ISFDB:Publisher Name Clean Up
Project Overview
The purpose of this project is to enforce certain standards, as specified in the ISFDB rules, on the names used in the Publisher fields of our books. These are not particularly strict rules. For example, we do not try to use a "Canonical Name" for a particular publisher. Instead, we prefer to record the name the publisher used on a particular book, which may vary across time. However, there are certain minimal standards:
- Case should be regularized unless there is a clear reason not to. For example, a Tor book often gives the imprint name as "TOR Books"; this should be entered as "Tor Books". DAW, however, is an acronym, and so "DAW Books" is the correct form for that imprint. Publishers of magazines are often printed in uppercase -- e.g. Fantastic Universe's statement of printing shows "KING-SIZE PUBLICATIONS, INC." as the publisher; the form "King-Size Publications, Inc." should be used here.
- If you are entering both the imprint and publisher name, as in "Del Rey / Ballantine", then it should be entered as Imprint / Publisher with the imprint first, spaces around the slash, followed by the publisher name. Note, it's still ok to enter things like "Imprint, an imprint of Publisher". The things we want to avoid are the Imprint/Publisher (with no space) and Publisher / Imprint (imprint / publisher flipped around) and formats.
- Library records, and in some cases the copyright pages of books, often list publishers with a preceding city, as "London: Mammoth Books Ltd" or "New York: Giant Press inc". In such cases, list only the actual name of the publisher, not the city. (Existing records should not be changed to match this standard without considering how to avoid data loss). The city or country can be listed in the notes field of the publisher record, or on an associated wiki page, or both. Where needed to avoid confusion, a country suffix may be used, so we might have, for example, "Mammoth Books (UK)" and "Mammoth Books (Canada)".
- Science Fiction Book Club books should be entered as "Publisher / SFBC" where Publisher is the publisher name stated on the publication.
In addition, where it does not conflict with the actual statement of publisher on a book, we would prefer to merge different publisher names. This, however, is not currently an active component of this project (although various editors try to do this when they notice apparent examples).
For a more complete list of the publisher rules, or to see if the rules have changed since 2012-04-08, see Publication Fields:Publisher.
This project does not yet attempt to address rule #1 above. The publishers that may be in violation of the other rules are collected below, with the known status of evaluating them with respect to these rules.
Avoid "Imprint/Publisher" (no spaces)
Publishers whose name contains a "/" with no spaces around it are listed below. In some cases, we know that this format is justified, as indicated below. In most situations, however, this is probably not the case. Editors working to correct these publisher names should not assume that the current listing has the correct order of imprint and publisher (imprint first), but should verify which of the names included is an imprint of the other.
Avoid "Publisher / Imprint" (publisher first)
We do not yet have a listing of potential violaters of this rule.