User talk:Glenn.Skinner

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Welcome!

Hello, Glenn.Skinner, and welcome to the ISFDB Wiki! I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are some pages that you might find helpful:

Note: Image uploading isn't entirely automated. You're uploading the files to the wiki which will then have to be linked to the database by editing the publication record.

Please be careful in editing publications that have been primary verified by other editors. See Help:How to verify data#Making changes to verified pubs. But if you have a copy of an unverified publication, verifying it can be quite helpful. See Help:How to verify data for detailed information.

I hope you enjoy editing here! Please sign your name on talk pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will insert your name and the date. If you need help, check out the community portal, or ask me on my talk page. Again, welcome! --MartyD 03:31, 11 July 2014 (UTC)

The Heir of Khored

Hi, and welcome. You did a very nice job with your first submission. The only thing that needed to be different was the cover image link. We don't allow links to images hosted on sites that have not granted us permission to do so (displaying the image places a load on their web servers). The Penguin Group site is not among those, so I switched the cover image link to point to Amazon, where we do have permission. The final result is here.

To answer your question about placing it in the proper title series, after the above submission was accepted, you would have needed to go to the title record and edited that to supply the series information. Someone has already gone and done that for you, though, so it is now appearing in the series.

One minor comment: Your note quotes the statement of printing in the book as giving the date "June, 2014", but you provide a date that includes a day (2014-06-03). Since the book does not provide the day, you should either omit the day in the date (using "00" instead of "03") or you should state in the notes where you got the publication date (e.g., "Publication day from publisher's website", or whatever is appropriate). The source for anything not from the book itself should be cited in the notes.

I hope that's helpful. Please see the links above for more information, and ask if you have questions. Thanks, and thank you for contributing. --MartyD 03:43, 11 July 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for pointing out the Amazon vs. Penguin image link distinction. Speaking of image links, when might it be preferable to scan the cover of one's copy rather than supply a link? If one can't find a link from a permitted site to use, Is that the way to go?
The June 3rd date did indeed come from the publisher's web site. I'll know to point that out in the notes next time.
Finally, I've noted very few references to e-book editions when browsing through the database. For example, Jane S. Fancher has several books available only in that format (published through Closed Circle Publications) that aren't listed. Are there issues with e-books that preclude their listing?
-- Glenn.Skinner 23:40, 11 July 2014 (UTC)
For images, it's sort of up to you. Some people dutifully scan every cover they have (if ISFDB doesn't already have a scan, or in rare cases if the existing ISFDB scan is poor quality or incomplete -- e.g., someone might replace a front-only scan with a full cover scan when there's wrap-around art). Some people scan only the covers where there's no good cover on Amazon, et al. A benefit of having the scan uploaded is that the cover link will not go away, which sometimes happens with links to other sites. If you do choose to upload scans, see Help:How to upload images to the ISFDB wiki. Dimensions, file size, and licensing are very important details to follow.
E-books are definitely acceptable, and we have quite a few. Details about in/out can be found at ISFDB:Policy#Rules of Acquisition. Feel free to add anything falling within those guidelines that you know is missing. If you are unsure about whether something should be "in" or "out", you can ask the community at large at ISFDB:Community Portal. --MartyD 11:46, 12 July 2014 (UTC)

No True Way: All-New Tales of Valdemar

Thank you very much for adding the contents for this anthology! As you weren't sure about it, I have changed the dates of the individual items to match the publication date for the book (no big problem since they were editable within the publication editor for that's their only publication so far). Thanks again for contributing. Stonecreek 06:02, 28 February 2015 (UTC)

After submitting my change adding contents, I noticed a discrepancy for one of the authors: Kristen Schwengel. I’m reasonably confident I entered the author name as “Kristin Schwengel” (note the difference in spelling in the first name), but somehow it ended up with the other spelling.

I got curious and looked up both variations of the author. I discovered only one other story listing the “Kristen" variant as author: “healing in White”, appearing in the “Finding the Was And other Tales of Valdemar” anthology. I have a copy of that anthology and checks for mentions of that author in it. The table of contents lists the “Kristen” variant. However the story proper, the page headers for the story, and the “About the Authors” section at the end of the anthology all use the “Kristin” variant. So I’m reasonably confident that “Kristen” is a typo that has propagated into an author entry in the database that ought to be merged with the entry for “Kristin Schwengel”.

How should I proceed? I think I have adequate permission to correct the entry for “Spun Magic” (the story I added to the contents of “No True Way”, but the help pages say that a moderator needs to do the author merge. (During the merge process, “Spun Magic” also ought to me moved under the “Mercedes lackey’s Valdemar” heading rather than standing alone under the “Shortfiction” heading, as it does now.) Glenn.Skinner 21:33, 28 February 2015 (UTC)

Empire & Ecolitan

I accepted the submission to add this record but changed the publication date to "0000" which is displayed as "unknown". We don't use the copyright date as the publication date, so we use "unknown" for publications which have no stated publication date, unless we have a reliable secondary source for the date. It's also not likely that this was published in 2001 since ISBN-13s didn't exist then. BTW, can you confirm this ISBN? It comes up as a different title on both Amazon and on WorldCat. Thanks for the checking. Mhhutchins|talk 04:24, 10 April 2016 (UTC)

I didn’t think the date was 2001, either. I edit pages so infrequently that I forgot about using 0000 as an unknown date. Thanks for fixing that part. The ISBN is as I gave it. I’ve downloaded the copyright page.: (Perhaps doing so was a faux pas. If so, feel free to remove it.)
By "confirm", I didn't mean prove, just confirm (by yes or no) that the data you've provided matches the data in the publication. (I'll delete the file, and place a note on the record about the ISBN being assigned to another publication.) Thanks for responding. Mhhutchins|talk 01:42, 11 April 2016 (UTC)

The Way into Chaos

Hello Glenn, I've changed this, the title from In to in--Wolfram.winkler 15:58, 22 July 2016 (UTC)

The Twisted Path

Hello, I've approved your submission but had to make some changes to conform to our standards:

  • changed type from NOVEL to CHAPBOOK (as the text is a novella) and a CHAPBOOK is a one-story-of-less-than-novel-length-text-collection (I'm quite creative today) and added corresponding SHORTFICTION record.
  • regilarised publisher to this already existing one that has books by Connolly.
  • transfered data about titles series at shortfiction level (due to the first item of this list).
  • deleted number of pages (it's meaningless for an ebook).
  • transfered some data that was in the "Notes to moderator" field (that would disappear after submission) into the publicatio Note field (here they will stay).
  • uploaded a scan as we're not allowed to deeplink tt the specified website.

The result is here. Thanks for contributing and don't worry, entering CHAPBOOK is always complicated the first times. Hauck 06:01, 25 February 2018 (EST)

I was looking for some alternative to NOVEL to use, but it didn't occur to me that CHAPBOOK was appropriate.
Sorry about the cover image link. I could equally well have used an Amazon URL for it, but figured that if Amazon was ok, Kobo would be as well.
As for the Twenty Palaces series itself, the novel Twenty Palaces is a later-writen prequel to the novels currently numbered 1-3 in the series's listing. Is there a convention for handling prequels (such as giving them the index number 0)? Glenn.Skinner 17:49, 25 February 2018 (EST)
IIRC you can even put decimal values in the field but 0 is acceptable. Hauck 03:19, 26 February 2018 (EST)
Got it. Glenn.Skinner 22:54, 5 March 2018 (EST)

The World of the Queen's Thief Collection

I approved your addition. I moved the comment about the conversation into the pub notes so it's clear to future reviewers. I also added the date and ISBN from kobo.com and the ASIN from Amazon. Thanks. -- JLaTondre (talk) 19:43, 14 June 2020 (EDT)

The World of the Queen's Thief Collection [re]submission

Hi. I have this submission on hold. It looks like a duplicate of this record, which I assume came from the submission JLaTondre was commenting on immediately above. Can you explain what you were trying to do with this submission so I can point you in the right direction? Thanks. --MartyD 07:32, 28 June 2020 (EDT)

I wanted to add cover art for the the ebook edition, with no other changes to the entry for the collection as a whole. (I've also made separate submissions the two short fiction entries in the collection to add their lengths [short story], but I doubt that those changes are at issue here.) I thought that all I did was add the cover art URL and don't know how a duplicate submission managed to creep in. Glenn.Skinner 13:44, 28 June 2020 (EDT)
I can't quite tell what happened. We do have problems from time to time with browsers multiply-submitting forms in a way that's invisible to the person doing the submitting. The submission does not have a cover image in it, only data, and the existing record does have a cover image and what seems to be all of the data. So I will just reject that other submission as a duplicate. We can recover it if need be. Thanks. --MartyD 14:52, 29 June 2020 (EDT)

The Order of the Air Omnibus

Hello Glenn. I've accepted but had to make a couple of changes. Do make sure you take these at heart ;)

  • Publisher: generally speaking, for imprints, we do not add the publisher (as you've done). In the current case, we record all pub records as by just 'Mystique Press' - always a good idea to check what publishers are already in the database.
  • ISBN: removed it as it's not a real ISBN, notwithstanding what Kobo says
  • Added notes to clarify where the date and price were coming from. - Always do mention the sources of the data if it's not on or in the book itself.
  • Piping symbol "|": it's not 1|, 2|..., but actually the other way around. Use it as |1, |2 etc... for ordered display of contents titles
  • Added cover artist, and made a note clarifying where the credit came from
  • And while I was at it, also added the ASIN

Hope this helps. Regards, MagicUnk 15:02, 10 November 2020 (EST)

A few points in response:
  • After submitting the proposed edit, I immediately saw that it had two warnings. Is there any way to correct such warnings (to reduce moderator workload :-) )?
No, you can't, unfortunately. But what you can do is use your browser's back button, and adjust anything that's wrong and resubmit - warning though, not all data is retained when using the back button, so review carefully. In addition, you'll have to go to the My Pending Edits and cancel the previous, wrong, submission. MagicUnk 06:12, 11 November 2020 (EST)
  • For the publisher information, I was following the instructions in the help pages for adding an imprint along with the publisher. Unfortunately, I committed a typo and entered "Crossroad Press" instead of "Crossroads Press". This is one of the things I wanted to correct, but couldn't. However, are you saying that the help pages are incorrect and that one shouldn't enter imprint information?
The imprint should indeed be mentioned. However, it can be entered as either "imprint / publisher" (with a '/', not an '&'), or just the "imprint". The latter is used in case it is a 'well known' imprint, the former in case it is not such a well known imprint and/or when a publisher has a large number of different imprints. When you encounter an imprint and/or publisher, best thing to do is to first check what's already in the database. MagicUnk 06:12, 11 November 2020 (EST)
  • The ISBN I entered was a direct copy/paste from kobo.com after I couldn't find it in the ebook itself. Again, it was something I would have liked to correct after it was listed as a warning in the submission.
  • Yes, I blew it with the pipe symbol ordering. (But in my defense, I would have noticed the problem in the publication record once it was accepted and would have corrected it.)
Hey, no worries, mistakes are made (God knows I still make a fair number of mistakes myself). Do not hesitate to ask for help here, or over at the Help Desk or Community Portal MagicUnk 06:12, 11 November 2020 (EST)
-- Glenn.Skinner 20:32, 10 November 2020 (EST)

The Baroque Cycle Collection

Hello Glenn, I've accepted your submission (and updated the ISBN from 13 to 10 digit for a pre 2007 pub), but are you sure about the ISBN for The Baroque Cycle Collection? Searching the ISFDB shows TWO publication records. The first one is yours, the second one is only for the third volume in the series, so clearly not the same publications. Could you have a 2nd look and see if you can figure out what's going on? Thanks! MagicUnk 14:28, 28 November 2020 (EST)

I've proofread it three times now, and that's what appears in the copyright page. However, the page itself is suspect. It doesn't mention the omnibus as a whole, but rather just the third title: The System of the World. So I suspect that something got mixed up in preparing the omnibus's copyright page. A check of the entry for the item on kobo.com gives 9780062378583 as the ISBN, which given the duplication is more likely to be correct. Glenn.Skinner 15:16, 28 November 2020 (EST)
Aha, that probably clarifies it. There's one caveat, Kobo says launch date : 12 augustus 2014; publisher: HarperCollins e-books, which does not match your 2004 edition. In any case, a note is in order I'd say. It might be safe to assume that ISBN has not changed from the 2004 to the 2014 edition. Will you update the publication (when you're adding a cover image) and update the ISBN to the Kobo one, and add the clarifying notes as per your explanation above? Thanks! MagicUnk 15:22, 28 November 2020 (EST)
One more thing, WorldCat has 2010 as earliest pub date for ISBN 9780062378583. So, might be that the 2004 date is in error too? MagicUnk 16:00, 28 November 2020 (EST)

Heaps of Pearl

Hello,

When adding a date (or any other piece of information) which does not come directly from a book, the source should be added to the Notes and not just the moderator notes. I've added a note here. Feel free to change the wording :) Annie (talk) 10:07, 22 December 2022 (EST)

Ack. Glenn.Skinner (talk) 19:39, 22 December 2022 (EST)

Benford - Rewrite: Loops in the Timescape

Hello Glenn, would you agree that the title here should to be imported into this record? (also see this thread). Thanks, Kev. --BanjoKev (talk) 10:08, 12 March 2023 (EDT)

Yes. The Afterword appears at the end of my ebook copy of Rewrite. I found it to be interesting and think it's quite worthy of being imported into rewrite's title record.

Glenn.Skinner (talk) 05:14, 14 March 2023 (EDT)

Interim Errantry 2: On Ordeal

I was going through Diane Duane's works and when looking at Interim Errantry 2: On Ordeal, I noticed that the fourth short story in the work titled "Aegolius Acadicus" is missing. Reading the Introduction, I see that it is a new story first published in this collection. Since you are the PV for that book, would you please add it? Thanks! Phil (talk) 08:25, 10 November 2023 (EST)

Also, by ISFDB conventions, series names aren't included in titles so please change the title to simply "On Ordeal". I fixed the main title record and the tp edition already. Thanks! Phil (talk) 08:42, 10 November 2023 (EST)
My copy of "On Ordeal" contains only the three stories I listed in its contents. I've just searched for "Acadicus" in it and the search came up empty. Perhaps this story was added in an edition later than the one I have, which is "IE:OO ebook edition v2.08 (27 July 2017)". As I have no information on the story other than the title you gave above, I can't add it. However, I will fix the ebook publication record's title. Glenn.Skinner (talk) 01:20, 11 November 2023 (EST)
I see what you mean. It looks like the version currently shown by Amazon is v4.02 dated December 30, 2021. I'll add that as a new pub. Thanks for looking. Phil (talk) 16:34, 12 November 2023 (EST)
Ack. Glenn.Skinner (talk) 10:48, 14 November 2023 (EST)

The Complete Poppy War Trilogy

Hi Glenn,

Just a quick note about The Complete Poppy War Trilogy. We do not record the number of pages for ebooks in the field that says Pages. Instead we add the estimated length in the notes. See the help page for more details and let me know if you have any questions. I fixed that in this book. Thanks! Annie (talk) 10:36, 29 January 2024 (EST)

Book of Gems

Hello again,

One tip - when adding a new format (or printing) of a chapbook, it is better to use ClonePub than AddPub. Clone will carry the story as well - while AddPub only adds the chapbook record. All text fields can be edited and you can add additional titles (the cover) on a Clone as easily as you do on AddPub :) It does not matter for Novels (because there is only one record) but for chapbooks (and collections/anthologies/omnibuses), that saves you a step. I added the story here after I approved the clone. :) Annie (talk) 12:23, 29 January 2024 (EST)

Ack to both comments. Glenn.Skinner (talk) 18:31, 8 February 2024 (EST)
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