User talk:Anniemod

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Hi, as the help for entering the date of publications explicitly says to use the publication date stated within a book [For books, to identify the publication date, try to find a statement (often on the verso of the title page) that says something like "Published in June 2001"], it seems that the date should be changed to 2016-05-00, for your verified publication. Christian Stonecreek 13:36, 12 January 2022 (EST)

No - that date is correct and has a valid secondary source. The book stays as it is. Thanks. If you would like to argue this, please open a discussion about not allowing secondary sources to date books. Annie 13:41, 12 January 2022 (EST)

Two variant questions for "The Very Best of Barry N. Malzberg"

Hi Annie. I'm reading my way through "The Very Best of Barry N. Malzberg". Aside from the issue of needing to update the existing ebook and also add new ebooks for the new ISBN numbers (discussed separately), I have discovered that two of the stories that are currently listed as first published in this book were actually previously published under different names. (There could be more stories like this in here)

1. "The Wooden Grenade" (http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?1624243) is listed as first published in this book. The Acknowledgements/copyright info in the book notes that it was first published as "The Sense of the Fire" in Escapade, July 1967. "The Sense of the Fire" (http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?97954) is listed in ISFDB as first published in Escapade in July 1967, and then reprinted in two editions of Malzberg's "Out from Ganymede" (1974). I have checked with Willem H, the last primary verifier for "Out From Ganymede", and it is the same text as the one I am reading. There is no doubt this is the same story. Next is the question of which is the canonical title? This story has apparently been published 3 times only, first 2 as "The Sense of the Fire" and then reprinted in "The Very Best of..." as "The Wooden Grenade". I lean towards making "The Wooden Grenade" the canonical title, as I assume that Barry N. Malzberg participated in choosing the titles for "The Very Best of". I'd appreciate your opinion and guidance. ThanksDave888 12:42, 13 January 2022 (EST)

As a rule - we always use the FIRST used title unless another title is better known/prevalent. Someone changes a title in a single publication does not make it so usually. The old title is used twice (that we know of), the new one only once - I'd use the original title as the canonical here if I was doing the variant. Annie 13:00, 13 January 2022 (EST)

2. "The Shores of Suitability" (http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?1624250) is listed as first published in this book. The Acknowledgements/copyright info here state that it was first published in Omni, June 1982. Omni, June 1982 features a story currently titled "Last Word (Omni, June 1982" (http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?1225970). I checked Internet Archive, and it is the same story and it is correctly titled "Last Word" in the magazine. I lean towards making the title in "The Very Best of..." the canonical title, as I assume again that Barry N. Malzberg chose that title. Once again, I'd appreciate your opinion and guidance. 3. Needless to say, these will both need to be varianted. ThanksDave888 12:42, 13 January 2022 (EST)

Same answer. The idea of the rule exception allowing a later title to become the canonical is to make sure that a story that was published once under 1 name and then 10 times under another do not get stuck under the original name. These two should stay with their original titles IMO - the author and/or an editor may have renamed them later but the new name is in a single publication. IF that ever changes, we can always reverse the direction but my basic rule is to keep it simple - don't use the exception from the rules unless it is really overwhelming. Hope that makes sense. :) Annie 13:00, 13 January 2022 (EST)

That all makes sense to me. I'll take care of this. Thanks.Dave888 14:33, 13 January 2022 (EST)

A question on "The Prentice Hall Anthology of Science Fiction and Fantasy"

Hi Annie.

I just acquired, for eventual reading, another one of the giant (doorstop) anthologies of 20th century SF and fantasy, "The Prentice Hall Anthology of Science Fiction and Fantasy", originally appearing in 2000. (http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?36482) I have not checked in detail, but it sure appears the TOC for the two current ISFDB editions are the same, and perhaps one was cloned from the other (I can't tell).

As is now my habit, I reviewed the TOC and contents to our ISFDB entries and found a few possible discrepancies. These discrepancies include the following: 1. "The Gray Wolf", George McDonald, p 208, (http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?923573) does not show up in either TOC. It is in both the TOC and the body of the book in my tp version. 2. "Introduction....", P 1, does not show up in either TOC. It is in my copy in both TOC and the body of the book. 3. A. E. van Vogt's "The Weapons Shop" is listed as such in my copy, both TOC and body of the book and in the copyright info, which does match original publication in Astounding. It is listed as "The Weapon Shop" in the two current editions in ISFDB. I suspect this was a typo by someone on data entry, but could be wrong. 4. A number of the page numbers for stories are off by 1 page in my TOC and body of the book, vs the two ISFDB editions. I am not sure what is going on here. My first suspicion is that whoever did the original ISFDB TOC was perhaps using the page the story title appeared on, and not the page the author bio is on for the story that immediately proceeds the title, which is how the TOC in my paper version is put together. 5. Although minor, the "Index" and "Credits" (detailed copyright info) are not listed in either current ISFDB TOC, nor in the Notes. I assume these should be added to the Notes.

I do have two questions for you.

A. What would be the appropriate ISFDB standard practice for page number of the start of a story - location of actual title, or location of the author bio before the story? B. The two existing editions have primary verifiers, with Markwood for the 2000 edition and MLB for the 2003. They both appear to be still active. The same questions apply to both. I assume I should reach out to both of them - please confirm.

Best wishes.Dave888 19:42, 20 January 2022 (EST)

Yep, talk to both PVs on that one - you can post one the page of one of them and then link to it on the page of the other one so the discussion stays in one place (especially if you are asking about the same elements).

• "The Gray Wolf", George McDonald - check with the PVs. Won't be the first time someone missed a story in a big anthology.
• Introduction: Same as the above
• A. E. van Vogt's "The Weapons Shop" - ditto
• Pages - I hate this question :) It comes down to "what is the contents here"?. I'd argue that you have a combo of an essay and story - we just do not index the essays because they are too short. We allow only one exception to the general rule of "The number of the page on which the content begins" - an illustration preceding the contents. But that help page needs clarification for cases like this one and where the story has a title page ahead of its text and all kinds of things like that... :) Adding that to the list of things we need to discuss...
• Notes - yes. Not mandatory but I like adding them so it is clear we did not miss them

Let me know if I missed something or if something does not make sense. Annie 17:49, 21 January 2022 (EST)

Annie, that all makes sense. On the page numbers, given that it's currently an edge case, I will start by confirming with the PVs where their page numbers came from. Assuming it is what I suspect (the other, less likely by possible situation would be an actual change in page number for a different printing by 1 page for some stories, which is possible), I propose to make a note of this on the Notes page for those stories, and not change the actual page numbers in the TOC. Depending upon how you look at it, it is probably not wrong. Let me know if you have more thoughts on this. Best wishes and thanks.Dave888 11:47, 23 January 2022 (EST)

Notes are always a good thing. Talking with the other PVs too :) So sounds like a good plan. Annie 13:55, 23 January 2022 (EST)

Annie, edits going along well here after input and concurrence from MLB and Markwood (both do not have a copy available, so they told me to go forward). One more question. I have confirmed that the title for the A. E. van Vogt is really "The Weapons Shop", the variant title, and not the original "The Weapon Shop". I think I have confused myself on how to deal with this. I can see myself either a) editing the title listed in the TOC to the correct title, assuming that the DB will attach to the right title record, or delete the TOC entry and re-import the correct title. Let me know if I am missing something. Thanks.Dave888 18:05, 1 February 2022 (EST)

"Remove title" to remove the wrong title from the publication and then Import to import the correct one. DO NOT correct the title inside of the publication (even if it appears that you can - if we do not have another publication with the parent because noone added the original yet, it will look as if you can edit it but that will cause issues because it will change the title record of the parent to be the same as the variant and will lose us the parent's title. Just adding/editing a title will never merge it with its other references - if you just add a title, then you will need to merge later on. :) Annie 18:47, 1 February 2022 (EST)

Thanks. I was leaning that way, but wanted to be sure I had not confused myself into doing it the hard way. Will do, and I'll take note of this for the future.Dave888 19:42, 1 February 2022 (EST)

Annie, thanks for all your help. I think this is done for both versions of the anthology.Dave888 14:12, 2 February 2022 (EST)

Anytime :) Annie 17:13, 2 February 2022 (EST)

Hurray for Titan!

Ever seen anything like this before?

[1] (Screengrab, as I imagine you won't be able to properly see that Amazon UK page without a VPN)

Kobo GB does have it available to purchase and download now, as does Google Play Books, so I'm inclined to forget I saw that preorder date... ErsatzCulture 14:31, 21 January 2022 (EST)

Oh yes - that's one of Amazon's weirdnesses sometimes - rarely but happens now and then making me scratch my head. Usually means that the book is out but Amazon will get copies a bit later for one reason or another - or something like that. Second source to confirm one of those dates and all is good. :) Annie 14:55, 21 January 2022 (EST)

I'm now very glad I didn't make a statement on the discussion about pub dates asserting that I'd never seen any issues with vendors reporting ebook dates...

I've submitted edits to correct the tp and ebook pubs, but could you have a look at the audiobook on Amazon.com? There are no (UK) audio listings for this on Kobo or Google Play, nor on B&N (although I dunno if they do audio downloads?), and whilst Amazon UK has Dec 14th, which matches the US tp and ebook, I'd rather get confirmation from a second source, esp. for a messy case like this. Thanks ErsatzCulture 17:18, 21 January 2022 (EST)

If the date does not get rescheduled, they tend to be ok. When they start moving... I play "follow the clues and whack-a-mole". It settles down once the book is out - but in the meantime, it can be a bit... funny. :)

Well, it is on Audible UK :) And Apple have it... here. Not all books are available on Google Play - I usually check the big 4 for audiobooks in English: Audible (US and/or UK - different records), Google Play, Kobo and Apple. Some books are exclusive to one of them. Some are excluded from one or more of them. It's... annoying. And there is another platform gearing up which never shares with Amazon/Audible which I never need to worry about with Fixer because all from Fixer is Amazon's first so they never show up - but if someone wants to chase them...

Add to that that Blackstone's audiobooks can be missing from their site (like this one) - they MAY appear at one point but... it is one of those weird things. Unless they also have the physical disks. Then it gets easier. :)

I fixed this audiobook. Annie 17:48, 21 January 2022 (EST)

Cyrillic vs transliterated titles

Back at the Asimov and I've a question. As I run across some Russian titles in sources (e.g. OCLC), they only have transliterated titles, such as "Kratkaja istorija chimii: razvitie idej i predstavlenij v chimii". Based on other editions, I'm guessing this is "Краткая история химии: Развитие идей и представлений в химии" but it is a guess, may not always be available and is putting 'words' into the sources mouth (I do credit them carefully). Would it be acceptable to just put in the transliterated title as the Pub Title for these unverified publications? (Where both forms exist from one or more sources, I'll put them both in.). ../Doug H 14:15, 25 January 2022 (EST)

How about running them by me before adding them? If you put them latinized, they will ping on a report anyway so I will fix them when I get around to that report but I am around most days and I will be happy to transliterate back. This one is indeed "Краткая история химии: Развитие идей и представлений в химии". :) Annie 14:20, 25 January 2022 (EST)

Luces del norte

I was just going to post to Community Portal asking for anyone with Spanish skills to confirm that edit was indeed correct... ErsatzCulture 16:25, 26 January 2022 (EST)

Already caught it and doing a surgery on it :) Annie 16:26, 26 January 2022 (EST)

Thanks - I'm spending more time than I'd like trying to sort out a load of missing UK pubs of this trilogy, all of which have annoyingly inconsistent details across the vendor sites, and I didn't want to burn even more effort on versions in a language I don't know at all ;-) ErsatzCulture 16:34, 26 January 2022 (EST)

My Spanish is... non-existent but I am good at chasing data in it occasionally. All sorted - as much as possible for a 1997 publication anyway :) Annie 16:36, 26 January 2022 (EST)

Title Regularization

It seems that the Talk page is the sole repository of rules, rather than the page. Which doesn't really matter, since the only link is to the Talk page and it's buried in an archive. Less of a skeleton and more of a dust bunny (accreting material but hiding in the shadows). ../Doug H 15:36, 27 January 2022 (EST)

A few attempts to get people to contribute failed on deaf ears so... I am letting it lie calm for a bit before I try again. :) The basic rule is - ask a language speaker and "most languages are not English and use Sentence case and not Title case" and if you are not sure, post in Community. :) Annie 15:40, 27 January 2022 (EST)

Gwendy's Final Task

I see you've just worked on the US pub of this. A couple of comments/questions:

• The UK pubs are advertised in various places as the third in a trilogy, and that's also how it's listed on Goodreads. I asked the PV's of the (allegedly) earlier stories if they had any thoughts/objections re. putting them in a subseries of "Castle Rock". I've yet to hear back here or here, so I'd held off submitting the UK pubs for the time being. Do you have any thoughts?
• I'm bemused the Cemetery Dance pub is claiming to be "World's 1st Edition" when the UK pub has the same pub date - I dunno if that statement might need qualifying in our note? (FWIW, it looks like there's AU/Commonwealth export edition, but not until a week later.) ErsatzCulture 14:34, 28 January 2022 (EST)

Amazon.com claims it, it is my only source so... no clarification needed. And as both are on the same date, it is kinda correct so I left it there. :) I saw your note - I think we need to pull the 3 Gwendies in their own subseries under Castle Rock but I put it on my todo list for now - trying to make some inroads into the Fixer's queues after all the delays in the last months. Both of the PVs are not around much so I will give them time. Annie 14:42, 28 January 2022 (EST)

OK, thanks. I've just submitted the UK hc, will do the ebook after the weekend when I've resynced with the next database dump. ErsatzCulture 16:39, 28 January 2022 (EST)

Approved and have fun. I'll probably have all February known titles in the system by mid-next week. :) Annie 16:51, 28 January 2022 (EST)

Are these different titles?

Under A for Asimov - Fantlab entries 653, 622 and 138926 have the same titles, but different translators - I think. Which makes them different TITLE records, nyet? I think I can avoid the 'unknown' translator if I assume a match to the same publisher's earlier and later editions. ../Doug H 15:35, 31 January 2022 (EST)

Different title records because of the different translators, yes. Careful with the translator names - don't copy from the linked pages (as these are not in the nominative: they are З. Гельман, В. Абашкин and Ольга Стихова (or О. Стихова if you prefer but using just the initial is the Fantlab policy; the books more often than not have the full names) respectively). If you click on the title record, you get this which also tells you that they are the same book in English. Annie 15:46, 31 January 2022 (EST)

Spite

So after several days or weeks of some of my edits sitting there without anyone touching them, now you suddenly feel the need to reject 3 of them and ask me an unnecessary question about the 4th? Wouldn't have anything to do with our earlier discussion about SFE, would it (which turned out to be a discovery by me, that none of the mods here were apparently aware of, that covers on SFE are actually usable now without uploading)? I do hundreds of these edits a week, so I'll try to recall for you now the specifics of these 4: 1) The Skin of the Soul cover already has a HC cover on ISFDB which someone uploaded that is very bright and clear, while the TP cover was just taken from Amazon and has a note about some confusion with the cover, so after finding that OL has copies of both the TP and the PB from Pocket I replaced both of those covers; the Pocket cover was better than the old one here, and the TP cover is obviously taken from an actual copy someone added to Archive.org and thus that's how the cover actually looks; whether you like the old one better is irrelevant, so please un-reject and use the cover from the actual copy. 2) Why would I ask PV's about the Swann note when it isn't actually in the book? Someone obviously had info they felt was important about the shoddy typesetting and unrelated cover of this edition of Will-o-the-Wisp and added it to Wikipedia; I thought people here would like to know in case they read the book and wonder why the cover has nothing to do with the content. If you don't want people to know about it that's on you. 3) John Richards has many Corgi covers on ISFDB and the signature looks the same as the 1 "Richards" cover on ISFDB, so unless there was some other artist named Richards doing 1950's Corgi covers who signed their name exactly the same way it's obvious who it really is. Now that you made me look at this again, I've discovered that the 1960 Corgi edition, with a different cover, also has "Richards" on the lower left corner, even though "Bluesman" wrote a note here saying there's no visible signature, so John Richards actually did at least 2 Corgi covers for this title. 4) The Tomorrow Log essay is only in 1 later edition of Meisha Merlin on ISFDB but wasn't imported into the original; I think that's why I did that, but it's been so long I can't remember. I think I've answered everything, so now it's up to you what to do about all these various things. Also, MagicUnk has been holding The Bus for days now; you 2 had a discussion about it, with you saying it's not genre, which begs the question of why it's still here. --Username 19:28, 4 February 2022 (EST)

I found them on the board, I processed them. That's how it works. That's it. Me helping you today about your question about SFE has nothing to do with any of these (none of these were SFE covers). Stop looking for conspiracies everywhere - people really do not care about you as much as you think they do and noone is trying to get you or whatever you think may be happening around the site. The reason why these were not processed earlier is most likely because people wanted to let someone else look at them because they wanted a second set of eyes before rejecting.

1) The cover you were proposing to add is worse than the one we have already. No point replacing a better cover with a worse one. Both ARE the same cover - and unless you have the book, you cannot say which lightning makes it look closer to reality - so we keep the one which is clearer.

2) It is called common courtesy. And the note implies things about what is IN the book - so get someone with the book to verify that what Wikipedia says is correct before adding the note.

3) Even if it is this Richards, if the credit in the book was "Richards", that's what we record and then we variant. And we do need a proof that it is his - the signature explanation will be enough to establish that but that will mean a variant, not replacing the name in the book - we record AS CREDITED. If your implication is that the credit is only by signature, then we will use the canonical name but a better note needs to be added explaining the attribution.

4) Then find a proof and/or add a note explaining why the essay is added here. As it is, I will have to reject that one as well.

The Bus is moderated by another moderator and you can ask him about it. You can also just submit the deletion. Not everyone is here 24/7 or works the queue every day - we are all volunteers. Annie 19:38, 4 February 2022 (EST)

Oh yes, that makes perfect sense; you're editing almost every day but just happened to notice 4 of my edits, 1 of which was sitting there for 3 weeks, on the same day that I disagreed with you about SFE's policies; yeah, right. As far as thinking people here care about me, this is the internet; nobody can see me or knows anything about me, so why you think I think total strangers on a virtual website care is bizarre bordering on paranoia. As for my edits, often images on OL don't match the actual cover on the Archive.org copy, but in this case they're exactly the same, with the back cover also having the same shadowy tint appropriate to a horror collection, so that is how the actual book looks. The editor who uploaded the beautiful HC cover took care of that edition, and I took care of the TP. You thinking some random cover from Amazon is better than an actual copy's cover makes no sense, but whatever. The Swann note is correct because that cover has nothing to do with the novel, which is readable in the 2 Fantastic issues on Archive.org where it first appeared, but I'll let that one go since anyone reading Wikipedia can find the note. The Richards thing is hilarious, since I've probably seen thousands of records here where countless editors entered the artist's name based on a signature on the cover regardless of whether the artist is credited anywhere in the book. These old PB's very often didn't have credits for artists and so a signature is often the only proof there is of who did the art. You thinking a cover artist can't be entered because they're not explicitly mentioned in the book is ridiculous. Also, the fact that I just discovered Richards did a new cover for the later Corgi edition, notwithstanding previous editor's note who apparently didn't see the signature on the cover in exactly the same spot as the one on the old cover, is a good find, and I suggest you don't let it go to waste. The Tomorrow Log thing is so unimportant I really don't care if it's rejected. As for The Bus, MagicUnk approved some of my edits recently and so is obviously around, so I think they just forgot about it. I'll just let it sit there until they finally remember to delete it, assuming they know that's what they're supposed to do based on your assertion that it doesn't really belong here in the first place. Whatever personal problems you're having, I'm not your scapegoat. All the edits and important discoveries I've made here over the last year plus, and you only seem to pop up when you can find something of mine to reject. --Username 20:30, 4 February 2022 (EST)

You are an interesting person - you complain when your edits are not handled, then you complain when they are handled. Yes, I did just notice them because they were between entries I am working on and because I looked for records which had been missed. Normal practice. Things get missed, skipped over and so on - moderators can skip entries they do not want to handle for one reason or another and those need to get handled sooner or later.

You disagreed with me in the SFE discussion? I did not notice that there was a disagreement there - not sure where you saw disagreement but whatever rocks your boat, that's fine. Although even if there was a disagreement, it would not have meant anything about any other submission or conversation. As I said - stop looking for conspiracies and what's not.

• Just as a FYI: The policy in question is in the help page: "The URL entered in this field should always point directly to the image, not to the Web page that contains the image. If the external site hosting the image requires you to link to the Web page that contains the image (e.g. SFE3 -- see below), then append the "pipe" character ("|") and the Web page's URL at the end of the URL of the image.". If the software needs an update to remind people of it, it needs an update but editors are supposed to read and follow the help pages. Which is why Ahasuerus is now checking with SFE to see what we need to change - the policy, the software, the warning or a combination of them. We may need to fix all the covers you added not following the policy at some point - if SFE still require that format, all of the covers you added without it, even if there was no warning will need to be fixed by someone (or replaced by covers from elsewhere).

As for the rest - you have your explanations on what was wrong with these, you can follow the advice on what needs to be done or ignore it but they cannot be accepted in the form you submitted them. Annie 20:43, 4 February 2022 (EST)

PS: Editing every day and moderating the queue every day are two very different things. Dealing with the passed over and delayed submissions in the queue is a third thing altogether sometimes. Moderators are editors first - and we all work on our own projects as well. And even when working the queue, easy and clear and well-documented submissions are always handled faster. Annie 20:56, 4 February 2022 (EST)

As always, these arguments are very boring and I could have done dozens of new edits in the time it's taken to check into your rejections and then respond here, so I'll end with these comments: the Skin of the Soul cover you rejected is what the actual print cover looks like and should have been accepted, the Swann note from Wikipedia is correct on both the typesetting issue and the unrelated cover and should have been accepted, the Richards cover is by John Richards and should have been accepted and the other Richards cover I discovered just now should also be entered as such, the Tomorrow Log essay should have been imported into the original edition where it first appeared, and The Bus should have been deleted right after you told the mod who held it that it doesn't belong on ISFDB. The way things are now, anyone searching will find an overly bright facsimile of the original Skin cover, will be confused when the Swann book they're reading has nothing to do with the cover of the book and has a synopsis inside that doesn't belong there, people searching for John Richards SF covers will not find 2 of them, the Tomorrow Log essay will continue to have a slightly wrong date, and people who stumbled on The Bus' ISFDB record will wonder why it was ever entered here in the first place when it's not a genre book. As for SFE, my accidentally finding out that SFE covers are now usable is something that none of you moderators had a clue about, obviously, and I wonder how long it would have taken for someone else to find that out or if anyone would ever have known about it without my help. You're welcome, everyone. Now back to what I do best. --Username 23:35, 4 February 2022 (EST)

Requesting feedback

Please see here. Thanks! ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 17:21, 8 February 2022 (EST)

Posted. :) Annie 17:35, 8 February 2022 (EST)

Quick question

Annie, I need your advice regarding this message. I hesitate to create the canonical parent when I think the attribution is incorrect. Should I just keep monitoring and wait for a response? I know I can't change the attribution in a PV'd publiccation without the verifier or a moderator's agreement. John Scifibones 15:15, 9 February 2022 (EST)

Create the parent - we can deal with the variant attribution later and sort out the rest of the issues once that is in place. The PV will show up from somewhere - he tends to show up occasionally or we will change it the standard way. The big question is what is on the title page - the contents page shows Kamei as a translator. But none of them precludes getting the author page sorted out. Annie 16:02, 9 February 2022 (EST)

The Collected Works of Philip K. Dick - A question

Hi Annie.

I hope life is treating you well.

I was recently made aware of a new edition of "The Collected Works of Philip K. Dick" on Amazon for Kindle. https://www.amazon.com/Collected-Stories-Philip-K-Dick-ebook/dp/B09QZXVHBC?fbclid=IwAR10aT86YsrFSQ7EcgCy1MTE7nwbWBOF7FIkwuXdUjCn0yEDAYrRYr_XWBo

I and my friends suspect this is not a legal, licensed copy. There is no publisher listed on Amazon, no copyright page and no ISBN. Much of the contents of the original 1987 Underwood-Miller edition (http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pe.cgi?22461) are present, but there are a few stories and introductions that are not. I did buy a copy, to make the comparison and to read it eventually.

I would appreciate your thoughts on this subject.

Best wishes. Dave888 12:21, 10 February 2022 (EST)

Hi, I may add some of my thoughts as well: I'd think it is a legal publication, because anybody using Amazon as a letout most likely will have to take legal action against his person if there's no license. The fact that there are some items missing IMO also points into this direction, as the licenses for their publication may not have been assigned. Stonecreek 12:35, 10 February 2022 (EST)

Maybe. But it is irrelevant for us really. Annie 12:56, 10 February 2022 (EST)

It does not matter if it is legal/authorized or not - if it exists, we catalog it. And we do not add any notes about what we think about its legality. :) Not having an ISBN is not a problem - if the only venue to sell it is either Amazon or your own store, you don't really need ISBN. And ISBNs are paid for so why pay for it if you do not need it? :)

And that cover looks like a (bad) digitization of the Citadel Twilight editions (look at the top left corner of the cover) so you may want to check if the contents match them to see if it is the same edition really or someone took scissors to them - that may explain the differences (possibly)). Annie 12:56, 10 February 2022 (EST)

Annie and Stonecreek, my thanks to both of you. I appreciate your input, on a situation I have not encountered before. I have done a careful evaluation of the body of stories in the ebook against the 1987 Underwood-Miller TOC. Volumes 2 and 4 appear to be identical to the Underwood-Miller. Volumes 1, 3 and 5 have various differences, which I will reflect in a ebook 2022 version. I'll probably clone the existing volumes and then edit the ones that need it. I will not speculate on whether it is a licensed, legal publication or not. One more question - I don't see a publisher listed. Does that mean, for ISFDB, that Amazon is the publisher, or do we just omit any publisher? Thanks again.

Dave888 13:43, 10 February 2022 (EST)

Either leave the Publisher field empty OR add the author name as the publisher OR even use "Citadel Twilight" and note that the publisher is assigned based on the cover and is not mentioned anywhere else. I'd probably leave it empty if I was adding it (or use Citadel Twilight with notes). Amazon is not really the publisher - they would be the "printer" if these were printed :) Annie 13:54, 10 February 2022 (EST)

Thanks. I think I'll leave it empty and observe the cover states "Citadel Twilight" in the Notes.Dave888 14:09, 10 February 2022 (EST)

As of yesterday, this Kindle e-book had disappeared from the Amazon website. Apparently, it was up there for just over 3 weeks. I will put this on hold until I can confirm it is actually available again. Interestingly enough, it has not disappeared from my Kindle.Dave888 11:56, 12 February 2022 (EST)

If you have it, it existed. So it is eligible to be added. Annie 13:39, 12 February 2022 (EST)

Got it. Will add it. Thanks.Dave888 18:08, 12 February 2022 (EST).

Hi Annie. Two related questions.

First, "The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick" as I have on Kindle ebook is a single Kindle document/file. Each of 5 Volumes are labeled as "The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.X", with X from 1 to 5, where 1 has the mostly the contents of "Beyond Lies the Wub", etc. This suggests to me that I need to title the overall book as "The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick, Volumes 1 - 5". I see that there is a Series this should be part of, "The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick". (http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pe.cgi?22461). Within this top level series, there is also a title record "The Collected stories of Philip K. Dick, Volumes I-V", a title record "created to handle the reviews and awards given to the five-volume collection as a singular work. The individual volumes were published separately and each have their own title record and publication records." Do you have any further insights into how to title the new volume combining all 5 volumes? Another possibility would be something like "The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick 2022".

You name it whatever the TITLE page says the title is - and if there is no title page, you use what the cover says. If all it says is "The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick"/"The Collected Works of Philip K. Dick", that's the name you use. You do not invent "Volume 1-5" or "2022" or "Imaginary subtitle noone has ever seen in print" unless the title page (or the cover at the lack of a title page) has it. Specifically crafted titles for awards (which do not have books under that name) are not related to actually having a book... If you have a book, you NEVER invent a title - you record what the book says. Everything else is commentary and can go into the notes. Annie 19:50, 17 February 2022 (EST)

/Got it. Will do. Sorry to create problems where there are none.Dave888 22:56, 20 February 2022 (EST)

No worries. It can get a bit weird sometimes. Annie 23:28, 20 February 2022 (EST)

Second, I think the most likely approach to creating the new book for all 5 volumes will be to import them from the individual 1987 Underwood-Miller Volumes, making corrective edits after the import for each of the 5. Each of these volumes within the book is somewhat like a chapter or Section of the overall book. There is no content to the chapter or Section designator, other than the title. I assume I can create each Section title before importing the contents, or am I missing something here?

Thanks.Dave888 19:20, 17 February 2022 (EST)

You do not need a contents page in the book you are holding - you are supposed to check all stories where they start, not what a contents page says - and add the stories. :)

Create a section title as what? ISFDB records does not have sections and you cannot just create an entity that does not exist just so the UI looks how you want it to look. The only thing you can do eventually is to import the Collection titles (the ones from the original "Citadel Twilight" editions which were used to create this one) - import the collection title (if it is the correct title, if it is not, add "The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.X" collection in the book and then variant that up to the proper one; then import the contents under it and so on, numbering properly so all stays ordered. Now - that will determine the type of your book - if you only import the stories, it will be a collection; if you import/add the collection objects, it will be an omnibus.

And I will ask you again - why are you still looking at the Underwood-Miller editions when this is OBVIOUSLY based on the "Citadel Twilight" one? Start from the "Citadel Twilight" ones, import from them - chances are that you will have almost nothing to edit after that (unlike the case when you use the incorrect source edition). With reprints, working from the edition that actually was reprinted makes your life a lot easier.Annie 19:50, 17 February 2022 (EST)

Got it. Two things here. 1) Yes, I will mention the 5 volumes in the Notes, treating them like Sections. 2) I checked the contents of my version vs. the 1990/1991 Citadel Twilight edition, the 2011/12 Subterranean version (first 3 books), the 2012 Gollanz/Orion version (book 5), and the 2016 Citadel/Kensington version (book 4). None of these editions match the complete 2022 version. Book 1 and 3 best matches the Subterranean, Book 2 and 4 best match the Underwood-Miller, and Book 5 best matches the Citadel-Twilight. I will import the contents for each, and then complete the necessary editing, as most of these "books" have content that will still need to be edited, deleted or added to match my version. Thanks.Dave888 22:56, 20 February 2022 (EST)

The one I checked was close to the CT version and they used their cover - but if the contents do not match, we do the best we can. :) although if they are not the same, then is it really a reprint of them all or just a new collection? Whatever you do, add notes. :) Annie 23:28, 20 February 2022 (EST)

I have a spreadsheet that I used to compare the contents of the various editions above. Even the existing editions are not identical overall, although they range in the 95 to 99% the same. For me, given the similarity to the other editions, I do think it is a new edition of the same collection, and not a new collection. I will use the Notes to document a lot of this, trying to hit a balance between precise and helpful and yet not nauseating in detail. Thanks for all your help in getting there on this. I'll reach out if I have problems.Dave888 11:10, 21 February 2022 (EST)

Hi. I think I'm down to one last thing on "The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick" 2022 e-book (http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?883425). My kindle copy uses a slightly edited version of the cover of the 1990 collection, "We Can Remember It for You Wholesale" (Citadel Twilight, http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?359083). The only difference I see is that the 1990 "We Can Remember It For You" cover includes "Copyrighted Material" in white font at the top and bottom against a black background; this 2022 version has those phrases removed, but appears to be identical otherwise. It's clearly the same cover by Norris Burroughs, other than those two edits. As the file/edition is no longer on Amazon, that source for the cover is not available. I have produced a copy of that original covered edited to match the 2022 version. Is it acceptable to add this as the cover, or should I just skip this? My thanks for all the help.Dave888 20:06, 8 March 2022 (EST)

If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck... The "Copyrighted Material" is probably an Amazon artifact - I doubt the actual cover has it anyway on the 1990 book. But for the 2022 one - if you have a cover which looks like the cover you see when you open the book, upload it - regardless of how you assembled it. Annie 20:09, 8 March 2022 (EST)

The Past Is Red

Hi Annie

I just started listening to the audiobook of Catherynne M. Valente's "The Past Is Red" where you have verified the hardcover edition. I had made a point of reading the earlier Garbagetown story "The Future Is Blue" before I started. I was surprised that the audiobook starts with the earlier story labeling it "Part 1, The Future is Blue". Later it has "Part 2, The Past is Red". If the hardcover is similarly structured, I think we may actually be a collection of two stories. If it isn't, I can split out the audiobook into a separate title as a collection. Could you take a look at your copy and let me know if it has both stories and if you agree? Thanks for checking. --Ron ~ Rtrace^Talk 07:48, 13 February 2022 (EST)

I don’t have the book anymore but it is the same structure. I am not sure if we should consider it a collection - the earlier story is supposed to be a part of the new one I think (which is why I left it as a single novella with the note on the title level already there explaining the relationship). If you think going to a collection is a better idea, go ahead but please let’s add proper notes explaining why. :) Annie 13:40, 13 February 2022 (EST)

The Four Thousand, The Eight Hundred

Hi Annie. Submitter wants to change note in a book you PV[2].Kraang 17:32, 13 February 2022 (EST)

I have no idea where this book is (in the middle of a library reorganization so I think I know which box it may be in but who knows) so check if Willem has his copy handy? I'm fine with the change though - the edition is the unsigned one anyway - no clue why I put Signature instead of Limitation in there... :) Annie 18:07, 13 February 2022 (EST)

Was unfamiliar with the term. Ok. Thanks!Kraang 20:10, 13 February 2022 (EST)

Seven Seas / Mo Xiang Tong Xiu pubs

I'll submit this tomorrow once I've processed my scraped data, but is this publisher/author one that Fixer isn't picking up? I think the 3 books from them that came out late last year were submitted by a human editor, and whilst there are a bunch of other pubs that have come via Fixer, it looks like Ahasuerus processed them, not you?

FWIW, I believe those first few books made one or more of the NPD/BookScan top 10 bestseller lists, and were also at the top of the top forthcoming list for some reason... ErsatzCulture 19:25, 13 February 2022 (EST)

Light novels are Ahasuerus's department - I claim an allergy to them (kinda - he just knows the publishers there a lot better than I do so he handles them) and I only process their later editions, audiobooks and so on if any get missed - so talk to him about this publisher :) Annie 19:28, 13 February 2022 (EST)

Люди как боги / Humans as Gods

Hello Annie, can you help me to clear the first part of Snegows series Люди как боги? The novel was first published in an anthology in 1966 under the title Галактическая разведка, in 1971 the novel was published as omnibus with the second part of the series Вторжение в Персей.

I don't know how to handle the German omnibuses, the first one have two novels and the second one have three novels. Many thanks Henna 12:41, 14 February 2022 (EST)

They will stay separate - we don’t variant omnibuses with different contents. I’ll untangle them. Annie 13:33, 14 February 2022 (EST)

Unlike novels, we do not create original language parents for omnibuses that we are not sure came out in that form in the original language (or collections and anthologies) - we just variant with the proper name of the author to get them to the correct page but leave the language and title as is - see how I did it here. If the 2-volume one ever shows up in Russian, we will connect it but in the meantime, it stays in German. :) I will add a 3-novels Russian omnibus (as that one exists) and see what else I can find out and if a 2 novels one does exist somewhere). Annie 13:52, 14 February 2022 (EST)

Hello Annie, I think the Russian edition in 1971 is the omnibus with the two novels look here. Thanks for your help Henna 14:31, 14 February 2022 (EST)

Still working on this one from 1966. :) But yes - that is next on my list :) Annie 14:34, 14 February 2022 (EST)

That one was added, I will add some more editions later. The second novel actually came out under a different name initially so need to add yet another big anthology for it. :) Annie 14:58, 14 February 2022 (EST)

Hello Annie, I want add the newest editions of the complete omnibus in German. Should I wait or go on? Many thanks for your help Henna 12:41, 16 February 2022 (EST)

Go ahead - the Russian titles are already there - I am just adding more Russian editions between other things :) Annie 12:43, 16 February 2022 (EST)

Neda Miranda Blazevic-Krietzman

Hi! I’ve just added this juvenile The Dragonheads: And the Mystery of the Twelve Magical Eggs by Neda Miranda Blazevic-Krietzman, her only fantasy, who is Croatian. As you’re the only one who might know, has she ever published any others in this series, and what was the original title of this novel? MLB

As far as I know, she writes in German, Croatian and English - so that may be the original really - it was published after she had moved to the States and after she had been a professor in English for more than a decade. I don't think that her early novels are genre and most of her other work is poetry but I will look again at them. Thanks for pinging me!

PS: And you had ISBN13 as BN number again - I removed it. Please keep an eye for that - you want a BN number only if it is not the ISBN. :) Annie 23:40, 15 February 2022 (EST)

Still so much to learn. **Sigh** I'll try to keep my eyes (ꙨᴥꙨ) open. MLB 03:18, 16 February 2022 (EST)

City of Saints and Madmen

Is there a way to determine if this one [3], was actually released?. The ASIN and Audible ASIN have different data and show a release date of January 2022. If the first was never released, I will just change the data. If it was, I can clone another pub record. John Scifibones 18:39, 17 February 2022 (EST)

Fixed. Pre-release loading can be sometimes dicey - and that one was on my list of delayed ones that need fixing. Blackstone had a bit of a mix-up of their omnibus edition (which they cancelled last time I checked) and their novel one (this one), changing dates a few times. Annie 18:47, 17 February 2022 (EST)

PS: The three disks editions are coming in April... eventually. This is the 3rd reschedule for them that I know of. :) Annie 18:50, 17 February 2022 (EST)

At the Caligula Hotel and Other Poems

Would you mind reviewing At the Caligula Hotel and Other Poems when you have some free time. There were a few twists regarding relationships to other works. Locus was the primary source. I also used the author's site.

• Look at Fragment of a Longer Poem, if you follow the link and read the title note, makes me think it should be a collection, not a novel
• Several titles are 'associated' with other titles, are my title notes adaquate? [4], [5], and [6]

I don't think there are any typos, he says hopefully. I really apppreciate it. John Scifibones 15:22, 18 February 2022 (EST)

A few notes:

• That's... complicated. The "publish in part and stitch together" had been a normal way to build a lot of novels. In some there is literally no connection material. In some there is enough to make it a real novel. We generally go by the consensus except in cases like Foundation where the original stories are obvious and we wanted to connect them. If you think it must change, talk to the PVs (a lot of there are active) and make your case although I think that keeping it as a novel makes more sense.
• Related how? I'd expand the note with an explanation for the relation (same world? same style? same something) and/or replace the word related with associated or something else that speaks of connection but not relationship - it allowed more vagueness that way I think.
• What is "Associational collection"? I read poetry (not only genre) and I am not sure I had met that term... which does not mean it does not exist but even Google does not help so... huh? If it was there before you started editing - is it coming from OCLC? From the work? :)

Hope that helps. It can stay as it is - don't get me wrong - it looks fine. But we have a lot of non-native speakers (yours truly including) and making things less ambiguous for them is always a good idea. Annie 15:40, 18 February 2022 (EST)

Associated collection, came from Locus, it's new to me as well. If associated is more vague than related, I'll opt for that and change the notes. As far as collection vs novel, I saw that a couple moderators have PV'd editions. If I come across more information, I'll post a thread on the Community Portal. Thanks again, John Scifibones 16:10, 18 February 2022 (EST)

Self-approval

There's many reasons you might want me to clean up my own messes. ../Doug H 15:50, 19 February 2022 (EST)

Ha. I can ask you to do that while approving your submissions. If I did not think you will be ok on your own, I would not have asked you if you want to self-approve OR supported you when you did. Plus everyone will still be here if you need a hand. :) Annie 15:57, 19 February 2022 (EST)

On the task assigned to me.

Star Date 2022/02/19: Lowly Ensign MLB was contacted by Commander Annie Yotova of the “Starship ISFDB” and assigned the mundane task of cleaning up numerous mistakes made by an anonymous crewmember to the data of the Starship. Ensign MLB is now reporting back that all the glitches have now been corrected with the hope that this will help the “Starship ISFDB” run smoother in its journey into the future…and BEYOND. MLB 04:42, 20 February 2022 (EST)

Forgive my snarkiness, just having a little fun. Job done. MLB 04:42, 20 February 2022 (EST)

Well, it made me smile :) Annie 14:26, 20 February 2022 (EST)

Osama

Osama is probably on your follow-up list. I updated the information. I see no reference to additional stories on the W. F. Howes website. However, I left your note and the incomplete tempate to be cleared at your leisure. John Scifibones 17:28, 20 February 2022 (EST)

Somewhere on a list. I’ll check it again in the morning. Thanks. Annie 23:29, 20 February 2022 (EST)

The Last Flight of Dr. Ain - A Question

Hi Annie. I recently became aware that Tiptree's "The Last Flight of Dr. Ain" (http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?52116) was heavily edited for it's 2nd appearance, in the 1974 "SF: Author's Choice 4" anthology edited by Harry Harrison.

This led me to wonder and research whether all the reprints after 1974 used this revised text or not.

These anthologies/collections all use the 1974 revision: "Warm Worlds and Otherwise" (2nd edition), "Galaxy: Thirty Year's of Innovative Science Fiction", "Yesterday's Tomorrows", "The Road to Science Fiction #4: From Here to Forever", "Her Smoke Rose Up Forever", "The Prentice Hall Anthology of Science Fiction and Fantasy", "The Vintage Book of American Women Writers", and "Women of Futures Past". I checked the text to determine this, all from first editions except for "Warm Worlds and Otherwise".

"The Future is Female" used the original 1969 Galaxy version, both as noted in the acknowledgements and per the text.

I did not check any of the foreign language publications. I also did not check all of the subsequent editions of these books.

I was hoping that I might be able to state in the Notes that all versions after 1974 were the 1974 version (heavily revised). That is not true.

I am rather thinking I should just add a note to each version that I am sure of to indicate it contains the 1974 heavily revised version or the original 1969 version. Do you have a better idea? What are your thoughts on dealing with subsequent editions - I sure don't have multiple editions of these.

Thanks.Dave888 11:43, 22 February 2022 (EST)

Let me look into these a bit more in a bit. I really dislike "heavily revised" stories... :) Annie 18:02, 22 February 2022 (EST)

Thanks. It was more than just punctuation, but not a complete rewrite. Sentences and paragraphs have been moved around and changed in structure, while apparently retaining the overall story, characters and meaning. Without more information (I have not read the biography to see if there is anything there), I can only assume that Tiptree did not like the original version and wanted it to be better.Dave888 19:09, 22 February 2022 (EST)

Yeah. But when authors do that, translations tracking becomes a nightmare. In a perfect world, every text will have one version in the original language... in the real world, that is very rarely the case. :) Which is why I really dislike these cases.

All you can mention is which editions carry which text in the title notes. Add a note on the publication level if you want but I'd also add it in the title note ("The XXXX edition (1983), YYYY edition (1987) and ... uses the revised text" or words to that effect). That way if someone is interested, they don't need to check every pub record... ;) Annie 19:14, 22 February 2022 (EST)

Thanks. One more clarification - sorry if I'm slow here today. Do I need to verify that all editions of "Warm Worlds and Otherwise" have the same version, or is that a legitimate assumption to make?Dave888 19:51, 22 February 2022 (EST)

Nope, unless you have a source or you eyeball all of them, there is a chance that some may be different... so I would not add a note saying that all of them use that text. All you can do is to list the ones you know to be using the text. Annie 20:02, 22 February 2022 (EST)

Got it. Thanks.Dave888 21:22, 22 February 2022 (EST)

We never invent information - we need a source or at least an explanation which we can spell out. You can put something like "Most likely all later editions use the updated text (verified for XXX, YYY, ZZZ)". That ensures that it is clear that we do not have enough information to make the call but based on the usual practice, it probably is the case. Unless I have to make a call (decide if something is a novella or novel or genre/non-genre, I tend not to add a lot of notes based on "most likely". But YMMV :) Annie 21:25, 22 February 2022 (EST)

Thanks. My next step is to contact primary verifiers for the works/editions I have not been able to personally view, and see if I can pin down some of those. I'll let you know, etc.Dave888 13:36, 23 February 2022 (EST)

Have fun :) Annie 13:37, 23 February 2022 (EST)

Cleanup Report Question

I thought I'd tackle 'Awards linked to Uncommon Title Types' from the cleanup report. Most of the list are awards attached to to a Chapbook as opposed to the content title. Even art based awards should attach to the cover art title or interior art title. Are there any exceptions? Thanks John Scifibones 18:41, 22 February 2022 (EST)

Extremely rarely if an award category is for a specific edition and not for the text/art. I don't think we have any of those on the books in English but there may be a special case somewhere. But the majority of these need moving - that's why the report was added (it is a relatively late report). But if someone looks weird, leave it on the list or feel free to ping me (or post in CP if you prefer) for a second opinion. Annie 18:55, 22 February 2022 (EST)

Advice Requested

Annie, Would you mind weighing in on this - Status Update? Here are my posts to the individuals involved Elizabeth_Hardy and Morganmike. John Scifibones 13:14, 25 February 2022 (EST)

I was just looking at that one. :) Let me look through all the threads and see where we are. Annie 13:16, 25 February 2022 (EST)

Opinion, please

Hi Annie! I'm considering asking for self-approver status. Is it too soon? Most of what I'm adding to the queue is simple updates but intermittently there are multi-step processes that are stretching across several days with my having to wait for step-by-step approval. I know I'm pretty new compared to some of the people who have just been given that status but I'm willing to do my part to keep the queue shorter. :) Thanks! Phil 16:41, 25 February 2022 (EST)

I think it is a bit too early -- not because of the time component as a whole but because you had been venturing into the more involved parts of the DB (variants for example) for only a few months (and not at all in others) and most of your updates are from the same type (which is fine - but it does not help figure out if you are anywhere near understanding the DB). And I really want to see much better moderator notes from you: "Added notes" is useless unless the field was empty before that - you can see that clearly based on which field is updated. If you are self-approving, that is the same as not having a moderator note -- someone finding the update later or in their "changed verified" won't know what you had changed unless they go tracking back and if we even have the oldest updates - at least under moderation you have a second set of eyes to make sure you did not lose something. You had been doing better in that regard lately but you asked for an opinion. :)

Of course, if you decide to apply, there may be enough people to support to carry it. So you decide - I just think you need a bit more time. Annie 16:53, 25 February 2022 (EST)

Thanks for the honest response. I'll wait. As for the added moderator notes detail, do you want things like "added printing detail", "added cover artist attribution", etc? It's easier to add things if I know what you are looking for. :) Phil 17:11, 25 February 2022 (EST)

Well, see my moderator note here for an example. No need to be as verbose but... 'added notes (printer key, art credit, updated blah blah)' is a lot more useful than just 'added notes'. Look at the screen after the approval. For that specific book, the original note is visible here (it works backwards - as long as we have an edit touching the same field - which we don't for all old books). If I had only added "added notes" and you were one of the other PVs, would you know which notes were added and you may want to recheck (or not) or ask questions about (I've also left a note for the active PV but that is kinda away from the book so... repetition never hurts). And if you find that in a few years, would you know who to ask for details? The histories are a side effect of the approval system - that is why we do not have "previous state" so writing moderator notes is a good way to workaround that. :) Annie 17:38, 25 February 2022 (EST)

Thank you. I'll make my notes more extensive from now on. This helped a lot! Phil 17:47, 25 February 2022 (EST)

Jodi Taylor Long Shadows ASIN

Quick favour/sanity check: is B08NJK2TMZ still a valid ASIN for this on Amazon.com? Amazon UK currently has B08MTFV3VQ - and 404s on the other ASIN - and I'd never scraped Amazon's page for it around the time it came out, so I'm not sure whether it's a case of different ASINs in different territories, or something that's changed at some point. I imagine it's the former, but I'm not sure what Hachette UK imprints do for stuff like this. (GR lists both ASINs, FWIW.

Either way, I'll edit the pub to have both ASINs, I'd just like to have an accurate note to explain them. Thanks ErsatzCulture 11:54, 28 February 2022 (EST)

Yes. B08NJK2TMZ is still valid on Amazon.com with $5.99 price. I remember that one - because it was a case where the ASIN worked on both sides for that publisher (and it is one of my authors)... Annie 15:14, 28 February 2022 (EST)

Thanks, have added (and approved ;-) an edit to add the second ASIN with an explanatory note. ErsatzCulture 17:08, 28 February 2022 (EST)

Nophek Gloss excerpts

There are 4 of these in the database; looks like 2 are from transient copies you had, and 2 added by Chris J, based on Locus data (I think). I've just added a UK pub that also had this excerpt, and the text matches the start/end details you entered in the note for one of those records, so I imported it rather than create another title record. Is there any reason not to merge the other 3 records with that one? ErsatzCulture 19:50, 28 February 2022 (EST)

We really do not know if they are the same text and we do NOT merge if we are not sure (I started recording the start/end exactly because of that). I am planning to get the one I did not record that back from the library to clear that in there. Annie 19:52, 28 February 2022 (EST)

Uhm... did you import the correct one? The one I recorded was this one, not the one you imported. They are most likely the same - I plan to verify - but... Annie 19:54, 28 February 2022 (EST)

Argh, no, that was the one I intended, but looks like I copypasted the wrong ID. Too late at night... ErsatzCulture 20:04, 28 February 2022 (EST)

Beneath Nightmare Castle

Hi Annie! I think I have looked at every link I can find on this book. Here is what I have found. The 1st edition (and I have only found one) has at least 7 printings, all have the same ISBN. I have found 1st and 2nd prints with red covers and a 7th print with black. The 1st and 2nd prints went for £1.95 and the 3rd-4th for £2.25. The 7th has £3.99. The Red covers have the #25 on front. The Black 7th printing does not. I have pics of the front & back covers for these 3 editions. The back covers show bar codes with both the 10 & 13 digit ISBN code. All three are the same. However there ia also a 5 digit code next to the main one. The 1st & 2nd have 9000 where the 7th has 90701. All were printed in 1987. All have 256 pages. I find references where these have 400 sections. I think that was what was put as the page number in the data base. The 1st edition was printed Feb 26, 1987. I also found a version on ebay with a Black cover AND a #25 on the front. The listing has no print date and again the bar code is the same, but it is like the Red covers with the 5 digit code of 9000. The original pricing has been covered over with a Black sticker with $3.99. The 1st and 2nd prints show pricing for UK, Aust, NZ and Canada. The 7th only has UK and Canada. Its not possible to tell with the one with the sticker. So the version in the data base shows a 1st or 2nd print Red cover at £1.95. (both covers look alike) The pages should be 256 not 400 (sections). !st printing was again 1987-02-26. Cover artist and interior artist are correct. Besides my 4 ebay links I also have https://fightingfantasy.fandom.com/wiki/Beneath_Nightmare_Castle_(book) and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Fighting_Fantasy_gamebooks aardvark7 18:19, 1 March 2022 (EST)

Well... if you know that the 7th printing had a different cover - add the 7th printing and add the cover. :) Technically we want all 7 printings - for printed books, we literally want every printing - even if they have the same covers and everything. If the date is unknown, 0000-00-00 to the rescue until we find it. Check if OCLC does not have at least the year for some later printings? Great job untangling that double cover fun. These 9000/90701 sound like a possible club editions but may also be SBNs or who knows? So if ours has the date of the first printing, it is supposed to be for the first printing and we can work from there - adding the others we know about (if you know a date or a price, you can add it as you know it exists. So if you want, compile all you have a submit clones to add the missing printings with the data you have about them?

However... looking at the book - is that a novel/fiction actually? Or is it a game book allowing you to play a game? Annie 18:32, 1 March 2022 (EST)

The book itself is a game as a single-player roll playing gamebook. It is #25 of the Fighting Fantasy titles published by Puffin. Looks like there were around 59 of them. According to fightingfantasy.fandom.com, it was the first book to use the Dragon Cover format that was then used on all of the rest. Wikipedia says "Fighting Fantasy is a series of single-player fantasy roleplay gamebooks created by Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone. The first volume in the series was published by Puffin in 1982, with the rights to the franchise eventually being purchased by Wizard Books in 2002. The series distinguished itself by featuring a fantasy role-playing element, with the caption on each cover claiming each title was "a Fighting Fantasy gamebook in which YOU are the hero!" The popularity of the series led to the creation of merchandise such as action figures, board games, role-playing game systems, magazines, novels and video games." Going to bed now. aardvark7 22:02, 1 March 2022 (EST)

If it is eligible to be here, then - see above - we want all the printings. :) Annie 00:00, 2 March 2022 (EST)

Are Game books eligible? aardvark7 11:58, 2 March 2022 (EST)

Game books (as in campaigns for games and so on fall under the "Games, game guides and game paraphernalia -- but works of fiction based on games are included" exclusion but these sound like "choose your own" adventures which are technically fiction (and we have a lot of them). Which is what I was trying to figure yesterday so... I think we are fine. So if you want to work on these, have fun :) Annie 13:41, 2 March 2022 (EST)

I have made some changes. On the main book level I changed the date to reflect when it 1st came out and added a synopsis. On the book with the cover attached I have changed the date, page count and have added various info such as number of sections it has. A question, the 1st two printings look alike, same isbn (they all have the same isbn), have the same bronze (red) cover and same cover price. Shouldthey be seperate entries with the only difference being one say 1st printing and the other 2nd printing? aardvark7 14:39, 2 March 2022 (EST)

Yep. For printed books, we record each printing separately even if all they differ in is the "printing" statement or number line and the date (and even if the date is the same - we have cases where the 1st and the 2nd are in the same month with no ability to find a exact date) :) Annie 14:49, 2 March 2022 (EST)

Disambiguating Excerpts

In order to avoid duplicates, I disambiguated The All-Consuming World (excerpt) (Lightspeed, August 2021) and The All-Consuming World (excerpt) (Nightmare Magazine, September 2021). You need both ebooks to determine if they are the same (The only text unavailable on Fantasy, Nightmare, and Lightspeed websites are excerpts). Now I am having second thoughts, is disambiguating with notes better? This is the third time this has come up, thought I better get a second opinion! John Scifibones 17:30, 2 March 2022 (EST)

We use notes for the fiction, not disambiguations in the titles unless there is a good reason to to it differently. :) So add notes if you want to, explaining why these should not be merged yet "Please do not merge with other excerpts unless it is verified that the excerpts are the same text"). Annie 17:33, 2 March 2022 (EST)

Disambiguating Inteviews

There are quite a number of 'Author Spotlight' interviews with duplicate titles. I think the best solution is to put the related story title in a note. Here is an example. While these are not fiction titles, notes still appear the best solution. What do you think? John Scifibones 14:43, 3 March 2022 (EST)

This is the most commonly used method for these. Sorry my question is in two posts. John Scifibones 14:54, 3 March 2022 (EST)

Cross-editing. We use the magazine/book title to differentiate essays (and interviews are really a special case of essays). Why reinvent the wheel? If you look around, we had done it in a quite a few places where it was needed (see these(Lightspeed only -- the rest of the same family will give you even more examples) for example).

That way, we are consistent even if someone does not know the story title (plus the interviews are about more than just that story - and they can give another interview about the same story elsewhere) and new editors can follow our rules. :) Annie 14:56, 3 March 2022 (EST)

That makes sense, Thank you John Scifibones 14:59, 3 March 2022 (EST)

Second opinion requested: New Worlds (2022), magazine or anthology?

This looks to be becoming available now or imminently: https://twitter.com/margolanagan/status/1498894599359967232

It has a listing on Amazon UK, albeit not currently available: NB: the "Aug 2021" date is a complete lie, it wasn't even showing on Amazon or anywhere other than the publisher's site a few days ago.

The publisher's original (?) announcement refers to it as "Issue #1", but I don't see that being referenced anywhere else, and I'm not seeing any signs of later issues being promised.

As such, this feels to me like an anthology rather than a magazine, but as I don't generally dabble in the latter, I'm looking for a second opinion before doing something that might require a bunch of fixing further on down the line.

(This one was only on my radar because the Ken MacLeod story was referenced in his latest novel as being in the same universe/series, and its appearance in this "mag" appears to be a reprint, with the original pub being some student's PhD thesis?!? Which in itself will be a bunch of fun to unpick, I imagine...) Thanks ErsatzCulture 17:30, 3 March 2022 (EST)

Publisher site: "Now PS Publishing, with the enthusiastic endorsement and participation of Moorcock himself, presents the first in a revived New Worlds anthology series." (emphasis mine). Issue 1 is not really excluding it being an anthology. While we don't always go by what the publishers say when it is an obvious impossibility, this one is a well established. That's one of the books that is probably making its way to me at the moment :)

I'd add it as an anthology; it is easy enough to change it if we ever decide otherwise.

It may not be a lie with the August date though - if they had printer issues, they may have not updated Amazon. But it was out and available for shipping last year - I know I got the mail at some point. I can look through the mails to see when that was and I am pretty sure the book will be dated as 2021 when it shows up here - so careful with the "it was only on the publisher site" - the last couple of years were weird that way. Annie 17:42, 3 March 2022 (EST)

Thanks.

Just to add to my cynical comments about when it was/is/will be published:

* When I did a search for the ISBN and/or title and/or authors on either Amazon or Google a few days ago, nothing showed up other than the publisher's site.

* This tweet indicates PS Pub. didn't receive copies from the printer until early/mid Feb. ErsatzCulture 18:03, 3 March 2022 (EST)

And we can document that. But if the book has a date inside of it (PS Publishing are usually very good with dating with month and year) and it is August 2021, we will need to date based on that. :) Annie 18:05, 3 March 2022 (EST)

First version is here - I'll do the rest of the contents tomorrow. I've documented the Macleod story as best I've been able to uncover so far, but whether that counts as a 2016 publication, I dunno - maybe the copyright details of this anthology will shed some more light?

Wasn't sure if/how this might related to the existing New Worlds series, so I've left that to someone more familiar with the arcane history of that mag... ErsatzCulture 18:53, 3 March 2022 (EST)

It is a revival of a type. So we can put an overarching series on top of both or we can just document in the notes. Annie 18:56, 3 March 2022 (EST)

Adam Blade novel->novella conversions

So now that I have self-approval, I feel I've lost the excuse that cleaning these up is too painful :-( Before I embark on this, is there anything I should be aware of beyond what is in Help:How_to_convert_a_novel_to_a_chapbook ? Specifically, I'm thinking of anything that might be more complicated due to having both the Adam Blade and real author/unknown titles?

(I'm probably just going to do the ones that have a single pub to start with, any that might have more than that can wait until later.)

Thanks ErsatzCulture 17:09, 6 March 2022 (EST)

Just don’t forget to convert both the parent and the variant, make a variant for the chapbook where the name of the author matches the name on the story and that all 4 of them need juvenile flags set. :) Annie 18:22, 6 March 2022 (EST)

Thanks. First one hopefully done - I'll check the nightly reports tomorrow to see if I've missed anything. Will try to do one of these a day on average to try to get them cleared... ErsatzCulture 14:16, 7 March 2022 (EST)

I removed your note from here. Amazon's pages number is based on pages with the illustrations (so they usually would match or be close to the paper ones); Kobo's pages mark the text only usually (so theirs tend to be lower, especially on children's books). That's where the page differences come from for most Juvenile records. Adding links to a seller all over the place because of their practices is not really needed. It is obviously not a novel; if you want to use the Kobo number for specifying the length (and selecting the correct length), feel free to do that but that comparison of apples to carrots is confusing for someone who does not know the sites and unnecessary in these notes. Annie 14:53, 7 March 2022 (EST)

Thanks - I'd noticed the weirdly low Kobo page counts before, but hadn't realized that it was due to skipping the illustrations.

I added the note because I was reluctant to commit to a particular SHORTFICTION length. Based on Kobo's word count, it's a novelette, but I'm pretty sure the other Adam Blade books had similar counts, and if I set this one, then I'd feel obliged to convert all the existing novellas to novelettes, at least until I've done the novel->chapbook. ErsatzCulture 19:05, 7 March 2022 (EST)

Yeah, I'd just leave it as Short Fiction usually - unless I am sure in the count :) Some of the later books are longer - well into the 20K words. After adding a few hundred juvenile chapbooks in the last years, that is the only explanation I ever figured out and it tracks - the more illustrated a book is, the bigger the discrepancy. And usually the length of its audible/audio versions will be consistent with the Kobo numbers (when there is an audio version - the 10K words ~~ 1 hour parity (with some deviations upwards for specific books) is consistent). So chances are that they are correct here - but just converting them to short fiction is enough :) Annie 19:10, 7 March 2022 (EST)

Die fliegende Kreissäge

Hello Annie, is this Муравьиныӥ царь correct Bulgarian? In the sources of Die gestohlenen Techmine this is the parent title of Die fliegende Kreissäge. I know the correct parent is Дърворезачка. Maybe Муравьиный царь first published in Bulgarian 1970 is the name of the original collection. Please take a look. Many thanks Henna 14:13, 9 March 2022 (EST)

Nope - that's a Russian title, not a Bulgarian one and it is the correct one for "Die gestohlenen Techmine" original, not for "Die fliegende Kreissäge" one. Maybe they mixed up the Lomm story with the Raditschkow one? I will chase it down. Annie 14:24, 9 March 2022 (EST)

The German translation was taken from Die fliegende Kreissäge und andere merkwürdige Geschichten. The content is:

• Die fliegende Kreissäge (Drworesatschka)
• Der Ziegenbock (Kosel)
• Der Ziegenbart (Kosjata brada)
• Angst (Strach)

Maybe it helps. Thanks Henna 14:46, 9 March 2022 (EST)

Yes but what does this have to do with the Муравьиныӥ царь/Die gestohlenen Techmine story?

I am a bit confused at where the problem is here so let's recap where we are and see what remains to be done.

"Муравьиныӥ царь" is the original title of "Die gestohlenen Techmine" and was published in 1965. We have it so in the DB and it is correct.

"Дърворезачка" is the original title of "Die fliegende Kreissäge". We have it so in the DB and it is correct.

If a book claims that "Муравьиныӥ царь" is the original title of "Die fliegende Kreissäge" or that "Муравьиныӥ царь" was originally published in 1970, the book is wrong and someone mixed up something somewhere while typing it. Now... it is possible that Дърворезачка is from 1970 and someone copied/pasted something wrong - I am still looking for its first publication - I know of a later one in 1984 but it also was published earlier).

Let me know if that helps or if we still have something else to sort out? Annie 15:00, 9 March 2022 (EST)

Hello Annie, sorry for the confusion. Everything is at the right place. This was only a hint for the first German translation in a collection. The collection is maybe a translation of the original collection Dărvorezačka (Дърворезачка). My posting was a hint and not a question. Sorry for the hassle Henna 15:26, 9 March 2022 (EST)

Ah, I see. Nope - not under the title "Муравьиныӥ царь" - as I said, wrong language :) But there may be an anthology somewhere in Russian or in Bulgarian - so I will see what I can find. No hassle at all - I was just confused about the issue. :) Annie 15:38, 9 March 2022 (EST)

Skyward Flight - collection or omnibus?

Just looking at adding the UK pubs for this - one of the trilogy is recorded as a novel (and I think at least one of the others could/should be), so wouldn't that "upgrade" this from collection to omnibus a la Binti? FWIW, Kobo has the UK ebook as 182k words and 672 pages, and the UK print version is reported as 640 pages, same as the US pub, which also implies novel length for (some of) the individual volumes?

I'll definitely defer to your decision on this, but I didn't want to start adding the UK pubs as collections only to (possibly?) create extra work later on if the individual pubs were switched to omnibus. ErsatzCulture 16:20, 9 March 2022 (EST)

I knew you will get to this one sooner or later. :) I am not sure. I added is as a collection because I don't like omnibuses with just one container title but I have it on my list to check the so-called novellas. Sunreach seems to be 49k words/5+ hours on audio which makes it a short novel. Evershore is even worse - 63k words according to Kobo and see my note on the audio length in the title notes - that was always suspiciously long. So maybe we should start there - get the 3 original stories cleared on length and see where that leaves us. Want to try your hand at novella -> novel conversion for a change? Once these are novels, it becomes an obvious omnibus. :) Annie 16:47, 9 March 2022 (EST)

"For a change"? ;-) My very vague recollection is that the third one looked like it also needed changing, but there wasn't as much evidence available at the time, so I was happy to put it out of my mind, especially with the pain on converting the second one. Will have another attempt with the final volume later... ErsatzCulture 12:34, 10 March 2022 (EST)

You had been doing a lot of novel -> novella so for a change, here is an opportunity for the reverse. ;) If I thought you had no idea how, I'd have posted a step by step. Authors and publishers use novella and short novel interchangeably often - regardless of length. We don't. So these crop up occasionally. ;) Annie 12:41, 10 March 2022 (EST)

I checked with one of the authors, and they said the Skyward Flight "novellas" are (in order) about 50k, 60k, and 60k. So, they are all actually short novels. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 14:41, 10 March 2022 (EST)

Yep - between Kobo's e-book lengths and the downloadable Audio formats lengths, they were too long to be even suspect novellas (aka "the too close to call" cases) -- even if Kobo/Audible can be occasionally (and very rarely) hilariously wrong far before publication, the post publication and close to publication values are usually close to reality. Thanks for confirming from another side as well! Annie 14:58, 10 March 2022 (EST)

I've cleaned this one up since it requires some weird juggling of container types and whatnot. It should be all fixed now. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 15:43, 10 March 2022 (EST)

Yeah... I left it because I kinda wanted our new self-approver to try his hand in untangling the whole mess and see the possible issues in that scenario - practice and all that :) But there will be another occasion. Annie 15:47, 10 March 2022 (EST)

Sorry. I can write out the steps I took if that will help. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 15:55, 10 March 2022 (EST)

Naah, don't worry - I am pretty sure he knows what he needs to do - it was really the "put your hands on the thing" and think through the steps more than the steps themselves - as you did mention, it requires some juggling in that direction which is different from the opposite one (which we also see a lot more often). We will find another cluster somewhere sooner or later - it is not like we don't have a lot of them :) Thanks for fixing this one! Annie 16:01, 10 March 2022 (EST)

Thanks also - was preoccupied with catching up with a bunch of recent/imminent UK pubs and - shock horror - actually reading something ;-) ErsatzCulture 18:02, 10 March 2022 (EST)

How long to wait

I'm pretty patient but I've posted multiple requests about making changes on Marc Kupper's talk page but have had no response. I even tried sending him an ISFDB email which also had no response. The oldest request [7] was posted on January 8, the second oldest [8] on January 21, and the third oldest [9] on February 1. I'd really like to make these changes so I can re-shelve the 5 books involved. After so long with no response, would it be wrong to submit theses changes without his concurrence? TIA! Phil 17:55, 11 March 2022 (EST)

The official FAQ: "If you want to change or remove information, please ask the verifier first. If the verifier doesn't respond in a week or so, post a note on the Moderator noticeboard and someone will help you."

Just post on the Moderator board for posterity and submit them with a reference in the moderator note of each submission to both the Moderator board note and the notification on Marc's page and the fact that you did not get a response from the PV. :) Annie 18:10, 11 March 2022 (EST)

The Observer Effect - physical pub with ASIN?

Looking through the newest Locus New Books list, and The Observer Effect was highlighted as not in the database. Turns out that we only have large print and audio pubs, so I'll see about grabbing & submitting data for the regular hc and ebook, but I was a bit surprised that hc has a (non ISBN-10) ASIN. It seems to have come from the Fixer submission, but is that legit and/or something I should be on the watch for when submitting other pubs? ErsatzCulture 13:10, 16 March 2022 (EDT)

ALL paper books with ISBNs starting with 979 have ASINs starting with B because they cannot form ISBN10 which is the base for all searches usually - which means we need to record them - for the same reasons as with ebooks. In addition some of the 978 ones MAY have a B-ASIN (once in a blue ASIN) because Amazon messes up. As you are usually submitting the big UK publishers and they had not ran out of their 978 ISBNs, you probably won't see these much (yet) but if you venture in other directions, you will see a lot of them (all US 978 ranges are now exhausted - assigned/sold to publishers essentially - so any new requests get a 979). Annie 13:25, 16 March 2022 (EDT)

Fixer says that humans wouldn't have this problem if they used hexadecimal numbers -- the only numbers worth bothering with! Ahasuerus 13:32, 16 March 2022 (EDT)

Ah, thanks - I vaguely recall 979s+ASIN being talked about before, but I hadn't spotted this was one. ErsatzCulture 13:43, 16 March 2022 (EDT)

Welcome to the fascinating world of 2022 publishing... Annie 13:52, 16 March 2022 (EDT)

BTW: don't read too much into this "Large Print" from Blackstone. They mark some books that way because it is a little larger font than what they usually use. And sometimes they are real Large Print editions. That may be the only paper edition out there. Publishers can be... weird. Annie 16:39, 16 March 2022 (EDT)

9781665048330 (B&N) is the hc ISBN on the Locus list, and seems to be the one showing on UK retailer sites (along with that 979 one). FWIW, it was also in the Fixer download as of 2022-01-22 (which is the latest copy I've got downloaded), I dunno if there's a reason it hadn't previously come through? ErsatzCulture 17:29, 16 March 2022 (EDT)

If it was in January, it may be on the back burner due to lack of data at the time or because something looked iffy. Or the API did not return data for it on reconciliation. It may also had had weird author/date combo which precluded it from being sorted in Q1. Or something else happened. You do realize that we get roughly 50K new ISBNs/ASINs in a slow month and these are not slow months, right? :) And because of that there are priorities and so on. Look at the export and see what priority is attached to it - that will tell you where it is sitting. Annie 17:42, 16 March 2022 (EDT)

9781665048330 was in Queue 2 as of this morning. I have moved it to Queue 1 and will review other "Queue 2/3" ISBNs by "Blackstone Publishing" to make sure that nothing else got misfiled. Ahasuerus 09:13, 17 March 2022 (EDT)

P.S. Fixer is reporting 2220 ISBNs and 2087 ASINs in Queues 2 and 3. The ISBNs are an eclectic mix of older audio books by major authors, indies, European translations, non-genre classics, etc. The ASINs are mostly obscure indies. I can ask Fixer to move the ISBNs to Queue 1 if desired. Ahasuerus 09:23, 17 March 2022 (EDT)

Being in Q2 explains why I never saw it :) Blackstone had been a mixed bag when theirs shows up on the board - I don't want all 2.2K of these at the same time (capacity and all that). They are not a strictly genre publisher (as Aethon is for example) and a lot of their horror is not ours (and they tag weirdly - or someone in Amazon tags theirs weirdly - so we get non-genre mix-ins). But I suspect we can sort them in Q1 more aggressively going forward and we can work through theirs at some point - they had been picking up paper and ebook editions of a lot more books lately. Annie 14:38, 17 March 2022 (EDT)

Just to close this off, I just added 9781665048330, in case Fixer pushes that through. I'll do the ebook 9781982693701 after I sync with next week's DB dump, if no-one beats me to it in the mean time. ErsatzCulture 18:28, 20 March 2022 (EDT)

If it is already in when Fixer's submissions are posted in the queue, it will be skipped - that's why we cannot use Fixer for later printing of the same ISBN even if Amazon has the data - we get one printing per ISBN from Fixer. If the submission is posted but it is added later, I get the "ISBN already in" warning so I check the case (and for ebooks I always check because we work based on ASINs there and if the ASIN is missing, Fixer will not know not to submit. So we are all good. Annie 18:46, 20 March 2022 (EDT)

The Forest of Forever second opinion

Would you mind checking this conversation? I'd welcome a second opinion. -- JLaTondre (talk) 17:20, 19 March 2022 (EDT)

Posted an opinion. It can go either way but I think there is just one book out there... Annie 16:50, 20 March 2022 (EDT)

Liverpool University Press pub dates

Just added a recent ebook of theirs - annoyingly not available via Amazon or Kobo - and whilst grabbing data for the physical pub, I noticed that the UK sites list March 1st, whereas B&N have April 1st. Any idea if that's usual behaviour for them? Whilst digging around, I saw that a pub from late last year is recorded as a Nov 1st pub, yet all the UK sites have Oct 1st. (I also note that the original Fixer submission says "data from Amazon.com", but it was edited to say "from Amazon UK" - possibly a difference in the listings that wasn't spotted at the time?)

Also, I note that none of the retailers listing a March 1st pub date actually have copies in stock. Given this is a £95 academic text, am I right for suspecting that they probably don't get copies in by default, rather than it being a pub that hasn't hit its due date? I don't usually catch these prior to publication, so I don't know if that's normal practice? (FWIW, the publisher's Twitter acct does say it's out, albeit not until a couple of days after the official date.) Thanks. ErsatzCulture 12:14, 28 March 2022 (EDT)

I usually check the dates for them on their own site -- retailers can be... notoriously weird with academic texts, especially across an ocean. Part of it is how it gets distributed -- the book is out, it just does not show up at regular venues yet more often than not. If it says just Amazon UK, then Amazon UK was showing that date at the time (Fixer will always show Amazon.com as long as the US side has enough info not to send him scrambling to use the UK data). And the "date" portion is usually unclear and comes from retailers. So we document what we can find until we get better dates.Annie 13:27, 28 March 2022 (EDT)

Thanks. Hopefully I've done enough trawling for info on this pub series on Amazon UK today, that I'll get recommender suggestions for their future titles ahead of pub date. (Looks like there's one missing from the end of last year that I now have enough info for to submit shortly.) ErsatzCulture 14:33, 28 March 2022 (EDT)

Check the publisher site for them as well - as I said, they had been finicky :) Annie 14:34, 28 March 2022 (EDT)

Upcoming Ben Aaronovitch short story previously published in Czech?

Apologies if this comes across as based on some ignorant Anglocentric "all Central/Eastern European languages are the same" assumption, but is the Czech language or publishing industry amongst your repertoir?

I finally got around to looking at the Waterstones exclusive editions of the previously discussed "Amongst Our Weapons", and it turns out these have an extra "exclusive" short story. This has now been added, but I thought I'd best double check that it is indeed part of the Rivers of London series before setting that field. Twitter has confirmed as such, but there's also an (unanswered) 2021 tweet to the author indicating that it was previously published. Googling throws up this, which does seem to confirm the prior pub, albeit in (presumably) translated form. Are you able to find out any more? Thanks ErsatzCulture 12:05, 31 March 2022 (EDT)

They are not the same (duh - we even use different alphabets) but they are all kinda in my repertoire - yes :) Let me chase that down - won't be the first time for a translation to come out first. Annie 12:16, 31 March 2022 (EDT)

So... the publisher site claims that "Projekt ROBOT100 se tak stal první českou antologií, do které se podařilo získat originální povídku hvězdy světové fantastiky." ("The project ROBOT100 thus became the first Czech anthology to secure the original publication of a story from a world sf star" - in a very rough translation - sf stands for a word that does not exist in English per se - it is somewhere in between terms - but is there in all Slavic languages). As the Robert Silverberg piece is not a story and Michal Hvorecký is kinda important but not really a world star, that leaves just Aaronovitch. :) No clue if it is a series story - no indication anywhere. I will add the Czech book later and add the connection and all that. Annie 12:28, 31 March 2022 (EDT)

Thanks. I did think to try amazon.cz, but that just seems to be the .de site with a different language, and it didn't know the ISBN. I did find the same argo.cz page after Googling the ISBN, and saw that it has a preview that namechecks Ben Aaronovitch, but I couldn't fathom the exact context, and browser translate tools didn't help.

This author tweet indicates the story is in the same universe. That it also says the story is set in Prague might be an indicator that it was written with the intention of being published in a Czech anthology? ErsatzCulture 12:37, 31 March 2022 (EDT)

Who knows. The introduction is available from the publisher site but it does not have anything about that story. Annie 12:42, 31 March 2022 (EDT)

Googling for the Czech title threw up this GR thread that seems to have been the trigger for the unanswered Tweet. It links to a FB post that has some English language text (screenshot of a Word/Scrivener doc?) but FB is breaking my browser translation tools, so I don't know the precise context. ErsatzCulture 12:47, 31 March 2022 (EDT)

So you assume I cannot use Google or something? :) That's the announcement that they will have a story by him with what appears to be the first page of the English text attached. As the name Nightingale is in there and we know he had traveled to the continent, chances are that this is indeed a story from the series. But I won't add it to the series until there is a better proof (names get reused) - we don't invent information, we record it and make sure we have sources for it. Notes to the effect of the name usage and series speculation can be added if you want though... Annie 13:10, 31 March 2022 (EDT)

Sorry, was just trying to be thorough in documenting my findings ;-)

That first page extract on FB (which granted, I didn't see until after I added the series to the story) references Postmartin, Nightingale and the Folly, which seem unlikely to all be re-used in an unrelated story IMHO... ErsatzCulture 13:36, 31 March 2022 (EDT)

Not with all of them referenced, no. I scanned it quickly - in the middle of something else - and noticed just Nightingale. All set then. I will add the anthology later. Annie 13:39, 31 March 2022 (EDT)

Second opinion requested: Philip Pullman's The Imagination Chamber

This is due at the end of April in the UK; B&N doesn't seem to know the title, so I guess there's no US release yet scheduled. Cursory Googling doesn't show up any more info beyond what's on that publisher page - there are no reviews on GR and a Pullman/HDM fan wiki only has a fairly barebones entry.

As it seems to be fragmentary bits and pieces from HDM, rather than a consistent narrative, I'm inclined to submit it as a collection. Page count of 96 pages implies it's chapbook length, but IIRC chapbooks have a vague limit on the number of contents (low single digits?) so collection would win out over chapbook? Any thoughts/objections?

Thanks :-) ErsatzCulture 15:19, 7 April 2022 (EDT)

Looks like a collection to me so let's do that for now. :) Chapbooks are really for single stories (with a few exceptions such as a short supporting story and the like). A collection of scenes is a collection. And I do not see it anywhere Stateside - will keep an eye for it showing under a different title though. :) Annie 18:41, 7 April 2022 (EDT)

Thanks, now added. ErsatzCulture 19:49, 7 April 2022 (EDT)

Don Tumasonis

The source for Don Tumasonis' death is Steve Jones via Ansible. Shsilver 16:03, 7 April 2022 (EDT)

OK, thanks - that needs to be in the notes when you submit the update. You can also respond on your own page - when a moderator posts a question, they monitor your page :) Annie 18:42, 7 April 2022 (EDT)

Copies of titles appearing in different publications

These are the exact same "Author's Note", that appears in the first part and the second part of a translation that has been split into two books, because of... reasons.

• http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?3014283
• http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?3014284

Because of rules you once explained to me with titles such has "Introduction", "Afterword", and I assume also "Author's Note", I've added the title of the book as a part of the title of the essay, i. e.

• Författarens anmärkning (Otherland I: de gyllene skuggornas stad)
• Författarens anmärkning (Otherland II: i en annan värld)

Although, they are made variants of the original "Author's Note", they still resulted in two different entries, because of this, which, to me at least, indicates that there is something different about them.

Is this a problem? How would you go about it? I would have liked to use the Import function on one of them, but then the title would be wrong.

--Spacecow 07:18, 9 April 2022 (EDT)

Is it the same text? If so, you can just call it Författarens anmärkning (Otherland) - and add a note into the title record explaining the naming. What you have now is technically not wrong but as the title is the same if we did not have the disambiguation and it is the same text, keeping them together makes more sense. Annie 10:51, 11 April 2022 (EDT)

Yes, its the same text. I will rename one of them and let both publications point at that one. Once they do, I will request admin to delete the second one, which no-one longer points at. --Spacecow 16:48, 11 April 2022 (EDT)

You do not need a moderator for that. The fastest way actually will be to merge them (via the Advanced Search for title) and then rename the result :) Annie 18:47, 11 April 2022 (EDT)

Oooooooh. I will try that with another candidate. I expect you to be there and clean up my mess. --Spacecow 13:27, 12 April 2022 (EDT)

An Asimov question.

Do I bother putting this Asimov title (excerpt) into the bibliography? There is an OCLC number (72859390). If it's silkscreened, I'm not even sure what the format should be. ../Doug H 15:44, 9 April 2022 (EDT)

It is eligible :) I would not bother adding it but up to you. Format will be "other" and a note explaining what that means. Annie 10:42, 11 April 2022 (EDT)

Too cute not to. [10] ../Doug H 13:30, 11 April 2022 (EDT)

Yeah... you have the bug... :) Add a note that it was published in 50 copies (So it does not look like an 1 off vanity project). Annie 13:32, 11 April 2022 (EDT)

I had it at the title level (only one publication), but figured you're right (again) and added it to the pub. ../Doug H 15:31, 11 April 2022 (EDT)

Rich Larson's Cypher and Ymir - retitling, or unused ISBNs recycled for a different book?

Did this one ever come up in discussion before? (I couldn't find any references to it on my or your talk pages...)

Anyway, I was just trawling through Waterstones' advanced listings, and was a bit confused by this title and cover image discrepancy. Judging by the Orbit/Hachette US pages, it looks like they have reused the earlier two ISBNs 9780316416573 (ebook) and 9780316416580 (tp) for a completely different book. I have only the vaguest knowledge of the series that Cypher was the second book of, but the blurb for this new Ymir title doesn't sound like it's simply a delayed and renamed version of the older title.

I assume the recycled ISBNs might mean that Fixer won't pick it up when the time (July pub) comes - will ping Ahasuerus for comment though.

Cursory online searches are unhelpful in getting to the bottom of things - this 2021 tweet confirms my suspicion Cypher never came out. Weirdly, it doesn't seem to show up on GR at all any more that I can see, despite me explicitly referencing its entry from there in the ebook pub note back in 2020.

I guess the title and tp pub records for Cypher should also be 8888-ed and noted, similar to the ebook, but I'll keep digging around... ErsatzCulture 18:58, 9 April 2022 (EDT)

No idea - will do some digging to see if this one came out. The ISBN is shot for Fixer though - if it is in the DB, Fixer does not know that there is something new (new printing or new title)... Annie 10:40, 11 April 2022 (EDT)

'Noname' (Luis Senarens)

I'm confused by your creation of 'Noname' (Luis Senarens). "Noname" is a house name used by Francis W. Doughty, Harry Enton, and Luis Senarens for The Boys of New York dime novels. Why would we disambiguate this? That's not how we normally handle house names. -- JLaTondre (talk) 16:24, 16 May 2022 (EDT)

Absolutely no memories about that one. Probably did not recognize it as a house name and went on the usual route of making a parent by default. Will clean it up in a bit. Thanks for catching it Annie 12:15, 26 May 2022 (EDT)

Fixed. Annie 12:21, 26 May 2022 (EDT)

Current tags issue

I'm having a problem deleting a misspelling for a current tag on the following page: http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?49626 The term "fantasy" is misspelled "fatasy". I went ahead & added the tag "fantasy" but can see no way to delete an existing tag. Can you help? Thanks. Mike 10:50, 26 May 2022 (EDT)

Editors (and that includes moderators and self-approvers) cannot delete tags. Only a bureaucrat or the user who added the tag can remove it. The best I can do is to make it private which does not change much except to make it invisible from the page (search still finds it). I've made it private for now - you can post on the Moderator board to get Ahasuerus to delete it completely. Annie 12:20, 26 May 2022 (EDT)

Thank you for your help. I think this change is enough. Mike 14:49, 26 May 2022 (EDT)

Possibly ignorant question about Fixer, audios, Amazon .com vs .co.uk, Audible, etcv

Hi, good to see you're back :-)

Quick question: when Fixer submits audio releases that it has collected from Amazon.com's API, are they (unlike ebooks) lacking ISBNs? I saw this Fixer-originated audio download just now, as I was updating the corresponding hc, which has an ISBN for the audio release listed on the copyright page. (And which matches the info on the Gollancz site and Kobo. As I've been feeling a bit guilty recently about never adding audios, I thought I'd try to at least get that info into the database.

However if I search for this audio ISBN on Amazon UK, it doesn't find anything (whereas it does find appropriate results if I search for the ebook ISBN). Searching for that audio ISBN does work seem to find stuff on audible.co.uk though. This seemingly illogical/inconsistent behaviour makes me wonder whether that ISBN might refer to a different pub/format? (Bear in mind that I never listen to audios, so I'm utterly ignorant about whether there are format differences similar to EPUB vs MOBI and how they might be modelled in the database.)

Basically I just want to sanity check that adding the audio ISBN listed in the hc, and on the Gollancz and Kobo sites, to that existing audio pub record is the right thing to do, as opposed to creating a new pub record. When I did track down the audio release on Amazon UK, it has a different Amazon ASIN from either of the two attached to the current record, which might be just a region splitting thing - similar to what Titan etc do for ebooks - but makes me paranoid enough that I'd rather get a second opinion about all of this, before making any edits in areas that I don't really know much about... Thanks! ErsatzCulture 18:27, 27 May 2022 (EDT)

Fixer does not have ISBNs for ebooks either - not for the last few years anyway. Most ebooks that come to the DB from him have ISBNs in their records because I track them down on publisher sites, kobo, Apple, blogs, promotional materials (and oracle bones if it gets to that). Fixer does not get ISBNs for anything besides paperbooks, physical audio disks and other physical formats and older ebooks (grabbed before the API change) - they dropped the support for the ISBNs on the digital formats a few years back. Ebook ISBNs are occasionally searchable in Amazon, audiobook ones are never searchable there.

The Audible, Kobo, Apple and publisher site version of the downloadable Audiobook is indeed the same book (as long as you make sure the reader and the dates and the covers are the same - some books do have multiple versions) so we keep a single record in the DB unless we find a reason not to (some publishers ites will have links to all stores with their own identifiers; some won't). Hope that makes sense.

Also - for the same Audiobook, Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk will always have a different ASIN (when both carry it); Audible.com and Audible.co.uk have the same ASIN when they use ISBN10; if one or both use a B-ASIN, they will be different. Our Audible field is only for the IDs from Audible.com; Audible UK (and the other 4 Audible sites - but as you are doing English only, that is irrelevant) ones go into the websites field. See for example. I'd throw the Audible UK into Sites even when the ISBN10 is used if I had checked it (because there is no other link to it). Annie 20:22, 27 May 2022 (EDT)

Thanks, I'll update all the info for this pub later today when I have a bit more time. ErsatzCulture 07:54, 28 May 2022 (EDT)

Mountain of Black Glass (dup?)

While cloning this title for a different printing I noticed that the entry [11] seems to be a duplicate of [12]. However, they have a slightly different page count. The edit history shows that you're the last one to touch it. Thoughts? --Glenn 16:30, 29 June 2022 (EDT)

From the looks of it, I removed a direct link to Amazon (in one of the cleanup efforts). They do look as the same edition indeed. Annie 11:09, 18 July 2022 (EDT)

Should I deal with this, or were you going to when you got caught up? --Glenn 17:36, 18 July 2022 (EDT)

Go ahead and get them cleaned up - let me know if you need any assistance :) Annie 18:01, 18 July 2022 (EDT)

The Prince Warriors (a request)

Hey Annie; I recently added The Prince Warriors series to this site, could you check out the foreign editions that I added, and make sure I got them right? MLB 23:33, 5 July 2022 (EDT)

Will put it on my list for this week - returning after 3 weeks of vacation is always fun. Thanks for pinging me about them! Annie 11:10, 18 July 2022 (EDT)

Mohsin Hamed - The Last White Man - novella?

This one has page count of 192 for both US and UK hcs, but the UK ebook is variously reported by vendors as 169 (Amazon) or 119 (Kobo GB). Kobo US and UK both have word count of 32k words, well into novella territory.

US publisher claims it is "A Novel" (and that is on the cover), but a Google indicates several reviewers report it as a novella.

FWIW, the US pub is a week-and-a-bit ahead of the UK one, I dunno if there are any other sources you know of that might worth checking on before making a type change? Thanks ErsatzCulture 11:32, 24 July 2022 (EDT)

I was looking at that one and have it on my list to recheck the length when it comes up - 32K is safely inside novella category but these can get adjusted a bit post-publication so I was planning to take a second look at the length when I am adding the ebooks. If you want to change it, go ahead. :) Annie 14:18, 25 July 2022 (EDT)

Thanks, I'll take a deeper look at in a few days.

BTW, in a similar vein, I just spotted this in the alt author/canonical title cleanup report, but the subtitle (which probably probably shouldn't be in the title field, I suspect) doesn't match the title type. This ebook doesn't seem to be listed on Kobo (GB), so I can't get a word count from there, and it doesn't seem like it's on Kobo (US) either, but could you just double check the later, in case Kobo have started following Amazon's habit of serving different results based on user's location? Claimed print length of 129 pages also seems fairly novella-ish. ErsatzCulture 06:06, 26 July 2022 (EDT)

Between the title (yep, that subtitle should not be there, a part of it should be in the series field instead), the page count and the author site, that is very very very likely to be a duck indeed (uhm... I mean a novella). Annie 13:33, 26 July 2022 (EDT)

Help/favour: Adam Roberts' Haven - apparent 2022 ebook

Hi, any chance you could help me understand a possible new pub from a couple of days ago?

Adam Roberts' Haven had a new tp out a couple of days ago, and this got added via Fixer. However, it seems that there may be a new ebook as well, but info is a bit inconsistent:

• Amazon UK no longer lists the previous B07D835BGP ASIN (which was valid for Amazon UK; I had/have added it in my wishlist, but it's in an unpurchasable state)
• There's a new ebook with the ASIN B0B7KG5RPT, with Amazon UK reporting it as a 2nd edn on 16th Aug
• Clicking on the Look Inside preview, it has the new cover, with the old 9781786181091 and 2018 copyright date - implying it's just the cover that has changed
• Kobo (GB) doesn't seem to list it at all now - although it did as recently as mid-June 2022 based on my scraped data
• B&N (which I now have a scraper for BTW, although I only plan on using it for "international" pubs) lists a new pub with an ISBN of 9781786186492
• FWIW, I get no Google search hits for that ISBN, but if I put it into Amazon UK's search it is recognized correctly. Neither of these apparent new ISBN or ASIN seem to be known by Fixer, but I'm currently running data that's a couple of months old

Any chance you can have a quick look at Amazon US from that side of the Atlantic, to confirm if there's an ebook listed with info that matches Amazon UK and B&N? If so, I'll submit this new pub - unless you think there's a reason not to? (It also looks like there's identical ebook reissue weirdness with the first in that series - sigh...)

Thanks :-)

I fixed the cover of the paper one while I was there. The UK has the same ISBN but two days later.

Here is what I am seeing for ebooks: ASIN B0B7KG5RPT is valid both in Amazon UK and Amazon US, same date (16). Kobo USA does not have it but that is not unusual at this point with these books - they show up a bit later in my experience.

The new cover makes a new book anyway but there is also a new ISBN here -- so I'd add it, with 9781786186492 as ISBN, the ASIN and with BOTH Amazons as source (one of the prices into the notes). It is the correct/paired ISBN for the new paperback so 99% belongs to the ebook -- and both Amazons show it the way they show ebook ISBNs these days when you search for it. Which in my experience means that this is the ebook ISBN - it will just take other places a bit to reconcile with it... Annie 18:02, 18 August 2022 (EDT)

Thanks - I went to fix the Haven tp cover, but saw you beat me to it by 3 minutes :-( On the plus side, it did remind me that I hadn't checked the WatchPrePub cleanup report recently, and there were 4 other dodgy covers that I've now fixed. (Plus a pub date one that I started fixing, before my net connection crapped out, and which I'll have to redo today.)

Will submit the ebook later today - I thought Solaris had gotten over their weird attitude to ebooks (from around a year ago, when they seemed to want to push people to only their own online store, and some stuff wasn't even listed on Amazon), but evidently not... ErsatzCulture 02:53, 19 August 2022 (EDT)

Another "can you check this ebook in the US please" request

Ebook of S. D. Perry's Resident Evil Code Veronica - I scraped details from Amazon UK and Kobo (GB) for this in late April/early May 2022, but neither of them list it any more. (It's a Titan Books - yes, them :-( - pub, so I don't have any publisher site info.)

It is however currently listed on B&N with the same ISBN, 9781781161913. The Amazon UK ASIN is/was B00MLDJOYC. The ISBN does appear in the Fixer dumps, attached to three different ASINs, including the one I had:

   (book_scraping) book_scraping $ grep 9781781161913 /mnt/data2019/_isfdb_/_fixer_20220820_/*txt
   /mnt/data2019/_isfdb_/_fixer_20220820_/ASINs2022-08-20.txt:B008QNE6M6|9781781161913|n
   /mnt/data2019/_isfdb_/_fixer_20220820_/ASINs2022-08-20.txt:B009ATEWDS|9781781161913|n
   /mnt/data2019/_isfdb_/_fixer_20220820_/ASINs2022-08-20.txt:B00MLDJOYC|9781781161913|n
   /mnt/data2019/_isfdb_/_fixer_20220820_/ISBNs2022-08-20.txt:1781161917|9781781161913|n|B008QNE6M6

Google search on B008QNE6M6 does indicate there is/was Amazon.com page for a Kindle edition, although possibly that's cached data and the listing is no longer valid? B009ATEWDS just finds a single reference on Goodreads - it also claims to be a Titan edition, so perhaps have been different issues. (The Amazon UK page did list it as a "reprint edition" FWIW.)

I'll submit this based on what I've got - if only to stop it showing up as a TODO in my tools - but if you can let me know what Amazon.com says about it, that'd be super helpful. Thanks! ErsatzCulture 17:26, 22 August 2022 (EDT)

Amazon.com has B008QNE6M6 with Publication date September 18, 2012. The Look Inside pulls an ISBN of 9781781161913 and that lines up with2012 date. The cover matches this one and the two ISBNs are a possible pair. So my gut feeling is that this is the 2012 ebook. Maybe they planned to reissue and changed their mind; maybe they decided to reuse the old records.

B009ATEWDS is invalid in Amazon.com. Considering it is a Thursday release, this is probably the UK 2012 ebook. Both ASINs are in Goodreads as the two ebooks from September 2012: A Thursday (September 13, 2012 for https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/19284333 and B009ATEWDS) and a Tuesday (September 18 for https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/16119229 for B008QNE6M6). Plus there is the ebook with the ISBN (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13642095 and the later date). There are more records in there and some more noise (that one needs to be cleaned up by the GR people...) but we know this pattern, don't we?

If I have to make a guess, I'd call that the ebook from 2012, published staggered across the ocean as usual (maybe for the 5 days before the US one came out, the UK one was available in US - based on the date and the usual pattern of these, B00MLDJOYC is probably that short lived record), add the 3 GR records and the two (or 3 if you prefer) ASINs, add the ISBN, note the date difference and call it a day. Annie 19:21, 22 August 2022 (EDT)

Thanks - I should have been clearer that I'd seen the 2012 date, and the multiple entries on GR, although I hadn't gone as far as working out which were Tuesday vs Thursday. Will submit this one later today to get it off my list. ErsatzCulture 06:47, 23 August 2022 (EDT)

It is almost the first thing I do when I see dates which are on the correct date-difference from publishers known to do that :) Annie 14:46, 23 August 2022 (EDT)

(As an aside, but on the general topic of publisher weirdness, I did a couple of Aconyte ebooks whilst you were on hiatus, and saw their thing of putting out the ebook a couple of weeks ahead of the tp. It also looks like the UK physical pub date is several weeks/months after the US pub date - trans-Atlantic surface shipping? - but it all looked messy enough that I beat a hasty retreat rather than daring to try document things in pub notes :-( ) ErsatzCulture 06:47, 23 August 2022 (EDT)

Aconyte are at least predictable. I ignore the UK date in such cases - if someone wants to add it to a note, go ahead and do that but I am not chasing all English speaking jurisdictions unless it is something like Titan or other similar publishers which are just close enough and/or can be mistaken. Annie 14:46, 23 August 2022 (EDT)

Charles Vess / The Queen (of) Summer's Twilight

Annie: the title and pub (pb) records both have an incorrect title for this book. They omit the word "of". My copy (of the ltd ed hc) has arrived and I can confirm from the title page that the title does contain "of". I have figured out how this happened. Amazon.com (and Amazon.co.uk, incidentally) has this misspelling. From the edit history, I see that you and Fixer have created these records. I know you could fix this but I would like to make the corrections please because I haven't come across this situation before and I would like to learn. I guess I:
1) edit the title record
2) edit the pub record
3) then, possibly, delete incorrect records
4) also, possibly, link the corrected pub record to the corrected title record.
Can you please put me right, if necessary.
Incidentally, once all corrections are done, I will create and PV a pub record for the ltd ed hc. Thank you. Teallach 18:38, 25 August 2022 (EDT)

Not sure how I missed the "of" although looking at the date that was just before my surgery so I think my mind was... not fully there.

Because there is a single publication, you can do all with a single edit. Go to the publication and press Edit. Fix the title in BOTH places. Once approved, both records will be fixed (and there won't be anything that needs deletion). If there were already two editions, you would have needed to edit the title and the multiple pub records separately indeed (still no deletions needed at the end) and the title and pub record never disconnect on an edit (they do on an import/export/remove title).

So go ahead, edit the Publication and fix both fields from there :) Annie 14:05, 26 August 2022 (EDT)

Thanks for the explanation regarding how title changes work in the ISFDb. Very useful for the future. I have submitted the edit. Teallach 17:04, 26 August 2022 (EDT)

Approved. Annie 17:07, 26 August 2022 (EDT)

AK/A. K. Mulford

Hi, sorry for bugging you again, but did you see this Community Portal item from a couple of months ago? ISFDB:Community_Portal#Proposal:_change_.22AK_Mulford.22_to_.22A._K._Mulford.22 The discussion sort-of petered out without any conclusion, and I wondered if you have any thoughts/opinion?

Since I raised that item, I did see a different case having separate author records for "AB Foo" and "A. B. Foo", so it would seem legit to have both the existing "AK Mulford" record, and a new "A. K. Mulford" one. My question now is whether it would be acceptable to make "A. K." the primary author record, and AK the pseudonym? Currently the former doesn't exist, but there are 2 entered Sep 2022 UK tps (currently listed against "AK", but which IMHO should be changed) [13] [14], corresponding UK tps (for the first one in the series at least), plus ebooks released in the summer, so that would make at least 6 pubs listed for "A. K.", not to mention the future books contracted as mentioned in the tor.com piece, which will presumably follow the pattern of those recent/imminent pubs.

All of which would make "A. K." clearly the most used variant, but only once all those recent/imminent pubs are entered/corrected. I'd rather not do a bunch of extra work making "A. K." a pseudonym of "AK" just because in the short term it has fewer pubs, only to have to redo it all shortly thereafter once "A. K." has more pubs added ErsatzCulture 15:29, 30 August 2022 (EDT)

What's with the "sorry for bugging you"? :) It's never a bother.

I think that having both A. K. and AK for authors where these are clear abbreviation and where the AK is not in use consistently (thus overriding our normalization - and that's why we had her as AK until now) is against the rules as written and even more importantly, against the spirit of the rules. We normalize names so we don't end up in this situation... Some people disagree and we get what you see. While I am all for "as written", that ship had sailed for author names I think. If new books are going to follow the usual practice (with dots), I think we should normalize to A. K. and explain all that in the note (aka the usage of the name sans dots early on and so on). Talk to the PV to see what he thinks as well and start a new Community thread (SHORTER!) asking the exact question (do we pseudonym or do we bring the account to policy now that the author is using dots) but without making it a novelette (I do not mind your long-winded explanations, especially here on my page, but part of why some discussions peter out over on Community is because it takes forever to get to a point in some posts). Not that we are not all guilty of that. :) Annie 16:11, 30 August 2022 (EDT)

Thanks, I'll see if I can curb my tendency to ramble and post a new discussion item later today... ErsatzCulture 13:58, 31 August 2022 (EDT)

John Scalzi - Travel by Bullet - US check requested

Any chance you can double check this one that I've just added please? In particular, I suspect the US price is $24.95 - with the 2 different UK prices being Amazon weirdness converting that to GBP differently on their UK sites - but AFAIK it'll be hard for me to get that info from this side of the Atlantic.

Also Goodreads has a different ASIN B0B8394JQS from either of the UK ones I've entered, so maybe that's something else that needs fixing/adding?

(Given that this had zero activity on GR until today, I'm guessing it was a stealth release that Fixer wouldn't have known about - sigh...)

Thanks! ErsatzCulture 16:03, 1 September 2022 (EDT)

Audio books work differently than ebooks in regards to ASINs. They (almost) never share ASIN across the different Amazons (as in "I am yet to find one that does share it but it is possible because I had not seen a statement saying otherwise"). Audible ASINs can only be shared when they are ISBN10s - for B-ASINs on the Audible site you will have one for .com and one for co.uk (the field takes only the .com one; the UK one goes into the web pages; please note that an ISBN10 may be the ASIN on one Audible but not on another one occasionally). Unlike Amazon, the different Audible sites are almost independent in regards of content (that's why we do not have a multi-value field like with the Amazon ones. We had talked about having a separate external ID for the Audibles used the most - thus the Web Pages link - so we can keep track of them :)

The price on the Amazons side is irrelevant for these - the Audible governs (as we want the list price - Amazon also has that but it can be a bit hard to see sometimes).

Fixed this one - moved the Audible UK ID out (it will never work unless you are in UK and Audible forwards you behind the scenes and you had allowed it (mine won't - it always asks me when I switch around)), added the Audible.com one, added the Amazon.com ASIN and fixed the price and the note.

Let me know if anything above does not make sense.

PS: Fixer possibly found it under the US ASIN - I had not touched ebooks and audio books in a few months - between the vacation and then the surgery, they are just waiting their turn. :) Annie 16:23, 1 September 2022 (EDT)

Well, I'm not sure that all the different IDs that international arms of Amazon and Audible use makes sense to me, but I think I understand what you say :-) Now that you mention it, I do vaguely recall some of the details you've mentioned, so I'll try to remember them for next time.

(This might have been only be the second audio download I'd submitted - certainly I don't think I've done more than single digits of them. I did submit this earlier this week, but I guess that as it has an ISBN10-derived Audible ASIN, it should be OK? Maybe there's a different Amazon.com ASIN?)

Thanks for cleaning that up anyway! Must confess I'm inclined to continue to steer clear of submitting audios, unless they are new titles like these two were.... ErsatzCulture 17:04, 1 September 2022 (EDT)

"The Second Earth Adventures Collection" looks good (and yes, the ISBN10 helps - same on both sides (which happens often) so we are good). I added the other ASIN anyway so it does not popup from Fixer. :) Annie 17:26, 1 September 2022 (EDT)

Yet another US check request: Rich Horton's Year's Best 2021

Just added this title and pub, but:

• Sources have inconsistent pub dates (plus RH himself only tweeted about it a few days ago, which makes me wonder if either of the August dates I've noted in the pub note are correct?
• GR has a second Kindle version with ASIN B09Y2D8466 and Aug 1st pub date - unsure if erroneous/cancelled entry, or a different US ASIN?
• The ISBN(s) are a mess, as documented on the pub note. Not sure why that might be if (as the copyright page claims) it has a legit ISBN, unless Prime Books are another weird publisher?

Slightly surprised this one didn't come via Fixer, but maybe hasn't been prioritized due to ebook-only pub?

I'll add the contents later, but this already took up more time than I was expecting :-(

I have corresponded with RH a few times on Twitter - a few times specifically re. ISFDB - so I can potentially query him about stuff, but I get the general impression that authors/editors aren't necessarily any better informed about publication minutae than the general public.

Thanks! ErsatzCulture (talk) 15:21, 12 September 2022 (EDT)

See above on all the ebooks and audiobooks - due to my health issues this summer, these are behind. :) I will catch up with them at some point but it is slow going - even paper was behind (that's why Ahasuerus did some paper ones earlier this summer). As there is no way to find the ebook only (as New may mean Ebook only or title being weirdly input), there is no easy way to chase these so they will come in as I get to them... The current focus is on September/October. I will go back to the earlier months as time permits.

Kindle/Mobi and ePub ebooks carrying separate ISBNs is not unheard of - in theory "ebook ISBN" does not exist as a concept and each format should have its own ebook but the practice had kinda changed that so outside of some children publishers and occasional examples like here, publishers had been issuing "ebook ISBNs" :) Practice trumps theory and all that. Most publishers print BOTH of them in all the ebooks though so it is clear they are different. In such cases, when we know that they did use separate ISBNs, we should be adding both different ebooks - one with the B&N and Kobo details (ePub format noted in the notes), one with the Kindle ones (Mobi noted in the notes). However, preview in Kobo USA shows the 978-1-60701-547-5 ISBN while showing the other one outside so there is a disconnect somewhere and I don't think that there is a second ISBN here.

Oh, and B09Y2D8466 was possibly a placeholder, maybe with a promotional price. Dead as a door nail at the moment on all Amazons. Or due to the delays, Amazon changed the ASIN but it is dead at the moment. But if you google it, authors used it so it was there for awhile. Its date is bogus though :) Annie (talk) 17:02, 12 September 2022 (EDT)

Thanks. Hopefully this pub is now all good with contents added. ErsatzCulture (talk) 17:53, 12 September 2022 (EDT)

Art Calendars

I can't see anything specific in the rules about their inclusion and wondered if there was an accepted practice/interpretation or if it should be raised in the Help. Any pointers? Thanks ../Doug H (talk) 17:24, 18 September 2022 (EDT)

Same rules as with any other nonfiction book - they are eligible if they are plausibly related to speculative fiction. So a LOTR or Harry Potter ones would often be allowable (one with stills from the movies is not eligible IMO - one with illustrations from a book edition will be); a calendar with fantasy pictures which are not tied to fiction is out. Feel free to open a discussion though - standardizing what we accept is never a bad thing - they do stretch the definition of a book a bit but I think they are as much books as any other art book. Annie (talk) 03:02, 19 September 2022 (EDT)

Self-moderation

Started here

I am surprised by your offer. The following questions arise: What happens to my current pending edits if I accept the self-moderation? is there a control of the self-moderation edits? Can mistakes or errors be discovered? --Zapp (talk) 17:14, 19 September 2022 (EDT)

Answers posted on your page - I was (mostly) off for the weekend so just getting around to ISFDB today. Annie (talk) 18:33, 19 September 2022 (EDT)

Algernon Blackwood - Ancient Sorceries pubdate

You moderated the original Fixer submission for this one, and updated it a couple of days ago. It's recorded with a pub date of 2022-09-06 - which I can see B&N and Amazon.com still have - but most of the sources on this side of the Atlantic - notable exception being Blackwells - have it as 2022-10-13, including the publisher.

Any idea if this one is a case of different dates across territories, or if the US sites haven't picked up updated data? As far as I can tell, Amazon.com doesn't have stock, B&N isn't clear - but I dunno if they are being awkward due to me being outside the US? I'm happy to make appropriate updates, but I'd prefer to have more confidence in what they should be :-) Thanks! ErsatzCulture (talk) 11:19, 23 September 2022 (EDT)

Earlier this week, Amazon US reported that they have copies. They do so now as well (" In Stock / FREE delivery Tomorrow, September 24 / Ships from Amazon.com / Sold by Amazon.com"). So it seems that it is indeed available. I don't need another Blackwood collection so I do not plan on testing them by buying it but... when they say they can deliver tomorrow, they usually know they can. So yes - I know it is an UK publication but it is already here on this site of the pond it seems... Annie (talk) 11:53, 23 September 2022 (EDT)

Thanks for checking; I've added UK details as extra info to the note. ErsatzCulture (talk) 11:58, 23 September 2022 (EDT)

Application

Hello, Annie! I don't know if you have seen my application for self-moderating. Would you mind to leave a comment? I have learned my lesson and things like not communicating on vital things that were cared for by other editors will not happen again. On the other hand I'm working on a number of projects which seem to be stuck in the queue for an ever expanding time span - entering European magazines (well, mostly German), adding months of publication based on infos stated in magazines (like here), the seemingly neverending Perry Rhodan complex, and caring for some European authors, at last especially Sławomir Mrożek whose bibliography needs original titles & dates and misses lots of relevant speculative work. Regards, Christian Stonecreek (talk) 12:31, 23 September 2022 (EDT)

Туманность Андромеды

Hello Annie, I have a problem with this title. The first Russian edition in 1957 is what, a pre-release or really the first edition? The first German edition is a translation of the edition in 1957, the second German edition is a translation of the edition in 1958. This German website explains the different between the German editions. The question is, if it is an pre-release 4 chapters are omitted, or the 1958 edition is expanded by 4 chapters? The chapters are:

• Река времени / Der Strom der Zeit / The River of Time
• Конь на дне морском / Das Pferd auf dem Meeresgrund / The Horse on the Sea Bed
• Школа третьего цикла / Die Schule des dritten Zyklus / A Third Cycle School
• Остров забвения / Die Insel des Vergessens / Island of Oblivion

What do you think, separate the titles or add some notes? Confused regards Henna (talk) 14:18, 25 September 2022 (EDT)

I have some notes about this books somewhere - let me try to find them tomorrow when I am on a proper computer. Annie (talk) 23:41, 25 September 2022 (EDT)

After some digging around:

• In 1957, the novel was published in a serialized form in two separate magazines. There was a practice in those days in abridging these serializations (usually mentioning it for post publication serializations but not always mentioning it for pre-publication ones) so it is possible that some parts are missing even in the Техника-Молодежи serialization which does not mention abridgements. The other serialization in 1957 (in Пионерская правда) was definitely abridged although it stated it clearly in its title. It is also possible that the German translation used the abridged serialization and not a version of the complete novel for that first edition (or both were abridged - who knows).
• The 1958 version is the official complete version - it may or may not have gotten extra chapters (or they could always have been there). That's part of the reason why novels are dated based on first book appearance even if they are serialized before that.

I'd say that adding notes about the editions is the best option considering what we know. I had never seen the 1957 version reprinted although I may have access to the magazines so I will put it on my list to compare the 3 versions at some point so we can expand the notes). Annie (talk) 14:50, 27 September 2022 (EDT)

Hello Annie, thank you very much for your investigations. Can you say me what is the third title in this list? Thanks again Henna (talk) 14:15, 28 September 2022 (EDT)

"Туманность Андромеды. Звездные корабли"? It is a volume from a series of collections of contemporary science fiction and contains the novel we had been talking about and this story. Fantlab's record is here. I will add it to our DB later. Despite Fantlab's title, the actual title on the title page shows up as "Туманность Андромеды / Звездные корабли" (see the image (/ is the usual separator in ISFDB for this kind of works when there is no other separator on the page) :) Annie (talk) 14:32, 28 September 2022 (EDT)

Dave Hutchinson Cold Water audio download release

Hi again - sorry, but this is another request for help/advice re. audio downloads, although this particular case is a bit of a weird one...

Per the original solicitations around the start of 2022, Dave Hutchinson's Cold Water was supposed to come out from Solaris in tp and ebook yesterday, in the UK at least. At some point - around a month or 2 ago? - most of the sources I scrape had switched to a November pub date, a notable exception being Amazon UK, but just for the ebook, with them keeping 2022-09-29 for the tp listing. That that tp didn't come out yesterday surprised the author, even though I'd previously warned him not to trust Amazon's listing.

Anyway, it does look like the audio download - which is from Penguin rather than than Solaris/Rebellion or their print distributor S&S - did make it out yesterday. Amazon UK has an audio sample - although I'm not sure if that's meaningful or not w.r.t. actually being published? - and Kobo (GB) and B&N also seem to have it available for immediate purchase/download. (Although for some reason B&N seem to be using their own code 2940174870222 rather than the proper ISBN 9781786188953.)

Does this sound like the audio was published to you? I'm not inclined to set up an Audible account to see if I can d/l a preview or actually buy it ;-) I'll submit the title pub if it seems legit, but given how messy this release seems to have been, I'd prefer a second opinion. Thanks! ErsatzCulture (talk) 11:23, 30 September 2022 (EDT)

It is out - not because of the sample (these can come out pre publication) but because you can buy it from Audible today (I have an account). On Audible USA at least - Audible UK is a different entity. The usage of the 294 pseudo-ISBNs is the same thing as the Amazon ASINs - neither of the two use the ISBNs for downloadable audio books ever. I will add it in a bit together with the paperback (which is already in the board with Fixer and I was chasing its current dates. Annie (talk) 13:21, 30 September 2022 (EDT)

And done. With a note explaining the discrepancy in dates and the delay for the other versions. Annie (talk) 15:14, 30 September 2022 (EDT)

Thanks. I've tweaked the title record as it doesn't follow on directly from the other novels, and is possibly the first in a trilogy. ErsatzCulture (talk) 16:06, 30 September 2022 (EDT)

(dedent for item resurrection)

I saw the tp and ebook are in the WatchPrePub cleanup report, and I'd seen tweets that indicated it did come out a couple of days ago. However....

... the ebook seems a bit spotty. Amazon UK has it (and a preview); Kobo (GB) doesn't list it at all (but does have the audio), and B&N no longer lists it, even though I did scrape data from them on 2022-10-06. In particular, when I scraped the latter, they had an ISBN of 9781786187239, but the Amazon preview of the ebook has 9781786187246. (The tp is 978-1-78618-722-2, so it's not a case of the previewed content coming from there.) Neither ...7239 nor ...7246 are recognized in searches on Kobo or B&N, there's only a Kindle entry on GR, and the title doesn't show up on the publisher's store. Could you have a look to see what Amazon.com says about the ebook? I assume it's the same as .co.uk, but given this mess, I'm loathe to assume anything :-( Thanks! ErsatzCulture (talk) 19:06, 10 November 2022 (EST)

Amazon.com has it as $6.99 and it can be bought (pub date November 8, 2022). The ISBN on the Look inside and in the sample is 9781786187246 which I've now added to our record. It is possible that they may have changed the ISBNs or had a different epub version or something. Feel free to add more notes. Annie (talk) 19:18, 10 November 2022 (EST)

Garth Merenghi's TerrorTome: Different ASINs for US vs UK?

This shows as B0B1M2Q1P8 for me, but the pub note says "Data from Amazon UK". I'm guessing you visited Amazon UK when moderating the Fixer submission, but they served you different content based on your IP?

No worries, but I just wanted to double check that theory is plausible before I add "my" ASIN to it and add an explanatory note. ErsatzCulture (talk) 17:28, 19 October 2022 (EDT)

Nah, I see the same one as you in Amazon UK (the other one is Amazon.com) - I just forgot to add the second ASIN apparently - either got pulled for something during the editing or just forgot what I was updating in this one and missed one element. Added now, feel free to update the notes any way you want. Amazon will give me US ASINs so if the book is British, I go to UK sources (Kobo, Amazon, publisher sites) and update the price and so on. Sometimes apparently I forget to add a differing ASIN (some match, some don't - when they don't I always plan to add both of them). :) Annie (talk) 18:23, 19 October 2022 (EDT)

No problem - now that you mention it, I've often seen you've added multiple ASINs to pubs that you & Fixer got to first; I should have clicked there was something atypical about this one. What you now added is more than fine by me. (I've just added the hc BTW). ErsatzCulture (talk) 18:55, 19 October 2022 (EDT)

I won't check Amazon UK (or any of the others) routinely for every book I add from Fixer to see if the ASIN works there (I may for some if something looks off and I am chasing where that book originated in or looking for more data because the .com listing is poor or incomplete. In the latter case I may even open every single one of the Amazons to see if they have a better record) but if I recognize it as a UK book, I always do (well, try to anyway). Same with Amazon Australia and Canada for their respective books. Or the internationals when I am adding a non-English version. You see them often because you work mainly UK books and the double ASINs are usually on UK books - it does not happen that often if you look at all books. On the other hand, Fixer gets a lot of rejections some days when you beat me to adding some of those ebooks and I just need to add the US ASIN into the existing record. :) Annie (talk) 20:43, 19 October 2022 (EDT)

Rebecca Roanhorse - Tread of Angels - novella?

Kobo has the UK ebook as 38k words, GR reviews refer to it as a novella, so any objection to switching the type of this? ErsatzCulture (talk) 16:19, 22 October 2022 (EDT)

Go ahead. I was waiting to see a word count somewhere - it was bound to be close to 40K. Annie (talk) 17:49, 22 October 2022 (EDT)

Chapbook/novella converstion done, and the UK ebook added. Think this is the first multiple-pub conversion of this type that I've done solo, so if you have a second can you check it over that I haven't missed anything? Thanks ErsatzCulture (talk) 17:19, 23 October 2022 (EDT)

The note goes on the novella record which is the record for the text itself, not the chapbook (or on both of you so prefer). :) Annie (talk) 20:23, 23 October 2022 (EDT)

Travis Baldree Legends and Lattes ebook messiness

So this is a case of an indie title being subsequently picked up by tradpub - fairly common these days, right? Well...

The Tor & Tor UK physicals are due early Nov and are already entered; I was just about to do the UK ebook, and was a bit surprised to see it with a June pub date. My guess is that is when the tradpub deal was done, and the original indie ebook was immediately superseded by Tor ones. However, I thought I'd better double-check that theory, and the actual reality turned out to be pretty messy :-(

Both Amazon UK and Kobo (GB) previews show that the ebook has a Cryptid Press title page, and has a copyright page that lists the ISBNs for those original pubs - basically it seems to be the original ebook, possibly with the new UK cover. This is in contradiction to the listings which say it's from Tor UK and has new ISBN (9781035007332) and ASIN (B0B426VJL7).

My suspicion is that some time around the Tor physical pubs come out, the ebook will be updated to match - which I think is what happened with Atlas Six, another Tor indie acquisition - but in the meantime we have this mess of the ebook not matching the product listings.

My plan is to add the new ebook, but leave the pub date as 2022-00-00, add a pub note with the gory details similar to the above, and make sure I re-check it in November to see if/when it might have changed. Does that seem reasonable to you?

It wouldn't surprise me if the US ebook has a similar situation, but I haven't dared look at that... ErsatzCulture (talk) 13:28, 24 October 2022 (EDT)

I'd use the November date -- with watchPrePub added for the date, cover and whatever else seems suspicious.

For previews: Amazon and everyone else will rather you see a preview or not. So they will show whatever edition they have handy. You always need to make sure that the edition is what you think it is. In some cases, they are decent enough to tell you they are showing a different edition. In others - not so much. So if the edition you are seeing on a preview does not match the described one in the page, do not read too much into it, just proceed as if there is no preview - it is not uncommon, even post publication but it can be endemic pre-publication when there is a previous edition out there... Annie (talk) 13:46, 24 October 2022 (EDT)

Thanks. I've added the ebook with a 0000-00-00 date, long note, and WatchPrePub. The Tor UK tp already had the latter (I'm not sure if it'll get the subtitle), so I'll check both of them in a couple of weeks. I *think* the Amazon preview is of a (slightly) different ebook from the original, as it has the new "chalkboard" cover rather than the original - as if someone just replaced that image in the epub/mobi, but left the other content unchanged. ErsatzCulture (talk) 17:23, 25 October 2022 (EDT)

EDIT: Just on the subject of Tor (US) - you wouldn't happen to know if/where their catalog(ue)s are available to the public these days, would you? The Tor/Tor.com ones on this page are a year out-of-date. ErsatzCulture (talk) 13:33, 24 October 2022 (EDT)

That's a complicated question :) Nowhere I know of online (I usually find a seasonal PDF from them when I look for one) although the macmillan pages will have the individual books. Annie (talk) 13:46, 24 October 2022 (EDT)

TBH, it was a slightly cheeky question, as the stuff in trade catalogues is usually less useful for ISFDB submissons than their websites. However, I find them interesting because they have stuff that has been cancelled or delayed, and in the case of Macmillan, details about publicity campaigns, which titles are being targetted for awards, etc, that doesn't normally leak out to the general public. I have to wonder if they've realized that, and that's why they're no longer on their public site for download :-( ErsatzCulture (talk) 17:23, 25 October 2022 (EDT)

Who knows. The last few years had been so weird that you never know what publishers may be doing these days. It made sense for all catalogs to be up with all trade shows and face to face things cancelled. These days? Who knows. The Henry Holt catalog is current so maybe we will see some of the others as well? I would not keep my breath though. I was just looking at the Bloomsbury winter one the other day. Annie (talk) 18:25, 25 October 2022 (EDT)

Jayda/Eden the Snowboarding Fairy, and the Daisy Meadows Fairy books in general

So this is a weird one. The UK sites have this ISBN as Jayda... not Eden... On Amazon UK, the cover image has Eden..., but if you click on the preview, the content is Jayda... Feels like there was some title change that never got communicated to Amazon.com - can you check to see what title the preview there has?

No preview on the US side. Nothing in this one triggered my spidery sense at the time :) It is now fixed. Annie (talk) 13:50, 31 October 2022 (EDT)

Thanks; I've also fixed the title for the "unknown" author titles records, and fixed the pub note that seemed to have been prematurely truncated. ErsatzCulture (talk) 13:41, 1 November 2022 (EDT)

More generally, I've noticed that some of these Fairy books that Fixer has been submitting have the same ISBNs as the UK ones, but with much later pub dates. Feels like maybe UK copies being shipped over the Atlantic in container freight or some equally slow method of transport? I only recently became aware of this series - which gives me "Adam Blade, but aimed at girls" vibes - so I'm only slowly going back and filling in the gaps, plus the new pubs as they come along. ErsatzCulture (talk) 19:54, 30 October 2022 (EDT)

Depends on the publisher. There is Orchard Books (UK) and then there is Orchard Books / Scholastic on the US side with different ISBN ranges. I try to untangle them and send them to the correct one (which also means usually resetting dates) but sometimes some slip - so I tend to hit the publishers pages occasionally and move things around where they belong. If you find them before me, feel free to readjust them. It is one of the pair of publishers that can get very tedious to untangle. Annie (talk) 13:50, 31 October 2022 (EDT)

Must confess I was too lazy to check the ISBN ranges - I'm currently showing 61 pubs by this author-gestalt that don't have any match in the database, and the data is so inconsistent between the vendor and publisher sites, I'm only attacking things very slowly... ErsatzCulture (talk) 13:41, 1 November 2022 (EDT)

Audible and their ASINs revisited

Sorry, this is a long and rambling one, even by my standards...

So a few months ago, I bugged you about Audible further up this page. Since then, I've been a bit of a coward, and whilst I have added a few audios, I've pretty much stuck to audio CDs, as they seemed simpler, albeit less common these days. However, I decided that it was overdue that I got my head around submitting these, so have now written a scraper for Audible.co.uk - and maybe their other sites? - but this has raised a few questions. A couple of examples to illustrate things:

Stephen Baxter's The Thousand Earths

AFAIK this has only had publications from Gollancz, but is available worldwide. Buried in the metadata of the audible.co.uk page are links to other Audible sites, the extracted data looks like this:

   {'de': 'B0B4T9Y1BF', 'en-ie': 'B0B4T8KM36', 'de-de': 'B0B4T9Y1BF', 'en-ca': 'B0B4TC7Z5Y', 'en-us': 'B0B4TDQ7T1', 'en-bb': 'B0B4TDQ7T1', 'en': 'B0B4TDQ7T1', 'en-za': 'B0B4TDQ7T1', 'fr': 'B0B4T95HHT', 'fr-ca': 'B0B4TC7Z5Y', 'de-at': 'B0B4T9Y1BF', 'en-nz': 'B0B4TF4438', 'fr-be': 'B0B4T95HHT', 'fr-ch': 'B0B4T95HHT', 'en-au': 'B0B4TF4438', 'de-lu': 'B0B4T9Y1BF', 'fr-lu': 'B0B4T95HHT', 'fr-fr': 'B0B4T95HHT', 'de-ch': 'B0B4T9Y1BF', 'en-gb': 'B0B4T8KM36', 'ja-jp': 'B0B4T9DG6J'}

So from this, I guess I should put B0B4TDQ7T1 as the Audible-ASIN value (audible.com link, and the audible.co.uk page as a link. Easy, right? Well......

Adrian Tchaikovsky's Eyes of the Void

This is one where the UK pubs are from Tor UK, and the US ones are Orbit US; you and Fixer already added the US audio, Audible-ASIN is B09VK6R673 for reference. The problem (for me doing the UK pubs) is when scraping the audible.co.uk page for this Tor UK pub, the international Audible-ASINs in the audible.co.uk page metadata include the Orbit US pub:

   {'de': 'B09LJQ5NM1', 'en-ie': 'B09LJZMW4G', 'de-de': 'B09LJQ5NM1', 'en-ca': 'B09LJX1QTQ', 'en-us': 'B09VK6R673', 'en-bb': 'B09LJY57WR', 'en-in': 'B09LJY4M5Q', 'en': 'B09VK6R673', 'en-za': 'B09LJY57WR', 'fr': 'B09LK48QGT', 'fr-ca': 'B09LJX1QTQ', 'de-at': 'B09LJQ5NM1', 'en-nz': 'B09LJWH2YG', 'fr-be': 'B09LK48QGT', 'fr-ch': 'B09LK48QGT', 'en-au': 'B09LJWH2YG', 'de-lu': 'B09LJQ5NM1', 'fr-lu': 'B09LK48QGT', 'fr-fr': 'B09LK48QGT', 'de-ch': 'B09LJQ5NM1', 'en-gb': 'B09LJZMW4G', 'ja-jp': 'B09LJV3RLF'}

So, when submitting this UK audiobook pub, just naively setting the Audible-ASIN field to the en-us value (B09VK6R673) would be wrong, as that's an Orbit pub, not a Tor one.

What might save the situation is that for some of the audible.co.uk pages I've scraped, there are a couple of hidden inputs that have a "reviewsAsin(UK|US)" value:

   (book_scraping) book_scraping $ grep -i reviewsasin /mnt/data2019/scraperecorder_data/uploads/www.audible.co.uk_pd_*Void*
   <input type="hidden" id="reviewsAsinUK" value="B09LJZMW4G">
   <input type="hidden" id="reviewsAsinUS" value="B09LJY57WR">

The "reviewsAsinUS" value here seems to be en-bb (Barbados?) and en-za - I'm guessing these are territories that use audible.com, but fall under UK & Commonwealth licencing? If I go to the audible.com page for B09LJY57WR, that does serve me details of a pub from Macmillan (albeit priced in USD), as opposed to redirecting me to a generic audible.co.uk page. Can you let me know what content gets served for that link from your side of the Atlantic?

(As an aside, GR only has B09LJX6JFH as an ASIN for the Tor audiobook, which doesn't match any Amazon or Audible ASIN that I've come across)

For cases like this, I propose to submit the en-bb/en-za Audible-ASIN, which seems to be (a) an ASIN which works on audible.com and (b) refers to the correct publication. (And include the audible.co.uk URL as a separate link, of course.) Does that seem reasonable to you? ErsatzCulture (talk) 15:36, 1 November 2022 (EDT)

The automation is getting you all confused here. Stop looking at the links which Amazon has added to facilitate selling -- it will connect different editions sometimes (when they are sold in different markets so relying on the link is a problem)

Audible.com (and all of the rest really) can have MORE than one record - if there are UK and US edition for example, it will often have both listed, sometimes one with "you cannot buy it here". The ASINs for both are different and unless they are ISBN10, they will be different from the rest of the Audibles across the world that show the same books. The basic rule is:

• Use an Audible ASIN which works on Audible.com (if it exists) AND matches the book - so if there is an Orbit one in UK and Recorded Books one in US, we need two separate records, each carrying its own Audible ASIN and the UK one carrying the Audible.co.uk link as well.
• If the book does not originate in USA (German, Spanish, UK book and so on), add the audible link from its closest Audible in the links and see if the book can be found in Audible.com for the ID from it.

I know you are trying to automate this but this is what got you confused here. :)

The GR ASIN is NOT an Audible ASIN but an Amazon ASIN. Audibooks will have both Audible ASINs (on the Audible page) and regular ASINs for the Amazon page. So for a UK audio-book which is available in the States as well, you will have:

• Audible ASIN
• 2 ASINs - one from Amazon.com and one from Amazon.co.uk
• Audible.co.uk link in the Web pages. Annie (talk) 17:48, 1 November 2022 (EDT)

Hi, so I had a look at what audible.com had to say about these two:

* The Baxter is listed with an Audible-ASIN of B0B4TDQ7T1, which is what audible.co.uk's metadata told me was the value for the US.

* For the Tchaikovsky, both the Orbit US and Tor UK audios are listed when searching for the title. The latter is listed with the BB/ZA/"reviewsAsinUS" Audible-ASIN B09LJY57WR, which matches what I was expecting based on the metadata on audible.co.uk.

As such, that very limited sample set seems to imply that the audible.co.uk data, and my processing logic for it, should be OK?

The problem - for me at least - with using audible.com as a data source for UK pbus is that none of the above pages (a) list the en-gb ASIN or (b) a GBP price. (I imagine the former is buried in the metadata, but I haven't checked.) As such, to submit these UK pubs, I'd still have to get info from audible.co.uk, and if that - in theory - has all the info that audible.com might provide, then that saves me the extra work of visiting audible.com.

However, until I've got the experience of doing a lot more audios, I'll double check things with audible.com, just in case there are any nasty edge cases lurking.

BTW, that GR ASIN of B09LJX6JFH isn't the amazon.co.uk ASIN - which is B09LK4RWDM - and Google doesn't know any pages that reference it, other than that GR listing. Clicking through to the details, it looks like it was submitted by a German GR editor, so perhaps it's the amazon.de ASIN? ErsatzCulture (talk) 12:39, 2 November 2022 (EDT)

If you are not sure, leave the Audible ASIN empty - it will show up on a report and if it is available, it will be added one day :)

Amazon.de is not scary: here it is :) As I mentioned somewhere, unlike ebooks, audio books always have different ASINs and Audible ASINs (unless they are ISBN10) across the different versions of Amazon (in the ones they are available in anyway). I tend to add the ones that are "natural" for the language and country the book is in (or closest for the languages which do not have Audible/Amazon version) so if you want to add this ASIN to ISFDB, be my guest and it is not wrong because it is a valid identifier after all... :) Annie (talk) 12:57, 2 November 2022 (EDT)

Enna Burning

Hi, Annie. For this edition, I don't understand how the month came from Locus1, which stops at 2007. Also, the archive.org copy has a £6.99 price and a cover by Hennie Haworth. Where did Alison Jay come from? —Rosab618 (talk) 22:29, 2 November 2022 (EDT)

No idea - all I did on this one was to move the OCLC from the notes to the external IDs when we added these and when I was moving the ones the automation could not. This is a very old record so we do not know who created it :( Annie (talk) 13:41, 3 November 2022 (EDT)

This listing on Abebooks shows a very different cover that's definitely not by Alison Jay. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 15:23, 3 November 2022 (EDT)

Because of the note of the incorrect ISBN, I wonder if it was not a bad assumption that this is a reprint of the 2004/2005 edition as opposed to a new edition (or if that note did not belong elsewhere actually). Annie (talk) 17:54, 3 November 2022 (EDT)

But where did the note about Locus1 come from?—Rosab618 (talk) 20:56, 3 November 2022 (EDT)

It was added by whomever added the book or by another editor a later stage a long time ago - before we started having history. There is no way to determine who added it unless the editor who did happens to remember. Annie (talk) 11:19, 4 November 2022 (EDT)

Quick question 2

When reviewing variant submissions which were submitted prior to another editor creating the same variants prior to the initial submissions being reviewed. Is our policy to reject or approve them anyway. I know it will only be a duplicate in the edit history. Thanks, John Scifibones 22:02, 9 November 2022 (EST)

No policy really. But this is what I do: If they are connecting existing titles, it does not matter so I tend to approve them if the time works out (aka if the original variant connection is after this one was submitted). Otherwise newish editors will just give up on doing the followups. If they are creating a new parent, reject because it will require a merge after that and that makes no sense - and I will follow up with an explanation on the editor’s page on the timing factor and thanking them for submitting them. However, if the variant was created by a moderator based on a cleanup report or something else, I would also ping the moderator and remind them to check the queue before “fixing” things - for the same reason - you don’t want editors to decide there is no point submitting the follow ups. Hope that makes sense. :) Annie (talk) 22:21, 9 November 2022 (EST)

I'm the moderator who submitted them while cleaning up Hungarian transliterations. The editor involved is the one with the majority of the submissions in the queue. I started to reject them but thought I'd ask. Still undecided which route to go. Sorry about the ambiguous thread title, thanks for fixing. John Scifibones 22:30, 9 November 2022 (EST)

The way I see things is that moderators have two equally important jobs: keep the quality of the data as high as possible and work with the editors so that they don’t feel discouraged and run away (or get sloppy because they know someone will fix things after them). So give yourself a warning not to do that again and do what feels right for you. Sometimes it will depend on the editor - when you were under moderation in the last months before you got permissions, I may have rejected yours and let you know why - if that would have scare you out, you were not moderator material and that is what I was looking at at the time. That specific editor? See all my notes from today on their page - their submissions require a lot of extra work very often - if you feel like rejecting, do so - just leave them a note on why it happened. Or approve them. Either way works. The current queue size is unprecedented in the last years so we are operating under somewhat weird conditions. Annie (talk) 23:00, 9 November 2022 (EST)

And no worries for the thread title - I am working off my phone in the evenings so scrolling around is annoying so I am just making sure the link in the Watchlist sends me where it is supposed to. :) Annie (talk) 23:08, 9 November 2022 (EST)

"Data probably from Amazon ..."; replacement of ISBN-named file

Annie, You approved my pubupdate for The Fish in Room 11 in 1st US ed. 5484525 approved. Two crucial note items are candidate boilerplate to be re-used (quote):

• "Data probably from Amazon.com prior to 2016-10-24." [damn@! quotation marks are not intended]
• This replaces an ISBN-named file at "/images/P/" that is visually identical today.

What do you think? Intended to address the /images/P/ problem as I understand it, for publications none of us has seen. Amazon.com now provides /I/ that is visually identical to the one at /P/ that it replaces here, but we don't know that the latter hasn't changed since we linked to it (more than six years ago, for the Fish in Room 11).

P.S. #5484574-75-76 complete the import of original Fish in Room 11 coverart into the early publications. I know that the /P/ will benefit from replacement and I have the info at hand for Update that will do that among other things. --Pwendt|talk 18:39, 10 November 2022 (EST)

I would not speculate on the source of the data. "Cover entered prior to 2016-10-24 based on the ISBN/ASIN of the book and replaced with a stable image based on the Amazon.com record as of 2022-11-10. That image may not be correct for this edition." sounds a bit better to me or something along these lines. People won't understand the /images/P thingie or why there is a problem if they do not know ISFDB or had not worked with Amazon's covers... In a better world, finding the cover elsewhere (ebay, other sellers, blogs - you get the idea) will allow you to replace cleanly; if not possible, a note is fine. I was pondering on the wording after the approval and was going to come talk to you when I make up my mind.:) Annie (talk) 18:49, 10 November 2022 (EST)

Now I may have submitted all the Fish in Room 11 updates and imports *except* further replacement of /P/ (one cover image) and reconsideration of the longer publication notes that partly concern cover images. Intellectually that's all I can handle. I'll return to those exceptions at proofread stage. --Pwendt|talk 15:38, 11 November 2022 (EST)

Submission 5486393 is a significant, not radical, alternative for your consideration. I haven't submitted any other replacement of a cover image file at "amazon.com/images/P/" during November 10-13, unless I am losing track of such matters faster than I know. --Pwendt|talk 20:44, 13 November 2022 (EST)

We do the best we can with these :) Annie (talk) 10:40, 14 November 2022 (EST)

Markwood

This PV finally responded re: the Spectrum title changes, 5484204, 5484207, 5484232, with a sarcastic comment about my name (even though they responded to a couple of my messages earlier in the year and didn't say anything about it then) and then said the titles were entered correctly based on the covers, so I had to let them know that it's what's on the title pages that matters here. They told me to get a 3rd opinion from a mod, so I'm letting you know so you can tell them the reason I was asking them about this in the first place is because a mod told me to. --Username (talk) 10:32, 11 November 2022 (EST)

The answer was within 24 hours so not sure what is with the "finally". You also do not need to post on my page - if I posted on yours, I am monitoring there and that allows the conversations to stay together. I will process the relevant submissions. Thanks! Annie (talk) 10:55, 14 November 2022 (EST)

I posted on your page because it was you who had me contact this guy about something I already knew the answer to, after which he responded with sarcasm and displayed his ignorance of how books are supposed to be entered; title page > cover. If I answered on my page there wouldn't be a separate message with his name on it to let people know that they may receive the same kind of response when they try to ask him a legitimate question. He couldn't even enter the notes about the title differences uniformly, with the last volume's note entered backwards. You mods made a giant mess of this site with the server move, with the biggest backlog of edits in the entire history, and then you want us to contact every PV about any and every change, even though many of them aren't active but none of you ever added the "no longer active" message to their pages, or they're like this guy and think this is a joke or something, not to mention the ones who answer with open hostility, of which there are more than a few. Instead of complaining you should be glad myself and a few others still contribute so much every day despite all the issues with this site and most of the others ISFDB is allowed to use. At least 1 long-time mod has apparently called it quits recently, at least until 2024, so don't be surprised when others are gone soon, too. --Username (talk) 11:30, 14 November 2022 (EST)

And it being on my page does not help much either for people seeing it.

There is a "last active" date next to the PV name on a book which tells you if the PV is around or not - the Wiki pages message is not automatic and we don't police them - if we see someone inactive we will add it but it is not a guarantee (and people come back without posting to their pages). Maybe if you do not call people "dude" when contacting them, they won't respond the way they do sometimes - just a thought. And we do require notes to be uniform.

Everyone contributes as much as they are able or willing to. Annie (talk) 11:40, 14 November 2022 (EST)

It helps a lot more than it being on my page, since the traffic on your page is enormous compared to mine. The "dude" thing came about because so many of the editors/mods here are such angry and/or pompous people that I adopted a fake cheery persona to try to combat that; sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. You seem to be under the illusion that this is some kind of professional site where people behave properly instead of the usual internet collection of bitter, mentally disturbed trolls, with a few legitimate scholars who actually care about entering this stuff. As I've said more than once here, I'm a complete amateur with no credentials at all who's been doing this for the last 2 years or so only because it's better than other things I could be doing. The fact that in that short space of time I have one of the highest number of edits in the entire history of this site says something; if I can do it, anyone can. Not to mention that thousands of those edits are correcting previous edits from other editors. Just a piece of advice: if these massive site problems that have been going on since the move aren't corrected soon, you're going to see a lot more editors than me leaving, dude. --Username (talk) 12:04, 14 November 2022 (EST)

The site is what people make it. (Almost) noone here is a professional or does anything around here because they have to - we do it because we like the genre. Belittling everyone else's contributions is not the way to make this a pleasant environment to work in. You have the time and you want to use it to contribute here? Great. Other people do the same - as much as they can around their other commitments.

PS: I already indicated that I find calling people dude a bad idea. Calling me dude in response is either childish, or disrespectful or both. Neither of these have any place in a site where collaboration is important. Annie (talk) 12:17, 14 November 2022 (EST)

Artist Matt Griffin

Matt Griffin record 212203 and Matthew Griffin record 239573 are the same person. Art work from Matthew (Ninth City Burning) and artwork from Matt (Dune) can be found together on https://www.tumblr.com/mattgriffinart. I have no idea on how to merge and rather than screw it up and cause lots of work for somebody and lots of ill will toward me, thought I'd just let you know. aardvark7 (talk) 22:01, 15 November 2022 (EST)

We won’t merge them - as we record credits as credited in the books. We will pseudonym them and variant the titles out from the one who becomes an alternate name. I can guide you through the process or I can get these connected. Let me know what you prefer. Or I can do both - I can do that one and still give you the steps so you know what to do for next time. Annie (talk) 22:05, 15 November 2022 (EST)

PS: No worries about making mistakes - everyone does.:) Annie (talk) 22:07, 15 November 2022 (EST)

I will let you play. Getting ready to play with a house 2.5 hours away, fun fun (not) But yes, please leave instructions. I think this is the second one I have come across. (LUISA J. PREIẞLER and her 3-4 permutations) aardvark7 (talk) 22:31, 15 November 2022 (EST)

I will sort it out in the morning and drop you a step by step. Have fun with the house. :) Annie (talk) 22:55, 15 November 2022 (EST)

And done: Matt Griffin. The required steps:

• Select who will be the canonical name (the one with more credits usually)
• Go to the other one (Matthew Griffin in this case) and use the "Make/Remove Alternate Name" menu to make it a pseudonym/alternate name for the canonical.
• For each title under the now new pseudonym:
  • If the same title already exists on the canonical name list, variant the second to the first (adjust the date of the parent if needed)
  • If it does not exist, create a new parent which shares all details but changes the name of the account.
  • Note: Art can be attributed based on secondary sources which do not give us the exact credit from the book. When that happens, we use the canonical name of the artist. If any of the art pieces under the now alternate name had been attributed that way, instead of making a variant, we just change the author credit. If there are two publications under that title and one is because it is the canonical name is used and one is "as is" from a book, they need splitting and proper assigning based on the new canonical.

That's it. That last part can be a pain for artists because not everyone adds proper notes when they credit based on secondary sources and using the canonical because of that... so if you are not sure, assume it is regular assignation and not canonical name one and go with a variant. Let me know if you have any questions :) 13:53, 16 November 2022 (EST)

The Book of Koli & The Fall of Koli

Please see this submission and this submission which would impact your verified pubs. Let me know if I should accept or not. If not, I would recommend updating notes to explain why credit is only in notes. -- JLaTondre (talk) 19:06, 16 November 2022 (EST)

I've copied the credit as I found it in the book into the notes. If you think this credit qualifies it as COVERART, approve them. I did not think so at the time and I am still not entirely sure they qualify but I won't argue the point (and if an editor with the book at hand decides to add them, I would approve it so there is that). That does open a question though: should we also start recording all author photographs as Interior Art titles and if not, where do we draw the line? :) Annie (talk) 17:00, 18 November 2022 (EST)

I rejected the edits since it was not an oversight on your part, but intentional. I am confused about the mention of author photographs. From the pub notes, this seemed to be one of those cases where a designer used a photograph as a basis of the artwork but it was a small enough component that the overall cover is not really the photographer's work. That's a judgement call that I'm fine with verifiers making though I think they should state they have made that call in the notes if they are going to record the photographer's credit (it reduces confusion down the road, especially if the verifier stops participating). However, if this was instead a credit for an author photograph, then the notes really should be updated to show it is an author photograph and not part of the artwork. -- JLaTondre (talk) 08:47, 19 November 2022 (EST)

I was just saying that if we create art titles for photographs for the front cover, why don’t we also credit the author ones with a proper title as well? :) The credit here is indeed for that plant on the front cover, not for the author’s photo. I’ll think on how to add a note explaining the lack of coverart title. Thanks! Annie (talk) 12:08, 19 November 2022 (EST)

Another confused fairy title: Soraya/Mikaela the Skiing Fairy

Hi, can you double check what this one looks like on your side of the Atlantic? I was just about to add the ebook of Soraya the Skiing Fairy, and was surprised that it wasn't a known title, when my tools told me the ISBN of the tp was in the database. The UK vendors all seem to agree that the title is Soraya here, but obviously the image Fixer got from Amazon.com says otherwise. This fandom wiki page says "Her original name was Mikaela." but I've no idea how reliable that might be, and it's not inconceivable it's some other context. Thanks ErsatzCulture (talk) 14:48, 2 December 2022 (EST)

Yeah - a few of these got renamed a few times (some after one publication, some before the first one) and I may not have cleaned all of them. I will check this one later today. Thanks for the heads up! Annie (talk) 14:59, 2 December 2022 (EST)