User:ErsatzCulture/Talk2023H1

Asimov - Foundation

Hi, re your PV here. Your entry is definitely the 10th printing, so remove the question mark. Also, the Amazon reference is to the 1st printing in 2016 - not to your much later 10th. To that end your date ought to be entered as 0000-00-00, which will show up in the Titles listing as date unknown. The first line of your Notes also then becomes redundant. Hope this helps. Kev

Replacing Amazon image. Kev. --BanjoKev (talk) 22:20, 18 January 2023 (EST)

Hi, sorry for ignoring you - I've been away from ISFDB. I've updated this pub per your comments. I'll try to go through your items below over the next day or so, but at first glance I don't think there's anything I have any issues with. Cheers ErsatzCulture (talk) 10:09, 9 March 2023 (EST)

Richard Morgan - Broken Angels

Hi, I have the 21st printing of this entry. A couple of points for you.

Looking at the Help page 2nd case here, would you agree that the page count should be 468?

My cover has the Netflix flash as well and I think you/we could use this cover instead of that Amazon one. It's the only one in the db that has the text at the top. It's exactly the same as ours except no flash :) Hope this helps, Kev. --BanjoKev (talk) 19:08, 8 January 2023 (EST)

Agreed re. page count, I've made an edit. I would scan my copy to have the "proper" cover image, except I left on the store price sticker, and 5 years later I suspect it won't be possible to remove without leaving a load of crud and residue, based on experience with other books bought at the same place :-( ErsatzCulture (talk) 16:41, 12 March 2023 (EDT)

I understand your predicament :) I find that a Stanley-knife blade used carefully and washing-up liquid usually does the trick. I'll upload an image I have for you. Please let me know if it's inappropriate. Kev. --BanjoKev (talk) 16:52, 12 March 2023 (EDT)

Image submitted. I've also added Orion as publisher (as per your data) while I was there. Kev. --BanjoKev (talk) 17:00, 12 March 2023 (EDT)

Herbert - Dune Messiah - coverart

Hi, replacing the Amazon image here. Kev. --BanjoKev (talk) 20:57, 17 January 2023 (EST)

Gibson - Burning Chrome + Count Zero

Hi, could you check yours here and here. Is the cover design by Steven Erkas or Sinem Erkas? Kev. --BanjoKev (talk) 23:00, 28 January 2023 (EST)

Had to dig out a magnifying glass to check - my dodgy eyesight is why I'm mostly on ebooks these days ;-) - but yep, you're right. I've edited them to fix. Thanks ErsatzCulture (talk) 16:46, 12 March 2023 (EDT)

UPDATE: Made the same fix for Mona Lisa Overdrive. I see the same "Steven" in Neuromancer, but my copy of that is currently buried in a storage unit, not sure when I might be able to dig that out to verify 100% that has the same error. Do you have a copy of that one by any chance? ErsatzCulture (talk) 16:51, 12 March 2023 (EDT)

Yes I do and it's also Sinem, so you can finish your work :) I have a couple of different printings of each of those titles but I haven't got round to editing them yet. Thanks for checking yours. Kev. --BanjoKev (talk) 20:37, 12 March 2023 (EDT)

Asimov - Second Foundation

Could you check your copy of this to see if "And by Grafton 1965" should be "And by Grafton 1964". Kev. --BanjoKev (talk) 23:01, 4 February 2023 (EST)

Just checked this and the Foundation's Edge a couple of items down, and you're right in both cases. Some sort of brain, eye and/or finger problems on my part - both now fixed. Thanks ErsatzCulture (talk) 16:59, 12 March 2023 (EDT)

Asimov - Foundation and Empire

I'm replacing the Amazon image here 2016 edition. Kev. --BanjoKev (talk) 20:25, 12 February 2023 (EST)

Asimov - Foundation's Edge

Hi, my copy of this has the copyright as "Copyright © Nightfall Inc. 1982". Could you check yours? Thanks, Kev. --BanjoKev (talk) 21:40, 12 February 2023 (EST)

I've submitted a replacement for the Amazon image. Kev. --BanjoKev (talk) 11:05, 14 February 2023 (EST)

Asimov - I, Robot

Hi, letting you know I'm replacing the Amazon image, adding OCLC# and the cover finish here. Kev. --BanjoKev (talk) 00:42, 15 February 2023 (EST)

Asimov - Robots and Empire

Hi, re this 2018 1st print. I'm replacing the Amazon image, adding novel pagination and changing the publisher as per the copyright page. Kev. --BanjoKev (talk) 09:40, 25 February 2023 (EST)

I'm doing the same with The Caves of Steel 2018 1st print. Kev. --BanjoKev (talk) 13:58, 25 February 2023 (EST)

And the same with The Naked Sun 2018 1st print. Kev. --BanjoKev (talk) 17:17, 25 February 2023 (EST)

And again with The Robots of Dawn 2018 1st print. Kev. --BanjoKev (talk) 19:13, 25 February 2023 (EST)

Finney - The Body Snatchers

Hi, letting you know I'm editing this 5th printing; adding publisher, cover finish and replacing the Amazon image. Kev. --BanjoKev (talk) 20:48, 29 March 2023 (EDT)

No worries. BTW, feel free to make any "mundane" edits like this to PVs without having to notify me here. ErsatzCulture (talk) 08:08, 30 March 2023 (EDT)

Thanks for that. Get on to me if you find anything that doesn't fit with what you've got :) Kev. --BanjoKev (talk) 08:15, 30 March 2023 (EDT)

The Midas Rain

This one got a facelift (if you see another £0.81 on a chapbook, ping me to see what US shows so we can sort it out). Thanks for adding it! :) Annie (talk) 14:16, 17 April 2023 (EDT)

There's this one from the same author/publisher from last year - although I see I went to the extent of checking the US details and adding them to the note, which I didn't do for this newer pub. (I bought that earlier one, but as I still haven't read it, and it's stayed at the same price, I'd didn't feel any urgent need to buy this newer release.) ErsatzCulture (talk) 16:43, 17 April 2023 (EDT)

It was $0.99 and I tend to like him so decided to just get it - then I came in to add it because I know I had not added it before and saw you beat me to it. :) I saw a couple with weird prices in the publisher list - so it is on my things to look at later - in the middle of a bit of Bulgarian publications fun - too many open tabs in one of the browsers so I can work on these so I am trying not to do much more outside of it. :) Annie (talk) 17:07, 17 April 2023 (EDT)

A. K. Mulford

I think we discussed this one - as we only follow the exceptions when the author really really does not use dots and she obviously does, I just regularize the name while adding the 4th volume. The note explains that appearance in earlier books if someone is interested. Annie (talk) 13:52, 5 May 2023 (EDT)

Thanks - I had a guilty feeling about raising this and never properly resolving it, and her UK pubs keep getting highlighted in my tools as not being entered, as I'd been putting them off in the hope this would magically resolve itself :-)

Well, it did. Fixer found the book, I decided it is time to get the name sorted out while adding it. :) Annie (talk) 16:40, 5 May 2023 (EDT)

K Y Craft

https://web.archive.org/web/20230000000000*/https://borsini-burr.com/artists/kinuko-y-craft/; Archived pages may have info about that book you just worked on. Photo of Craft and her dog on the original page isn't the same as the photo of her and her dog on the current site; weird. --Username (talk) 10:21, 8 May 2023 (EDT)

Thanks - I should have thought of doing that myself, but TBH I'd had enough of the wild goose chase on this book, especially as I was only looking at it to fill in the last category of the Locus Award finalists.

I tried at least half-a-dozen different archive.org captures of that page from 2022 and 2023, but all I can see is some generic biographical info. Some of them do have a link to what seems like a page specifically to that page, but that in turn just seems to be a video which I've been unable to get to play, so I'm guessing it wasn't captured. However, that did make me think to have a look on YouTube, in case the video was there. There are a couple of vids, one of which has uncovered a somewhat barebones Amazon.com listing, which seems to have a legit ISBN, so that's something. (Googling that ISBN doesn't throw up anything else that looks particularly useful though.) ErsatzCulture (talk) 16:23, 8 May 2023 (EDT)

Finney - The Body Snatchers

Hello, I'm uploading a better cover image to our PV'd 5th printing. I'll post to the Moderator page to have the old one deleted. Kev. --BanjoKev (talk) 11:12, 22 May 2023 (EDT)

No worries. ErsatzCulture (talk) 11:39, 22 May 2023 (EDT)

Watch out for the spaces

K.A. Tucker should be K. A. Tucker really OR you need to add a note explaining why the name does not follow our standard for abbreviated names. I fixed it on the author level. Annie (talk) 12:45, 2 June 2023 (EDT)

Nnnnnnggggghhhhh - this is actually one that I'd noticed, and added a rewrite rule to in my local config file of ~600 names that publishers/sites get wrong. However, the pages my tools generate, which I use to copypaste into the AddPub page still show me the original text from the sites, so that I can overrule or decide which of contradictory info to go with. This is mostly a problem with publisher, pub date etc, that only crop up on AddPubs, and which I'm expecting, but as this particular case was a NewPub, I wasn't on my guard as much as I should be for the author field, and copypasted in the uncorrected name. I'll tweak my tools so that such discrepancies are more obvious visually, which will hopefully avoid a repeat.

Thanks for catching this one - did you see it in a cleanup report? I don't see any relevant reports currently, but maybe there's one that is kept under tight control and doesn't currently have anything to report?

BTW, I've noticed a few similar NewPubs lately, and in a couple of cases it looked like there were US pubs that Fixer presumably hasn't pushed through as yet. This one comes to mind, which is a somewhat high-profile release ;-) I don't recall the others off the top of my head, but LMK if you want a nudge if I come across more in the future. ErsatzCulture (talk) 15:29, 2 June 2023 (EDT)

Yep, we have a report for authors with dots in the names that do not follow the usual rules. We can ignore if needed but 99% of them are like this one. It may be moderator only as only moderators can change canonical names. They get caught sooner or later but I was just letting you know in case you can do something like what you just did (aka get the tools to help you).

I've added all May, June and July paper books (minus a few May books in the queue) which we know about and which made Q1 so either it was not pushed in properly or did not make Q1. If you see high profile ones being missed, ping me or Ahasuerus (I will ping him if you prefer to ping me just to keep it simple) and he can see if he needs to adjust the sorting for this author. As you know, we get thousands of books per month (many many thousands) so getting the sorting right sometimes needs a nudge. I will track down this one and check what Fixer knows about the US edition. Annie (talk) 15:49, 2 June 2023 (EDT)

Just had a quick search through my edit history, I think most of these are understandable Fixer "misses", but just for reference:

* Of Flesh & Bone trilogy is a bit of a mess, where I've added the first 2 volumes that have UK tradpubs, but only the third has US self(?)pubs. Not a surprise that Fixer missed those US pubs though.

* Kimberly Lemming romcoms (?) are also a bit messy, although it looks like the UK is getting them a couple of months ahead of the US, so it's likely that Fixer will get there eventually. I think some (all?) of these were originally selfpubs - 9798542143460/B09B359Y4M seems to be a 2021 pub of the first one, and there's also a chapbook that doesn't seem to be getting a trad release. But again, I don't expect selfpubs to come through reliably from Fixer. I'll try to get some sort of entries for the selfpubs once I've got the UK tradpubs cleaned up.

* Curse of Saints: I see that it's a fair bit later in the US and you processed the Fixer submission for it a few days ago. In a similar vein, Grave Expectations seems to be a September US release

* Our Hideous Progeny has US pubs, but it's unclear if it's truly speculative, which I've called out in the title note. GR link for reference; "Fantasy" is one of the most commonly used shelves/tags, but I couldn't really get a handle from the user reviews what fantastical elements there might be.

* It looks like Allan Kaster/Infinivox anthologies aren't being picked up by Fixer? I just added this year's Hard SF one, and it looks like MLB did last year's and the year before.

I think around half of the above are "TikTok books" :-( ErsatzCulture (talk) 16:51, 2 June 2023 (EDT)

We found the first (Fourth Wing )- it came to Fixer in March from an unknown publisher (imprint) and unknown author so got sent to a lower queue. Added now (and the publisher is now known). I will check the rest over the next days.Annie (talk) 17:12, 2 June 2023 (EDT)

[dedent] And I just noticed that the K. A. Tucker book has ampersand not " and " in the title - Amazon UK unusually has previews of both ebook and tp, and confirms that is what's on the title page. All the listings had " and "; I only thought to look into this when I noticed that the second book has listings with both forms. ErsatzCulture (talk) 16:31, 3 June 2023 (EDT)

&/and are the bane of pre-release publications. Almost always else is foundable/clearable but these need a title page and that is not always available so early on... Annie (talk) 11:15, 5 June 2023 (EDT)

The Accidental Medium

When you have a chance, can you see if you have any more information about this one. The look inside confirms the publisher to be Macmillan (which we record as Macmillan UK) and the copyright page talks about an earlier 2017 Accent edition (of which this book is revised), Goodreads has more and puts the Accent one in 2016 - which is where the copyright is as well. I will tackle that mess later if you are not interested but figured as it seems to be UK based, you may have a better chance at having already collected info... Thanks! Annie (talk) 20:10, 27 June 2023 (EDT)

Afraid this one (and the sequel that came out earlier this year) completely passed me by. Waterstones has the earlier pub in 2017. Blackwell's concurs, but has the selfpub as 2015, which is a few years after what GR says... EDIT: publisher site also has 2017, but that's probably just reflecting they're all the same source? Looking at the different covers, I'm wondering if GR has the selfpub conflated with the Accent release, or maybe Accent "took over" the selfpub ebook, and later issued a physical version with a new cover?

I'll have a look through her Twitter later to see if there's anything in the past she's posted to clarify things. ErsatzCulture (talk) 12:46, 28 June 2023 (EDT)

Have fun. I saw it is a mess, added all the notes I had above and dropped it for you after adding what Fixer found - usually it will go on my "to follow up" pile and eventually I'd get to it. Thanks for looking into it. :) Annie (talk) 13:47, 28 June 2023 (EDT)

"Brookes said: “Tracy was pitched to me by one of my other authors who was already a big fan of this series which had been self-published on Kindle with the first book also having a limited run with Accent Press." Doesn't help with the date details, but at least confirms some of the basics.

Also got sidetracked trying to work out what the deal is with Accent Press vs Headline Accent. Seems like they were taken over around 2020, but the only news story (from 2019) I could find explicitly says it was a backroom only relationship. Oh well, it's in the notes if someone wants to look at it again in the future... ErsatzCulture (talk) 14:04, 28 June 2023 (EDT)

See, this is exactly why when I see something thorny like that while working the Forthcoming ranges I tend to drop it into my "to followup" list -- otherwise I end up adding a book in Azerbaijani 3 days later and still untangling that one mess. Which is fun... but then everything else goes behind schedule. :) Annie (talk) 14:16, 28 June 2023 (EDT)

Mark Knowles

One more that slipped under your radar: Mark Knowles. The books appear to be historical at first glance but they are really mythology retelling/expansion (complete with Sirens and whatsnot) so they are ours. Just heads up if you have anything waiting as it is a publisher we do know. :) Annie (talk) 20:37, 28 June 2023 (EDT)

Thanks, I've scraped data for all 3 in that series (one from last year, one due later this). Dunno about you, but I've come across any number of these retellings (e.g.) and had to work out from the blurb whether they have any speculative content or not. I find the Greek ones especially annoying, as I've never had anything resembling a so-called "classical" education, and zero interest in that sort of thing ;-)

BTW, in return, have you done Mira/Harlequin for June/July/Aug? This one is the first in a subseries trilogy that IIRC is coming out monthly? Per the Fixer download from the start of the month (I only d/l them monthly) it wasn't known then, but it's on a Locus monthly list. ErsatzCulture (talk) 11:24, 30 June 2023 (EDT)

EDIT: I wonder if there are 2 different Mark Knowles of interest: this doesn't look like the work of the same author as Greek myth retellings - will try to dig out details on both of them... ErsatzCulture (talk) 11:35, 30 June 2023 (EDT)

I don't go by publisher :) The third in the series showed up in August and is in the DB now - it is possible that the June one is already in the queues and the July one will show up on the next download. It is also possible that an earlier blurb did not make the Krewe connection (or the speculative angle) clear so I may have sent it off as non genre -- in which case it will come on a different format and I will sort it out. It happens with the more thriller sounding one on first passes when the blurb is... weird. :)

Possible but some authors do cross genres - possible also that we have more than one Knowles.

Myths retelling of all kinds, gothic, magical realism and some of the ghost stories and light horror are often hard to figure out - they can be ours or not. I spend probably half of my time working Fixer on untangling these types. Annie (talk) 11:44, 30 June 2023 (EDT)

PS: Got the full trilogy - the early blurbs were all but useless (which is why reject with messages and look through my "not sf?" rejections occasionally and fish out books). :) Annie (talk) 12:05, 30 June 2023 (EDT)