Help:How to enter a new book

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This page is a help or manual page for the ISFDB database. It describes standards or methods for entering or maintaining data in the ISFDB database, or otherwise working with the database. Other help pages may be found via the category below. To discuss what should go on this page, use the talk page.

If, after exploring the Help system, you still have a question, please visit the Help desk and let us know. We probably know the answer, but we need your help to know what we left out of the help pages.

If you are new to editing the ISFDB, please see Help:Getting Started.

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Here's the sequence of steps to enter a new book that is not a novel.

  1. Determine whether this particular edition of the book exists in the ISFDB already. If it does, you can check the accuracy of the data, but don't need to enter it.
  2. Check to see if another edition of this work is already entered. If so, you want to make sure your edition is "connected" to the editions already entered. This is done by using "Add Publication to this Title". Note that you can use this method even if the title on your copy is different, so long as it's really the same book. The same applies to pseudonyms -- you can use this link for a pseudonymous work too.
  3. If no other editions of the book are already entered, use the "New . . ." links. There is a separate "New" link for magazines, anthologies, collections, omnibuses, and nonfiction works, as well as novels. The main difference between these is that they preselect the correct "publication type" field. Novels are slightly different in that they don't show any "contents".

Once you are at the right screen, you can use the detailed help page for that screen to help you fill out the fields correctly.

When you've entered the data and clicked Submit, a moderator will review it and approve or reject it. When the update has been approved, you'll find that the contents of the newly submitted publication have all been added to their authors' list of works in the ISFDB. It's a good idea to run through the list of these titles and find out if they can be merged with other versions of those titles in the database. See How to tell the ISFDB that two works are really the same for more details.