing? ErsatzCulture 16:59, 28 February 2022 (EST)

We shall see - these things tend to sort out themselves sooner or later. But that is not so surprising - Hachette and Macmillan and Penguin/Random House (on all sides of all oceans) had been buying smaller publishers like crazy... Annie 17:06, 28 February 2022 (EST)

BTW, mostly unrelated: some time in the past couple of days it seems Amazon UK have started rolling out a change to their HTML markup that stops you from being able to r-click on a cover to save it/open it in a new tab etc. So far it doesn't seem to affect all book pages, and you can still get hold of the image URL by fiddling around with browser dev tools, but it's a bit of an annoying faff around when you just need to do a quick cover update/addition like this. ErsatzCulture 17:21, 28 February 2022 (EST)

All Amazons - although I am not sure if it is really them or the latest browser updates or what. Check your browser - not all of them behave the same way. :) For the ones that do behave that way - it seems to happen only on books which have the cover under the main cover as well. In this case - you cannot drag the main one to the address bar (how I usually get these) but you can drag the tiny small one under it... so try to r-click on that one? Annie 17:39, 28 February 2022 (EST)

(DEDENT) Voila ErsatzCulture 15:27, 3 March 2022 (EST)

What is dedent? :) See - sometimes gut feeling works well enough. :) Annie 15:41, 3 March 2022 (EST)