User:ErsatzCulture/Talk2020H2

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Crash intro

FYI, I found this, where the bottom line on the cover says "with a new introduction by Zadie Smith", and the copyright page explicitly copyrights the novel 1973 to Ballard and the introduction 2014, 2017 to Smith. This is for a Picador edition. I also see in the Look Inside for the Fourth Estate ebook that its copyright page has the introduction copyrighted 2014 to Smith.

So I think what we should do is make two Fourth Estate ebook pubs, one in 2009 without the introduction, and a second in 2014 with the introduction, using Amazon's pub date plus the copyright on the introduction as justification for each of those two dates. Then the data would line up. We don't want a 2014 introduction in a 2009 publication.

Let me know what you think about that approach.

As for the varianting, your guess is as good as mine. I like unique titles as canonical/parent, so I'm inclined to go with your choice.

Thanks. --MartyD 10:37, 5 July 2020 (EDT)

Hi, thanks for picking up these submissions, I was wondering if/when a mod might dare to touch them ;-)
What you're suggesting seems fine, and I have absolutely no objections. Truth be told, I only submitted this pub to get rid of it from my TODOs, and I initially submitted it without the intro, until I saw it was already in the database, albeit in these different forms, so I cancelled the original submission and redid it with the intro. If I knew what I was letting myself in for, I might have feigned ignorance...) ErsatzCulture 11:15, 5 July 2020 (EDT)
Sorry, I haven't had time lately, but I will get to these eventually and take care of them. Thanks for the feedback. --MartyD 20:37, 8 July 2020 (EDT)
No worries, if they've been held by a mod I'm happy that they're going to get done (or rejected) at some point, and they aren't anything that I'm depending on to do other changes. It was more the case that they'd sat unlooked at for several days whilst newer changes - including some others from me - got accepted, which was a bit frustrating. Thanks for being the brave -- or foolish ;-) ? - one to tackle them! ErsatzCulture 03:22, 9 July 2020 (EDT)
The trouble with a submission that obviously shouldn't be accepted as-is is the amount of time required for the moderator to deal with it. This one, for example, took me a couple of hours by the time I got through with it. If one has only a few minutes to do moderating, problematic submissions are, well, a problem. :-) So moderators will skip those in favor of dealing with the straightforward ones that can be handled in the time they have available.
Anyway, I put all of the information I collected above into the title record. I removed the introduction and the cover from the 2009 edition. I created a record for the 2014 Fourth Estate paperback edition, for which I found info here. That gave me "on sale" date, price, and page count. I then made an ebook record for what the Look Inside is currently showing. I hope I have fixed everything up appropriately. Please review and augment/correct. Thanks. --MartyD 10:27, 12 July 2020 (EDT)
Hi, thanks for sorting this out, the pubs etc that are now in place are fine to my eyes.
Apologies for creating so much work for you; I'd have happily tried to dig out some of those details if I'd realized the edit as submitted wasn't considered acceptable. If current circumstances were more normal, I'd probably have tried to flick through a print copy in my local bookshop or library to see if I could glean more info. ErsatzCulture 16:19, 12 July 2020 (EDT)
Well, it was a bit of an onion peeling/loose thread situation. Clearly having a content entry dated 2014 in a publication dated 2009 couldn't be correct, so that was the flag that the submission shouldn't be accepted as-is. But what would be "correct" wasn't readily apparent, so it was also clear that some research would be needed to deal with the submission and provide useful feedback. That's enough for someone with only a little time to leave it for someone else with more time to handle. --MartyD 09:46, 14 July 2020 (EDT)

War of the Maps

Regrading your moderator note on this submission: Changing the publication author credit does not automatically change the title credit as well. In this case, you would have needed to also go to the parent title record and used the "Unmerge Titles" option to remove the changed publication from the record. That creates a new record with the correct credit which then needed to be merged with the existing variant. As it was a multiple step thing, I just went ahead and did it. But figured I'd give you the instructions in case you had a need in the future. Hopefully that made at least a little sense. -- JLaTondre (talk) 20:12, 22 July 2020 (EDT)

Thanks for the info - sounds like it'll definitely be worth me being more careful about doing the original submission with the correct author variant. 05:23, 23 July 2020 (EDT)

Templates in notes

When linking to another publisher, use the template and not the direct link. See here how I changed these. That way even if a merge operation messes up the ID, the link will work :) Annie 05:09, 29 July 2020 (EDT)

The Age of Witches

This edit had to be rejected. In changing the content record, you are changing the parent record (since that is the one in the pub) which is still needed. It would be changing it to a duplicate of the current variant record. Instead, updating this pub requires multiple edits. There are a couple of options, but the easiest (at least in my opinion) is:

  1. Edit the pub to change the pub author.
  2. Use the import contents option to import the variant.
  3. Use the remove titles option to remove the parent.

If you want me to do it, I can, but thought I'd leave the directions in case you want to run through it. Regarding your moderator comment on AddPubs, AddPubs will add to whatever title you are viewing. So if you are on the parent, it is going to use the parent title & author credit and if you are on the variant, the variant title & author credit. This is desired behavior because even if a parent doesn't currently have any pubs under it, it could in the future (example, Stephen King's books published under his Richard Bachman pseudonym where later re-published under his name). -- JLaTondre (talk) 18:49, 31 July 2020 (EDT)

Apologies for the bad submission; I was naively trying to avoid the follow-up steps alluded to [here], but from what you say, that's not possible.
Re. my mod comment, I appreciate it should be possible to add a pub using the parent author, but if say, there are multiple existing pubs attributed to the variant and none to the parent, then maybe something akin to the yellow warnings might be useful if an editor does try to add a pub to the parent? ErsatzCulture 13:14, 1 August 2020 (EDT)

Converting novels to chapbooks

Hello,

When converting a novel to a chapbook, the old novel record becomes the story, not the chapbook as you did here. The novel record carries things like:

  • Awards
  • Reviews
  • Tags(those can go on both technically but still...). Same for translators. :)
  • Series information - Series are not supported on the chapbook level.
  • Synopsis if any - Ditto.
  • The note on length of the text.

When you convert, you want these on the NOVELLA record, not on the CHAPBOOK one. So you always change the novel to a short story and add a chapbook manually to all records (and then they get merged as you cannot import the chapbook - one of the contents protections). Please note that this is also one of the ways to create language-less titles so after the merge, always make sure the record says "English" or whatever it is supposed to say :) Annie 21:25, 31 August 2020 (EDT)

PS: As this was going to add a lot of lines to all kinds of cleanup reports tonight and we would be better off backtracking and fixing the record anyway, I just fixed it (changed the old novel record to novella, then changed the story you added to a chapbook to fix that pub) and finished the conversion. The result is here. Now you know for next time. :)
If you want some practice, I have at least a few hundred juvenile novels that need converting - just let me know. They even have extra steps (setting the juvenile flag). :) Annie 21:59, 31 August 2020 (EDT)
PS: For a non-mod conversion, you have 3 batches of changes - you need to wait for a approval before the next step can be initiated (the same thing that stops you from importing a chapbook will stop you from doing the second before the type change is approved). Look at the Recent edits when you submit the first and just ping a moderator who seems to be working at the moment so they can unlock you to proceed - pretty much anyone would do it if it is a clear cut case:
  • Novel -> short story.
  • All publications conversions - add chapbooks, change pub type (to the old novels), omnibus -> collection if all the novels are getting converted) and so on. If you change omnibuses, you need to clean the Contents field on the Omnibus record as well (the 1-3 thing for example).
  • Merge the chapbooks and then as a 4th step (not always needed): set the language if not set and set any needed flags (juvenile, non-fiction and so on - they need to match the story) and add the translator if there is one. :)
That's it Annie 22:31, 31 August 2020 (EDT)
Thanks. I only spotted this one because Alastair Reynolds is one of the test cases I use on my own personal projects that use ISFDB data *and* I'd actually read this one, so I'm probably going to avoid doing anything like this in the future ;-)
Is the process for doing novel->novella (or vice versa?) conversions documented on the wiki? I did do a search for "novella", but it unsurprisingly threw up lots of unrelated pages, or ones that mentioned this sort of conversion, but no details. ErsatzCulture 05:37, 1 September 2020 (EDT)
Yes. As you are converting a book, it explains how to convert a novel pub to a chapbook pub and explains what goes where from the old record. It needs an update on when to wait because of some of the new checks but the process is there. I will update it in the morning. :) Annie 06:04, 1 September 2020 (EDT)
Thanks - I had a vague recollection of seeing that page, but the wiki search wasn't helpful. In retrospect, the help category page is probably more useful, so I'll have to remember to check that in similar situations in future. ErsatzCulture 08:00, 1 September 2020 (EDT)

Series names on titles

As per current practice, even if the title page shows the series and series number, we do not add them to the title. We won't stop someone from adding them when they PV if they so chose (although at least I will try to discourage them) but you are right, no variant needed for that :) Annie 13:15, 3 September 2020 (EDT)

Thanks - I thought so, but I was feeling too lazy to dig out the rules on the wiki to be 100% sure ;-)
Change of subject - I noticed there are quite a few October books already in the database. I've not really been keeping close attention on whether pubs are still getting delayed, but in theory you'd hope publishers have now adjusted to "the new normal". Not that I'm planning on changing my current practice of only submitting stuff that's due within the next 1 or 2 weeks, but are longer term upcoming releases (say 2 weeks to 2 monthas ahead) OK to submit again? ErsatzCulture 15:56, 3 September 2020 (EDT)
Not yet on the 2 months. Most of the October ones are long delayed that slipped through the cracks or had to be redated (some of them more than once) plus books for October 1 specifically (see here - there is a handful of ones after October 1. It just happens that October 1 is a Thu that pairs with the last Sep Tuesday -- so I had to get them together so that I get all dates squared away (Tue is USA major publishers day, Thu is UK so they are easier to be worked as a pair). But it being the 1st of the month brought some other things (juveniles and large prints). So keep to 4 weeks or so ahead of time -- the schedules are still messed up from what I am seeing so slowly gearing up. Anything expected in September is fair(~ish game); leave October alone for a bit longer - I am not adding the Fixer ones for it yet either (planning to add the first days next week). Annie 16:26, 3 September 2020 (EDT)

Doe Lea formats

Added a note here as we have that special format that may actually be valid for such a short book. The tp/ph separation for these very short books is based on the type of binding - glued/sewed perfect bound books will be tp; things bound with staples or other lighter ways (including some ways of sewn bindings) will be "ph". Not sure if you had seen these in the DB yet so figured I would stop by with a note :) Annie 20:04, 9 September 2020 (EDT)

Thanks - this one definitely fell in the gap between my contrary instincts to (a) try to document the M. John Harrison collection this was reprinted in as accurately as possible vs (b) not actually caring about short stories very much, and limited/signed editions even less ;-) (Same goes for that Visions magazine submission that you also accepted.) ErsatzCulture 05:53, 10 September 2020 (EDT)

Missing contents

About this pone. Incomplete is the only official way. Adding a placeholder ends up with the placeholder still being here in 10 years :)

You can also create your own tag and add it to the title record -- thus reminding yourself to get back to it. A moderator can mark the tag as private if you want (just ping me and I will) - which does not hide it from search but removes it from the title pages. I have this one for highly suspect dates so I know to go back to it. :) Annie 15:36, 13 September 2020 (EDT)

Thanks; I see there's also a report that highlights records with { {unknown} }, although there's no way to see the ones which are "mine". (Hopefully there are neither enough of "mine", or generally, that that should be a big issue...) ErsatzCulture 05:32, 14 September 2020 (EDT)
It is "incomplete", not "unknown" :) It is a team effort - the point of the template is to allow everyone who has time (or wishes to) to help. If you do not want to use a tag (especially because it is on the title level), you can also keep a list somewhere on your profile page. Most editors do... :) Annie 06:19, 14 September 2020 (EDT)

Hemingway Hoax dupe ISBN

Pre-empting mod follow-up: I was surprised to see that this submission was flagged as dupe ISBN; the existing entry is an unrelated title from the same publisher: http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?743430

The source for this ISBN is Kobo: https://www.kobo.com/gb/en/ebook/the-hemingway-hoax-3 . Kobo has a preview, and the copyright page also lists the same ISBN.

The Kobo product listing for Reboots: Diabolical Streak has a different ISBN to the one currently on record in ISFDB: https://www.kobo.com/gb/en/ebook/reboots-diabolical-streak-1 , and this is backed up by the preview for that pub - strongly implying the existing record is wrong. (Or perhaps there was some error on Amazon/etc when the data was first grabbed that has since been fixed externally.)

I'll do a bit more digging, and update here if/when I find anything more definitive, but as far as I can tell right now, my submission is correct, and the existing data in ISFDB is wrong. ErsatzCulture 06:01, 15 September 2020 (EDT)

Amazon (US and UK) previews confirm the Lackey book has the wrong ISBN in ISFDB, so I've submitted an edit to fix that. ErsatzCulture 06:28, 15 September 2020 (EDT)
Yeah, Amazon old mix-up on that one. Thanks for fixing it! Annie 15:25, 15 September 2020 (EDT)
Good thing you followed-up, because if you did I was going to mention that there's was a physical edition from the same publisher that seemed to be missing, and maybe you'd want to look at why Fixer didn't submit it at the same time. However, on closer examination, it seems this is even messier than I thought. Namely http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?41326 (novella) vs http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?847144 (novel). The Phoenix Pick physical pubs are linked to the novella title record, but I added the ebook to the novel. Maybe I added that to the wrong one, but I'm not sure, as the more I look, the more confused things seem:
- The Phoenix Pick website says the tp is a novella of 132 pages.
- However the [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Hemingway-Hoax-Nebula-Winning-Novella/dp/1612423485 Amazon UK preview of the tp shows contents going up to at least page 150. Still potentially in novella territory though?
- Both titles have a note "The book version of this novella was slightly expanded and published soon after the first appearance in IASFM.", but that seems a bit vaguely worded - is the "book version" still a novella, or did it expand enough to become a novel? Kobo wordcount is 37k FWIW, so presumably still well within novella-land?
- Also, I would naively assume from that, that all the non-magazine/anthology pubs are the same "slightly expanded" version, so maybe we don't need a separate novel and novella version, just one? (Especially given that my understanding is that slight changes aren't considered enough to have a new and/or variant title entry?)
Not sure how to fix this one, especially as I don't have access to any pubs of it - I dunno if any of the PVers might know more? ErsatzCulture 16:10, 15 September 2020 (EDT)
Fixer submits what it can get -- and when there are ISBN issues, it can submit only one per ISBN. This is not the firs mix up with this publisher and ISBNs so who knows what happened here and why Fixer missed it. Or it may have come sans author or publisher (or both) in which case it is somewhere in Q3 - will ask to see if we can find the ISBN in the tables. For the novel/novella - I will try to do some digging later today - chances are that we indeed have two separate titles but keeping them separate will become a challenge. The slight changes won't qualify is as a separate record indeed unless it jumps from novella to novel or are substantial enough to be a separate entity. I have no memories of this specific book (too many of them for me to remember them all) so will do some more digging. Annie 16:22, 15 September 2020 (EDT)

Ebooks preceding paper ones

Re: this: It happens occasionally but this spring and summer, it seemed to happen a bit more often - the ebook needed just a click; the paper one got delayed because the printer(s) were closed or not starting on new runs (for PODs) or the distribution channels were closed (including Amazon de-prioritizing books so you could not get a paper book in less than a week for a while even with Prime) or who knows what. In some cases, ebooks even came out weeks and months pre-expected dates (usually replacing another book from the publisher which got pushed back). Usually happened with the smaller publishers. :) It is a weird year. And some publishers get the ebook out on a certain date, the follow up with the paper (either by selling the paper exclusively on their site for a bit or by just having the ebook early out first). Welcome to the world of the non-major SF publishers! :) Annie 15:24, 15 September 2020 (EDT)

Changing author names

When you do changes like this one do not forget to change the author name of the publication as well - once created, they are independent. In cases like this (when there is only one publication), edit the publication and edit both at the same time :) Annie 01:38, 23 September 2020 (EDT)

OK - I've been wary of changing too much in a single edit and/or having multiple related edits pending, because I've screwed up stuff in the past that's then taken more effort to unpick than if I'd just gone slowly one step at a time. ErsatzCulture 06:15, 23 September 2020 (EDT)
Which is ok but these should be treated as a single multi step change - leaving publications and titles with different authors is never a good idea. :) Annie 07:24, 23 September 2020 (EDT)
In my defence, I had a tab left open on this title/pub/author on my tablet as a reminder to check it looked OK when I got up this morning. As it wasn't a logged in session, I was in blissful ignorance that all was OK until I logged in on a computer as me a couple of hours later... ErsatzCulture 08:18, 23 September 2020 (EDT)

All yours

This one. I haven't even heard before I saw your update (one of those days). Annie 19:14, 23 September 2020 (EDT)

Audible and the UK/US mess

Welcome to the fun that is Audible these days. See my changes in this one. These days a lot of the audible books carry two separate ASINs in the two stores (pretty much like some ebooks we talked about earlier) plus separate Audible ASINs for each Audible store that sells them. We probably should add the rest of the Audibles as external IDs (the one we have now is the US one - until a couple of years ago if the book was available, it had the same Audible ASIN everywhere...) but for now this is what we have. Just to make it funnier (not), some books will have matching ASINs on both sides (and even Audible ASINs in some cases). Always fun with Amazon and its companies. Annie 14:33, 25 September 2020 (EDT)

FWIW, this Scalzi and the Bujold earlier were side-effects of me looking into 2020 novellas for the first time this year - was just good/bad luck (delete as applicable) that it happened to throw up two omissions from here.
I don't normally pay any attention to the audio side of things, and absolutely nothing in your comment is making me inclined to consider changing that... My tools that report on missing pubs are nowadays showing a load of pseudo false positives for audio versions that aren't in the database. I assumed this was that they were missing altogether, but from what you're saying, it sounds like it could in many cases be that the US ASIN is known but the UK one isn't?
Thanks for tidying up the rough edges on that submission and doing the series addition. ErsatzCulture 16:20, 25 September 2020 (EDT)
Yep - the Audio ASINs on the UK side can be either a new one or one we have but only its US ASIN and most will be the different ones (the US one being in or not will depend on which author it is and if I had worked through them - the Audio ASINs had the same issue as the ebooks one we discussed over earlier today - we had been unable to sort them). I found that the hard way a few weeks ago when Fixer found a cache of ASINs that turned out to be those doubled ones so spent more than a day basically adding ASINs to existing records. If you want to send me a mail with the Audio ASINs I can see if I can spot a pattern.
Our audio coverage used to be very very low - it is just this year that we freed most of the audio formats and Fixer is learning to submit them. :) Annie 17:03, 25 September 2020 (EDT)

UK and Fixer

While we get some early books from the UK side, the majority of the UK books for October will come with the October download - which had not even started yet - or even post publication in the November download. Especially when there is a US version as well - the ones we see early are mostly books the US side also at least can see and they need to be tagged correctly. In this case, you may be able to see why Fixer may have skipped that one if we could not correlate with a download from the UK side yet. Chances are, we have it in the DB, it just had not been marked as an October book so it did not make it in yet. Alternatively, it may have been submitted earlier and may be waiting for me to get back to "rejected because it was too early" pile - with the the Amazon US dates for UK books being a disaster, that pile is not very small. :) Annie 16:26, 5 October 2020 (EDT)

Thanks - I don't mind adding it, but I added the mod note just in case it indicated something amiss. (Although do you see the mod notes for submissions that other mods accept?) And the experience with that Hodder book just now reinforces the idea that it's maybe less pain to try to keep the recent/imminent releases under control than trying to fix historical mess several months later. Of course, that's probably a lot easier if all I'm focussing on are UK releases - and even then, I'm not really looking at childrens/non-genre imprints/small presses/etc - and not the entirity of what Fixer sends through ErsatzCulture 16:35, 5 October 2020 (EDT)
UK coverage had always been problematic due to the lack of APIs - even when we have the ISBN, we may not have it in the correct month due to the way Amazon US sees it. This year had been especially challenging because Amazon US never changed the dates properly so it had been a bit of fun. Not :)
If I open the submission, yes I can see the notes :) As can anyone who goes to the approved submission. :) I usually won't open every submission though so chances are, I won't see them unless I approve. And yes - staying on top of things is easier than fixing messes - between Amazon removing older books and information getting muddled, older books are... challenging. There is a reason why Fixer works the way he does (and why I clean from the current backwards when I am done with new books - see where the zeroes are in the tables Fixer has). And depending on how busy I am, I don't always have time to track the UK books while adding the US ones - I would do it now and then but too many books, too little time turns out to be a problem sometimes. And I cannot ignore small presses and magazines and what's not - Fixer does indeed cover the space a lot more than just the major publishers.
And then there are cases like this one - thankfully Australia got the UK edition or there would have been another pair there. My head was hurting while untangling this one (the CA edition was showing as a US one almost everyone - took some digging to pinpoint it). And I still have some work to do on the Audio versions but needed a break. :) Annie 16:51, 5 October 2020 (EDT)

The Windsingers Series: The Complete 4-Book Collection

Hi,

About this one. Why do you credit Megan Lindholm here instead of Robin Hobb? And why HarperCollins (UK) and not the actual imprint credited in the book Harper Voyager (UK)? The title page is very clear here and there is nothing that shows that it had been updated since 2013. And it shows the covers with Lindholm and the title pages with Hobb inside for the omni and for at least the first novel so I would assume all 4 will be like that as well. In this case a note should be added to explain that the cover and the title page disagree. Am I missing something? Thanks! Annie 12:49, 6 October 2020 (EDT)

I usually do check the title page on any submissions that I suspect might be ambiguous or wrong e.g. all the ebooks listed as "Cornerstone Digital", that invariably have some Penguin imprint on the title page.
In this case, all three of Amazon, Kobo and Harper Collins concurred that this one is by Megan Lindholm (and the cover seemed to concur with that) and published by HC, not HV. As such, I took that as read.
Not that it's a defence for my dodgy submission, but it looks like at least one of the individual ebooks in this series has a similar author issue Megan Lindholm here (and on the Amazon listing) vs Robin Hobb on the title page. (That one at least has "HarperVoyager" consistently.)
Because I still have the form page in my browser history, I've resubmitted a correction, with additional notes. The original submission can be cancelled, unless you're already doing something with it - apols for the annoyance. ErsatzCulture 13:15, 6 October 2020 (EDT)
No annoyance at all and feel free to cancel. I checked because Hobbs tend to be... problematic that way. I keep finding versions that need fixing. :) Annie 13:24, 6 October 2020 (EDT)
OK, the bad submission you had on hold has been cancelled.
Related - I checked some of the Raymond E. Feist ebook omnibuses, some of which have been submitted and some not (yet), and those seem to be a mix of HC and HV, with one example of the former (according to the product listing) being HV when you actually check the preview - sigh, I'm going to have to revisit all those, aren't I? :-( I'd gotten the impression that the older backlist omnibuses retained their HC imprint, but on reflection it seems like maybe only Tolkien hasn't been moved over to HV, presumably because he's more prestigious and considered "proper" literature? ErsatzCulture 13:30, 6 October 2020 (EDT)
Don't you love the big publishing groups that keep moving books between imprints? :) Annie 13:44, 6 October 2020 (EDT)

Someone Like Me

I fixed that one because it was a special case - you probably would have figured it out at some point but it was easier to fix and come explain so I just did. A few notes:

  • You always have to change both the title and the publication record - both for authors, titles and dates changes. If there is only one publication the system will allow you to do it in one edit - and that would have been the wrong thing to do here - despite the system looking as if you can do it.
    • This was the only publication on the parent record - all the others were on the variant
    • As a result, the system would have allowed you to change the title - thus breaking the canonical author title record. :)
    • So the way to fix it was to change the publication only (as you did), then to unmerge from the title (it looks weird to unmerge a single publication but it happens for parents like that) and then to merge into the variant.

Hope this makes sense :) Annie 12:57, 6 October 2020 (EDT)

Well, it doesn't strike me as especially user-friendly, but maybe it's only me who makes screw ups like this?
Anyway, thanks for the info, it'll be useful if I make this error again, although hopefully that won't be the case. (Laughs hysterically....) ErsatzCulture 13:17, 6 October 2020 (EDT)
The DB is not simple and this is just an annoying side effect. :) It happens -- I do that all the time. Untangling can take some time but nothing is undoable :) Annie 13:28, 6 October 2020 (EDT)

UK books and US prices

When editing an obviously UK book (Gollancz for example) with a US price, don't hesitate to move the US price into the comments and the UK price into the price field. :) Annie 14:15, 8 October 2020 (EDT)

As I think you know, I usually do, but I couldn't be bothered for these, mainly due to how old they are, and that the prices they are now probably don't bear any relation to the original price.
I guess I'll have to be sure to do that switch in future to avoid receiving another telling off, eh? ;-) 14:21, 8 October 2020 (EDT)
*sigh* It was not a telling off - I am just trying to help by letting you know that it is ok to swap prices in such cases and not to be afraid to do it. The more of these tasks you are comfortable doing while working the UK books, the less I need to try to find and deal with (and the better records we have). I am really thankful for everything you are doing about the UK books so when I come with a reminder/advice, take that as an attempt to help :)
On a separate note, Fixer has some new and shiny features so I can add ebooks now (after them being sorted which is a lot of work so... slow progress but we are getting it done). But we have a huge backlog - so we are catching up in waves. If you are willing/interested, I can let you know when I am done with a month (both via Fixer and what I am going to add manually on the final review - I am adding any UK books I can see/anticipate when I can) so you can see what else you want to add to it as well. September 2020 will be the first month to be done/completed - some time next week probably. Annie 18:42, 9 October 2020 (EDT)
I was only joking about being "told off" - it's good to have "official" confirmation that switching the price values is indeed the right thing to do, as I know the first time I ever did that, I wasn't sure if I'd annoy someone for the temerity to suggest that a UK price might be the more correct value to have than a US one...
For those UK pubs that I only added the UK ASIN, but not the UK price, there was also a contributing factor that those changes hadn't come via my normal workflow - they'd been highlighted by my browser extension that highlights links with ASINs or ISBNs that aren't in the database, but I hadn't gone to the effort I normally do to get at least 2 and ideally 3 or 4 sources for a submission, and I definitely don't like changing a price based solely on what Amazon alone tells me.
On the subject of that browser extension, and maybe tying in with the backlog: one of the things it was never designed for, but has come up with interesting results for, is in highlighting unknown titles/pubs on "Pick of the (upcoming) month" lists. e.g. on this list, the following don't seem to be known (at least as of last week's database dump, I haven't actually checked the "live" data):
Some of these are possibly off-topic for ISFDB despite their inclusion on that list, but it seems that genuinely relevant titles/pubs from small presses or non-genre imprints do come up reasonably often. Assuming my code that parses the Fixer data files that Ahasuerus shared a couple of weeks ago is correct, none are/were known to Fixer.
As these are US pubs, I'm not personally interested in looking into these further right now - I don't have a scraper/parser for Indiebound, and I don't want to complicate my hacky code even further by mixing and matching Amazon UK and US data, but would lists of these omissions be of any use to you and/or Fixer? My guess is that there's plenty of stuff that Fixer has queued up, that you don't need me to add yet more to the list, but I thought I'd mention it...
Re. September, I *think* I submitted everything I know about, with the exception of some retailer signed editions (which don't seem worth submitting if there's nothing special about them other than the signature, and some of which seem to have "fake" ISBNs?) and maybe some export editions (not submitted 'cos I don't have sufficient and/or reliable-enough sources) but I'll have another look. I was wondering whether to submit this US title/pub, which doesn't appear to be in the database in either print or ebook formats, but maybe it's in the backlog? Physical version doesn't seem to be available from Amazon UK right now, even though it claims a pub date in the past, so maybe has been delayed, but ebook does seem to be purchasable/downloadable from both Amazon UK and Kobo GB right now. ErsatzCulture 08:58, 10 October 2020 (EDT)
Small presses titles do not get added to Amazon as early as big publishers' ones do and they tend to have crappy topic subjects added to them. So an October title is more likely to show up in the October or November download while for big publishers it will come as early as July or August if not earlier. There is a lot of variety based on the publisher and authors but... as a whole these above are small presses from October -- so they may show up in the download that is about to start this weekend (or on the next download if the subjects are still messed up). So I would not have expected to see these in the latest exports quite honestly. As for if they will make the cut for adding even if they are found this or next month... Fixer finds something like 30K-40K ASINs/ISBNs per month (probably more when we collect all of them together) so small presses/unknown authors may not always make it through sorting :) If you feel like adding them, be my guest. :)
The paper version is here. I won't know for a few more days if we have it or not - I have a few hundred September titles to add and I am trying to go by somewhat of a system so don't want to just ask for it. I will pull it in if it does not show up though. ;) Annie 09:24, 10 October 2020 (EDT)
Talking about UK and September 2020, see what showed up today. The hardcover will be available in December on the US side (which is why we had not gotten it so far I think). I guess this one is outside of your regular checks? :) Annie 21:38, 10 October 2020 (EDT)
Yeah, a combination of being a reprint kids' book (I think?) and Penguin not really having a Twitter account for their ISFDB-relevant content (other than Del Rey UK, which probably wouldn't have covered this one), so definitely unlikely to have been caught by me, I'm afraid. There's also the problem that Pratchett has a load of books, many with weird editions (illustrated, special editions, unusual formats, tie-ins etc) that means whilst I've got a few in my system that need to be added (I think a few are merely ebooks that need the ASIN adding), I've been a bit afraid to get sucked into them trying to make sense of the more obscure cases. ErsatzCulture 04:57, 11 October 2020 (EDT)
New collection actually. Probably all material is reprinted but the collection is new. :) Annie 16:24, 11 October 2020 (EDT)

Omnibuses

If they have the same contents, regardless of language, compiler, editor, author name or format, they get varianted. Unless they have the exact same title, author and language -- then we merge. If the language differs, we treat them as we treat anthologies and collections which have different contents -- we add notes. A lot of notes :) Annie 09:28, 20 October 2020 (EDT)

Thanks - I have a very vague recollection of seeing some separate omnibuses that could have been varianted in this way - maybe some of the bazillion permutations of The Witcher that have been put out recently? If I come across them again, I'll tidy them up in this way. ErsatzCulture 10:02, 20 October 2020 (EDT)
It is possible - there are always things that need varianting. :) Annie 10:34, 20 October 2020 (EDT)

Into Everywhere

Couple of small things:

  • A small typo here - 06 vs 04. :) I approved anyway and then updated again.
Not so much a typo as me not noticing the month was different. FWIW, the TP entry that the 2016-06-00 date came from appears to be wrong; Amazon and Booktopia both think it came out in April, same as the ebook. As it has 3 PVs (albeit only 2 still active), I'm disinclined to chase further though.
That may mean that it came in April but was dated as June inside of the book - in which case we record as June and add notes for the earlier date. The fun in paper publishing and dating. Annie 12:44, 21 October 2020 (EDT)
PS: Only one of the 3 is active actually - ping him to ask. Annie 12:45, 21 October 2020 (EDT)
  • When you are updating dates on a variant like here, check the parent date as well - it may also need adjustment. In this case, it did - as the parent was created only to move the record into the canonical author so I did that. That may not be needed if the parent is in another language OR if there are pubs under it that already pulled the date further back. :)

Thanks! Annie 12:07, 21 October 2020 (EDT)

The parent stuff seems to involve a lot of extra manual work - has there never been a push to try to automate some of the more mundane/non-ambiguous tasks, or at least flag up warnings to show that extra follow-up actions may be required? ErsatzCulture 12:34, 21 October 2020 (EDT)
How will the system know if you need a parent just for that "non-ambiguous task" or one under a different title (if the title already exists under an old name) or a different language or needs linking to another existing title if the canonical author name does not need to be changed? It is not that mundane if you think about translations, titles with multiple versions and other things like that. Not to mention that if that happens automatically and the editor used the wrong author form, untangling will take a lot longer. :) I'd rather do the manual variants than need to untangle automation firing up wrongly or based on wrong data.
A yellow warning is already there - see this -- that yellow warning is telling you that you are submitting a title under an alternative author form so that means you need to follow up and connect it later if it was a New and not Add/Clone. That's why we have this warning when you do that - when it is Add/Clone, the connection already exists so it is just a "just in case you did not mean that" but for "new" it is a reminder to connect later. :) Annie 12:44, 21 October 2020 (EDT)
I have 2 issues with that warning:
* It also appears if you do an AddPub on an existing variant author title. It's reasonable for that to be flagged up, but in these particular cases, there's no further manual action needed, and so I have just mentally filed those warnings away as the system being overly chatty - especially with mods silently doing the fixups and (IIRC) never posting anything on my talk page about it, leaving me to believe things were all handled automagically.
But it might - if you addPub to one of those omnibuses NOW, it will still need a variant even if it was an AddPub/ClonePub - because you started with a title that needed it. It is a yellow warning: aka - something MAY need a check. The system is trying to help you - over-complicating it to check for all variants will be a bit of an overkill IMO. It is pretty straight forward - if you are adding a new publication under a non-canonical name, always check to see if you need to do a variant once it is approved. :) Don't ignore yellow warnings - the system is never chatty - even if it does not always apply, they are there to remind to check on something :) Annie 13:21, 21 October 2020 (EDT)
PS: And most of those are not the mods on approval, it is the cleanup report and someone cleaning them after it finds them and before you wake up. The risks in international projects. :) Annie 13:23, 21 October 2020 (EDT)
* The warning doesn't appear if you add a publication to the parent author rather than the variant, even if all the existing pubs belong to the variant author, in which I'd strongly suspect the majority of cases you probably intended to add another pub for the variant. I know that I've made that mistake for both Paul (J.) McAuley and M. R./Mike Carey, and only noticed it by chance a long while afterward. There may well be cases where you really wanted to add a first pub for the parent author, but it would be nice to have a warning that maybe that's not the right thing.
Why would it? You are adding under the canonical author, this warning is for the case where you add under an alternative name. If you mean that a different kind of warning is needed, then submit a request and so on but let's not blame the "title under alternative name" warning for not being shown when you add under a canonical name - it is kinda not designed to. :) Annie 13:21, 21 October 2020 (EDT)
(Possibly the best thing to do in this particular case IMHO would be to make "Paul McAuley" the parent author and "Paul J. McAuley" the variant - I've not looked in depth, but I think the majority of his pubs are under the middle-initial-less name only. ErsatzCulture 13:00, 21 October 2020 (EDT)
Do some counts, if you think we had gotten to the point where it needs to be flipped, post in CS and it can be. It is a LOT of manual steps so someone will need to do all the work. I can add it to my list if we decide it is time. Annie 13:21, 21 October 2020 (EDT)

Import and art

When importing/cloning, you can exclude the art pieces :) Annie 12:00, 24 October 2020 (EDT)

Good point - irony is that I normally do exclude them, because I'm usually doing an ebook version of a physical pub, but because that one wasn't on Amazon UK, I was thinking more about the need to keep the "original" cover.
The irony is, on closer inspection, there are some formatting differences in that cover image, so I've since found a better cover image on Amazon UK, which means none of the original art contents (cover or internal) will remain - sigh.... ErsatzCulture 12:19, 24 October 2020 (EDT)
Formatting differences still means the same COVERART record :) Annie 12:23, 24 October 2020 (EDT)
Duh - I'm having a hard-of-thinking day... I was referring to this, but I also removed the COVERART because it struck me as unlikely that the same artist would do three completely different paintings for the same collection over a period of twenty years. ErsatzCulture 12:31, 24 October 2020 (EDT)
Not unheard of but not very likely indeed :) By the way - in terms of covers - any Amazon cover in the /P/ISBN10.jpg format (like that one used to), it always needs changing if we can verify what the cover is - these are ISBN based and Amazon links whatever is the latest under that ISBN. Annie 12:35, 24 October 2020 (EDT)

The authors

If you change the author credit on the publication level, the title also always needs changing - it may be a simple change or an unmerge (or remove/add - I prefer unmerge + merge/variant in this case). :) I will let you finish the one you just started - let me know if you need assistance. 16:30, 25 October 2020 (EDT)

Thanks - this is one of these things that I do often enough that I get really annoyed with myself about, but not often enough that I remember exactly what needs changing to fix it :-( ErsatzCulture 19:58, 25 October 2020 (EDT)
No worries - it will become second nature. Just keep in mind that the author in the publication and the title should be the same :) Annie 20:10, 25 October 2020 (EDT)

Non-numeric page numbers after |

A small thing: When adding | in front of numbers, if you see a non-numerical number, convert them to numbers (usually as |0.1 and so on). They stayed in place here because of how it usually works (not numbered pages bubble at the top) but technically it should be just numbers after | to ensure the order. I fixed it in this one. Annie 16:35, 27 October 2020 (EDT)

OK, noted. ErsatzCulture 16:42, 27 October 2020 (EDT)

Fixer - again

Fixer has no way to check if the book is available; it can only query the API. When I am approving, I am the one checking the details and in the case of this one, it was showing as available from Amazon UK (which had happened before with e-books). A day or two later, the date got changed. Welcome to Amazon's dates management - tracking them is a full time job - and why I stopped checking on day of "supposed" availability (which shows as published for ebooks). Annie 16:45, 27 October 2020 (EDT)

FWIW, I only spotted these because I've spent some time today writing a scraper today for the titanbooks.com website, and I had to add logic to handle the fact they have both US and UK details on the same page; that this pub had dates that didn't match what Fixer got from Amazon was a lucky (?) coincidence.
Whether picking up data from the publisher's site will flag up these sort of things more visibly remains to be seen. TBH I've not been paying them as much notice as other UK publishers due to not being able to scrape their site; this will give me less excuse in future.
(In the short term, I'm just going to be pulling the UK details from them, and ignoring the US date and price. They also don't seem to list ebooks on their site, so that's another gap in coverage.) ErsatzCulture 17:00, 27 October 2020 (EDT)
Titan Book is challenging because of how they load data in both Amazons - I had seen up to 4 changes in dates within a month, not synced between the two of them. I had been going through older records for them as well -- it is a mess. As soon as I am done with some of my current lists, I plan to hit Titan's record a bit more systematically - not sure how many years back I will need to go but we will see. :) Of course, I also accept that people make mistakes - and that is why there is a team around here. Annie 17:09, 27 October 2020 (EDT)

The Gateway ebooks

The ones with the yellow covers (with or without pictures) such as this one. Apparently Hachette is bringing these to the US with a different ASIN compared to the ASIN in UK -- so I am adding the US ASIN as I am approving -- or these will show up sooner or later from the sorting of Fixer and will need to be added anyway ;) Just heads up. Annie 15:19, 28 October 2020 (EDT)

OK, thanks - do you have any visibility on what proportion of titles might be available in the US? (Presumably there'll be some that they don't get US rights for.) Also, any idea if this is just for future releases, or if prior titles may also have multiple ASINs?
No idea - I am just adding them where I see them and plan to check all 2020 releases (at least). Will let you know when I figure how many actually do get their doubled ASIN... Annie 15:43, 28 October 2020 (EDT)
I don't mind doing a check for a second ASIN on Goodreads, and then following up with either a Google search to see if Amazon US/CA pages are found and/or a look on B&N to see if they list it, to get a US price and ideally ASIN if they exist - but it'd be good to have a vague idea of how likely anything is to turn up.
So far it seems that all the new releases that I checked had an US ASIN. :) So who knows. It will depend on permissions I suspect. Annie 15:43, 28 October 2020 (EDT)
FWIW, I'm not likely to submit these much before pub date, and quite possibly afterwards - for some reason it seems they upload future titles to their site and Amazon ahead of pub date, but not Kobo, and I like to have data from all three of those sites to reassure myself that pubs have genuinely come out. There are a bunch more of those Hugh Walters going into at least mid December, but which aren't listed on Kobo as yet. ErsatzCulture 15:34, 28 October 2020 (EDT)
As I said - this was just a heads up. Fixer cannot figure out that they are the same book so when it finds them, it sends it as a new book which I need to reject and re-edit the existing - so I am just running ahead of it and making sure the ASINs are already in the DB. Nothing to do about these if you do not have an easy way - it is literally a 3 click check for me from this side of the ocean. Annie 15:43, 28 October 2020 (EDT)

Doctor Who stories

Doctor Who stories go to Doctor Who (Short Fiction), not the main series :) And when a story is published in a place that does not mark it as "published" for us, we date based on first publication per our rules and add the online date in the notes. IF or when that initial publication becomes eligible to be added, we reset the date from there. Fixed it here. :) Annie 15:52, 29 October 2020 (EDT)

Fixed the rest of the stories as well :) Thanks for finding the sources on these! Annie 15:55, 29 October 2020 (EDT)
OK. I saw the "DW (short fiction)" subseries when I was filling out one of the author bios, but I was going out for a couple of hours, and quite frankly bored of looking at that anthology, so I was going to leave fixing them and adding notes to the remaining stories till tomorrow - IIRC only three of the stories are original. ErsatzCulture 18:14, 29 October 2020 (EDT)

Modern Fantasy: The Hundred Best Novels

Finished the work on this one. It is important that we have the correct title records. The result is here. :) Annie 11:17, 3 November 2020 (EST)

OK, I will consider myself suitably re-educated ;-) NB: I probably only noticed this one because Amazon had it listed as "Hundred", but Kobo and the publisher had it as "100"... ErsatzCulture 11:53, 3 November 2020 (EST)
Common problem with these titles - if there is a number or &/and, a check of the title page is more than needed :) Look Inside is your best friend when available (I checked before I renamed, unmerged and varianted) :) Annie 11:59, 3 November 2020 (EST)

Mission to Mercury

About the note here: nope, still different ASINs. The UK one is valid on Amazon US (as with all these Gateways) but with a "This title is not currently available for purchase" note instead of a price (I see that lately on both sides with those books being distributed from different companies). I added the US ASIN.

What do you see when you click on the Amazon US ASIN to Amazon.com link directly? Annie 19:01, 11 November 2020 (EST)

I only looked at a Google cached copy of the Amazon.com listing as of 29th October as I don't trust Amazon not to localize what they serve me - but just now I tried clicking directly on that page, and I get the UK ASIN.
Even if I click on the link to Amazon.com with the US ASIN (not logged in as an Amazon customer), it serves me a page showing the UK ASIN. (Although it confusingly has the Kindle price near the cover image as $4.99, but the "Pre-order Price" in the box on the right-hand side as $6.67 - dunno if that's some weird US sales tax/UK VAT thing???)
With Goodreads not knowing about any version of this pub, I'm not aware of any way I could have tracked that US ASIN down, short of faffing around with a US-based VPN? ErsatzCulture 19:15, 11 November 2020 (EST)
What happens if you are logged in? I think that part of what you are seeing is Amazon trying to help you find the correct site for you so you can register where you need to be; once you are logged in, it clears its act a bit. And the 6.67 is the UK price in dollars basically - so seems like Amazon made some type of a Frankenstein page... Annie 19:45, 11 November 2020 (EST)
Nah, even logged in I get the UK ASIN. (Although it shows me a different price again - "from $5.56" - and the buy link on the right has been removed, suggesting I go to amazon.co.uk or change my country in "Manage content and devices".) ErsatzCulture 05:39, 12 November 2020 (EST)
Always fun with sites which try to localize... it seems like the non-US ones are really prone to madness (which also explains some of the issues Chris was having around these books). Annie 15:43, 12 November 2020 (EST)

Stargods

Please check this one again. It seems to have both a wrong author (please pay attention to which author you are adding in cases like this :) ) and a non-working link in the Webpages. Annie 14:59, 16 November 2020 (EST)

I also untangled the two ebooks here. There was a wrong ISBN in the wrong place which caused a bit of confusion. The US and UK books are quite different. I fixed back the US one (which another moderator approved) and then cloned to create the UK one. Once you fix the UK tp, we will be all set with this one. Annie 15:12, 16 November 2020 (EST)
(Most of this was written before your second message - posting now and will look into the ISBN ebook stuff...)
Sorry about the author variant, and thanks for catching it - I've submitted edits to (hopefully) fix everything.
Re the broken link - about a month ago Harper Collins UK "upgraded" their site, which as well as requiring me to rework my scrapers to parse the (worse) markup, broke all their old URLs. (The URLs have also degraded - before they used the ISBN in the URL, which meant my browser extension could catch pubs which aren't known here, but now they've removed that...) Most of my recent submissions of their pubs, I've remembered to find the new URL, but evidently not in this case :-(
(As an aside, I also noticed that some time in the past few months, they've increased the price on a lot of their ebooks - the Feist omnibuses in particular - so I had to re-scrape a bunch of older pages, where I had them, too before submitting) ErsatzCulture 15:16, 16 November 2020 (EST)
No worries - that is why we have 2 sets of eyes ;) The ISBN mess was my fault - I grabbed the UK one by mistake when fixing the US e-book. When something like this happens, especially with the publishers who are not known to mix up UK/US edition, don't rule this out as a possible explanation - errors do happen.
BTW: While Add/Remove works, if one of them is not approved on time, it leaves the book in a really bad state. So I prefer unmerge/mrge instead for these - but either work. :)Annie 15:22, 16 November 2020 (EST)
Thanks for clarification re. US vs UK ISBN - I was about to add a reply asking you to clarify, but your edit beat mine :-)
Just to add even more confusion to this title, I see Harper Collins UK are now additionally listing the US pb with a UK pub date of Xmas Eve: [1]. Not quite sure why they're bothering to list that... ErsatzCulture 15:28, 16 November 2020 (EST)
Maybe they plan on importing it? The US side has it with Dec 1 as a date. And it is a US ISBN so... who knows. Harper can be... weird.Annie 15:33, 16 November 2020 (EST)

We, Robots

Hi! I've accepted your submission, but... disambiguation is done by adding only the publication's title in brackets, not some additional descriptive clarification (exception of course for mutliple identical titles in the same pub, which are being additionally disambiguated with a number in square brackets). In addition, titles that do not need any disambiguation should be left as-is. Having said that, if the pub's section titles are just that, titles without any contents (such as a short introductory essay), they do not belong in the Contents section of the publication and have to be removed (having no body in and of itself, they cannot be considered a work by this author - you won't find it in the author's bibliography). Instead, copy the description from the title notes into the pub notes field too for added clarification. Will you submit an update per above? Regards, MagicUnk 15:24, 23 November 2020 (EST)

Hi, I am working from the Kobo preview, which, geo-IP issues permitting, you can find here. The format goes as follows:
* Page with title of the section
* Blank page
* 4 page essay with no title or other identification, talking about the theme and some of the stories in that section
* The stories in that section
(NB: I'm assuming the later sections which aren't in the preview follow a similar pattern.)
There is a contents list visible in the preview a few pages earlier, but it doesn't explicitly reference these essays, just having "Section One/Two/etc" in the author column, and the section name in the second column where the story titles are shown i.e. these essays don't seem to be explicitly described as "Introduction"(s) anywhere in the text.
I'm more than happy to change the submitted data to something that's more ISFDB standards-compliant, but I'm not sure what that might be? "Introduction [2/3/etc]" would seem to be compliant with what you suggest, but - outside of the context of page numbering or notes - seem a bit unhelpful in terms of not acknowledging they refer to a particular section of this anthology, as opposed to the implication (to me at least) of it having multiple introductions at the start of the book?
These definitely seem to be essays in their own right, so presumably should be included in the contents if possible? ErsatzCulture 15:46, 23 November 2020 (EST)
EDIT: I did do a wiki search for "introduction" and "introductions", but nothing on the first page of results seemed relevant. ErsatzCulture 15:47, 23 November 2020 (EST)
From the info your're presenting above, I'd say that, indeed, the section titles can be considered essays in their own right. So, I'd do just that. Take the title from the title page (title pages take precedence over table of contents) and record them as an essay (no need to add disambiguation to the titles) + adding some additional explanation in the notes doesn't hurt either :) Regards, MagicUnk 17:01, 23 November 2020 (EST)
Thanks - there are edits in the queue to implement that which should hopefully pass muster... ErsatzCulture 18:55, 23 November 2020 (EST)

The Complete Krondor's Sons Collection

To answer your question in this Note to Moderator: Parents should always be the author's canonical language and the variant the other language. Order of appearance doesn't matter. Thanks. -- JLaTondre (talk) 14:11, 26 November 2020 (EST)

Thanks for confirmation - I was just about to submit the variant edit, but I see you beat me to it :-) ErsatzCulture 15:07, 26 November 2020 (EST)

Publisher merge request

Just an FYI. A publisher merge can be requested over at the Moderator noticeboard (and yes, I think RHCP should be merged, but I'm not entirely certain myself, not being familiar with these publisers). Regards, MagicUnk 14:33, 28 November 2020 (EST)

Thanks - I held off from doing a formal request, as Annie often has a contribution/opinion on this sort of publisher issue, but she seems to have been fairly quiet on ISFDB the past week or so, so I thought it best to wait until she "returned" - adding the note to the publisher record was just a "placeholder" in case I forgot to raise that, or if no consensus on doing a merge was reached. ErsatzCulture 12:00, 29 November 2020 (EST)
RHCP Digital and RHCP UK Digital are definitely the same publisher... And from all I am seeing RHCB Digital is also the same operation (based on ISBNs and as many Look insides as I could find...) - that last one needs pages numbers and prices cleanup though.
Or is this about another RHCP? :) Annie 19:55, 30 November 2020 (EST)
Hey there! Yeah, it's about "RHCP UK Digital", per this edit. As the mod note on that comment says, of the 2 pubs listed for that publisher, both books, one has a Puffin logo on the title page, the other says RHCP Digital, and both have Amazon listing them as "RHCP Digital", so it **seems** a fairly reasonable merge.
As it sounds like you don't have any objections, shall I post a note on the mod noticeboard page for greater visibility about merging these? (RHCB, I know nothing about; I think I stumbled across the dupe RHCP Digitals when looking to find the canonical ISFDB name when adding a Pratchett children's book.) ErsatzCulture 09:55, 1 December 2020 (EST)
Just post a request on the mod board and someone will merge them - these two are an obvious match. In the meantime I will look into the third one a bit more. Annie 11:43, 1 December 2020 (EST)

The Andromeda Breakthrough

Regarding this submission: Adding a sorting pipe to put something first will only work if all the other contents have page numbers (actual or only pipes). Unpaginated numbers always come first as can be seen in the result. Figured I'd explain and show it to you for future reference vs. just fixing. Thanks. -- JLaTondre (talk) 09:36, 6 December 2020 (EST)

Thanks - I was trying to indicate that I was aware of that by adding the TODO in the mod note to show there was more to come to get this all working properly. Anyway, there's now a submission in the queue for that, which - fingers crossed - should complete all the work for this pub. ErsatzCulture 09:40, 6 December 2020 (EST)
Sorry. Somehow I totally missed that in moderator note. You were very clear. My fault. -- JLaTondre (talk) 09:58, 6 December 2020 (EST)
No worries - I've made enough silly errors in submissions - including initially getting the wrong "John Elliot(t)" in this very title/pub - that I'd rather have "false positive" mod comments like this, than risk my genuine errors go unquestioned. Regards ErsatzCulture 11:15, 6 December 2020 (EST)

One Way

Hi. This one should be by S. J. Morden (not Simon Morden), I think, as we record what's on the title page - Could you double-check your ebook copy? Thanks! MagicUnk 15:40, 15 December 2020 (EST)

I have verified that the title page does indeed say "S. J. Morden", and submitted [2] an edit to fix the pub record. IIRC the title record in the contents will still need to be switched, which I'll do after the pub edit is accepted. ErsatzCulture 16:26, 15 December 2020 (EST)
Again? I have a deja vu :) Approved and even fixed the title for you :) Annie 18:58, 15 December 2020 (EST)

Saturn

It is an ebook - so the Look Inside UNLESS specifically showing the pub date and no later dates and not showing anything else to make you sure it is the initial version, is usually an updated file. Most ebooks will go through tens of revisions in 17 years - same ISBN, nothing to separate them. Looking at my kindle, I will have at least 5 books updated in a month, more in most - none of them changing anything but the file they are serving. So in cases like that, add the ISBN as it would have been at the date you are adding (so ISBN10 here) and if you want add a note that as of today, it shows the ISBN13. Annie 14:55, 19 December 2020 (EST)

OK, thanks. ErsatzCulture 15:26, 19 December 2020 (EST)

Mallix the Silent Stalker

Two more things to add to your TODO list here:

  • Add the story itself - I did it for you but you should not be submitting a chapbook without its story unless you are planning to import and then you tell the mods in the notes you are going to import
  • Mark the story as juvenile - the chapbook designations do not get inherited by the contents (because the contents may be a mix and match).
  • Adding the number of pages in the notes for these books is also a good idea. :)

Annie 14:59, 19 December 2020 (EST)

Sorry - I was about to add the story, then remembered I needed to tick the juvenile box (on the CHAPBOOK), so scrolled up, and when I scrolled down I forgot to add the story before hitting submit :-(
Re. page numbers - looks like I have a bug, as my tools that pull out the data from the scraped pages failed to extract the page count, yet I can see it's there in the HTML. I did notice that some of the button styling on Amazon UK changed a few days ago, so I'm guessing some bored developer/designer at Amazon might have changed some other part of the markup just to make my life difficult... ErsatzCulture 15:09, 19 December 2020 (EST)
No worries :) It happens -- I was just completing the list :)
It is not that important in the long run for ebooks but helps with determining at a fist glance if it is a chapbook or a proper novel. Annie 15:19, 19 December 2020 (EST)
I've now fixed the page count bug - someone at Amazon decided to change the text from "Print Length" to "Print length", and I was only checking for the former. (This now means that the various product details field labels on Amazon UK have inconsistent capitalization - as some of them like "Screen Reader" haven't changed - which now that I know it's there, will irritate me every time I see it....)
Annoyingly, looking at my archive of scraped pages, they changed that back in November, but I failed to notice at the time. ErsatzCulture 15:24, 19 December 2020 (EST)
Anti scraping-bot measures - they tweak small things which will be almost invisible for the end users but mess up bots. That's partially why Fixer is so bad on the UK side - we scrape pages there (no API) so... it needs repairs often. Welcome to Amazon ;) Annie 15:31, 19 December 2020 (EST)

(unindent) If you leave it under Adam Blade, someone will need to mop after you. Which I did this morning for these two (plus adding the juvenile flag on the short story which was not there when the series was added :)). If the real author is still unknown, make a parent with "unknown" - which then is easily changed to the actual author. Annie 08:52, 21 December 2020 (EST)

Hmmm, I'm sure I posted a follow-up comment (I think on your talk page, but maybe here) asking whether creating the "unknown" was just something you prefer to do, or if it's an "official" ISFDB policy - but that edit seems to have gotten lost, maybe I forgot to hit save? Oh well, will try to get these right next time.
Or I missed it. The rule is that a book under a pseudonym WILL show up on a report and someone will need to fix it - we cannot have books there. So... always clean these up :) Annie 09:24, 21 December 2020 (EST)
Is that a publicly accessible report? I just had a skim through the cleanup reports page, and couldn't see anything that struck me as obviously related? ErsatzCulture 09:42, 21 December 2020 (EST)
Alternate Names with Canonical Titles. I think it is available to all editors. However - it is not the report why we should be fixing it - it is because the data is designed not allow this to happen so anyone doing queries will need to account for an editor who does not follow the rules and/or decides to implement their own rules. That's why we have the report. So - if you submit under a pseudonym, make a parent :). Annie 10:34, 21 December 2020 (EST)
BTW, I just came across an incredibly confused bit of Titan Books scheduling on another pub - there'll be an edit coming up shortly if you're still processing the submission queue... ErsatzCulture 09:07, 21 December 2020 (EST)
Yeah, I saw it. The thing was clear 5 days ago and because it was Titan I went looking all over the place - everyone was showing 2021... I hate Titan. Annie 09:24, 21 December 2020 (EST)
Talking about delays, this was due in 2016 originally, Amazon still thinks it will maek it in January, the publisher says "nope" now... I am not taking bets if the now September date will hold. Annie 11:21, 21 December 2020 (EST)
Yeah, I was looking at the UK version of that earlier today, as it was showing up on my "titles in the next 30 days" report, due to having data scraped from Amazon UK back in March that had a 2021-01-14 pub date. I also have a page scraped from panmacmillan.com in April 2020 that claims it was published a month earlier... both are now showing a Sep 2021 release.
BTW, I saw that Fixer submitted a bunch of Gateway ebooks that are supposedly due to come out on 2020-12-31 example. I'm pretty dubious that they'll actually come out then - although that one at least is also listed on the publisher's site - but I guess checking on them will give me something to do next week... ErsatzCulture 11:57, 21 December 2020 (EST)
It is a Thu so chances are relatively high that there will be valid books and it is not a placeholder. When adding almost 2 months ahead of time, things can change - and as splitting UK and US books is not trivial, sometimes the UK ones may need a bit of an update later on. The three Moorcocks probably will need to be looked at - I have them marked on my "check closer to the date again" list. Gateway is on the same list as Titan for publishing schedules so I tend to revisit them when I have a chance. You do that for awhile, you learn which publishers need to get a check. :) Annie 12:25, 21 December 2020 (EST)

The First Sister

When changing pub author names, the associated title record has to be edited also. I changed The First Sister to match your pub changes. Thanks. -- JLaTondre (talk) 09:54, 28 December 2020 (EST)

Thanks - I wasn't sure if there'd be something else to do, so it was on my list to check after the initial edits were accepted.
However, it looks like we now have two titles for this here and here - I assume a merge is the right thing to do? ErsatzCulture 09:59, 28 December 2020 (EST)
Yup, done. Thanks for catching that. -- JLaTondre (talk) 10:15, 28 December 2020 (EST)
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