User talk:Fixer/Archive/2010

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Publisher Telos

Can you run Fixer and see if Telos[1] has any pubs for 2009 & 2010, we have nothing after 2008 and I believe they still are publishing. Thanks!Kraang 01:32, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

Unfortunately, Fixer is currently inactive while I am redoing the way he handles US/UK (and eventually Canadian/Australian) discrepancies. Once I am done, he will be better than ever and will gladly check Telos, but it will take a few weeks to get there. I will update Fixer's to-do list, thanks! Ahasuerus 09:44, 16 January 2010 (UTC)
According to Fixer, they don't seem to be doing much SF any more except for TV-related non-fiction. I have submitted all SF-flavored titles (including some borderline ones) for 2001-2010 and they are now in the submission queue. Unfortunately, Fixer doesn't know how to handle Amazon.ca yet, so the data came from Amazon.com and Amazon UK and all prices will need to be reviewed. Ahasuerus 03:21, 31 March 2010 (UTC)

non-UK editions from Amazon UK?

It looks to me like Fixer's latest run (early Feb, 2010) picked up a bunch of things from Amazon UK that are not UK editions. Don't know if there's anything that can be done about that, but I figured I'd mention it. --MartyD 12:17, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

Oh yes, that's the "US/UK" problem that I mentioned in the previous paragraph. The underlying issue is that Fixer currently has separate tables for Amazon US and Amazon UK. Since they have a great deal of overlap, Fixer doesn't always use the right table to create submissions. I need to create one combined table with US/UK/Canadian/Australian data for each ISBN and then teach Fixer how to determine which country's data to use for each ISBN (and when put the other countries' data in Moderator Notes). It's a bit tricky and I am still working on it. The last run was just a cleanup pass to flush out old records in Fixer's temporary queue before I start making changes. Ahasuerus 15:18, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

Astrosaurs

When you feel a little better, the Astrosaurs books by Steve Cole could do with a pass (from Amazon UK, rather than US). The astrosaurs.co.uk website is a bit too Flash-heavy for my tastes and I won't be tackling it manually. BLongley 22:06, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

Sorry, missed the note when it was originally posted. Sure, I will see what I can do tonight. Ahasuerus 19:29, 30 March 2010 (UTC)
...or rather tomorrow since the Telos mini-project above took more time that anticipated. Ahasuerus 03:22, 31 March 2010 (UTC)
No hurry, I can always find something else to work on. Too successfully really, I should be doing more non-ISFDB stuff. Even over Easter weekend - I need to get a new car and create a home office and things like that. BLongley 19:34, 31 March 2010 (UTC)
Telecommuting is an excellent idea -- you can then spend more time editing ISFDB! :) And Astrosaurs got pushed back again since earlier tonight I found a few dozen 2010 ISBNs (mostly from Gollancz) which needed to be rescued, dusted off and submitted. They were suspended in April 2009 since it was way too early to create submissions for 2010 at the time. They have been patiently waiting their turn for almost a year! (Although a few turned out to be vaporware, of course.) Ahasuerus 05:34, 1 April 2010 (UTC)
Submitted, although the number of dirty records seems unusually high. Ahasuerus 15:20, 18 April 2010 (UTC)

Fixer ??

Still trying to find a line in the sand for some of the Fixer submissions. Some of them are so bereft of data.... there's really nothing to use to decide in/out. Just because Amazon somehow put something in a category isn't enough. So, can I assume that Fixer, in future searches, would bring up the same publication if its ISBN is not in the DB? The reason I ask, is that maybe later there WOULD be more data to go on, and a better decision made. I'd feel a whole lot easier about rejecting a submission if I knew it could come back more fleshed out, but wholly against accepting something with nothing to go on. Especially with these 40-80 page children's books that could be nothing more than a fairy-tale treatment to get them to brush their teeth properly [don't laugh, there was a dragon story for just that purpose!!]. ~Bill, --Bluesman 17:11, 30 March 2010 (UTC)

I am in the process of improving Fixer, so things are rather fluid, but here is how it currently works:
  1. Fixer queries Amazon.com and Amazon UK (Amazon CA is under construction) for a particular subject, author and/or time period. There are various (often obscure and/or complex) Amazon-imposed limits on what you can query for and how many items are returned, so it's not as simple as it sounds.
  2. Amazon sends some data for the books that match the query back to Fixer. Note that the data that Amazon sends back is not always the same as the data displayed on Amazon Web pages, e.g. Fixer doesn't have access to cover artists.
  3. If the ISBN of the incoming book has been submitted to ISFDB in the past -- or previously suspended/rejected -- then the book is ignored. Otherwise Fixer adds the book's data to the main "queue".
  4. Once all books matching the query have been returned by Amazon (which takes anywhere from minutes to hours depending on the query), Fixer looks for any ISBNs that were returned by only one of the two Amazon stores and queries the other store. This happens frequently when a book is released first in one country and then the other.
  5. At this point all data for all eligible books is in the main queue. Typically, each ISBN will have two records, one from Amazon.com and one from Amazon UK.
  6. Next, Fixer tries to determine which store's data to use. For example, if Amazon.com says that the publisher is "Baen" and Amazon UK says that the publisher is "Unknown", then chances are that Fixer should use the US record to create the ISFDB submission. Ideally, this would be an automated process, but there are many cases when both records look plausible, e.g. the respective prices may be $17.99 and £11.99, and it requires manual intervention. Hopefully, the automated identification process will get better over time as Fixer learns which publishers are "US only" and which ones are "UK only". Any publishers that are active on both side of the Atlantic, e.g. Orbit, will still need to be handled manually.
  7. Next, Fixer decides whether the ISBN should be automatically suspended. This is currently done for any ISBNs starting with "2" or "3" (France and Germany), any audio, CD and MP3 books, and, lately, for any books published by the better known vanity publishers. We will get to all of them -- eventually -- but for now I didn't want the submission queue to grow unmanageably long.
  8. Next, a manual process is run. I review all books in the queue and decide whether it should be submitted, suspended or rejected. Unfortunately, there are quite a few cases where the logic is just too complex for Fixer to handle, e.g. TokyoPop publishes both manga and written versions of certain series and there is no easy way of teaching Fixer which one is which. Besides, Amazon's data is often quite dirty, which makes the number of potential permutations too high for a poor overworked robot to handle reliably.
  9. If I decide to submit the book, Fixer marks the ISBN as "submitted", builds the submission and sends it to ISFDB.
Hopefully, this clarifies the process. Also, please note that in the past Fixer worked with less human supervision, which made it easier for me to run, but also resulted in more bad submissions and more work for moderators. As Fixer gets better at making some of these decisions, it should become a faster and smoother process both for me and for the approving moderators.
Next:
  • Amazon CA -- in progress.
  • Australian sources -- some 20,000 records have been captured, but I still need to parse them before Fixer can create submissions.
  • Library catalogs -- a number of major catalogs have been captured, but the data will require a lot of massaging before it is ready to be submitted. Suffice it to say that there are well over a thousand meaningful fields in the most popular standard for catalog records. Although not all of them are required for our purposes, quite a few need to be included in Moderator Notes since they may facilitate the decision making process at approval time. (And then there are catalogs with non-standard formats or no formatting at all, but that's a whole different headache.)
Ahasuerus 20:46, 30 March 2010 (UTC)
I really appreciate the in-depth answer! Not that it will help deciding which bunny is an alien and which just dust! ;-) Thanks! ~Bill, --Bluesman 02:35, 31 March 2010 (UTC)

Multiple ghosts?

Currently have 12 Fixer submissions on hold, none of which seem to exist. Each title has been issued, some through the complete cycle of HC/TP/PB on both sides of the Atlantic, but there are no records on OCLC, BLIC, no copies for sale on either Amazon or AbeBooks. All HarperVoyager editions, all from Jan-Jun '09. Do the ephemeral "Export-Only" editions tend to disappear from any records? Or are these just vapourware? Each is by an author already in the DB. I don't know what else to check. ~Bill, --Bluesman 20:29, 22 April 2010 (UTC)

2009 was apparently a particularly bad year for canceled titles/editions aka "vaporware" (according to various authors complaining in the blogosphere.) Something to do with the recent economic unpleasantness, I am told, so I wouldn't be surprised if HarperVoyager canceled a whole batch of projected editions. Ahasuerus 21:10, 22 April 2010 (UTC)
Okay, then I will reject them. Thanks! ~Bill, --Bluesman 22:25, 22 April 2010 (UTC)

Catnip(publisher)

We may want to be careful with some of the spec fic descriptions from this company. This book[2] and one I deleted are listed as spec fic but a visit to their site would lead me to believe there not[3]. The one I deleted was clearly a western[4] "Badlands: Death in Drygulch".Kraang 02:43, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

The Case of the London Dragonfish is apparently not spec fic, but the rest of the author's output is mostly SF, so presumably Amazon and other booksellers lumped them together. After all, the title has the word "dragon" in it, right? :) Ahasuerus 03:36, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

Elements submission

I'd love to reject this submission and have the ISBN requeued for next month's run. Is there any way to do that? The publisher has no website, nor does the author, that I can find. I found one reference to the publisher as having incorporated in May, 2010. I find conflicting evidence that the books is either part 1 of the Elements series (and called The Secret of the Amulet) or part 1 of The Secret of the Amulet series (and called Elements). The former seems more likely to me, but is less of a match to the Amazon data.... I think the best would be to wait and see what happens with it. --MartyD 10:39, 16 July 2010 (UTC)

Fixer says that he doesn't mind if we put the submission on hold for a month or two. He is an easy going kid! Ahasuerus 12:34, 16 July 2010 (UTC)
Ah, so what do I do? Reject? Accept and then Delete? I don't want Fixer upset with me, nor do I want to undo any of his hard work.... --MartyD 18:09, 16 July 2010 (UTC)
I think keeping the submission on HOLD for a month or two should be a reasonable compromise. In another 30-60 days we should have enough data to decide what to do with the submission. Ahasuerus 01:04, 17 July 2010 (UTC)
How about putting rejected new publications with ISBNs into a table so that if they're resubmitted the moderator can get a warning that this one has been rejected before for Reason X? Might help with some of the pubs that we have to reject due to insufficient data, like the "Merlin 2010" Q3 and Q4 placeholders. It might also help with Pub Deletions, if that deletion removes the ISBN entirely (don't want to flag obvious duplicate clearups.) BLongley 21:07, 16 July 2010 (UTC)
Hm, that's an interesting idea. The submission queue is kept around for years, but the data is stored in XML format, so it's not easy to do lookups against it. Perhaps all we need to do is add another field for ISBNs (populated for NewPub submissions only) and index the table by that field... Ahasuerus 01:04, 17 July 2010 (UTC)

Vaporware detection

Just how much evidence that a book exists should we be demanding? For a forthcomming book, or one first issued within the past month, it is not unreasonable that there not yet be an OCLC or LOC record. If Amazon says "In stock" is that enough? if not, what sort of further evidence is wanted? -DES Talk 23:57, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

That's an excellent question, but, unfortunately, I don't think there is an all-encompassing answer. If Amazon says that an item is in stock, it probably exists, but then again, Amazon can be easily confused. I usually try a variety of searches, including OCLC, Bookwhere ($$$), www.addall.com (and used.addall.com), and just plain old Google search. Publisher-run sites can be very valuable, especially once you learn each publisher's quirks.
Perhaps we should start a discussion on the Community Portal and call it "Your Favorite Book Search Tips and Tricks". Ahasuerus 00:52, 4 August 2010 (UTC)
Personally, I put a bit more effort into finding the Author and/or publisher web-sites and checking details there. And yes, that does sometimes mean deleting a lot of advance notifications. "Angry Robot" comes to mind - that was tricky. BLongley 01:29, 4 August 2010 (UTC)
I was thinking of the three novels by K. Gerard Martin which i approved from fixer submissions. All had amazon in-stock listings, but no OCLC, no LOC, no B&N.com, really no other mention on the net. I was also thinking of Redemption Of A New World II which i looked at but didn't approve or reject, partly because I wasn't sure how to handle the sub titles, that is which ones to keep if I approved this. I wasn't able to find any indication besides Amazon's "In stock" lsiting that this exists either, though the author clearly does, and it seems to be a sequel to a book which clearly does exist.
In such cases, what is the minimum standard of evidence which a mod ought to see before approving a submission? -DES Talk 01:48, 4 August 2010 (UTC)
Note that both of these appear to be self-published or very small press published, so there is no useful publisher site. -DES Talk 01:50, 4 August 2010 (UTC)
I approved that one and would usually create a series, but with no image or other data to break down the title I decided to leave it as it is.Kraang 02:35, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

List of ISBNs from rejected Fixer submissions

Wasn't there talk about creating a list of rejected Fixer-submitted ISBNs? I'm thinking that such a list will give us a second chance at pubs that were announced, but not yet published. For example this submission is for a Nov. 2009 publication that Amazon states is "Temporarily Out of Stock". There is an OCLC record but no library has a copy of the pub. In cases like this, I don't believe we should accept the submission but we also shouldn't reject it with recording the ISBN somewhere for a later check. Thanks. (BTW, the cover image on the Amazon website for the submission I've placed on hold makes me believe the book is an anthology.) Mhhutchins 04:05, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

Well the software feature suggestion is two sections up from here, but I guess a manual workaround would be to have a dedicated Wiki section for the purpose, if it can be fed back to Fixer easily later. BLongley 17:07, 14 September 2010 (UTC)
Also, I think the example is a Graphic Novel, self-published for a College, with distribution being rather localised. BLongley 17:15, 14 September 2010 (UTC)
Thanks, that's enough for me to reject the submission. Mhhutchins 17:26, 14 September 2010 (UTC)
It's possible to handle it in the software, but it would be time consuming to implement. For now, let's have a section on Fixer's User page where we can list "provisionally rejected" ISBNs. As long as it's a simple list, I can easily feed it to Fixer every 6 months or so. Ahasuerus 19:17, 14 September 2010 (UTC)
I have created User:Fixer#Deferred Submissions for the above purpose. If the format is not optimal, please tell me what would be better. Is it ok to list here and reject any fixer submissions which might be acceptable, but I can't tell at this time? -DES Talk 22:10, 24 September 2010 (UTC)
Sure, that should work, thanks! Ahasuerus 22:40, 25 September 2010 (UTC)

Advance submisisons

A number of Fixer submissions or forthcoming pubs are begin rejected/deferred for insufficient data. Just how important is it to have these entered before pub date? I understand the value of forthcoming listings for pubs from major genre publishers, and those aren't usually so problematical. Would it make sense to not submit Fixer pubs for "minor" publishers until the month after publication? By that time, amazon listings may be updated with descriptions and other info, and there may be listings elsewhere, including OCLC, for some of these. -DES Talk 03:40, 4 October 2010 (UTC)

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