User talk:Anniemod/Archive-2019-2020

Author correction 1/4

Lemuel de Bra should be Lemuel De Bra (it's printed that way in the only publication we have for him, and elsewhere too). --Vasha (cazadora de tildes) 12:24, 4 January 2019 (EST)

Done. I checked the legal name and the directory one as well - let me know if I need to change them back. Annie 12:27, 4 January 2019 (EST)

Slight problem: I am looking at the American edition of Twenty-Three Stories and it has his name printed "L. De Bra." But earlier, someone added the British edition (unverified) with "Lemuel De Bra." I can't find any text view of the British edition, so I don't know if that's accurate. I suppose I should keep the British edition the way it is, for the moment, and variant the two forms to each other ...

This would be a non-issue if I removed the nongenre stories from the contents of Twenty-Three Stories (Lemuel De Bra would vanish from the database then because he has no genre stories). But I am reluctant to do that because the complete contents of Twenty-Three Stories are listed in The Supernatural Index with no indication as to which of the stories are supernatural (in truth, only half of them are). I feel like we should have those stories in the DB with a note so as to correct the record. --Vasha (cazadora de tildes) 12:38, 4 January 2019 (EST)

The someone is probably the person that did all the secondary verifications :) So someone was working off secondary sources and probably had never seen the book. Post on the Verifications board to see if someone on the other side of the pond can get a copy of the book to look at it? Annie 12:42, 4 January 2019 (EST)

Kaleidotrope Winter 2019

I always get confused adding new e-mags... can you add http://www.kaleidotrope.net/ the Winter 2019 Kaleidotrope with a new NKH story? Thanks Susan O'Fearna 15:46, 10 January 2019 (EST)

I will add it tonight. Annie 16:21, 10 January 2019 (EST)

done. I will be adding some more links in a bit -- but the magazine is in. Annie 18:29, 10 January 2019 (EST)

Speculative FICTION

Touche! :) --Galacticjourney 23:46, 11 January 2019 (EST)

Magazine tracker

The 2019 magazine tracker is up and running. I have moved 2018 to an archived page. It still shows a bunch of December issues needing to be added to the database. Plus, I am still waiting to see whether the December issues of LampLight and Leading Edge will be published late. --Vasha (cazadora de tildes) 01:46, 13 January 2019 (EST)

American Gods

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?250857 and http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?674944 both say 5th printing... should one be deleted? Susan O'Fearna 15:08, 21 January 2019 (EST)

Yep, look like duplicates. Both are verified from the same PV so let me ping them. Annie 08:02, 22 January 2019 (EST)

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?702400 -- Lookit the pretty new book! Susan O'Fearna 11:41, 24 January 2019 (EST)

There went my "I am not buying new books this month". Pretty :) I hate their font choice inside of the book but... pretty.

PS: Sorry for the delay - had been traveling (work-related). Annie 14:31, 28 January 2019 (EST)

Transliterated series names added

As per our discussion last year, transliterated series names have been added -- see ISFDB:Community_Portal#Transliterated_series_names for details. Also, I am not sure if you are aware that Advanced Publication Search has been updated to support "Language of an Included Title" as a selection criterion. Ahasuerus 14:41, 7 March 2019 (EST)

Yey! Thanks. I had been dealing with some work related stuff and not around lately. Annie 11:59, 12 March 2019 (EDT)

No worries -- we all do what we can :-) Ahasuerus 12:18, 12 March 2019 (EDT)

Buy or Die: There Cometh a Time of Ruthless Advertising

Hi. I recently added Buy or Die: There Cometh a Time of Ruthless Advertising and it seems to have been originally published in Russian. Any chance of you creating a page for the original, and then linking them to the English translations? MLB 15:47, 14 March 2019 (EDT)

Let me dig a bit further over the weekend and if there is an original, I will get it created an added. Annie 21:06, 15 March 2019 (EDT)

Done! Annie 21:12, 15 March 2019 (EDT)

Awesome. Thanks. MLB 21:16, 15 March 2019 (EDT)

Curiously, unlike the current version of this author's Amazon page, Google's cache says that "Theodor Ventskevich" is a pseudonym used by "Igor Borisov". Ahasuerus 21:19, 15 March 2019 (EDT)

I would not be surprised to find that this one is a pseudonym based on a few more things I saw around the Russian sites and how all of the personal sites are setup - will do some more digging to see if I can definitely connect them... Annie 21:21, 15 March 2019 (EDT)

Anytime. Took me a few minutes to remember that the name Fyodor gets changed to Theodor when going into English (to sound less Russian? I don't know...). Then it clicked. Thanks for pinging me about it. Annie 21:21, 15 March 2019 (EDT)

Sítio do picapau amarelo

Hi Annie! I was seeing about this series again and I (finally) noticed that a good number of these books are "Collections of Chapbooks/Short stories with chapters". I saying that because Recreations by Retroussy Book One (Amazon) translates some of the stories (not all) from Reinações de Narizinho and would be nice to connect the translations with the originals, but I can't find how the titles were back in the 30s, only how we write they with currently Portuguese (here). That's a problem or I can just send how the stories are know now, and insert that they were released in 1931? Now that this author entered in Public Domain here, more translations may be released. Thanks, ErickSoares3 15:35, 21 March 2019 (EDT)

Back from vacation - let me look into this :) Annie 11:42, 1 April 2019 (EDT)

The Stone in the Skull

I added "Stated First Edition" to the notes, the map to the contents and a scan for your verified The Stone in the Skull. Bob 20:19, 16 April 2019 (EDT)

Not sure how I missed to add that when I added all the rest. :) Thanks! Annie 18:05, 17 April 2019 (EDT)

Children of Time

Hi Annie, I just noticed that I created a duplicate (see here) of your verified Children of time. Don't know how I missed that - ugh! :-( I'll copy over my notes to your PVd record and delete mine, if you're OK with it? (or the other way around... ;-) MagicUnk 07:25, 1 July 2019 (EDT)

I moved the notes over to mine. I would rather not lose the date of the first verification (it shows when an otherwise dateless edition was out) - if it was not a dateless one, I would have just moved to yours. Do you want to re-upload the cover (I can just move the link but then the naming won't be right for that edition). :) Annie 15:30, 1 July 2019 (EDT)

Sure. I re-uploaded the cover, and submitted a delete for the duplicate. MagicUnk 16:18, 1 July 2019 (EDT)

And approved :) Thanks for writing the long note - I think I got lazy when I was adding it :) Annie 17:23, 1 July 2019 (EDT)

Regular Titles

I have tried adding the regular titles to Birthright: The conmplete trilogy. Hopefully I am getting better at this? On3man 22:55, 16 July 2019 (EDT)

You are doing fine - the DB can be complicated. You can also answer to me on your own page - I am monitoring when I leave a message :) Annie 23:14, 16 July 2019 (EDT)

ANTHOLOGY and OMNIBUS

Hi Annie. Following User talk:Chris J#Shorter Novels: Eighteenth Century
I did hope/pray that the two container Titles, originally ANTHOLOGY/Henderson and OMNIBUS/Rhys would be merged somehow, and hint/urge that in multiple Note to Moderator that mentioned the Anthology/Omnibus issue.

I have supposed that Type = OMNIBUS implies Author (in this instance)

Author = Samuel Johnson and Horace Walpole and William Beckford

so that the anthologist, pardon the term, is credited only for appropriate ESSAY contents that are entered in a publication record. --Pwendt|talk 21:37, 29 July 2019 (EDT)

Usually yes but it may depend on how the book itself has the authors on the title page - omnibus is one of those weird formats that... are annoying. Let me look into it later today - I will probably end up adding the three authors so the book shows up on all 3 authors page.

As for the hints, feel free to just drop me a message in such cases here - I will be more than happy to see what I can do about things like that :) Annie 14:30, 30 July 2019 (EDT)

The three fiction writers are not named on the title page. Nor is Henderson named on the print title pages, from the following evidence.

You see how Gutenberg represents the v3 Eighteenth Century title page. Evidently the source for Gutenberg's title screen is several front pages of Everyman's #856 in 1948 printing.

Compare print title page, similar design, of vol 2 (non-genre?) as Everyman's #841 in 1949 printing. v2 Jacobean and Restoration, t.p. 1949

Contrast the radically different original 1929/1930 design, which shares no mention of the three fiction writers. v3 Eighteenth Century, t.p. 1930 (and v1, t.p. 1929)

See t.p. verso and the preceding leaf or two, for Everyman's entire presentation of the bibliographic data. (Unfortunately I don't find at HathiTrust multiple printings for any of the 3 vols.) --Pwendt|talk 16:33, 30 July 2019 (EDT)

Thanks for the research. :) That almost sounds like an argument for making that "uncredited". Let me think a bit more and look up some help pages. Annie 16:36, 30 July 2019 (EDT)

"They" They 'They'

Anniemod and Stonecreek, Thanks for your prompt attention today. Last hour I quit database submissions related to "They" &c when I noticed how much variety there is in usage, and the number of title records including CHAPBOOK, COVERART, etc. I will need to re-visit several of today's, after advice the back pages including Community Portal. --Pwendt|talk 18:17, 30 August 2019 (EDT)

That's fine :) Things need redoing now and then :) Annie 19:54, 30 August 2019 (EDT)

Seven Doors in an Unyielding Stone

I've submitted the collection as well as the seven individual titles. The essay on "Seven Windows..." could be changed back to a review and linked to the limited edition set that I submitted as that is the one he is talking about specifically. I will also submit the unlimited book bundle once the limited is accepted.Jim 19:42, 31 August 2019 (EDT)

Everything's been accepted and updated now. The essay on "Seven Windows..." can be removed as there is now a review linked to the new entry.Jim 00:50, 2 September 2019 (EDT)

Thanks! Annie 13:59, 4 September 2019 (EDT)

Snow Glass Apples

Snow, Glass, Apples

This chapbook is TWO TOTALLY DIFFERENT BOOKS. The 1995 chapbook illustrated by Charles Vess has spot-illustrations, but the prose of the story has not been changed. At all.

The new one, adapted by Colleen Doran, is a graphic novel adaptation of the story by Neil Gaiman.

How do I get them separated & fixed?

Thanks Susan O'Fearna 17:23, 5 September 2019 (EDT)

Yeah, they are different... Do you want me to split them or do you want me to explain how to? I can do either :) Annie 17:26, 5 September 2019 (EDT)

If you can split them, maybe I can see what you did... Susan O'Fearna 17:33, 5 September 2019 (EDT)

Step 1: Umnerge the Chapbooks. Because the review is for the older ones, I will pull the new ones instead and merge them together. So you have umnerge, followed by a merge.

Step 2: Unmerge the stories: as there are a lot of them, I pull only the two that are the graphic ones and them merge them together

Step 3: Mark the story and the chapbook as graphic format so it is clear they are different. Add notes to the same effect.

Now you have the graphic story and the original one.

I need to think a bit on varianting the stories together - let me read some of the guidelines. That's it. Annie 18:15, 5 September 2019 (EDT)

Let me know if I missed something Annie 18:15, 5 September 2019 (EDT)

De reiziger Graphic Novel

Non varianting of a graphic novel to the original novel it is based off of? MagicUnk 18:04, 7 September 2019 (EDT)

We do not variant graphic adaptations to their non-graphic counter parts (they are adaptations/retellings in a new format and not variants). I've put it on my "check later again" list in case my memory plays tricks - if so, I will reconnect them and drop you a note. Wrote you a note and then found a Moomin book and you beat me to it (apparently I never posted the said note). :)Annie 18:08, 7 September 2019 (EDT)

A graphic novel is a variant of the original it is based off of if you ask me :) No big deal though. We can always go back and variant if needed. MagicUnk 18:12, 7 September 2019 (EDT)

Well, yes - if you look at the word at face value. But remember that the variants are also used for changed names and what's not. So here, in this DB, the line between what we variant and what we leave as a new title is a bit different from what the word variant implies. One of those... funny things :) I will do some more checks later today :) Annie 18:14, 7 September 2019 (EDT)

Weird Tales Publisher

Hi Annie. I'm happy to see that you made it back from Dublin safely. I noticed the edit you made to the publisher of the latest issue of Weird Tales. I had intentionally entered "Weird Tales, Inc." with the intention that it should be separate from Weird Tales. I'm fairly certain that the current publisher is a different entity than the publisher from 1938 through 1953. I also suspect that publisher from 1973 and 1974 is yet a third entity. The current publisher who is listed as "Weird Tales, Inc." on the magazine, is likely only a name change from Nth Dimension Media which published the several preceding issues, all of which also list the publisher (person) as John Harlacher. In any case, I wanted to discuss this with you before changing the publisher back. Thanks. --Ron ~ Rtrace^Talk 07:12, 13 September 2019 (EDT)

Same here - looks like you managed to get on a plane as well (heard that on Monday and Tue the airport was overrun by too many leaving people) - it was nice meeting you.

So... last night the two publishers popped up on a report and I went investigating. 99 Weird Tales issues on one side, 1 on the other. Seemed straight forward. So I considered merging the publishers outright - but with the PV there, I figured I should let you know what happened. merge + note vs update on the pub with a moderator note made it an easy choice.

What I missed to see - it did not register at all until you pointed it out this morning and I looked at the magazine grid after the merge - was that this is not a missing issue from the 50s but yet another revival. So... my bad. Change it and when it pops up on the report again, I will just ignore and add notes. Sorry about that! Annie 12:38, 13 September 2019 (EDT)

Nate Southard

I took your advice, and looked at the list you steered me towards and did the Nate Southard listing. With the currant edits, I believe I have completed his listing on this site. All of his books are now listed, except Brian Keene's Fear which is ineligible for this site. Southard adapts three of Brian Keene's stories into comic/manga form, and adaptations, except for textual forms, are ineligible for this site. If so, think of all the Lovecraft and Poe adaptations that would be here. A slippery slope I wish not to take. Anyway, I'll check out some of the others on the list in the future. Your wish is my command. MLB 20:14, 18 September 2019 (EDT)

Thanks and I saw all of them going through! Yes - these would be uneligible. Don't forget to edit the list thus one in this case and just delete the list of books so someone (most likely me) do not try to readd them just to find out that we have the ISBNs already. Or I can clean it if you prefer? :)

Also - if the format helps you, lists can be created for authors you want to work on :) Annie 20:25, 18 September 2019 (EDT)

Maybe you should, I'll be busy for awhile today. MLB 20:38, 18 September 2019 (EDT)

The grand total of editors working on this is 2 so no much problem :) I will clean it up. Thanks again for helping with that (and all the other missing authors) Annie 20:40, 18 September 2019 (EDT)

J. H. Sweet

Well, you got me started, so, unless you can spot something I missed, I do believe that J. H. Sweet's page has now been updated and you can eliminate this author's page here. It's now five ayem here and I need some sleep. MLB 04:58, 20 September 2019 (EDT)

Got it. You can always just edit the page and delete the contents :) I will get to deleting the empty pages in a bit - I am trying to decide if we will need them.

Thanks and even though I do appreciate it, please take care of yourself! Annie 13:08, 20 September 2019 (EDT)

Nightshade

Don’t ask me why this book is so hard to find, but it is. MLB 01:35, 22 September 2019 (EDT)

Hm? You mean on the site here? Yeah - looking through the numbered pseudonyms is never fun. Took me awhile to realize why that ISBN was telling me we have it already. I tend to search by ISBN on the site before adding books - just in case it is hiding like this one :) Annie 02:39, 22 September 2019 (EDT)

And when you're juggling a number of books by the same auther late at night with same name you tend to make mistakes, I made some, and I hope I've corrected them. MLB 16:48, 22 September 2019 (EDT)

if someone claims they never make mistakes, they are not very honest. :) All is good. Annie 17:00, 22 September 2019 (EDT)

Could you check on my first Fixer batch?

Hello Annie, if you feel like it, could you have a look at my first batch & assess the quality of my submissions? And while you're at it, have a look at my reasons for the few rejections as well? Would be most appreciated! Regards, MagicUnk 13:22, 23 September 2019 (EDT)

I had been checking all along and if something was weird, I would have already mentioned it. Definitely no karate bunnies :) thanks again for helping with those and if you would like to work on a specific author that we do not have a list for, just ask. Annie 13:34, 23 September 2019 (EDT)

Thanks for the confirmation Annie. MagicUnk 16:10, 23 September 2019 (EDT)

I need to remember to post more often when things look fine. :) The author and publisher lists are generally a bit easier to work on - more patterns and less weirdness - the dated ones are basically books that had been classified late so they did not make their usual window - so there are more weird ones. We need them all if someone wants to add them but just in case you want something a bit less exotic. :) Annie 16:58, 23 September 2019 (EDT)

Archiving

Hi Annie, If it is possible could you archive my user talk page like you did Bob's. Mine has never been done and I have no idea how to do it. I'm a bit too old to learn now. Thanks --Chris J 21:24, 26 September 2019 (EDT)

Hi, Wonderful. Thanks for that. --Chris J 21:59, 26 September 2019 (EDT)

Glad you like it. If I remember to, I will archive it when it gets long again - if not, just ping me. Annie 22:01, 26 September 2019 (EDT)

Podkayne of Mars

I noticed you'd jumped in on behalf of Bluesman regarding a question and hoped you'd help me out. He had verified this pub and I have a similar copy to hand, the only difference being mine has the SBN (not ISBN) on the spine and copyright page. This is similar to what I'd pointed out here to Kpulliam regarding the seventh printing. My question - do I add the SBN to the Bluesman notes, or change it to the ISBN and note the catalog and upgrading of SBN to ISBN, or create an entirely new pub? Of course I'd let Bluesman know, but without expecting an answer which state is the best to leave it in? Thanks in advance. ../Doug H 23:22, 29 September 2019 (EDT)

The other question was easy to answer - it was a Canadian vs US copy basically. :) Although it is calculatable, the book number identifies these books well enough so I would not add the ISBN as such (Although I do not work much on this specific era...). Compare to this for example -- see how it notes both the SBN number and the S number. If you are sure you have the same printing, I would say to add the SBN number in the notes and make sure to add an explanation on what exactly was changed in the moderator notes when you add it. Or if you want, post over in Community and see what the rest of the editors think? Annie 23:32, 29 September 2019 (EDT)

NGDGU (No Good Deed Goes Unpunished). I'll pass on the moderator forum - it will likely turn into a debate on the general principle of SBN vs. ISBN (10 vs. 13) and catalogue numbers. While that might be a good thing in general, it won't help me get this off my desk. I'll update notes and post on Bluesman's talk page. Thanks for the feedback ../Doug H 08:10, 30 September 2019 (EDT)

Sometimes discussions do end up with a solution... but I know what you mean. These books are generally easy enough because their book code and SBN derive from each other and you can make an ISBN from it. What we record or do not is really just policy... :) Annie 13:00, 30 September 2019 (EDT)

Jules Verne translation tables

Would you please review my Verne Translation wiki page? The content is still in a spreadsheet with the wiki text being generated, so format revisions are still quite do-able. However once I reference it from the titles and editors make changes that won't be possible any more. There is still a lot of clean-up to do on individual titles (e.g. some title notes do explain which translation they are, but were not merged with the existing one) so I'm more interested in layout and meta-content than particular entries. My intention is to edit each translated title and ensure the same translator / text is provided and edit the base French title to add a link to the appropriate section on this page. Then I can tackle the publications. ../Doug H 10:29, 3 October 2019 (EDT)

It looks great. One proposal - make the languages inside of each title section headers as well. This way you can see what languages are there at a glance in the contents table. Annie 13:59, 3 October 2019 (EDT)

I tried that initially and it made the TOC so long as to be almost useless. Take a look now and see if it's what you expected? ../Doug H 14:11, 3 October 2019 (EDT)

Yeah, you are probably right... too many headers. So let's scrap that for now :) I did take a look - I really like it :) Great job! (and a lot of it) :) Annie 14:27, 3 October 2019 (EDT)

So scrap the languages as headers or you really like it? ../Doug H 15:03, 3 October 2019 (EDT)

I like it as it is - it was more of an idle though - I can see how the thing will get crowded if we add it once you mentioned it and I thought about it again. Annie 15:07, 3 October 2019 (EDT)

I've made the change, so you can see it in all its header glory. Just cleaning up from a painting job, so I'll change it back if I don't hear. ../Doug H 15:32, 3 October 2019 (EDT)

The data person in me says "yey, I love it". The "usability and usage" part of me says: "shut up and go back to how it was" :) Change it back (for now) I would say. I may have an idea of how to solve both problems - but need to think a bit more (and it will be outside of your stuff - more an index at the bottom than anything else. Let me think on it some more. And thanks for entertaining my not-so-usable ideas :) Annie 15:36, 3 October 2019 (EDT)

Baklänges genom tiden

Dear Annie, I hope this comes to your attention -- I still haven't understood the system of communication. Nor, alas, of submissions. I made a second attempt with Baklänges genom tiden, submitted it unwillingly (by pressing CR while still in a data field) and trashed it, because I dind_t find a way to continue editing. Typical beginner's mistakes, I hope. Anyway I don't understand yet how this NEW PUBLICATION (in Swedish) will be linked to the original work (in German, which is already in the ISFDB) -- I don't see where the original title should go. I fear there will be more questions forthcoming, but these will be enough to start with. Hopefully, до виждане. Simsel 19:48, 4 October 2019 (EDT)

You do not connect them when you add the book (that is why we do not ask for the original title) - you first add the book, then when approved, you connect them as a second step. Translations are one of the more complicated sides of the DB but we non-English native editors learn that part quickly :) I posted a longer message on your page and I am here to work with you on that. :) welcome again! Annie 19:56, 4 October 2019 (EDT)

2nd attempt failed, too. After filling most of the fields, I clicked the ? to find out about "length", then returned to the previous page and found all the contents in the form cleared. Somehow the ISFDB server doesn't work well with my browser's configuration. Can you find the lost form (with all 18 texts) and make it available again? -- As for "length": Preface, postface and some of the appendices are not exactly short _stories_ but "short prose", fictional texts without a plot of their own, related to the book as a whole or adding a detail / an aspect to one of the stories. The whole collection is mimicking a supplement to a scientific textbook. -- Hoping not to misuse your patience, Simsel 19:22, 8 October 2019 (EDT)

Unless you pressed submit at the bottom of the form, it never made it to the server I am afraid so no way for me to see it - when you clicked on the question mark, it opened in the same browser window (I use control+click to make sure it goes in a tab) and never got submitted - and then the back button lost it (that depends on the browser - my chrome on my chromebook looses any details when I go back, my Firefox on win 10 keeps them after the latest update :(

Anything that is fictional and not a poem is a "short fiction" - regardless of plot. :)

Let me offer you something else for this one - just type/copy the details here and I will add the book for you?

Alternatively - try to add just the book with NO contents, then we will work on contents slowly (you can add later on so it does not need to be all or nothing). Annie 19:27, 8 October 2019 (EDT)

Appletons'

Thank you for your offer of help. No, changing the one existing entry for Appletons' Journal that's in 1878 is NOT what I want to do. I want to add another, one that will also show up in the grid, for April of 1881. That magazine issue will be much more complete since I can provide every story that comprised that issue, though only one of the stories as far as I know is in genre. After more than an hour of looking around, I could not find a template to bring up and fill that would simply add the one issue to the one already there. Thanks. DanQuigley 12:45, 17 October 2019 (EDT)

I monitor your page so you can either answer here or on my page.:) There are a few things here that I need to explain then:

• You add new Magazines by following the "Add New Magazine" link from the left menu. It will open this page. You may want to click on the link at the top for some explanations on some of our policies per field or you can ask me or you can try and we can fix later :) What will tie them together is the Title Series - in this case "Appletons' Journal" which you can add when you are adding the issue or later after approval.
• Even if you have the names and authors of every single story in every single issue, the DB is not built for them. The reason why this specific issue you found has only one story is very simple - when a magazine is a non-genre one, we include only the speculative stories (and eventually stories by authors we consider above treshold - think of Asimov for example). So if a genre magazine (say Analog), publishes a non-genre story, we add it and mark it non-genre but if Appletons's does, we just do not add them. We catalog speculative fiction - adding hundreds and thousands of non-genre stories so we can get one genre one does not make sense. This is also why we have the editors as "Editors of Appletons' Journal" instead of their real names - think of the magazine record as a vehicle to include the story and not as a listing for the magazine.

So let's try that. Try to add the magazine and in the contents section, add the story that is genre. Once you submit it, a moderator will look it over and approve (or reject) and work with you on the next steps. Let me know if you have any questions. Annie 18:30, 17 October 2019 (EDT)

Thank you for all the detailed advice. I feel I understand it and have created that page in conformance with it to the best of my ability.DanQuigley 00:19, 22 October 2019 (EDT)

Approved and left a note on your page with details. Annie 10:25, 22 October 2019 (EDT)

Thank you. I understand and appreciate your changes. The only one I question is where you said you marked the story as non-genre. It's actually probably the earliest story that fits the Weird genre. There's an approved PhD thesis on that subject here: https://escholarship.org/uc/item/4ns5q1fv. But even if it's not in the Weird genre, it's definitely a ghost story, which makes it horror or speculative fiction. In short, the story is in-genre. Otherwise I'd not have bothered to add it. Thanks again for all your help.DanQuigley 02:15, 23 October 2019 (EDT)

The magazine (the editor record as we save magazines internally). Not the story. :) the story is genre - which is why we catalog it even if it is in a non-genre magazine. :) Annie 02:30, 23 October 2019 (EDT)

Conan the Wanderer

I added the Bulgarian version of Conan the Wanderer. Please check it out when you have time. Also added Чернят Колос. Bob 13:48, 20 October 2019 (EDT)

Will look at them. Чернят Колос cannot be right - there is a missing letter. Thanks for letting me know. Annie 20:40, 20 October 2019 (EDT)

All fixed - the second one was a mess - there was also a missing story and none of the variants was to the correct English title (probably because the order got messed up because of the missing story), Howard was credited differently and a few English names were used instead of Bulgarian. All fixed now :) Annie 21:13, 20 October 2019 (EDT)

And added one more from the same publisher while I was at that. :) Annie 21:22, 20 October 2019 (EDT)

Thanks, Annie. More to come! Bob 23:11, 20 October 2019 (EDT)

Two More Bulgarian Pubs

Today I added two more pubs, "Мозъчна нощ" and "Черният меч", both anthologies. Bob 23:26, 22 October 2019 (EDT)

I will get all of them tomorrow - work and travel is getting in my way today. Thanks for the notification :) Annie 02:37, 23 October 2019 (EDT)

One more Конан Варваринът. Bob 21:34, 23 October 2019 (EDT)

And the last three: Конан Варваринът: И се роди вещица, Конан Варваринът: Алената цитадела and Конан Варваринът (Ролис). That's the last Bulgarian pubs in HowardWorks. Bob 21:31, 24 October 2019 (EDT)

Apparent

Hello Annie, what is the meaning of "apparent"?--Wolfram.winkler 01:06, 23 October 2019 (EDT)

In this context and usage: obvious, clearly visible, clearly understood. What “apparent first printing” means is that this is the record for the first printing based on everything we know. The same thing it means in the other 2900 or so publications it is used in. Annie 02:44, 23 October 2019 (EDT)

A quick clarification: bibliographers generally distinguish between what is "stated" and what is "apparent". For example, if the copyright page of a book says "First printing", then it's recorded as "stated first printing" in its bibliographic record. If "first printing" is not stated explicitly in the book, but there are reasons to believe that it is indeed the first printing, then it's recorded as "apparent first printing" in the bibliographic record. Ahasuerus 12:28, 23 October 2019 (EDT)

So it's just suppositions that have nothing to do in a database, in my opinion (Google translator).--Wolfram.winkler 13:21, 23 October 2019 (EDT)

It's common bibliographic practice to record data based on circumstantial evidence. The important part is to make sure that we make it clear what the source of our information is, i.e. whether it is "stated" in the publication itself or whether it is "assumed" based on outside sources or circumstantial evidence. Librarians usually use square brackets to indicate that a recorded value is assumed, e.g.:

• Bodleian Libraries: "For elements which do not specify “any source” you should enclose in square brackets any information taken from outside the resource." [emphasis in the original]
• Yale University Library: "Supply a date of publication that corresponds to the distribution date, in square brackets, if it seems reasonable to assume that date is a likely publication date." [emphasis added]

The ISFDB doesn't use square brackets for assumed values, but we document them in the Notes field. Ahasuerus 14:16, 23 October 2019 (EDT)

What bothers me about this practice is the fact that anyone can write: apparent... without specifying sources (Google translator).--Wolfram.winkler 15:37, 23 October 2019 (EDT)

At some point, we have to trust that people are generally here to contribute without making stuff up. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 15:57, 23 October 2019 (EDT)

I would say that the desired level of specificity of the Notes language depends on the field. For example, if the publication date is not stated in the book, then we need to provide the exact source of our date information if the value is not 0000-00-00. On the other hand, if the pub doesn't include an edition number or a printing number, something like "Apparent first printing" in Notes is as specific as we can get in most cases.

It also depends on the country and on the time period. Back in the 1970s-1990s, most US-based paperback publishers printed the printing number on the copyright page of subsequent printings. In the 2010s things changed a great deal; smaller, non-traditional publishers may not be following the same conventions. And, of course, other countries may exhibit different patterns altogether. Ahasuerus 16:32, 23 October 2019 (EDT)

For me, data without sources is untrustworthy. A database does not rely on trust but on facts. What speaks against "apparent" data to explain more detail? (by Google).--Wolfram.winkler 05:27, 24 October 2019 (EDT)

It is a standard bibliographic notation - and we are a bibliography database. Annie 07:46, 24 October 2019 (EDT)

The Man Who Sang to Ghosts

My intent was to have the full title, ie including its subtitles, to be in line with the other pubs in the series. I'll resubmit. Thanks! MagicUnk 19:29, 31 October 2019 (EDT)

Only if you change all the publications as well. If any of them lack the subtitle, then nope. Annie 19:32, 31 October 2019 (EDT)

Did check, but can't see pages 3-4 of the paper LookInside. Can you see them? All editions should have the subtitle when comparing with the other pubs in the series, having the title pages at pp.3 and 4, and having been published at the same time. MagicUnk 19:39, 31 October 2019 (EDT)

I honestly would not add this as a subtitle on any of them (I will add it to the notes) - this is a subjective choice of the editor when a subtitle is a subtitle to be included and I tend to err on the side of removals for this kind of subtitles on modern books - I just do not think of them as a subtitle... And I would leave the title record without it when you cannot be sure and when the story can be printed without the subtitle. I am not going to change the books you are editing but without seeing the title pages, we go by other means (cover, OCLC and so on) and if we cannot confirm, we do not just add a subtitle so it matches the rest in the series or because we think we should. :) Annie 19:43, 31 October 2019 (EDT)

Well, here it's different, I'd think. The ebook edition does have the full title displayed. The tp has been published the exact same date. So... MagicUnk 19:50, 31 October 2019 (EDT)

Update the pubs, I will be happy to update or approve an update on the the title after that then. :) Annie 19:51, 31 October 2019 (EDT)

They should all be in the queue :) MagicUnk 19:56, 31 October 2019 (EDT)

Write moderator notes in these cases - tell the approving moderator what your intents are - we cannot (always) read your mind :) Annie 19:58, 31 October 2019 (EDT)

The Eerie Book

Hi Annie (I suppose must be your name).

T1337014 1898 anthology The Eerie Book with Contents reported by Ashley/Contento (TSI, viewed piecemeal at Google Books) from purported facsimile 1981 Castle Books edition.
Entered here by Bluesman (from TSI, with brute clerical errors now corrected), as story titles and author names identically for 1898 and 1981.

After updates continuing 2019-11-07, no publication record displays the Contents reported by TSI, but the 1981 record retains all the page numbers from that report. --Pwendt|talk 19:48, 7 November 2019 (EST)

My principal source is the 1st ed. 1898 Contents list (viewed at HathiTrust) and I have viewed story headings (4 pages after every listed page number).

The 1981 Castle Books ed. is not a facsimile, as TSI Ashley/Contento state --not unless they make small even-number clerical errors in different directions on page numbers for most stories, and the last page. Yet I wonder whether any of the credits to authors are revised. Ashley/Contento may use their own canonical names for authors, rather than take anything literally from the book. (Do you know?)
Is it prudent to align all of the joint story title records to the 1st ed., with a single note of warning in the 1981 publication record? Or to unmerge some/all of the stories and correct only those published in 1898 --presumably on grounds that we don't say what's in the 1981 edition, we only say how Ashley/Contento report it.

No more updates for today, as I have delayed food and drink too long. Regarding author credit policy I have some questions you may be able to answer, inferences to confirm, and so on. Perhaps I will augment this list by phone (no tilde "~", and above my signature).

• 1. From the very small number of "The ..." credits --only one by Motte Fouque as "The Baron ..." for instance T1579750-- I infer that we are permitted to interpret "by the Baron ..." and "by the Rev. ..." (in-line lowercase "by the") as credits under the names "Baron ..." and "Rev. ...".
• 2. Concerning attributions in the possessive, no by-line, as "from Mrs. Shelley's novel" we are welcome to use the person's canonical name. Akin to collection titles "Andersen's Fairy Tales" and "Hans Andersen's Fairy Tales", which do not generate variant story titles as by Andersen and Hans Andersen.
• 3. Yet "From the Danish of Hans Andersen." demands credit as Hans Andersen. It seems to me.

Do you know whether you will do a session tomorrow meaning 20-24 hours from now? --Pwendt|talk 22:33, 6 November 2019 (EST)

Yep on the name :) About that 1981 edition - let me see if I can get my library to find me a copy of it - their ILL department rarely disappoints me and I see quite a lot of copies in the system they usually draw from so... I may be able to get it so we can solve that mystery once and for all. If you want to align them, go ahead (and leave notes on A/C's version. If they differ when I get the book, I will re-update.

I should be around - unless I have something at work. If you want, check with me to see if I am around before you start a long string of updates. Annie 22:44, 6 November 2019 (EST)

ok to your ILL suggn

thanks --pwendt

I begin some work on The Eerie Book. Prompt approval is not crucial, as I am better nourished and organized to make progress regardless. For now I use this line in SHORTFICTION title records

• The 1981 reprint is not a facsimile, so annotation may differ.

regardless whether it I suppose or guess that annotation differs, and regardless how Ashley/Contento lists the story. --Pwendt|talk 19:31, 7 November 2019 (EST)

I am around. May step out for 30 minutes or so but I am around. And the 1981 book is on an ILL request so let's see if and when I will get it. :) Annie 19:36, 7 November 2019 (EST)

Thanks for your part. Chris J approved the last four Eerie submissions. I am done today. At least two remain, the novellas(?) abridged/extracted from Mrs. Shelley's and De Quincey's works, a matter for some substantial research tomorrow. Then I may be entirely away this weekend. --Pwendt|talk 21:06, 7 November 2019 (EST)

Annie, I expect no more db submissions this weekend, whose length remains to be determined, as much as three full days? Thanks. --Pwendt|talk 21:38, 8 November 2019 (EST)

Have fun. :) Annie 21:41, 8 November 2019 (EST)

2019-11-12

Google Books does not provide any view of The Eerie Book in its 1981 edition, as it does for The Dream Weavers (1980, User talk:Chris J#Dream Weavers; Locus #234 (June 1980)).
That's all for me here today. --Pwendt|talk 17:29, 12 November 2019 (EST)

It had been requested. It may come next week or never... will see. Annie 18:37, 12 November 2019 (EST)

After some time wallowing in the mire of 19c English-language Andersen fairy tales, I submitted one TitleUpdate for an Eerie Book short story--the Andersen. That will be all for today. Reminder: I retain early November title Notes about how each story is credited in the 1898 edition, which close with the line, "The 1981 reprint is not a facsimile, so annotation may differ." Presumably those will be rewritten or replaced after you get the 1981 Castle Books, or we decide to move on without getting it. --Pwendt|talk 22:32, 17 November 2019 (EST)

2019-11-22

The Night[-]Side of Nature belongs under 1898 anthology The Eerie Book because Crowe's "The Blind Beggar of Odessa" was first published there. This university library closes in 20 minutes and I don't expect to back to historical newspapers for a fortnight. Not sure how much I'll do that relies on HathiTrust, either, as the wide-screen display university provides is vital at HDL (and convenient for all ISFDB contribution). Probably I won't contribute much for the remainder of this month.

Where my Eerie Book shortfiction title notes are incomplete --chiefly, reported extract not verified-- that isn't relevant, I think, to your making use of the 1981 edition if it arrives. There may be no issues other than its credits and other annotations, and page numbers. --Pwendt|talk 18:55, 22 November 2019 (EST)

History

Hi again, why there (on isfdb.org/) is no history of the edited pages? Like here on wiki. Or it is only available for administrators?--Terraflorin 01:12, 7 November 2019 (EST)

Because the main site is not a wiki-based system - it is a DB system. Only the talk pages are wiki-based; the main site is not. Admins don't have the data either - for some things, we can find all relevant entries (not trivial but doable) but sometimes it is convoluted to follow it all. That is why we have the "notify the verifier" rule and we check multiple times before changing data. And we had been discussing adding the ability to save previous states and thus creating history but I won't hold my breath. What are you looking for? Annie 01:16, 7 November 2019 (EST)

Among other things, I was curious to find out who contributed to adding the books in collection Fantastic Club from Editura Albatros. And, in general, I find it easier to edit a book if I have a history of editing --Terraflorin 01:29, 7 November 2019 (EST)

Look at the secondary verifications in such cases - both N/As and actual verifications - the Romanian books are mostly added either from OCLC or from Moshul SF (or both). This specific pattern of notes with Moshul and OCLC as a source and followed by the translation and price notes and so on (as in here) is from Linguist.

So ask - most of the long-time editors have distinctive styles and it is easy to find who originated something - especially outside of the few big languages. Other from that - we have what we have. :)Annie 01:34, 7 November 2019 (EST)

Another question, when I edit a new collection or anthology how to add translator in notes for each story? --Terraflorin 01:47, 7 November 2019 (EST)

Only after it is initially approved I am afraid... Containers have their title node on Add, contents does not. You know how you need to variant each story to its original? You have to also edit the title and add the translator and the transliteration (if needed). They can be submitted in parallel so no need to wait for the variant to be approved. Yes, we all wish there was an easier way :) Annie 02:15, 7 November 2019 (EST)

La Machine fantôme

Hi, I made a mistake, Mașina fantomă isn't a novel, is a collection of short stories, see La Machine fantôme or here: La Machine fantôme (recueil de nouvelles...). --Terraflorin 00:51, 11 November 2019 (EST)

Go here. Press Edit in the right corner and change the type to collection in the both places it says novel now. Let me know if you prefer me to do it :) Annie 00:53, 11 November 2019 (EST)

I must add the title of stories, (find them first.) --Terraflorin 01:02, 11 November 2019 (EST)

That's ok. We can fix the format and then add the stories later. Do you want to try to change the type? Annie 01:06, 11 November 2019 (EST)

And approved. In case the title level is greyed out (which happens if we have two editions - hc and tp for example), you need to edit the title first and after it is approved, you can edit the two or more publications :) Annie 01:14, 11 November 2019 (EST)

Another question, if I uploaded a new version of a file, I must change something in Publication Record? to add new link or is the some link with the image and the new image apear automatically. e.g. here and here.--Terraflorin 01:12, 11 November 2019 (EST)

That depends. If you uploaded via the "upload cover" link both times, you do not need to change anything in the publication (as the address is the same). If you uploaded in different places (which you should not :) ) - then you need to tell the pub where its picture is. Annie 01:14, 11 November 2019 (EST)

Ok, thanks for info, the new cover look nice, now i add the stories and the preface by Gérard Klein--Terraflorin 01:18, 11 November 2019 (EST)

Publication translators

I'd been watching Terraflorin's talk page as he'd provided Romanian text for some Verne translations (here) and saw you saying that translators "can be skipped" on publications. With a lot of Jules Verne publications ahead of me, my plan is to document translators/translations in publications in one of three ways - {{Tr|xxx}} when the translator name is provided (using xxx as stated in the pub); {{Tr|xxx}} based on translation text when the translator is not identified but I can determine which translator it is; and {{Tr|an unknown hand}} first published by yyy based on translation text when I can establish a translation but not a translator (yyy being the publisher/year). When I have no text, I will either say so or say nothing. Is this consistent with you interpretation of "can be skipped"? ../Doug H 10:47, 11 November 2019 (EST)

Yes. It is up to the editor and when there is no difference between the credits on both levels, the pub one is not mandatory. I like to have them in both places but if it is just one, it is the titles. Which is what I am still trying to teach our new editor. :) Annie 10:58, 11 November 2019 (EST)

I like to see it on the pub when it the data is available from the pub. I'm not looking forward to cleaning up all the Verne pubs where some people were careful and others weren't, so now I have to check them all carefully. Kind of like putting contaminants in the recycling bins. ../Doug H 11:15, 11 November 2019 (EST)

No argument on that but with smaller languages, as long as we are careful and make sure all is checked and added where it belongs while adding them, they should not make messes. Too much any way. We did not even start recording them completely until a few years ago - most of the messes are pre-existing. It is a balancing act sometimes... Annie 11:40, 11 November 2019 (EST)

Cover upload deletion

Hi Annie, please could you delete this early try-out of mine, it's not linked to anything. http://www.isfdb.org/wiki/index.php/Image:MRTNTMSLP21999.jpg Thanks, Kev. BanjoKev 14:40, 11 November 2019 (EST)

What upload? :) AKA - deleted :) Annie 14:41, 11 November 2019 (EST)

Ha ha... Kev. BanjoKev 14:50, 11 November 2019 (EST)

Author's Foreword

Hi Annie, could you please spare some time to have a look at the title record here. Of two recent edits I've done on this title, this publication appears there, but this publication doesn't - it appears on a separate page here. I can't figure out why, is it something to do with my submissions for the latter pub? Thanks :) Kev. BanjoKev 17:14, 15 November 2019 (EST)

Welcome to the fascinating world of merges :) Every time when you type a title as opposed to clone or import, it creates a new title. Once approved, it needs to be merged.

There are three ways to see the merge links:

• "Check for Duplicate Titles" - the link is on every author, publication and title page, on the left menu. When you press it will show you potential candidates and a merge button. Useful for anthologies for example - will show you all the duplicates. This one also have some fuzzy searches available inside of it to help with typos and things that look similar to be able to be duplicates.
• Show all titles - on author pages. Works awesome for authors with small amount of titles. Same idea.
• Advanced Search for titles - construct a search that finds both titles and you will be able to merge them. :)

Do you want to try to get these to merge? Hint - scenario 1 will work here - locate the link on one of the two essays and see if you can see what follows? Annie 17:21, 15 November 2019 (EST)

Thanks! I suspected 'merge' but couldn't find(missed) anything in the help pages. I'll get on it now :) Kev. BanjoKev 17:34, 15 November 2019 (EST)

Approved. It's kinda hiding - isn't it? :) Moderators have a special "check for duplicate" button post approval and most of us will click on it - and merge everything obvious. So you may have not needed to do it before -- someone here did not use the button or was not sure it is the same text - so they remained unmerged. :) Annie 17:56, 15 November 2019 (EST)

Seamless. Great help. So, that's what the 'manual merge'(?) flag indicates on an edit submission? If I think a merge might be needed, now I can indicate to Moderator that I'd like to try to do it myself post-approval. Save Moderator the decision/time as I will probably be up to speed with the info needed. Many thanks, Kev. BanjoKev 18:09, 15 November 2019 (EST)

You mean the text that shows up after you press submit? Yep - it means "if this title is already in the DB, you will need to do a manual merge after it is approved". As opposed to "Auto-merged" which tells you that this is using an existing title (because you are cloning or importing) so no merge will be needed.

Just use the moderator note and say something like: "please do not merge, I will follow up shortly". Some may still merge. Some will miss the message. Sometimes someone will find the story before you get back to it and merge. Or if you know that it is the same, you can say "please merge". 50/50 chance of the moderator merging :) If you get me, I tend to assist as much as I can and do all the needed steps post-approval - and go talk to the editor if they could have used import or clone instead. :) Annie 18:17, 15 November 2019 (EST)

CHAPBOOK vs. NOVEL

[Offline until there's an actual point to be made rather than confusion to spawn].

Using 20,000 Leagues as an example - we've documented the first two publications as novels that include Part 1 and Part 2 in the title (in French). Then we document them published together as the full novel. Now we're proposing to make the first two publications CHAPBOOKs and the contained titles SERIALs. How is this different than other two+ part novels? A contentious but well-known example would be Lord of the Rings - IF it has been published as Lord of the Rings (Part 1): The Fellowship of the Ring would it have been done as CHAPBOOK / SERIAL? I suspect not, but that means we need to draw a line - what is the serialization of a novel? To Hetzel, each part was a book, and the combined were truly OMNIBUSes (double or triple books), and so really does follow the Lord of the Rings approach. Except we have the French book as a single title and the English as a Series. And the presence/absence of a subtitle exists for Jules Verne - he's got 'books' done both ways.

[The problem with moving forward is that it's like real moving - it's not just where you're going, it's all that stuff you have buried in the basement that suddenly needs to be dealt with. Sometimes, it's never been unpacked and you can just move without opening them and sometimes you can't.] ../Doug H 15:19, 17 November 2019 (EST)

Ignore the chapbook part on its own - it is a distraction because of how we save data. It is a SERIAL vs Novel discussion really. If the two parts are novels in their own right and stand alone, then when you publish them together, they become an omnibus, right? That's how The Lord of the Rings is handled. This won't change. So the Lord of the Rings will remain as 3 novels. Single novels split for publication will be the one that get converted. How we handle The Reality Dysfunction. See how many non-English titles are there? They look as if they are complete translations. They are not, none of them is but because the Italian ones are in a magazine and the others are not, they are recorded differently - so the change will send them under "serialized" and not under "variants" and someone opening them won't think they are complete novels. Or look at Dune - the Japanese split into 4 which now appear as full variants to the main one.

Now, if we say that "20,000 Leagues" is actually 2 novels that always get published together, then that changes things. Then it will follow the Lord of the Rings example, make those novels, make the complete thing an omnibus and work based on that. It is the good old "is publishing in volumes serialization and if not, where do we draw the difference" conversation.

And yes, I did not propose that lightly. :) Annie 15:32, 17 November 2019 (EST)

And SERIAL containing what should be a novel based on length is not uncommon - that is our (Complete Novel) rule for magazines (we have 2,261 as of this moment) Annie 15:35, 17 November 2019 (EST)

Now, if we want "originally serialized in books" to remain separate, where do we draw the lines between serial and novel? At 40K words. Who is going to count? And what if 2 installments are 45K words and 1 is 35K? If all installments are 10K words, they are obvious SERIALS. What about 6 installments of 20K words and one of 45K words as a finale? We CAN add a date clause maybe - so if a book initial serialization is in book format pre-1950 for example, then do something else but then it is back to the "we show a partial novel as a variant of a complete novel" and will make even harder to explain. Annie 15:38, 17 November 2019 (EST)

(points kept together, hopefully context is obvious or unnecessary). ../Doug H 16:42, 17 November 2019 (EST)

• CHAPBOOKs was for completeness. Consider it dropped as long as the documentation/definition allow for novel-length contents.
• Not sure what you mean by "stand-alone". None of the three parts to Lord of the Rings stand alone from a plot perspective. Same with the Verne stories. Mysterious Island is probably a better example from Verne - trilogy with separate titles (Dropped from the Clouds, Abandoned, Secret of the Island) for each book. The English translations followed to keep pace and combined once they'd butchered the translations and cut the content.

Our types are weird. Had you thought about Foundation as a collection before you came here? It had never crossed my mind. So we just make a decision based on... consensus and intents I guess. Annie 16:50, 17 November 2019 (EST)

Always thought of it as a collection of short stories published earlier. Checking the entry I see I was wrong. I also see the synopsis calls it a Novel. So for Verne I can do as I please? ../Doug H 17:06, 17 November 2019 (EST)

It won awards for a novel. It is presented as a novel in most countries... I did not realize it is just a collection of distinct stories until much much later. :) Sure, as long as you realize that if we change the rules, it will need to be cleaned up. The rules had not changed yet so at this time, as long as you comply with them, it works. Annie 17:10, 17 November 2019 (EST)

• Your Reality Dysfunction example does not include the edition that I entered back in 2014. Not knowing about the combined British versions, documenting it as a stand-alone novel made sense. [Although who created the series it's under is unknown. Calling it paperback when there are trade and e-books in it, and there being paperbacks and trades in the main series is just confusing. And hopefully irrelevant.]

Yeah, I did post about that a few minutes ago. That one is a mess despite being the poster child for a split novel. Annie 16:50, 17 November 2019 (EST)

• Where is the good old "is publishing in volumes serialization and if not, where do we draw the difference" conversation? Do we dig this out of the basement and unpack it? It seems to be relevant to my concerns. And a good source of many more questions.

Will dig through archives later today

• The "originally serialized in books" remaining separate is a later problem as far as I'm concerned. Once I know how to document the books and see where they show up, deciding if that is correct/appropriate/acceptable becomes the next question. Though I'm willing to go there if it has an impact on the decision of how to document them.
• Harking back to an earlier point, translations of a part of a book under a 'Part x' title would be a separate SERIAL varianted to the full original language title, even though it is a complete translation of another SERIAL. Can't variant to both, so we would still need to do that in the notes. This may impact the translations as variants vs. their own thing discussion, but this discussion could (and probably should) be resolved before going there. No reason to drag that topic into this one.

Variants of variants. We need them both for this AND for same translations under new names... Making these novels or serials does not change that though - they still need to go under one parent Annie 16:50, 17 November 2019 (EST)

• I like your arguments about size of instalments although I'm not sure what the point was beyond to stay away from keeping "originally serialized in books" separate. My problem sometimes is type - NOVEL describes text, SERIAL describes intention and mixing them gives me trouble. Maybe SERIALizing and TRANSLATing are related. And tangentially a pet peeve - is there a way to treat SERIALIZATION as a collective for the title summary page?

I was thinking aloud and pointing out that if we look at the size, a split novel will end up a mess of a Serial+novel or novel+novel or serial+serial combinations. Call a part of something serial and be done with it. They are different but.. they are not.:) We have two types to play with NOVEL and SERIAL. :) Annie

• Has anyone every published a story in serial form (magazine) as one series then published it as two novels? [No real point to this question other than looking for outliers][I've obviously been working on this too long and should stop]. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Holmesd (talk • contribs) .

The novel in one magazine issue and then in 2 books? Hm, need to check but doubt it. It would have been a very big magazine Annie 16:50, 17 November 2019 (EST)

No, serialized as one story (multiple issues), but when it came to the book it was too long so they made it two 'books'. Would the books be separate novels (as published) or a 2-part Serial (given it was considered one in the magazine). And if separate novels, you'd have to break up the magazine serialization into two parts. As I said not point beyond 'yet another example' to consider. ../Doug H 17:06, 17 November 2019 (EST)

Ah, I see. No idea. Will do some digging. That's why we discuss - multiple viewpoints and all that. :) Annie 17:10, 17 November 2019 (EST)

КайноZой

Hi, Annie! On this publication page Сергей Лукьяненко "КайноZой" you wrote: "FantLab credits Е. Ферез as the cover artist but the book credits him only with the design of the cover". However, Е. Ферез is woman - Ekaterina Ferez (E. Ferez's FantLab page with photo). So, correct is "her" instead "him"? --Zlogorek 04:45, 18 November 2019 (EST)

I thought I did. Oops. Sorry and thanks for catching that. Annie 18:59, 18 November 2019 (EST)

Collection vs Omnibus

linkWhen the "collection" contains two novels, we call that omnibus. I fixed this one :) Annie 12:25, 11 November 2019 (EST)]

But here? (Publication: The Brains of Earth / The Many Worlds of Magnus Ridolph, Type: OMNIBUS) I can't see two novels here. Only a mention about the "novel" The Brains of Earth, who appear bellow as novella.

And here (Omnibus edition at en.wiki) is another definition: An omnibus edition or omnibus is a work containing one or more works by the same or, more rarely, different authors. Commonly two or more components have been previously published as books but a collection of shorter works, or shorter works collected with one previous book, may be an omnibus. --Terraflorin 06:26, 18 November 2019 (EST)

The first example is one of those weird things where an old novel is now considered a novella.

I did not give you a "what is a an omnibus" description, I came to tell you that in the case where you have 2 novels, it is an omnibus. There are other cases that make a book an omnibus as well.

2 novels fits into the description above (Commonly two or more components have been previously published as books - the two novels). Annie 12:44, 18 November 2019 (EST)

От дълбините на времето

Hello Annie !

When you have a chance, you may want to check the record of this Bulgarian pub I just put in (in case I forgot or messed something up). TIA, Linguist 06:46, 18 November 2019 (EST).

I changed the publisher - see the note on the publisher page. I had been going through the two names and still cannot decide which one to use - so for now just getting them all together. The title pages are all over the place...

Added SFBG ID, artist (from SFBG - if we find the cover under another artist, then we will reassign and redelegate this one - Bulgarian credits are... notoriously crazy and designers are often called художник (artist)), price (from the publisher - looking to find a back cover scan to confirm it is there but with Collibri, it usually is so I am looking to see if there is also an EUR price), format note(I add that to BG and Russian books so we have them) and put the complete name of the traslator - FantLab tend to go for the Initial Last Name in their listing as a policy (as most of the older Russian books would do the same). Annie 11:57, 18 November 2019 (EST)

Thanks a lot for all your work ! Linguist 12:36, 18 November 2019 (EST).

If you have an opinion on Colibri, please share it :) The thing is giving me a headache. See About us and how the name is Колибри through the text? Between that and the norms, I kinda lean towards the Cyrillic name. But I am open to a second set of eyes. :) Annie 13:10, 18 November 2019 (EST)

I think the note you put on the publisher's page is explicit enough to refrain one from being too finicky. And one good thing about Колибри is that it doesn't get inflected (in Russian, anyway) :o). Linguist 05:01, 19 November 2019 (EST).

True. Although Bulgarian is one of the two Slavic languages that lost their cases so we don’t change our nouns too much anyway. Verbs on the other hand. :) Annie 09:03, 19 November 2019 (EST)

Marvel-ous work

Here's the snippet I was working one when your change overrode mine:

I'm not much of a Marvel fan, so have been following this thread without understanding a lot of the details. I tried to figure out what was going on by looking for Marvel's take on how to organize the material, thinking that should for the basis for our series. Seems that even they don't have one way to deal with it. The medium (film, comic, TV, etc) seems to loom large as there are differences for the same character between them. Their fandom seems to recognize various universes (e.g. 616), but even these cross-over. Much as I personally dislike tags, I think the Marvel (Meta)(Multi)Universe(s) is too big to be considered a hierarchy of 'series' and should be abandoned and that sets of tags - like universe, character, medium be established and used to link stories together. Maybe series could be used to link small things with clear connections (like movie novelizations).

As if you didn't have enough on the go. I have enough trouble reading this stuff and getting the laundry done. :) ../Doug H 11:48, 18 November 2019 (EST)

Oh, post it anyway... :) Edit conflicts do happen when enough people care - just copy it, step back, press edit again and post. My point is that the per-character lists are... weird. I would rather find a solution than stick to my preconceptions. Annie 11:51, 18 November 2019 (EST)

Are you familiar with the Farmer's Wold Newton Universe? There might be some lessons in what not to do there. ../Doug H 12:03, 18 November 2019 (EST)

Ah, that. Somewhat - I am not sure I ever read a book of this series though... :) That's why I am posting threads and seeking opinions. I do not know everything and I am occasionally wrong. When that happens, I am happy to change my mistaken ideas :) Annie 12:17, 18 November 2019 (EST)

Farmer tied together Tarzan, Doc Savage, Sherlock Holmes and other into a shared 'universe' as addendums in two of this books treating Tarzan and Savage as real people rather than characters. First- and second- generation fans have expanded this to a universe involving any character sharing a story with one of these, including their own pastiches. They also seem to be having trouble drawing the line at including the Marvel Universe characters. My point with this is that writing to a 'universe' - be it connected stories like Asimov's Foundation or common background like Niven's Known Worlds or even Howard'd Conan can be documented in a series. Stretching to fit free-ranging multiple authors views is chaos. It's why tags work (and I don't like them) ../Doug H 12:32, 18 November 2019 (EST)

Oh dear. :)

As long as we have a plan and stick to it, it works for me. But "I will just delete everything that I do not like or understand" is not a plan. :) I am more of a DC girl but I had been working through Marvel lately as well and character-based lists are just weird for either universe -- not when the splits into universes are not accounted for. They were ok when this series were setup (maybe) but things had evolved. It's the nature of the beast. I'd rather spend the time and find a way that makes sense than make something that noone can use for any purposes besides blind "or, Spider Man novels" check (and with crossovers, even this list won't be complete). The good news on MCU is that just like Star Trek or Stargate, there is an approval process so people cannot just go off on a tangent. But there is more than one universe. :) Annie 12:39, 18 November 2019 (EST)

I've been sticking to the arguments about the results and ignoring the process by which this came about. Definitely and issue, but a separate one. ../Doug H 12:44, 18 November 2019 (EST)

Yeah, I know. I am just trying to make sure we do not make an even bigger mess. :) Annie 12:59, 18 November 2019 (EST)

Excerpt year

Annie, Is it recommended to use the year of the excerpted work rather than the year of the excerpt, as in User:Rtrace work on Oz excerpts:

• Booktionary (excerpt from The Scarecrow of Oz); Date=1915

rather than this, in effect:

• Booktionary (excerpt from The Scarecrow of Oz, 1915); Date=2003

It seems to me that our general principles support the latter. --Pwendt|talk 18:54, 18 November 2019 (EST)

It is the latter - we had a conversation somewhere in the last year or so. The dating rules are the same for everything (except the exception for serialization in magazines and the flow up of a variant date in cases when the variant is later but we connect the other way around) - The date comes from the first appearance under that title, that author, that language, that translator (if relevant) and in the case of parts of works - that specific part. But that rule had changed a few times so some older works are not compliant. Ping Rtrace on that - he is around usually and discuss with him :) Annie 18:58, 18 November 2019 (EST)

He is one of my frequent correspondents; that's for later.

By Advanced Search, I find we have no titles with the year of the excerpted work YEW at the end of the parenthetical disambiguation "(excerpt from ... YEW)", as I suggested above, nor such as "(excerpt from 1915, The Scarecrow of Oz)". There may be none with YEW explicit. It appears that the structure of the database makes the relation clear (some of our views show the relation) only in exceptional cases where a fiction Series is introduced, as for Frankenstein, Gulliver, and 20,000 Leagues --whose "(abridged versions and excerpts)" series is provides our only titles "(excerpt from 2". --Pwendt|talk 22:46, 18 November 2019 (EST)

That is correct. We do not variant excerpts anywhere. The "big works that always get excerpted" get series so you connect this way but for the garden variety excerpts, we don't connect them at all (and one can only find them by going to the author page). Annie 22:48, 18 November 2019 (EST)

Pub with Missing Series Name and Number

I just received a chapbook in the mail that is part of a series. The chapbook was already entered in the data base, but without a series name (not surprising, since it was based on Amazon data). I can't figure out how to add the series name and number; the software doesn't seem to allow it. How can I add the series name? Bob 19:19, 19 November 2019 (EST)

You add it to the story inside, not to the chapbook. Think of the chapbook as this artificial container which that publisher used to contain the story. The same story coming out in a collection will still belong to the same series - so we do not allow chapbooks to be added series, instead we add the stories. Novels are different because the container and the story are one and the same record. Annie 19:33, 19 November 2019 (EST)

Duh! Sorry to be so dumb. Thanks! Bob 20:00, 19 November 2019 (EST)

No worries at all. If you do not do that all the time, it is one of the quirks you can forget about :) Annie 20:05, 19 November 2019 (EST)

Serialization

Hello Annie, can you please give me a brief summary of what should happen to the serialization (old / new). I will add a new novel which is split in three parts. Thanks Henna 15:26, 21 November 2019 (EST)

Split into separate books? Under the current rules: Each part is recorded as a novel, with its separate name and then all 3 are varianted into the complete novel (as opposed to merged into it) (see the Japanese, the French or the Serbian variants in Dune. If the three parts have their own unique names, we record that. If not, (part 1 of X) or "1" is needed to determine which part is what (see the French splits in Dune). If the same novel is split the same way inside of a magazine, it is recorded as SERIALs. We are discussing at the moment changing the "record as novel" part but at this moment, this is the rule.

So submit them as 3 separate novels (as you had been doing so far) and when they are approved, variant all 3 titles to the complete novel record (as opposed to merging them into 1 record and then varianting to the original). Let me know if that makes sense. Annie 15:40, 21 November 2019 (EST)

Hello Annie, what should I do with the old staff Atomvulkan Golkonda??? Henna 16:08, 21 November 2019 (EST)

Just leave them for now - when we decide if we will keep these as novels or change to SERIALs, we will clean them up in one step (as opposed to splitting them now and then changing to serials later if we decide to do that or to whatever we decide to do. Annie 16:22, 21 November 2019 (EST)

Introduction (The Night Side of Nature)

Annie, I know that it's common to use such as Preface (__), Introduction (__), and Conclusion (__) with parenthetical annotations that omit subtitles. What do you think of using only two sets, thus

• Preface (The Night Side of Nature)
• Introduction (The Night Side of Nature)
• Conclusion (The Night Side of Nature)

and same with the hyphenated foretitle only, but no more? --no subtitles (which are different or absent in some eds not in the database) and no "Vol 1 of 2", "Vol of 2".

Library now closes in 1 minutes. --Pwendt|talk 19:00, 22 November 2019 (EST)

Are they the same text exactly? If they are different in each volume, we should be separating them from each other. Annie 19:04, 22 November 2019 (EST)

Suppose they are the same text. Introduction and Conclusion are simply ch 1 and ch 18 of the book. I can check later for some such as Gutenberg vs 1st ed. 1848. --Pwendt|talk 19:55, 22 November 2019 (EST)

Apocalipsul / and Библиотека "Фантастика"

Hi, Annie, I hope u are fine. How about Apocalipsul (Flagelul)? I just started Publication Series: Библиотека "Фантастика", please add more books published by Народна младеж. Thanks, --Terraflorin 01:24, 23 November 2019 (EST)

There is a question about this one on your page. You may want to slow down and read your Talk page and answer the questions there - at the moment you keep adding more and more records and a lot of them need fixing. :) As for the Bulgarian books - I have only two hands. I will add them when I can. I will fix the one you added. FantLab’s data for Bulgarian books is very often at best incomplete and often wrong :) Annie 01:46, 23 November 2019 (EST)

BTW: if you are going to use FantLab, please find the Nominative forms of the author names. The artists and translators names are usually inflected - as I said I will fix this one but keep this in mind. Annie 01:51, 23 November 2019 (EST)

Ok - that one is fixed. Fixed the format (145x200 is tp), the artist (plus interior art - Fantlab mentioned that one as well), the pub series, the number of pages (from a different source) and added notes and the price. And added the translator to the title page where it belongs (as we had discussed before). Thanks for adding it. :) Annie 03:04, 23 November 2019 (EST)

SERIALS and novels

My recent request makes me wonder how we'd deal with this when we start SERIALizing part novels. It was done as two books (each a single serial as part of Hector Servadac), then as a full novel, then each serial individually translated, and also translated as a single novel. And this entry, which is treated as a novel, but with text presented as an omnibus of two novels, so would really be a novel with two serials? And what do translated titles variant to - the full novel or the serials?

I've stayed out of the discussion because it's confusing enough without people mis-reading my questions or going off on (important but non-relevant) tangents. I'm waiting for the dust to settle and then ask these questions if the description isn't clear enough.

EOG (End-Of-Gripe) ../Doug H 23:39, 26 November 2019 (EST)

Under the current rules or under the changes rules if we decide to use serials for partial novels? Annie 23:47, 26 November 2019 (EST)

The proposed/impending rules. This might make a good test case for illustrating how to apply the new rules. I thought about it last night and we couldn't variant a translated SERIAL to the original (hence matching title translations) because the original SERIAL would be varianted to the full title. So, while it answers that question it underlines the awkwardness of using variants for translations. ../Doug H 08:12, 27 November 2019 (EST)

ClonePub Cthulhu

Hi, please make some changes here (Chemarea lui Cthulhu, 2016), I discovered this book after my submission with Chemarea lui Cthulhu (2019). Please move ISBN 978‑973‑102‑347‑2 Bad checksum to Catalog ID. And the real name for 2016 book is Chemarea lui Cthulhu și alte povestiri stranii . Thanks- --Florin 04:12, 1 December 2019 (EST)

There is one more change to be done before this clone is approved. If I approve it now, we will need to edit every single story one by one to set the date to the one from this earlier book. However, if you submit a Pub edit on this one and change all the dates of the stories and the collection itself to the older date, it can be done with one edit (as the stories are only in one pub now). Would you like to submit that and then I will approve the other one and do the needed changes? When you find an older book and need to clone in time and there is only one newer book, this edit is kinda important. If we already had 2 books, we cannot do a single edit (unless you do remove and then reimport from all the books but one) but when it is only one, it is kinda easier this way. :) Annie 04:40, 1 December 2019 (EST)

I hope this is good.--Florin 04:51, 1 December 2019 (EST)

I don't change the numbers of pages (from 2019 book) --Florin 04:54, 1 December 2019 (EST)

Well, that is one way but then we need to cancel the clone and start over. The easier way would have been to just change the dates -- thus leaving the other edition as the 2019 one and the new pending one as the 2016 one. Let me cancel this one and do what I asked and show you here. Give me a second. Annie 04:55, 1 December 2019 (EST)

So: here is the redate submission I just did - so when we clone or import from it, the dates are where they are supposed to be. Now back to the clone. If it has a different name from the other book, we will need to split it anyway. So we have two options:

• I can approve the clone and then split and variant
• We can reject it and then you can add the collection with no contents and then import from the other one.

I will approve the clone, unmerge, change the title and variant this time but keep the second option in mind for next time -- it is less prone to mistakes. Annie 05:01, 1 December 2019 (EST)

OK... So the ISBN is actually good - the problem was that the "-" (hyphen) in it were not the proper Latin one character but character 8209 (Non-Breaking Hyphen) - used often to ensure that the line stays together. Once I cleaned it up, it worked as a charm. All done now - plus the unmerge, name change and the variant and the transliterations and so on that needed adjusting. You may want to check some of the others that were incorrect in case there are more like that. Look them over to see if both books look ok. Annie 05:11, 1 December 2019 (EST)

Look great!! Thanks for your help! I discovered new information: In Chemarea lui Cthulhu și alte povestiri stranii (2016) it is printed: H.P Lovecraft . The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories , Copyright © 1963, 64 August Derleth and Donald Wandrei. So this books it is not trans. of The Call of Cthulhu and Other Dark Tales 2009. Idon't find this book (The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories (1963)) here. --Florin 05:18, 1 December 2019 (EST)

If the list of stories are the same, they get varianted even of they are not credited as translations. I was planning to take a second look in the morning at the list of stories to see of these two are where they are supposed to be. If no English collection matches, you leave it unvarianted. Annie 05:28, 1 December 2019 (EST)

Comments about PVs in notes

I chanced upon this and I just thought I'd add a sidebar to the second paragraph of your 15:32 post "(so it is clear what comes from where...." here http://www.isfdb.org/wiki/index.php?title=ISFDB:Moderator_noticeboard&oldid=567103#Comments_about_PVs_in_notes.

In the Help, and the only one I can find just now, here http://www.isfdb.org/wiki/index.php/ISFDB:FAQ#What_if_I_want_to_make_a_change_in_a_verified_publication_record.3F, Editors are supposed to leave a note on PV talk pages. I do that, even when the PV appears to be no longer active. This means that anyone who wants to dig and find out who did what can see the history.

IMHO I think the Help should be more specific in explaining this secondary issue. What do you think? Kev. BanjoKev 05:26, 1 December 2019 (EST)

Baby steps on this. :) We did not use to have the "Changed Primary Verifications" until a few years ago. The only way for someone to know someone even touched their PV'd record was for someone to leave them a note on their page. Thus the language. Then we added the list - so at least you can see the list of EditPubs (but only editPubs - for any other changes, you still need to go old style) and you can go ask what happened if you want to - or read the note if someone bothered to write it. So we had been slowly moving towards "minor trivial changes are notified via the moderator note, anything bigger is still a note on their page'. We tried to define "trivial" (change in a title is only trivial if it is bringing the title to policy for example; transliteration is a trivial change and so on) once but we never finished it. We need to rewrite the whole section on notifications at some point but at the moment there are a few other changes on the board so I am keeping that in reserve for a bit.

Of course you can always go through Recent Edits and find the records but... you are bound to miss some and it is... annoying :)

As for inactive PVs... it depends on the PV. There are some that appear inactive but show up once in a blue moon. And there are some we know are not coming back either because they are not with us anymore or because they decided to leave the project for one reason or another. And some had not been seen for a decade. Keep in mind also that the wiki pages are backed up differently than the main DB (that's why we had been moving all contents that is not images to the main DB -- we used to use a lot of wiki pages before).

Plus... some days I do 200-300 edits per day on my house-keeping tasks (moving ID to proper fields during the big migration project, capitalization issues, transliterations and so on). Sending notifications for those will end up with thousands of entries per editor page per month - so people will start ignoring them and they will drown the ones that actually do matter. :) So... depends on what it is all about. For big things - yes, the wiki notifications are important. For small stuff... well... :)

Ok, I am rambling a bit :) But hope this makes sense. And yes - we need to get the help updated at some point. Annie 05:41, 1 December 2019 (EST)

I knew there might be a whole 'War and Peace' length background going on so thanks for taking the trouble to outline the direction of travel, it's all a plus for my education :) Kev. BanjoKev 06:02, 1 December 2019 (EST)

Things move slowly but they do move (and when the do not, we kick them again) :) We had been trying to keep the Help page updated but... between policies and all the rest, things don't always make it to the Help page. And some things just need time to develop - the "editors can see the moderator notes" was a side effect of another change that turned out to be very useful and someone (Ahem...) started using it extensively during cleanup tasks so it kinda became a "it's a feature, not a bug". Combined with the "Changed PVs", now we had a viable alternative for small changes. If you are bored some day, read through some of the threads in the archived pages in Community Support and the like (from the last few years anyway although I found them all fascinating) - there are a lot of interesting nuggets and explanations there that make some of our more arcane practices look almost normal :) Annie 06:32, 1 December 2019 (EST)

Human Is? - PKD

Hi Annie, I think I understand why the cover art credit appears on the ebook as it does - but... On my not-yet-submitted 2nd printing title page it's just "Human Is?", with no subtitle as appears on the cover. I know nothing about ebooks so I was expecting it to come up on Michniewicz's author page with the earlier 2007-03-00 "Human Is?" pub. 63521. What am I missing here? Thanks, Kev. BanjoKev 16:29, 1 December 2019 (EST)

Because unless they are merged or varianted, separately added titles show up on their own and differently named titles don't show up on Pub duplicate check and whoever approved the adding of the second cover did not look deeper. We have a lot of these all over the place... If the subtitled one was a legitimate one, we would have had two choices:

• Variant the subtitled one to the clear one
• Merge them, leaving the non-subtitled title as the canonical title.

Both will be in policy (or practice...). However, looking at the title page of the ebook (Look Inside on the Amazon UK side), the ebook does not have the subtitle so I cleaned it up and merged cleanly. Annie 16:39, 1 December 2019 (EST)

Great! I should have thought to look inside :) Kev. BanjoKev 16:47, 1 December 2019 (EST)

Don't worry, you will develop the usual love/hate relationship with Look Inside before long :) Just make sure that whatever it shows is the edition you think it is and don't forget that if Amazon.com does not have it, UK or CA or AU (or maybe even a non-English one) may have it so... go hunting if some books do not have it. :) Annie 16:52, 1 December 2019 (EST)

The Story Behind the Foundation - Asimov

Hi Annie, re your change here, why 1982-12-00 and not 1986-10-00? :) Kev. BanjoKev 22:13, 8 December 2019 (EST)

The change was a merge - see here where and when the original is. Annie 22:16, 8 December 2019 (EST)

Yes I had seen the data for the 1982-12-00 pubs, but this essay is specifically dated by the author as 1986 which is why I submitted as 1986-10-00. I see 5 other pubs 1986 or later listed separately here and the essays there are all dated 1982 - so perhaps I see the reason for the merge. What I don't get is why these 5 have a separate listing (but excluding my 1986-10-09 submission) as well as showing (correctly?) in the 1982. Kev. BanjoKev 22:38, 8 December 2019 (EST)

Ah, did I merge wrongly? I will pull them out and fix it - good catch. As for why it was separate - because it got added instead of imported - so someone had to merge it where it belongs (and add notes on that so they all do not get merged together). When you simply type a title, it gets its own record. Annie 22:41, 8 December 2019 (EST)

Houston, we have a problem... I see you've extricated the 5 mentioned above (that link's gone) but that seems ok. With the specific author-dating for 'mine' at 1986 it seemed to me to warrant a new title (and whether it should be a variant of the 1982 remains moot until contact is made with some PVs with 1986 or later). Btw, I added rather than import to reflect the author's actual dating. I can go through the rest of 1986+ and locate active PVs to ask what their dating is (some, Del Rey for instance, carried the 1982 'version' through 1986). Does that make any sense? :) Kev. BanjoKev 23:04, 8 December 2019 (EST)

Kev, as I said - I will pull the pre-merged ones out again - it just cannot happen immediately as I need to pull them from archive. Once we get to where we were, we can see what actually needs merging and what does not. So leave it like that for a couple of days until I get it back to where it was. Annie 23:06, 8 December 2019 (EST)

Sorry Annie, wasn't nagging - just didn't know the process :) Thanks, Kev BanjoKev 23:10, 8 December 2019 (EST)

No magical "revert" button - and with merges it can get hairy. When I looked they were so mixed up that it did not look like two separate essays. Once we pull them, we will see what else needs pulling. And add notes :) Annie 23:11, 8 December 2019 (EST)

Great. I'm initiating contact with the other active 1986+ PVs for clarification on their dates. Kev. BanjoKev 23:27, 8 December 2019 (EST)

No. Please wait until we have them separated again. Sending messages now will confuse everyone even more. Annie 23:29, 8 December 2019 (EST)

Ok :) Kev. BanjoKev 23:39, 8 December 2019 (EST)

If other essays start getting pulled out and merged elsewhere, it will be very hard to get back to where we were -- trying to track a title through a merge without an archive is impossible and my only choice will be to undo all the work since the last archive. So step 1: get where we were. Step 2 - sort out of that state needs fixing. :) Sometimes patience pays off. Annie 23:42, 8 December 2019 (EST)

Just so you know, I posted to just one PV before your 23:29 came in. Hopefully there'll be no fallout :) See here [1] for the 'stay'. :) Kev. BanjoKev 00:50, 9 December 2019 (EST)

Thanks Annie for all the heavy lifting you've done with this essay :) I'll carry on pecking away at any scraps that are left. And thanks for the mention in dispatches giving credit :) Kev. BanjoKev 13:30, 12 December 2019 (EST)

Credit, blame... who is counting :) I think I got all the ones that needed to be out out but there may be anomalies so have fun chasing those - most of the remaining post 1986 pubs are reprints of earlier ones or visible online so they should be in the clear but if you find more mixed in, we can pull them out. It's a team effort - I happened to be around when the confirmations were rolling and just left a few messages for the ones we did not know about. I like stories that end well when they start as a "oops, what did I just do" ones. :) Annie 19:20, 12 December 2019 (EST)

(unindent) With regard to the image I uploaded here [2] for the purposes of distinguishing between the 1982 and 1986 versions of the essay, I think it's ok to leave it up but do you think it goes a little beyond 'fair use' (in that it's reproduced in full). I can edit the image and replace it with the same but only showing 2-3 paragraphs if you think that would be more appropriate. Also, if it remains (in whatever form) I'll add a link to it to the title page. Thamks. Kev. BanjoKev 22:06, 15 December 2019 (EST)

I think we can delete it - it served its purpose. Let me know if you want me to delete it. Annie 22:08, 15 December 2019 (EST)

I was thinking more of leaving a shortened version so things will be clear for future editors :) Kev. BanjoKev 22:18, 15 December 2019 (EST)

Hi again Annie. Could you please delete the old image here [3]. I've also added a note to the title page, with a link, here. I notice that, on the image page, the 'Links' registers "There are no pages that link to this file.". Is this correct and if not, how do I change it to show that there is a link to this file? Thanks, Kev. BanjoKev 08:41, 19 December 2019 (EST)

Deleted. As for the links - we only have the ones that are built automatically (via the covers field for example). The only way to make sure the link is there is to edit the image wiki page and add manually a note and a link back. Annie 09:58, 19 December 2019 (EST)

Thanks, done :) Kev. BanjoKev 13:37, 19 December 2019 (EST)

Deep Signal The Illustrated Anthology (Digital Edition)

So, kickstarter just sent us the digital edition and I can't read it... the illustrations and color-format are what I cannot read on the computer screen. Do you want me to 1) try & add the contents, 2) wait for the physical copy or 3) share it with you and maybe you can add it? Susan O'Fearna 12:55, 10 December 2019 (EST)

What format is it in? I may not be able to open it either :( If I can, I will be more than happy to enter it this weekend. Up to you. Annie 13:05, 10 December 2019 (EST)

I have PDF but I have converter if you want it in another format (color background with color text - I can't read it, blind person!) Susan O'Fearna 15:47, 16 December 2019 (EST)

Ah, did not realize that. I can read it if you send it over. Annie 16:00, 16 December 2019 (EST)

Still need your email... Susan O'Fearna 11:55, 19 February 2020 (EST)

Sent you a message via the system here with my mail -- but it is anniemodee at either yahoo or gmail - whichever you prefer, I respond to both. Annie 19:16, 19 February 2020 (EST)

email confirmation

Hi Annie, I'm trying to register my email address in my Preferences. I'm shown a message "Confirmation email has been sent" but I'm not receiving the confirmation-link email. Any ideas? :) Kev. BanjoKev 10:00, 11 December 2019 (EST)

We do not send one - technical issue. :) Try to send me a mail through the system - that will confirm if your address works. Keep in mind that some email servers do not like us. Annie 10:08, 11 December 2019 (EST)

OK. I need coffee. If you are still not seeing it, try another mail address? Annie 10:15, 11 December 2019 (EST)

I've sent you an email not using the internal system, i.e. directly by guessing the address. Hope that works :/ Kev. BanjoKev 10:40, 11 December 2019 (EST)

My mail is a bit weird -- use my username and add "ee" at the end -- either gmail or yahoo will work. :)

Where is your mail in? Yahoo and Gmail work (according to the last set of tests we ran a year ago) Annie 10:55, 11 December 2019 (EST)

Ok I'll try again. Mine is with 'btopenworld.com' - I don't use yahoo or gmail :) Kev. BanjoKev 11:32, 11 December 2019 (EST)

and you can delete your "My mail is..." line. Kev. BanjoKev 11:34, 11 December 2019 (EST)

Well, it will be in the history anyway and my mail is not a secret - if for 15 years someone had not figured it out, this won't do it - I am pretty sure it is on plain text in enough places as it is. :) Not sure if btopenworld.com works with our server quite honestly - we have issues with email.com for example... Annie 11:39, 11 December 2019 (EST)

This is so frustrating - I'm not getting anywhere :( and bt are just about the biggest provider here in GB. Kev. BanjoKev 12:36, 11 December 2019 (EST)

Ahasuerus had been trying to work on that for awhile. Can you send me a mail through the system here? Or directly? I do not seen anything in either of my mailboxes (anniemodee) at either of the two big ones. Annie 12:54, 11 December 2019 (EST)

Not possible through the system here. I've sent directly to "anniemodee@isfdb.org" and to "emailuser/anniemodee@isfdb.org" but something must be wrong there? :) Kev. BanjoKev 13:12, 11 December 2019 (EST)

I do not have an isfdb mail - noone does and the relay does not create or forward addresses. If you want to send me directly, send it to my yahoo/gmail address directly. Annie 13:30, 11 December 2019 (EST)

(unindent) I have been monitoring the email queue on the ISFDB server for the last 30 minutes. I see some messages going through and being delivered. Other messages, including the 2 test messages that I tried sending, get stuck in the "deferred" state. Some deferrals due to "Too many concurrent SMTP connections" or "Connection timed out" errors appear to be legitimate. Others -- like "[IP address] is not yet authorized to deliver mail" -- suggest configuration issues. The receiving email server may have a special filter, which only accepts email from "recognized legitimate servers", installed.

For now, I would suggest following Annie's advice and sending e-mail messages from your personal e-mail program directly to her e-mail address. If that doesn't work, you can send an email message to my e-mail address (ahasuerus at email.com) and I will forward it to Annie. It may help us diagnose where the failure occurs. Unfortunately, email.com's mail server is rather restrictive, so it's not a great test, but it doesn't hurt to try. Ahasuerus 15:19, 11 December 2019 (EST)

For what it's worth, my test messages arrived after an hour+ delay. The receiving mail server complained about not recognizing the sending server, but eventually delivered them. Ahasuerus 16:52, 11 December 2019 (EST)

Thank you Ahasuerus, I have emailed you so you have the technical information which hopefully will help. Kev. BanjoKev 20:42, 11 December 2019 (EST)

Made-Up Novels

Annie, I trust your judgement. Would you take a look here and see what you think? Bob 16:06, 17 December 2019 (EST)

The German made-up novels? Such as this one? That is one of the things that gives me a headache. Another one of our German-only oddities :)

If noone is credited anywhere, we credit as uncredited and then we variant up to the actual writers if we know them. That part is the only one clear here. Now how do we credit into the parent is the big question. If all the editor did was to clean the mistakes and repetitions, they should not get a credit (your comparison to collections is what comes to mind immediately). If they wrote part of the story, they are now one of the writers (similarly to how we co-credit the real author for abridgements for example).

My big question about these had always been: are they real fixups (aka the original stories are really changed and rewritten) or are the stories actually in there and just linking material had been added. Because if the stories are there with minor changes, that should be an anthology in my book. That will also allow us to link them to their originals. But I had never seen one of those or compared texts so... I am just thinking aloud.

So to summarize - I am not sure what to do with these either. I think we need a bigger discussion but... just before the holidays people seem to be ignoring any discussions. Annie 16:30, 17 December 2019 (EST)

As Annie said, crediting the author(s) of the variant title is usually straightforward -- use what's on the title page or "uncredited" if not stated.

Parent title credits are a different and more complicated issue. We have quite a few titles which have been abridged, expanded, rewritten, etc by third parties. For example, consider William Shakespeare, many of whose plays were later adapted/abridged by Charles Lamb, Mary lamb, E. Nesbit and others. We have separate title records for the adaptations and we credit the adapters as "co-authors" because the changes were extensive.

On the other hand, consider the Baen reprints of Keith Laumer's and James H. Schmitz's books like this omnibus. The stories were "updated" by the editors, Eric Flint and Guy Gordon, who removed anachronisms, overlapping text, etc. Some changes were significant enough to cause a certain amount of controversy online, but we don't credit the editors as co-authors because -- in the grand scheme of things -- they were not that significant. Thus "the extent of the changes" is the line which separates "edited by" from "co-written with" titles. Finding out exactly how much each individual text was modified is a whole different challenge... Ahasuerus 22:02, 17 December 2019 (EST)

Well, I had read (and compared with the originals) some fix-ups of the parent series Perry Rhodan. The original novellas were written by several different authors, but were revised, reorganized and connected with additional text that binds the episodes to form a novel by another hand. The approach - according to Perrypedia and Norman - was the same for the publications in question. Christian Stonecreek 23:46, 17 December 2019 (EST)

So there are more differences in the original texts beyond what a good editor would do if they are trying to synchronize the text so the different stories work together better (just curious - the linking gives the editor a credit in the parent anyway)? Can we add notes in the relevant series so it is clear what we are recording and how (and why) and why we variant the way we do? :) Annie 00:15, 18 December 2019 (EST)

Sure! Will do. Christian Stonecreek 01:49, 18 December 2019 (EST)

Please see for quite more details. [4] --Norman 11:23, 18 December 2019 (EST)

Experience failed

Hi Annie. I hope you are fine. Any ideea about this Bulgarian story? Experiența nu a reușit by Dimitr Ianakiev. I dont't find nothing about Димитър Янакиев + изживяване се провали. No additional information about the author and story in the magazine. --Florin 06:47, 19 December 2019 (EST)

Let me do some digging :) Annie 12:06, 19 December 2019 (EST)

Moderator candidate(s)?

I've been following the progress of user MagicUnk a little closer the last few weeks, and i.m.o. he's ready to be nominated for moderator. Most of his submissions are boring (close your eyes and push 'accept'), he communicates very good and I think it would be nice to have a moderator from Belgium. Can you think of any reason we should wait any longer? Or are other editors more qualified (Zapp, Ofearna, MLB). If you agree I'll ask him if he thinks he's reasy. Thanks, --Willem 16:50, 27 December 2019 (EST)

The only thing that worries me about him is the number of areas on the site he had never touched -- he is very good at the things he is doing and he tends to be very detail-oriented but when you get out from the Dutch books (and a few non-Dutch here and there), I had never seen him touching other areas (Awards for example). On the other hand, he is usually up for a challenge (The Fixer public page for example) so may be a good thing to look at it as a challenge. Maybe with a proposal of self-moderation only (self-governed) as a start and slowly easing into full moderation? Same with Zapp and MLB quite honestly - I will be more than happy for them to be able to self-moderate; I would be a bit more cautious on handling non-standard submissions - but we will never know until we try. And yes - more international moderators is a good thing :) Annie 17:01, 27 December 2019 (EST)

Wise words. In my experience, learning the ins and outs of the database goes to a whole new level when you can approve your own submissions (you can review your stupid mistakes and correct them so no one will notice). I've been a moderator for nearly ten years now, and I haven't touched the Awards yet... but we do have awards in the Dutch speaking world. Someone will have to add them someday. So let's start with MagicUnk, I'll ask him what he thinks. Thanks! —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Willem H. (talk • contribs) .

Annie's comments make perfect sense :) And yes, I 've been thinking of adding the King Kong / Harland awards, but haven't gotten around to it yet - and truth be told, I find the awards entry process a bit opaque... but one day I'll get to them for sure! :) MagicUnk 02:50, 28 December 2019 (EST)

Collection => Anthology in one submission

ISFDB:Community Portal#Anthology : Collection grey area? When I submitted a publication update, error message stated that the publication record must contain some Content of the matching, so I guessed that I must add ANTHOLOGY content and later delete the COLLECTION content, etc. Now I see that the yellow-background content listings can be revised during PubUpdate (both author and type fields here). Thanks.

Two submissions were needed here, with the Title record needing Series: Gothic Fantasy, but those two submissions might have been submitted together. Right?

(my deadline strikes) Happy New Year. --Pwendt|talk 16:50, 31 December 2019 (EST)

You need to change it in both places at the same time - the error was there because you changed it in only one of the places. :) As long as the pub/title relationship is 1/1, you can change it in one update :)

You would have needed an update for the Title to add the series - yes. But not for the type change - that way if only that one is approved, at least the mismatch does not stay in the DB by mistake.

Happy new year :) Annie 16:53, 31 December 2019 (EST)

help adding two "daily science fiction" titles

Aug 14, 2019 "Passed Down" by Nina Kiriki Hoffman and Dec 27, 2019 "Vacation Station" by Nina Kiriki Hoffman... THANKS Susan O'Fearna 22:08, 2 January 2020 (EST)

Here is August. I will add December in a bit. Annie 00:40, 4 January 2020 (EST)

I have no idea how to add it, but December still needs to be added so I can add "Vacation Station" Susan O'Fearna 01:35, 22 September 2020 (EDT)

Oops. Forgot about that. I have a project to finish today but after that will add all missing months. Sorry about this. Annie 09:44, 22 September 2020 (EDT)

Series name

Hi Annie, your diplomatic skills are needed here, I'm afraid.--Dirk P Broer 08:06, 5 January 2020 (EST)

See also this. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 12:40, 5 January 2020 (EST)

Posted about the series names themselves - Ahasuerus got the book title covered and Talk language :) Annie 15:20, 5 January 2020 (EST)

Multilingual publications

Hi, I get stuck with this maintenance report. I am the culprit, but I just imported the titles from another edition (the same) for both the entries that now come up as being 'multilingual'. Can you give additional data?--Dirk P Broer 10:05, 16 January 2020 (EST)

this story is actually in Scots and not in English :) I verified that when the first came up - so we can safely ignore these 2. I will add a note into the title record so we do not need to hunt it again. Annie 12:26, 16 January 2020 (EST)

Thanks!--Dirk P Broer 13:16, 16 January 2020 (EST)

The Fear that Kills

for some reason the poem "The Fear that Kills" by Nina Kiriki Hoffman has disappeared... http://www.vestalreview.net/thefearthatkills.html - where it was published https://ofearna.us/books/nkh/TheFearThatKills.pdf - a pdf location Susan O'Fearna 18:45, 17 February 2020 (EST)

Technically, unless it is published in a publication which is eligible here, it is not eligible for being added -- which is why it may have been deleted. No idea who and when though. Vestal Review may be eligible though - let me do some digging to see if it will fit into the eligibility rules for online only publications. Annie 18:48, 17 February 2020 (EST)

Thanks Susan O'Fearna 11:53, 19 February 2020 (EST)

Merge creates variant of itself

Hi Annie. Three months ago at User talk:Pwendt#Dead Love you warned concerning such self-variant. Conclusion, "just keep an eye for that. If the parent remains one of the two IDs in the merge, it is the wrong ID and needs cleaning; if it is an independent one, you can leave it in place."

Consider this 1848 shortfiction (which may be called a subcollection) "Allegorical Dreams, Presentiment, Etc." T2451341 and its 1850 variant--now in the database under its original Contents listing. These should be merged, as the former, eliminating the latter. (I suppose I will notify PV Chavey that we eliminate these incorrect chapter titles by merge; my current notice does not cover that.)

Here I hope to get the technical point straight. Can this merge be submitted at once? Does that require a Note to Moderator such as "Please remove the self-variant this will create." --Pwendt|talk 14:58, 18 February 2020 (EST)

You can do that with a single step. Towards the bottom of the page, in the "title_parent" field it will show a conflict, ISFDB will automatically select the ID of the parent as a parent for the new title. Make sure this is changed to the other radio button (the empty value). That's it. Annie 16:06, 18 February 2020 (EST)

some audible titles should be added ... ?

B00EPHNWOKB07V6HFYZT Foreverywhere], The Conception of Terror, Interview with the Robot, Junk

In your opinion, should these be added as chapbooks, or what?

Are the first one a straight reading or is it a dramatized ones and/or a play? Because the latter are not eligible

The second (https://www.audible.com/pd/B07MR6RY3T) is drama and as such definitely not eligible for inclusion. Same for the third.

The last one does look eligible on first reading -- if it does not seem to be long enough to be a novel, then yeah - it will be a chapbook. Annie 01:59, 22 February 2020 (EST)

they are all audible originals, the second one, The Conception of Terror, is audible updates of stories by M.R. James also Locke & Key - since the graphic novels are here and Sovereign ? Susan O'Fearna 02:29, 22 February 2020 (EST)

If they are stories (aka read from a narrator), they are eligible. If they are plays (different actors for different roles and so on), they are not. Being original or not does not matter. Annie 03:04, 22 February 2020 (EST)

how about Oddkins - from the graphic novel, read by the absolutely awesome Luke Daniels... ? Susan O'Fearna 03:07, 22 February 2020 (EST)

well, there goes the benadryl... if you want to "borrow" these (I think audible makes you jump through hoops, but for two weeks you can borrow them and I can't listen to them on audible app... Then you can form your own opinion Susan O'Fearna 03:21, 22 February 2020 (EST)

Waiting for tonight's Benadryl! House of Teeth -- would this, at 7+ hours, be a novel? Susan O'Fearna 21:17, 26 February 2020 (EST)

I'd think so. Anything hovering over the 5.5 hours has a chance in being a novel in my book so needs a second look; anything over 7 will need a lot of convincing to make me believe it is not... There are outlines but if I had to guess, I'd go with novel here. Annie 21:29, 26 February 2020 (EST)

DAW Catalog numbers

Hi Annie, I just noticed the new feature showing changes made to my primary verifications. Fascinating! Anyway, while looking at the entries I see one that you made to one of my old Jack Vance books that I verified. You added the DAW catalog number to the notes. I got out the book and after some searching discovered the number in very small print up in the corner of the cover. Never noticed that kind of number before. Since I collect mainly old paperbacks, I have a lot of older DAW books on my shelves. Should I go through them and try to add catalog numbers from them to the notes? If I do that, do I need to notify the other primary verifiers of the new note? These older DAW books typically have several verifiers. If so, is there a way to notify several of them with one message? Thanks, Jack Sjmathis 08:47, 23 February 2020 (EST)

Which book was that? The daw catalog number usually goes as a pub series number - so chances are that I did not add it to the note but was reformatting the notes and add it to its proper place - in such cases and with verifiers, I would usually leave it in place in the notes as well (but then who knows - thus the question about the book). Annie 14:00, 23 February 2020 (EST)

Sorry. There were hundreds of changes to my verifications, and I just picked one to look at this is it. I see the 'catalog number' in the lines above the notes. I usually ignore those lines, since I don't know what they mean, but I understand what this one means, now that I see it. The notes that I put in did not include the catalog number, since I didn't know what it was, but it's in the notes now, in addition to appearing in the lines above the notes, so someone entered it, and if it wasn't you, then it was probably Bluesman, since he verified it after I did. I don't usually put in the HTML code to make a 'list' out of the notes, which this entry has, so perhaps Bluesman did a lot of 'clean up' on my original entry. So back to my original question - should I make an effort to get catalog numbers from my DAW books? I have about 260 of them. Sjmathis 11:26, 24 February 2020 (EST)

Ah, these - I was thinking of the DAW Collector numbers (these go into the Pub series number - I had moved a lot of both types while doing the OCLC cleanup) :) Who knows who had edited between your verification and my latest update - I generally did not change format (so someone else did the convert to html at some point). Bluesman probably added the number indeed. These numbers belong in the catalog ID field but it however when I was moving the OCLC from notes to the new fields, I also left them in place in the notes when they were there (and copied them to their new field) - as these are written in the book unlike OCLC, people like having them in the notes. So technically we do not need them in the notes but they are useful up in the catalog ID field so if you have books for which we do not have them and you have time, it is good to have them :)

These are precursors to the SBNs which then became ISBNs. As such they identify the books in the same way ISBNs do (the first two letters point to the publisher). Annie 12:50, 24 February 2020 (EST)

OK. Which explains why part of the numbers match - I guess. So, looking through some of Bradley's books (she seems to have been a DAW author), I found one that didn't have a catalog ID this. It was hidden by some tree branches on the cover, and hence hard to read, but I could read it, and in fact, in does appear on the cover scan that was associated with the book. I edited the book to put it into the record, and the system warned me that I had to leave a note to the moderator explaining what I was doing, so I did so. Now, the primary verifiers are HolmesD and Bluesman. Do I now need to leave them a note explaining what I did, and is there an easy way to leave a note for more than one person? Also, the system warned me that "the Catalog ID was already on file". What does that mean? And if it was on file, why wasn't it already in the record for the book? Sjmathis 14:09, 24 February 2020 (EST)

For this kind of changes - the moderator note is enough - that is why we made it mandatory :) It is visible to the PVs. No easy way to warn multiple people. The ID warned you because it was on record for the Canadian version but not for the US one -- the warning tells you that there is another book with this catalog ID - which is not an error - as we just compare strings :) See this for the books with this ID after I approved your edit. Annie 14:46, 24 February 2020 (EST)

OK. Many thanks for the help and the explanations. I'll proceed with other DAW books that match ones that I have. If I mess something up, let me know. Sjmathis 15:48, 24 February 2020 (EST)

everything is fixable if it gets messed up so don't worry :) Annie 16:05, 24 February 2020 (EST)

Jules Verne / split novels

A specific question in light of all the general discussions regarding split novels. Asking under those discussions would not likely get me an answer and I can't really tell from the discussions what the correct approach is.

Jules Verne published Hector Servadac in a journal first, and as books in two parts, one before the serial finished, the other just before it finished. The two books were titled with first part and second part. The complete novel came out a week or so after the second part. We've treated the full novel as the NOVEL and each of the two parts as NOVELS that are varianted to the parent.

The next year, an English translation by Roth was published as two separate books, with separate titles (To the Sun?, Off on a Comet!). Again, each is a separate novel varianted to the French parent.

Then in 1960, Dover published the same two translations together. The title page has both titles and there is a separate title page for each part, complete with title, author, (new) sub-title, translator credit and publisher and illustration on the facing page. Clearly intended as an omnibus of the two earlier translated titles. Currently it's a NOVEL masquerading as an omnibus. Making it an OMNIBUS would mean creating two content entries pointing to the earlier editions and leaving the omnibus title hanging because you can't/shouldn't variant an omnibus to a novel, even though it is the same (translated) content.

Would it be possible/acceptable to make this a NOVEL with two content records for the two parts that use the TITLE record for the earlier translation and variant the combined NOVEL title a variant of the French? ../Doug H 14:45, 24 February 2020 (EST)

The software won't like a novel with 2 novels inside... I think. So you can either make it a single record and connect via the notes or leave it as an ombibus but then it is incorrect because it is now not connected. Let me read through this later today. Annie 16:07, 24 February 2020 (EST)

It is currently a NOVEL with a title containing a slash (/). If need be I'll put links to the two first editions (English) in the notes. Looking forward to your suggested approach. ../Doug H 16:13, 24 February 2020 (EST)

This novel with the / contains the complete Hector Servadac, right? Annie 16:30, 24 February 2020 (EST)

Yes. ../Doug H 23:41, 24 February 2020 (EST)

(unindent) a related but separate thread

the discussions of NOVEL / SERIAL / OMNIBUS has lead to my wondering about multi-volume publications and including omnibuses as content records in OMNIBUSes (OMNIBI?). What caught my eye in the glossary is the idea that a 'publication' is a physical thing (singular). Not sure how it affects any of the discussions, but seems pretty fundamental but overlooked. ../Doug H 12:30, 25 February 2020 (EST)

You are overthinking that one a bit I think :) A publication in "loose sheets" (see in the same definition "a mass-printed portfolio of an artists work in loose leaf format") will also qualify as a publication here - despite being in multiple things. Multi-volume sets go under the same logic. Annie 12:43, 25 February 2020 (EST)

Of course I'm overthinking, but everyone seems to be overtalking. Of the several definitions of 'portfolio', I think you mean the equivalent of the case which holds the pages. So still a 'book' with exceeding loose binding. Which of these two series 'works' better - individual volumes or grouped volumes? By the way, the second example is just the first 10 volumes of the first. Under the first example, they would share the first 10 TITLE records, while in the second there is no connection. Both, of course, share the specific content titles they contain. ../Doug H 13:40, 25 February 2020 (EST)

can you add a story?

https://dailysciencefiction.com/science-fiction/nanotech/nina-kiriki-hoffman/vacation-station Susan O'Fearna 22:16, 24 March 2020 (EDT)

Will be updating the whole magazine soon-ish. On my list for this month (eventually) Annie 11:19, 25 March 2020 (EDT)

I also need help re-adding the poem "The Fear that Kills" that was published online at vestal review in 2004 http://www.vestalreview.net/thefearthatkills.html.

how's the quarantine going down the valley? Susan O'Fearna 13:08, 25 March 2020 (EDT)

Let me look at the poem thing. The quarantine is going fine despite the governor siding with the "what quarantine?" croud... :) I hate it but... oh well - we shall survive that one... Annie 13:13, 25 March 2020 (EDT)

Make Variant Title

Hi, Annie Probably you are the one who provided some variant title relations and {tr|} translation Title notes rather quickly after I submitted two new translations of Peter Schlemihl. If so, then thanks.

1. I have forgotten whether such a Make Variant as submission 4616442 creates a variant author relation where there is none; if not, whether it is "clean" to submit both steps at once.
2. In title notes should the {tr|} parameter be the ISFDB canonical name, whenever that exists? or the names as credited, whenever that exists?
3. In publication notes I commonly quote from the title page, which is a formal mis-match for the {tr|} template, such as "Translated from the Persian by ...". Is that appropriate to continue, or is it recommended to reword for the template?

From some User space exchanges I know of plans "soon" to cover translators or translations by extension of the database. I should read the description of what will be achieved, or view the diagram, if any. --Pwendt|talk 16:09, 8 April 2020 (EDT)

Yeah - when I was fixing the conversion from novel to chapbook, I cleaned up everything else on the author page that I saw. Figured it will be faster (and I was there anyway).

• Yes - you can submit make variant and make pseudonym at the same time.
• As credited is better, with a note on the canonical if not very clear. I tend to try to use the name as credited or at least to make sure that the note explains what is credited and where (and if it is a known pseudonym, whose it is).
• Publication notes are ok - we do not need the template there although it is not a mistake to use it if you want -- we need it on the title notes as a template; the pub note is fine either way. So feel free to keep quoting what is in the book. Annie 16:17, 8 April 2020 (EDT)

continued re template {tr|} only

1. Part of your follow-up to approval last week was add {tr|} Note to a new CHAPBOOK record. The template message isn't strictly true, and another approving moderator this month added annotation such as "Contains the Bowring translation." (commendable in principle, and I memoed myself to follow). Do we plan automated extension to CHAP titles --also COLL and ANTH where there is a single translator of contained fiction-- such that template {tr|} should be used?

2. Should the template parameter be clean? I have sometimes used such as {{tr|{{a|Charles Baudelaire}}}} --if in the database; else any biographical data such as (1815–1914) {{LCCN|n84225038}} outside the template of course.

3. After your reply above I returned to Hatim Taï T1934885 and inserted the first line using template {tr|}. That's a great simplification, you see. What do you think of this use? (The original translation is now indb too T2712123.) --Pwendt|talk 11:15, 13 April 2020 (EDT)

Then this other moderator needs to be reminded that we have a template for this specific message. Yes - the template should be used in these cases. You can add whatever you want after the closure of the template. Let's not confuse our DB with ours - inside of the template should be names/transliterations only. Annie 12:33, 13 April 2020 (EDT)

El dodecaedro - Francisco Lezcano Lezcanno

Hello, somehow i made a mess making variants for this title. "Le dodécaèdre" (French) should be a variant of "El dodecaedro" (Spanish), not the other way around as they are now. Could you help me fix it? I don´t find way to do it.Thanks--Wolland 19:35, 23 April 2020 (EDT)

Nope - that was me - I was cleaning up the empty parents that got created yesterday and apparently did not pay enough attention. I saw the note that the Portuguese was a translation of the French so for some reason I decided the Spanish must also be. Sorry about that - all fixed now. For future references:

• Step 1 - Make Variant on the Spanish version and put 0 as the parent
• Step 2 - Make the Spanish a parent of the French. The Portuguese will follow in its own as it is under the French so it will go under the Spanish now (and no, we cannot make it a variant of the French - the note will need to be enough)
• Step 3 - Now make a Spanish variant with the canonical name for an overall parent. 2 and 3 can be in random order :) Annie 19:40, 23 April 2020 (EDT)

Nice, I didn´t know the zero thing! Yes, I know is not possible to make variant of variants. Thanks!--Wolland 19:43, 23 April 2020 (EDT)

Perfect. Sorry about the mess :) Yep - this is how you break a variant. IF it will be replaced by another, you can directly replace one with the other but if you just need to break it, just use 0 :) Annie 19:45, 23 April 2020 (EDT)

One more thing, if you don't mind, there's some stories in this publication that i can't find the original date of the Spanish originals. Noosfere refers their titles, but i can´t find in LTF, or anywhere, the mention of those titles. Is it possible to put 0000-00-00 in the date? And if it is, should that be done? Or is better to live them without an original title? Thanks!--Wolland 20:03, 23 April 2020 (EDT)

I leave them with the date of their first translation -- and when/if we find an earlier date, we can fix them. If you put 0000-00-00, they gets them into a weird place in the author list. Annie 20:06, 23 April 2020 (EDT)

The 5th Wave - Yancey

Hi Annie, thanks for moderating my merges. When I submitted the pub, Intrusion: 1995 (prologue to The 5th Wave) came up with the Manual Merge flag but I can't work out what needs doing with it (if anything?). Thanks, Kev. BanjoKev 18:00, 29 April 2020 (EDT)

The flag just tells you that IF you need to merge somewhere, you need to do it manually - as this submission is creating a new title. That is all. It is the companion of the Auto-merge note -- when you do ClonePub or Import and add manually titles, you will always see it. :) Annie 18:03, 29 April 2020 (EDT)

Got it :). Just noticed that Konrad's interiorart should read "interior artwork by Manfred Konrad [as by uncredited]", so something's gone wrong there :( Kev. BanjoKev 18:15, 29 April 2020 (EDT)

You merged - did you mean to variant instead? If so - unmerge, then after aproval, change this one to uncredited and then variant. Or I can do that if you prefer. Annie 18:17, 29 April 2020 (EDT)

Thanks, I realised what I'd done just after I posted above. It's been one of those days... Kev. BanjoKev 18:26, 29 April 2020 (EDT)

KBR as External ID

Hi Annie, I noticed KBR as an option for external ID. I assume this is Kirkus Book Reviews online. I have submitted quite a lot of publication dates using this resource. What is required to note KBR as an external ID? A URL of the online review, or something else? Thanks. Mike 18:20, 29 April 2020 (EDT)

Nope - it is "De Belgische Bibliografie/La Bibliographie de Belgique" - the site is kbr.be thus the abbreviation (comes from De Koninklijke Bibliotheek van België). The help page is here and here. If you click on the small question mark before next to an ID, there is a list with the longer names as well. Annie 18:25, 29 April 2020 (EDT)

PS: If the Kirkus reviews are online, you can link to them via the Web Pages field on the Publication (we added these a few months ago finally) :) Annie 18:28, 29 April 2020 (EDT)

KBR = Koninklijke Bibliotheek / Bibliothèque Royale - that's what you get, living in a bi (actually tri-) lingual country :) MagicUnk 09:19, 30 April 2020 (EDT)

I probably should have posted the name in the two languages indeed to make it clearer. Apparently my brain decided not to remind me yesterday :)Annie 13:04, 30 April 2020 (EDT)

No worries! I actually went and added the link to the French version of the KBR webpage too since that was missing from the ExternalID page. MagicUnk 13:19, 30 April 2020 (EDT)

PORBASE

PORBASE seems to be a new external ID. Shouldn't it be integrated in this listing? --Zapp 15:21, 30 April 2020 (EDT)

It is in the master list in the other help page: here. This one misses a few more - I noticed yesterday, planning to add it later today. Thanks for reminding me. :) Annie 15:23, 30 April 2020 (EDT)

Le mystérieux docteur Cornélius

You rejected some of my submissions. Since I discovered here the same cover art on all 9 pubs, but some are merged and some are varianted, I tried to rename and after that to merge. Stonecreek told me to do so. Now I'm confused. What should we do? --Zapp 05:06, 4 May 2020 (EDT)

Looking back, it looks like all of those where cover art records - for some reason I thought some were the stories. If the goal is merely to merge, you do not need all these variants breaking and renames - you can merge with a single request via advanced search. However - that is not how we usually treat art titles when used as covers - we variant so we know where they are used as opposed to just merging all in one title - Stonecreek has in the past merged a lot of art titles that should have not been merged and there was a long argument on that a few months ago. This needs to be discussed - if the decision is to merge, it is a single merge. If we decide to variant (which is what we usually do), we need to break the wrongly merged ones. Do you want to start the discussion on the community portal or should I? Once we all agree on what we are doing, we can fix that half-way done mess. Annie 20:08, 4 May 2020 (EDT)

I prefer You to solve this problem because You are closer to that. If it will be clear how to go on, I can do the necessary submits, too. --Zapp 04:49, 5 May 2020 (EDT)

Let me work on that tomorrow and thanks for the understanding. :) Annie 04:57, 5 May 2020 (EDT)

Do You have any idea for that? --Zapp 10:37, 1 June 2020 (EDT)

Time

Just wanted to thank you for your work this evening :) Kev. BanjoKev 20:59, 5 May 2020 (EDT)

No worries - I had been under the weather last few days (not the pandemic one - just regular old fashioned illness) - I try to catch up new updates a bit more often when I am around like today. :) Annie 21:02, 5 May 2020 (EDT)

Velo/Cities

1) When the page numbers are known, we add them. When they are not, use |1, |2 and so on as page numbers to order the stories so that they show up in the order they are in the book. (Thanks. I'll keep this in mind. When I added this page, I used the other Koja story collection, Extremities, as a template, or model for how this one should look. The Extremities entry does not have page numbers or other numbering. Using that entry as my example, I repeated the mistakes made there apparently.)

2) For reprint anthologies, instead of typing/copying the names (and dates) of stories, you can use import. If you go to the publication and look on the left menu, you will see the option. When you do not, each of the stories you typed in need to be merged to its earlier record. That also cuts down on typos. I had merged all the stories (and fixed the typos that prevented some of them). One story had to be treated as a new story - see below. :) (I'll try to follow these instructions in order to do this next time. Thanks for pointing that out.)

3) For stories that had been published before but under a different title (such as Far & Wee/ Far and Wee or different author name form, the reprint gets its date from its first publication under that title/name - not from the original. (Since in English '&' and 'and' are both symbols for precisely the same word, I don't consider one to be a variant of the other any more than '2' is a variant of 'two' or 'II'. '&' and 'and' are identical. In fact, calling them variants, it seems to me, can only cause confusion and inaccuracy, making it look like there are two versions when there are in reality but one.

Moved this back to your page - please respond there - I am monitoring after I post somewhere and this keeps the conversations together. Annie 02:39, 10 May 2020 (EDT)

Debolestis

Hi Annie. Did you check the submissions by Debolestis are not removing data? We seem to have been approving at the same time, but I have quite a few submissions on hold where he removed cover art referenced information. Thanks! MagicUnk 13:29, 14 May 2020 (EDT)

Of course I checked - apparently you did not look at the magazines though and you looked just at the submission on its own,

No, he is not removing information - he is cleaning up the entry. If you click through, you will realize that these cover notes are irrelevant and unneeded now because the variants had been made and the original had been linked to the cover the proper way. These notes are from early on - when we were missing some covers or when he did not know how to variant. Annie 13:32, 14 May 2020 (EDT)

Aha, OK. That's perfectly normal then. I'll approve the remainder ones, and leave a note to apologize ... (will learn me to be more thorough - ah well, you learn every day) Thanks! MagicUnk 13:46, 14 May 2020 (EDT)

No worries. Updating publications while someone is cleaning up older notes is sometimes harder to check - you really need to crawl through the pub, titles, series and so on to see why it is being removed. A note would have helped but not everyone writes them so I am just opening all I can see - or go asking if I cannot find it. Plus I suspect he believed it is obvious - he is starting from the pub where the link is right there. Now you know why I was on your case about writing notes even if it looked obvious to you before you became a moderator. :) Annie 13:56, 14 May 2020 (EDT)

Yup. Looking at it from the other side of the fence sure gives you a different perspective :) MagicUnk 16:58, 14 May 2020 (EDT)

Michael Marks

I hope that I got this correct, but I changed the name Michael Marks to Michael Marks (I) as there is another Michael Marks, although that Marks is a pseudonym for a German author. I changed the name as to not clutter them up with CreepyPasta author, who I suspect is a different author. I'm leaving this on your page as you've been moderating my stuff this long night and in case you were wondering what I was doing. MLB 03:42, 15 May 2020 (EDT)

Figured it out - or you would have seen me on your page. :) I agree - he seems like a different author from the one we had already so I approved the change. :) Annie 03:44, 15 May 2020 (EDT)

Multiple COVERART authors

Hi Annie, I didn't want to hijack Doug's question so I'm here. Re your line "For the notes - you can link to the title records inside of the note - and yes, it should be the COVERART ones.", as it wasn't indented I presume it was meant for me (?). If it was, a reader being able to link through to the art origin pubs sounds like a nice idea - but where? Can you spell your thoughts out for me - I'm not sure about the "and yes" bit either :) Kev. BanjoKev 15:11, 16 May 2020 (EDT)

(Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition). You can link to title records using the <a href="...">title</a> HTML, and the COVERART was a reference to my presumption that you would use the COVERART title record, rather than the NOVEL title record. At least that's what I took from her comment. ../Doug H 15:52, 16 May 2020 (EDT)

Doug, I'm simply asking Annie to clarify for me because I didn't understand. And I still don't understand from your comment here. And actually, everyone did expect the Inquisition apart from the Monty Python team :) Kev. BanjoKev 16:08, 16 May 2020 (EDT)

It was not indented because it was for Doug - the message you were also answering to - an answer to you would have been indented from yours. :) See what he did in the notes - this is exactly what I meant with the comment. Isfdb cannot link to multiple parents via the variant system so you do it via the notes field. And the yes was indeed confirming that the link should be to the cover art and not to the novel record. Hope that makes sense. :) Annie 19:41, 16 May 2020 (EDT)

Perfectly. What I wasn't aware of was the indenting etiquette which left me asking who your comment was meant for. And of course, the linking is something I'm already doing in the Pink Beam contents titles with HTML that we've been discussing. I didn't put it together when reading the initial question. Thanks! Kev. BanjoKev 19:59, 16 May 2020 (EDT)

No worries. And yep - exactly like your contents tables except you link to the novels and here we link to the cover arts. :) The indenting etiquette is to add one more indent compared to who you are answering to - that’s why most conversations look like a stairwell as it is a continuous conversation and you in effect respond to the last response and everything before it. But if you do not want to address the bottom of the conversation but a specific comment, you indent with +1 position to that comment. Sorry for the confusion :) Annie 20:14, 16 May 2020 (EDT)

Mysterious ISBNs

This is maybe a topic for Community Portal/Help Desk/Rules & Standards, but it maybe follows on from the conversation we had re. NewCon Press ebooks a couple of weeks ago, so I thought I'd try you first...

Over the past couple of days, I've come across a couple of ebook ISBNs that are listed/known on some sites, but not others, and I'm curious if there's any sort of ISFDB policy for this.

Example #1: Anvil of Stars: I did this submission (accepted by MagicUnk, so I dunno if you saw it) http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/view_submission.cgi?4650521 which uses the ISBN that seems to be known by most sites, whereas the one that was already on record http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?452675 (which has the same publisher and pub date) doesn't seem to exist outside of Amazon, and a Goodreads entry presumably derived from it. Perhaps it's a MOBI vs EPUB issue, or an Amazon error - but how could I tell?

Example #2: I found this earlier today, and haven't yet done a submission, as I thought it best to improve my understanding of things. Aliette de Bodard's On a Red Station, Drifting (http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?1545078) doesn't have an English language ebook recorded in ISFDB, but it definitely exists and is for sale at at least 3 vendors: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Red-Station-Drifting-Xuya-Universe-ebook/dp/B00CS5XXBI , https://blackwells.co.uk/bookshop/product/On-a-Red-Station-Drifting-by-Aliette-de-Bodard-author/9781301050543 , https://www.kobo.com/gb/en/ebook/on-a-red-station-drifting . The latter two have an ISBN 9781301050543 which isn't known to WorldCat though, and there's no ISBN listed on the Amazon "Look Inside", and a search on Amazon UK doesn't find a match either, although Goodreads does. (I did check author's site - the ebook seems to be selfpubbed - but couldn't find any reference to any ISBN.) My default instinct is to submit with that ISBN, and add a note pointing out that it might be dubious, but thought it might be worth sounding others out first.

Is there any place besides Worldcat worth trying ISBN searches on? (Searching the wiki for "ISBN" shows nothing helpful on the first page of results.) Thx ErsatzCulture 13:24, 18 May 2020 (EDT)

For English language ISBNs, OCLC is your best bet - and then BL for British (it is actually pretty good in my experience for ebooks -- it has them before it has the paper books more often than not) and LCCN for US-based. And Goodreads :) Now... if we already have the ISBN but it does not match... Some publishers have a single ISBN for all their ebooks; some have different ones for Kindle, Epub and PDF. Most of our ebook ISBNs come from Amazon - so if Kobo has a different one, that usually means the publisher had different versions (And just to make it worse, there will also be separate ISBNs for the library versions of the ebooks sometimes). So if you have the same book, two ISBNs, my guess would be different ISBN per format.

Missing books is not uncommon - considering the volume of books being published all the time, it is a miracle when we have the book if you ask me :) Submit the B00CS5XXBI. It is even valid on this side of the pond. Plus looking at the book - this is from 2013. E-books from that time are usually back-filled - and with a non-major publisher like that, no surprise it was never added. :)

If there is ISBN somewhere, add it and add notes.

PS: UK ebooks are in a really bad shape because the Amazon API does not find them (the UK Amazon API is not the same as the US one) so Fixer does not see them and the only way they get added is either manually OR if the same ASIN is valid stateside. Add the fact that we cannot sort ASINs yet (this is being worked on - but that means that if the API served ASIN only and not ISBN, unless I targetted it on one of my cleanups, it won't be added) so unless they come as valid ISBNs from the API (which now never happens for ebooks), we are toast. I am trying to add them when I find them missing when adding US counterparts lately but... too many books. Plus there is a backlog in Fixer on the ISBNs for ebooks (I am going down through the years but it takes time) - so there are a lot that still wait to be sorted and added. :)

Hope that makes some sense. Annie 13:43, 18 May 2020 (EDT)

I agree it's a mess :) And in my experience, WorldCat is not all that great in capturing ebook ISBNs, specifically not in the Dutch speaking part of the world (don't know about the situation for the rest of the world, but I guess it's not going to be much different from the Dutch case - btw, it's getting better for Dutch ones in recent years but a large part is still not available). Kobo, Smaswords, and Goodreads (and bol.com) are better sources there. My take on it is that you need to dig into the different sources like you're doing (great job by the way), and reconciling where possible. MagicUnk 14:54, 18 May 2020 (EDT)

I am specifically talking about ISBNs in the English speaking world (US and UK really - don't even get me started on Canada and Australia and NZ) - this is where our DB is considerably stronger than with any other language and even there we have issues. OCLC (and BL) are not bad at the ebooks business - the problem on the US side is that often there are different ISBNs for library and non-library e-books and audio-books and it is the library ones that make it to OCLC (for obvious reasons).

Other languages have their own issues and problems. OCLC is the last place for non-English ISBNs, especially for non-first editions -- it is ok occasionally but most of them have better sources. Goodreads and whatever local sources are available (some library ones (DNB in German for example); some just projects like ours (Fantlab for Russian for example)and so on) beat OCLC on most international titles. Don't even get me started on the Eastern and Central European languages (which are kinda my thing around here when I have time for them). You learn the rules per language and per market for the most part... The only thing that stays constant is ASINs - once the books make it into Kindle, we have an ID for it that can be cross-referenced in Goodreads and other sites. :) Annie 15:03, 18 May 2020 (EDT)

An interesting piece of information from the ISBN wikipedia entry : If a book exists in one or more digital (e-book) formats, each of those formats must have its own ISBN. In other words, each of the three separate EPUB, Amazon Kindle, and PDF formats of a particular book will have its own specific ISBN. They should not share the ISBN of the paper version, and there is no generic "eISBN" which encompasses all the e-book formats for a title. Didn't know that, but it sure makes it even more interesting :) MagicUnk 15:27, 18 May 2020 (EDT)

Thanks both - I just tested the BL search with a couple of Jeff Vandermeer ISBNs I happened to have handy - it knew about the Dec 2019 Dead Astronauts UK ebook (which I think is currently unknown to ISFDB), but not the 2016 Annihilation movie tie-in edition, which is perhaps the opposite of what I might have expected. (Maybe they don't care so much about later editions?) Anyway, good for me to be aware of another source :-) ErsatzCulture 15:31, 18 May 2020 (EDT)

Theory and practice are two different things - publishers do use single ISBN sometimes - especially smaller presses. "should" is one of those words everyone reads differently. In theory - yes - a new format needs a new ISBN. In practice... ISBNs are paid for so... :) Welcome to the publishing of the 21st century. Most days it gives me a headache worse than an Eastern/Central European book from the early 90s can (let's just say that copyright was not something some publishers cared about for awhile - especially for covers but for some texts as well...) :)

And yes, with BL it is more likely to find ebooks and first editions than late editions/printings in my experience - at least for newish books - with the ebook usually being added first, then the paper versions. BL also contains list prices (like DBN does...) which is nice. I tend to find data about missing UK ebooks there a lot. :) Annie 15:42, 18 May 2020 (EDT)

The Lost Tomb: unknown author for title, known author for pub?

Stumbled across this one whilst working on my tools: http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?2722381 - it doesn't affect what I'm doing, but I was a bit surprised to see the inconsistency between pub and title, even given that "Adam Blade" is a pseudonym for a group of authors. Is this deliberate, a bug, or an oversight? If the former, is there anything on the wiki that documents the logic? If either of the latter two, I wonder if there should be a report detecting mismatches in title-author relationships vs pub-author relationships? (Obv. handling cases of joint authorship, variant author names, etc correctly, and only reporting "real" mismatches.) ErsatzCulture 09:05, 19 May 2020 (EDT)

Nope. Adam Blade is a pseudonym. We know that. But we do not know which of the many writers who use it had written that specific one. So we mark it as unknown - until we manage to learn who did this one. The tile and the pub have the same author - and we have a report for that. The parent of the title has the author as unknown. Annie 09:18, 19 May 2020 (EDT)

Doh - I didn't notice the title parent/variant - I just saw a single pub, and the thought that there might be a title record without any (direct) pubs didn't cross my mind. Sorry for wasting your time ErsatzCulture 11:24, 19 May 2020 (EDT)

You are not :) The DB can be a bit... challenging :) Annie 12:31, 19 May 2020 (EDT)

Sunfall

Sorry, that was a genuine mistake/oversight on my part, I didn't do it deliberately :-( ErsatzCulture 14:21, 20 May 2020 (EDT)

I know. So I just fixed it :) It happens to everyone - the reason I pinged you yesterday for that was to make sure you do not have an API call going wrong - otherwise single mistakes like that gets just fixed. There is a reason why we have the submission/approval system -- checking things twice pays off (even when the same person performs both) :) Annie 14:24, 20 May 2020 (EDT)

Peter Learns Arithmetic

You beat me to handling this submission. Why did you accept the title change? We only add "(excerpt)" to the title when the title is the same as the original work. But if an excerpt has it's own title, it should be titled per the publication in accordance with our rules to record what is in the pub. -- JLaTondre (talk) 21:11, 26 May 2020 (EDT)

And you beat me while doing the second edit - with multi-tab browser with a few things loaded so it takes a bit to get to it :) It was either reject + edit to add the note or approve + edit to clean the title; both with a note over to the submitter. Annie 21:18, 26 May 2020 (EDT)

PS: Thanks for keeping an eye on it though :) Annie 21:24, 26 May 2020 (EDT)

Okay, sorry! I gave it a couple minutes, but obviously not enough. I'll continue to work on my patience. ;-) -- JLaTondre (talk) 21:27, 26 May 2020 (EDT)

Nah, it was a good call - mistakes happen, especially when handling submissions by editors you know are usually good at what they are doing. :) Last time I looked, I did not see another moderator working in Recent Approvals - if I see someone else around I keep it a lot tighter between edits. Annie 21:30, 26 May 2020 (EDT)

A clockwork Verne

I saw your response about a missing chapter not requiring a separate title. We can let that play out there, but I had a few related questions I'd like your view on, relating to translations such as Verne, where there are multiple translations and editions, translators and editors?

Given:

• different translators would get a new title records, based on new authorship (assuming we treat translators like authors for this purpose).
• anonymous translators would each get new title records IF their text is known to differ. Where text is unknown, all such would be lumped under a single title.
• where an unspecified translator's text matches a known translator's text, these should be merged (with appropriate notes in the pub).
• where text differs between publications for a specified translator, these should be merged.
• that text matching as used above is based on the Clockwork ruling.

Questions:

• Where a known editor/translator has been identified for a publication (think I. O. Evans, or Horne) - does the their finger in the pie require a new title?

This will depend on how much the editor had changed the text. This is where the "minimal textual differences" come into play. The reason we have this expression there is to allow for text-editing. So for example if the editor had just fixed badly chosen words or fixed the spelling inside of the work after a writing reform for example, you still have essentially the same text. On the other hand, if it is an effective re-translation just using the old one as a base, it is a new translation. Very hard to determine without the book at hand so I would usually add as many notes as I can (both on the pub levels and the title levels) so it is clear what the situation is and unless I know this is a retranslation will leave them together. Annie 22:47, 30 May 2020 (EDT)

• While Evans' work includes severe abridgements, some of his work consists of modifying a few words. Does this distinction matter?

See above. :) The few words change does not make a difference; abridgement... that depends. I wish we had a variant of variant for exactly these usecases. Annie 22:47, 30 May 2020 (EDT)

• Other editions clearly state they have only made a few updates (and even list them), but if an editor is known, would it still have to be a separate title for that reason?

If it is minor enough, no - just a note. Annie 22:47, 30 May 2020 (EDT)

• Does the role of editor vs. translator matter? What if it's not clear? Are we depending on a text comparison?

We do not credit editors so unless we elevate them to a second translator, they don't change anything.

• If their edits are of a known translation (stated or otherwise), does that make a difference?

Same as all of the above.

I'm thinking ISFDB needs a discussion of what they think Translator functionality is like. Call it requirements gathering for implementing translators. With an eye to understanding how much work it would be so it could be properly prioritized. And possibly identifying any pre-work that would ease implementation conversion. Maybe my real question to you is - are we ready for such a discussion? (and yes, I realize all my questions seem to be either stupid or complicated. Or both.) ../Doug H 12:55, 30 May 2020 (EDT)

Nope, they are not stupid. Life is complicated so.. why would we expect something else here :) I answered directly above with a few thoughts - but the short version is "if it is a re-translation; it is a new title; if it is an editing comparable to a normal language editor work, then it is the same title". By all means, start a discussion but I would not hold my breath for too much participation. :) Annie 22:47, 30 May 2020 (EDT)

Stupid is as stupid does - I was thinking of some of my other questions, this fits under complicated. If I follow your arguments, it boils down to how much was changed. I have text versions of some of these, but even if I compare them word for word, it comes down to how much is enough? Which will also apply to abridgements - 20 page chapter books are clearly abridgements, but the Fitzroy editions are more like Procrustes, made-to-fit. I'm still trying to figure out a good way to deal with those. For now Fitzroy are translations. Thanks for your input. ../Doug H 23:20, 30 May 2020 (EDT)

Yep - one of the things that will be subjective unless we go for "each word change makes a new title" and that is counter-productive. Add notes -- as long as we have all documented, we can change any decision later on without someone needing to redo all the work you are doing now - while doing all the cleanup around here in the last few years, it was the lack of notes that usually made me want to start screaming :) Annie 23:23, 30 May 2020 (EDT)

About Чуйские разливы

Good afternoon! :) Please be informed that I have responded to you on my discussion page. With respect from Russia and thanks Google Translate, Sony2810 05:11, 3 June 2020 (EDT)

"we are trying to migrate data from wiki to the DB"

In a moderator discussion you said we were trying to migrate data from the wiki to the DB. In my defence of the Jules Verne Translations, I believe there is no information in it that is not also available in the DB. It is just a collation, aside from some self-evident comments regarding the original versions that were included to explain why there are multiple titles in translation. Also, I don't know where such information would be kept in the DB, the only level high enough would be the author. Breaking down by title would be possible, but as I recall, you were the one to argue for putting it all in one entry. My argument for using the wiki was its easy and immediate editing for non-moderators. ../Doug H 09:09, 8 June 2020 (EDT)

These kinds of pages will stay in the wiki - there will always be a need for a place for combined information. And some over complicated pages that belong to single entries also will stay - too much to move. But historically the wiki has been used for anything from sources information to addresses for publishers and other stuff that belongs to the dB. We are not going to kill the wiki - we are just trying to get the information together. This is what all of those wiki cleanup reports are all about. Annie 11:55, 8 June 2020 (EDT)

The Dread

Hello Annie, this title appeared on the 'Title Dates after Publication Dates' cleanup report after this edit. Can the date be a typo? (2012-02-01 in stead of 2011-02-01). I can't see a publication date on Amazon.com. --Willem 15:05, 8 June 2020 (EDT)

Oops, I thought I fixed all of those weird dates when I was adding these but missed that one - the date came from Fixer's datastore (which came from Amazon.com once upon a time) and is indeed incorrect - Amazon UK and Amazon AU have the date :) Fixed. Thanks! Annie 15:09, 8 June 2020 (EDT)

How to User Talk

Dear Annie

This is dosgamer. After three hours of reading everything i could on the internet and on this sites HELP i finally figured out that I needed to sign in to the Wiki in addition to signing in to ISFDB. You may have been here for 10 years but this is not very self explanatory.

Current Issue:

Having found the + next to the Edit button I suppose that I am tenuously going in the correct direction. However, I wanted to respond (very politely) to your moderator comments regarding Tunnel Through Time. However I am still confused as to how (or if) I am supposed to reply from that page (the User talk: Dosgamer.)

Help please.

I am trying to type the four tildes (why does it tell me to type 4 tildes but everywhere I look only 2 tildes show up. Obviously I have never been on a Wiki before. Okay the four tildes must have worked because I am Show preview and i can see where the Dosgamer and the time stamp have appeared. This is very strange to me because there is no "Send" button. I shall hit "Save page" and hope for the best.

Dosgamer 03:52, 10 June 2020 (EDT)

You can post here or you can go to the page where I left the message which is your talk page. Look at the right side of the screen next to the title of the message there. There is a small Edit link. If you click on it, it opens the editor and you can respond. you can do the same here as well if you prefer - I am monitoring both pages. Do let me know if I can assist further and welcome again! Annie 03:57, 10 June 2020 (EDT)

Memoir, by William North

Annie, Suddenly you and Chris J eliminated my queue. By my mistake that eliminated William North from the database. I have the data to reconstruct William North but this may be all for me tonight Wednesday. Two of my submissions this hour restore William North as author name.

• 4678780 PubUpdate 2020-06-10 20:59:16 Pwendt Vathek: An Arabian Tale
• 4678761 MakeVariant 2020-06-10 20:14:00 Pwendt The City of the Jugglers; or, Free-Trade

Another may approve before you see it, but I have a question for you about the former, anyway. The added content is ESSAY by William North, namely "Memoir" of the author William Beckford[, Esq.] Is "Memoir" an essay title that should be disambiguated, as by the name of the publication, or the memoired person? If not here, but sometimes yes, then when? --Pwendt|talk 21:10, 10 June 2020 (EDT)

Is it likely to have another essay by the same author with the title Memoir and a different contents? If yes, then you disambiguate with the name of the book it is in. If not, you leave it alone. I would not disambiguate until a second one shows up (and pings on "duplicates". The point of disambiguation is to ensure that when you look at someone's page, it does not look like a wall of same named essays (or worse - that we merge different contents). With the Introduction and so on titles, chances of second ones are high so we always disambiguate. With less common ones, it is a subjective decision sometimes but that is the main idea. I would not disambiguate this one specifically. :) Annie 01:32, 11 June 2020 (EDT)

Budrys' review of Yefremov

Hi Annie, thanks for approving my submission of Budrys' A Budrys Miscellany [5]. With your interest in Russian Sf, I think you will find the review therein of Yefremov's collection Stories of interest :) --Mjcrossuk 08:54, 11 June 2020 (EDT)

I saw it when I moderated the book :) I've read that specific review before somewhere and often wondered how much of it would have been different if it was not USSR but France for example. But then separating fiction and locale is not that easy, even in our genres so who knows. Plus I cannot be really objective - these are the stories I grew up with - while the West was reading the SF of the Golden Age, Yefremov was part of the ex-Eastern bloc SF Golden Age. :)

PS: I also connected the review to the book as we already had it. :) Annie 13:44, 11 June 2020 (EDT)

HathiTrust

Annie, Re short note to Zapp (who may not see it) in my own user space ... "(I have also asked moderator Rtrace about this.)" Rtrace approved the update by Zapp. But I was at work there User talk:Rtrace momentarily. ...
[1] Probably you know that Primary Verification by Rtrace and Chavey is routinely from online views, such as "full view" at HathiTrust Digital Library. or Permanent or both. I am not keen on that practice, and am disappointed that we have no intermediate alternative.

I know - and we had had talks about it. We cannot control who clicks on what. We briefly discussed at one point getting a "verified from online scan" option but it went nowhere. Maybe time to resurrect it considering that more and more material is getting digitized. Annie 16:29, 15 June 2020 (EDT)

[2] (repeat from Note to Moderator) babel.hathitrust.org is not permanent. At least, HathiTrust user interface promotes as "Permanent" the hdl.handle.net addresses for (a) the full view (b) a particular page, which are by default displayed down in the left margin rather than in the browser address bar. --Pwendt|talk 15:39, 15 June 2020 (EDT)

Yes, I kinda know that. As I said - we may be talking for a EU/US viewing issue or it may just be someone cleaning a link and not realizing why it was pointing where it was pointing. It happens - we are all human. Annie 16:29, 15 June 2020 (EDT)

Amazon ID field and ASIN

Annie, On my talk page, re: my "aside" concerning re our left margin menu of links to Amazon sites you wrote in part:
So if Amazon issues an ASIN starting with B, we record that separately, regardless if there is an ISBN; if it does not, then the ASIN is the same as ISBN10 so we have that covered. Always fun when our links change their behaviour... Annie 17:51, 15 June 2020 (EDT)

Bottom line for publication update, I think: IF we use one Amazon product page as a source, including for display of the cover image whose URL we enter, THEN IF Amazon assigns ASIN starting with B, THEN we also enter ASIN in that field. To wit, enter ASIN here regardless whether Amazon reports ISBN. (ASIN completes the page URL at Amazon?) --Pwendt|talk 18:29, 15 June 2020 (EDT)

Yes - as long as the ASIN starts with "B" (down in the product section). If it does not, then it is ISBN10 -- and we already have that.

One special case: If the ASIN is ISBN10 BUT the book has no ISBN (because Amazon merged pages and what's not), this goes as ASIN as well so the source is clear (happens to old and often reprinted books sometimes). Annie 19:13, 15 June 2020 (EDT)

Currency formats

I saw this discussion when posting a separate topic. I agree with on the rules. We may wish to request a cleanup report. See this query and that's just the L currencies. -- JLaTondre (talk) 18:30, 15 June 2020 (EDT)

Yeah. I clean a few of these every time I have a minute or 5. I thought I cleared all Levs but apparently there is more work left. And the Italian Lit are almost completely in the wrong order. this one and its 9 brothers find a lot - and we should never have a number starting this field except for the UK 2/6 for example (thus the do not contain but even these may need an inspection). What we need is this field to be changed but in the meantime, a cleanup report may assist (then moving towards double field (currency/value) will be easier. Annie 18:39, 15 June 2020 (EDT)

Uncanny Tales (1911; 1999)

Annie, While I'm here: My elderly submission in the queue concerns Uncanny Tales (1911; 1999) T918132. Is the Unmerge operation one that requires moderators to do confirming research?
The two publications we report as 1999 P271465 (publication record) and 2009 should be separate, together, as ANTHOLOGY edited by Richard Dalby. I have revised COLL title notes for what will be the 1911-only (T918132) and the 2002 T1955272 F. Marion Crawford collections, and I have private worknotes to complete that when this Unmerge is approved. (Because the unmerged will become a new ANTH title; will not be variant of the 1911 COLL with the same title, nor of the 2002 COLL, although it contains all of the 7 and 8 stories.)

I may understand why we commonly treat small differences in scope --such as 7 stories vs. 8 stories including those 7-- as variants (always there should be an explanatory container Title note, I believe). In this case, we do have the 7-story and the 8-story 2002 collection as different works, so to speak; not parent and variant. The 1999 difference looks large to me, with 7 stories vs. 11 stories, including the 8 stories plus three others by two different writers.

The 1999 publication record P271465 is substantially unrevised. Its current list of story contents is correct (I'll double-check before export to the 2009) and the related Note by Bluesman is wrong (mistaken). --Pwendt|talk 19:43, 15 June 2020 (EDT)

Technically - yes - pretty much anything requires at least a check but that one was easy (and your note is clear on what the problem is). You just got caught into bad timing. I was mostly away this weekend, from the looks of it a few more of the regulars were also not around. Approved it now. Annie 19:49, 15 June 2020 (EDT)

ISBN ranges and Orbit UK vs US

You've mentioned in passing a couple of times about ISBN ranges for publishers, but I've never dared to ask - are these formally/publicly defined anywhere, or are they just things that you can see from experience?

What prompted me to finally ask is this title http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?2403796 which claims to have 2 different Orbit US ebooks published on the same day. I'm 99% certain that one them is actually from Orbit (UK) - and will probably have submitted an edit for it by the time you read this - which might be supported by the 978-0-316 vs 978-0-356 ranges used?

I did however just do a query on a copy of the DB for pubs and publishers using these ISBN prefixes, and whilst it looks like they're all part of the Hachette empire (and possibly the Little, Brown sub-empire?), it's not a 100% split between the UK and US arms, although the ratios are different enough that I suspect the exceptions are errors on the ISFDB data entry side:

   | isbn_prefix | publisher_name                               | publisher_id | count(1) |
   | 9780316     | Orbit                                        |          113 |       17 |
   | 9780316     | Orbit (US)                                   |        25520 |     1500 |
   | 9780356     | Orbit                                        |          113 |      855 |
   | 9780356     | Orbit (US)                                   |        25520 |        8 |

Thanks! ErsatzCulture 07:39, 18 June 2020 (EDT)

Yeah - one of those is a UK one, published at the same time as the US book ("the e-book comes out at the same day as the first of the US/UK edition, usually from the local publisher" phenomenon). There are a handful of books that seem to be coming with the wrong ISBN prefix (and I usually add notes when I notice that - sometimes it is export editions and a few times it almost looks like a mistake) but as a whole the ISBN ranges are a good indication to dig deeper.

This is useful in giving you an idea. For example it shows the 316 to belong to Hachette Book Group USA while 356 is Orbit. Then practice and checking numerous books tells us the imprints inside (some publisher use separate ranges per imprints, some don't). In this case, as they are technically different publishers, it is easy to split the two Orbits. Now - sorting the imprints of Hachette is not trivial as they do not split their codes - see this. But once you know it is Orbit (from the cover/title page/publisher page), the 316 will tell you it is the Hachette USA Orbit - which is Orbit (US) for us. Now - there is a time-drift - older books and ranges exist and in some publishers we do have them recorded (and they won't be on this list). But for most modern ones, this is at least a start (and experience and looking at the others help).

I really need to put these notes into a page somewhere for the major SF publishers... :)

The two Orbits are usually easily recognized by the ISBN prefix. And yes - we are not always good at separating in such cases and I tend to work through our "double" publishers and sort out the discrepancies (based on ISBNs, prices and additional research). I will check these 25 stragglers you found and see if I can sort them out later today. Annie 14:47, 18 June 2020 (EDT)

Thanks, that books-by-isbn.com site looks super-useful. Has there ever been any thought in having some sort of exception report with similar range finding functionality for here, to help identify this sort of issue? Or is that likely to show up far more problems than any sane person is likely to want to fix? :-(

It will mean us having a table somewhere with ranges and someone keeping it uptodate. It's... not trivial. So for now I am mostly doing spot checks -- see my latest explorations in Community on merging pub names as well. Ideally, we probably need something but... let's just say there is a lot more fish to fry and that can be worked on via search :) And this is valid for the big guys only - small publishers don't always have a full range (they buy 10 or 20 ISBNs or may have a very limited set of ranges and self-published buy one by one. So.. it may be easier to attack the big ones one by one than come up with a crazy report with a lot of false positives (the small publishers are thriving and self-publishing even more...). As for sanity -- anything under ~50K records is considered doable for me but then I dealt with the bulk of the OCLC migration so... nothing scares me. I just do not see an easy way to develop a report that does not have too many false positives AND does not require too many man hours of work to be built. Annie 15:44, 18 June 2020 (EDT)

One other thing that might be worth mentioning, if you're planning on fixing these bad publishers - the pub I fixed I came across because the ASIN I got from Amazon UK didn't match the one that Fixer had from Amazon US. I dunno how typical that it is - naively I might guess it'll have a different ASIN if there's an official local edition, but perhaps not if it's only pubbed in a single territory? ErsatzCulture 15:30, 18 June 2020 (EDT)

Not always on the ASINs... Amazon is inconsistent. We know that IF the ASIN is the same, the book is the same. But a different ASIN does not always mean a different publication - sometimes the same book will get one ASIN in the States and a different one in UK. I suspect it has to do with permissions and copyright but... It is somewhat consistent for the same publisher pairs - so if you have Orbit publishing in UK and Tor on the US side for example, the ASINs will most likely behave similarly across books (which is why I think it has to do with copyright and permissions) but that can change with time. Annie 15:44, 18 June 2020 (EDT)

Prisoners of Space by Lester Del Rey

Annie

Before I start messing up I want your advice about this book (you will need to refer to the current listing). There is only the one listing of this book and in hardback. I have two different hardbacks so I will address their questions separately. 1. My "review slip" copy (with DJ) has a pasted in "review slip" from Westminster Press. This slip (typed in) says "Prisoners of Space",Ages 12-15, Publication Date March 11, 1968, Price $3.75". The cover flap says 0012-0015, 32-0413, $3.75 (in RED). Copyright page begins with 1968 in roman numerals and later states LCCN 68-10427 and then "Book Design by Dorothy Alden Smith".

Looking up OCLC (from original listing) provides "Philadelphia, Westminster Press [1967, ©1968]" Why does the original listing say 1967-00 if the copyright page has 1968? Stated differently, why does OCLC list 1967 if the copyright (and printing ?) was not until 1968?

The book cover flap has 32-0413. Since this is not an OCLC or an LCCN what is this number?

Should we assume a pub date of March 11?

Should we refer to Dorothy Alden Smith? If so, in the notes or elsewhere? (I am still learning.)

All told, should we edit the original listing or start over? 2 Actually my second hardback (no DJ) has identical interior info so I no longer have any questions about the second copy-except I will note that it also has the 1968 in roman numerals at the top of` the copyright page. Dosgamer 16:54, 20 June 2020 (EDT)

So do you think you have the same book we have? If so - edit. If not - clone. From the sound of it, you have the first edition sogo ahead and edit. Just to make that easier, we are talking about this book.

The year may have to do with expected publication date vs printing date (a delay?) and 1967 being printed in the book? Who knows - OCLC can be weird sometimes for older data.

If the book or something that came with it states a publishing date, then yes, we use that and we add in the notes that this is so. If another note/review/material does, you can use it - just make sure the note explains where it is coming from.

"32-0413" - proto-ISBN basically (or publisher code or publisher sequential number - pick your name). Look at the ISBNs we have here - this number lines up nicely in producing an ISBN of 0-664-32-413-4 (which will be in line with the publisher range at that time). These are called calculated ISBNs occasionally and some sellers use them when listing the editions that have just the pieces -- I would not add the to the ISBN field but I would add a note explaining what is printed and what can be derived from it. When these books are reprinted later (WHEN they were), later printings will replace the code with the actual ISBN. 1967 is just the beginning of the SBN-era (which will turn into ISBN era later) and you get a lot of these codes on books from the era.

Dorothy Alden Smith goes into the notes only if you want to add her name.

Hope this makes sense. Annie 23:15, 20 June 2020 (EDT)

Gateway / Orion tps

Not sure if this might be better directed at Ahasuerus, given that these were from Fixer, and you were just the approver, but I notice that 3 tps that were due to be published by Gateway / Orion today aren't showing up as in stock at Amazon, Waterstones or Blackwells:

• http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?779609
• http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?778565
• http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?779610

(The ebooks of the latter pair have become available today; the first one had an ebook last year. I'll submit the first two ebooks at some point; I'm not sure if ISFDB already has the latter.)

I was a bit suspicious when I saw those pop up, because (SF) Gateway mostly puts out ebooks, and most of the non-ebook pubs we have on record for them are SF or Golden Age Masterworks, which are Gollancz-ish. (Given that at least two SF Masterworks that were due to be published post-pandemic have been pushed back, I was dubious that these lower profile SF Gateway pubs would come out as planned.)

Vaguely related, there's also the weirdness that they have 3 Elizabeth Bear tp reissues listed on their site - e.g. https://www.sfgateway.com/titles/elizabeth-bear/worldwired/9781473224568/ - but I'm yet to come across any vendor that lists them, never mind having them in stock. There's also supposed to be an ebook of GRRM's Dying of the Light out today, and it shows up on Kobo, but not at all on Amazon UK.

Basically, I'm disinclined to believe anything they say about what they plan to publish, until the time it actually shows up as available at any vendor website. At what point should those pubs be marked - e.g. in the pub date or pub note? - as not having come out as claimed? ErsatzCulture 13:11, 25 June 2020 (EDT)

No, this question comes to me as I am the one doing the research on what actually gets added - Ahasuerus makes the basic research but I dig deep to find out if a book is really likely to come out when we pre-add. Especially in the last few months.

Not showing in stock does not always mean "not out" this spring/summer. These days some of the books are out BUT they are not available from the big retailers for a few more days (then they are with their original dates). Plus Amazon's de-prioritization for non-essential goods had hit new books very badly - books they DO have in stock show up as "will take a few more days/weeks before we can send". So I wait a few days to see how it settles and then mark them up if needed - considering that it is not even June 26 here, these won't be looked at for awhile longer - I will probably be hitting the whole of June early in July. I would submit an update on the day IF the publisher pushes them back or cancels or there is another proof that they are not out but not just based on "they are not available in the online stores".

Showing on Kobo and not showing on Amazon may mean that they published the ePub but not the Kindle formats. It does happen now and again. I will look at that one in more detail.

Yes, I can differ any July/August books from them until they actually show up -- part of adding June early-ish was exactly to see which publishers are safer than others so we know how to proceed through the summer. It had been a crazy few months... Annie 15:37, 25 June 2020 (EDT)

PS: Looking at this: This is how a new SF book looks like very often this spring/summer (the "Usually dispatched within 6 days; Dispatched from and sold by Amazon." part) The 6 (sometimes 2-3, sometimes 5) days delay is due to the de-prioritization. It may also be that it is not here at all - but that will become clear(ish) in a few days. So hold your horses for a week on these and let's see what shapes up. Annie 15:41, 25 June 2020 (EDT)

OK, if you're planning on checking them - and other recent additions - later I'm happy to leave it to you :-) If I notice them showing with different info, I'll update the entries here, but I'm not planning on actively keeping tabs on them myself. ErsatzCulture 17:25, 25 June 2020 (EDT)

It is part of this year's craziness - I am going back in time, checking books to make sure they made it. We usually don't - a few here and there slip but someone will find them but this year... it had been a bloodshed in some publishers. Thus the reduced number of days for the pre-publishing addition and me chasing back in time to verify we have all. And as we do not get eISBNs anymore and ASIN sorting is nowhere close to being ready to be done, I also use the opportunity to add ebooks and other missing editions. It may take me awhile to get back to them - I want to do one more pass through April and May (and I had not done much in the last 2 weeks due to external circumstances) but these will get checked. :) Annie 17:39, 25 June 2020 (EDT)

Yeah, I saw you weren't as active on submissions lately; I wouldn't have hassled you, if I hadn't seen that you'd been on the wiki a couple of times, which I took as an indicator that you weren't completely pre-occupied with other things, hope that wasn't a misread of the situation.

I've been trying to only submit pubs that are already available, or publisher/author social media accounts are actively promoting things due for release in <14 days, implying that they will come out as scheduled. (Those accounts don't seem to bother tweeting when things get delayed though - grrr...) This led to a fun day yesterday, when Harper UK put out ~150 quid of illustrated hardback pubs, which they hadn't tweeted about in the week or two leading up to release, making me suspect they might have been stealth-delayed. ErsatzCulture 13:18, 26 June 2020 (EDT)

If I had not added a "I am on vacation" message here, I am around - just less active due to that thing called "the real job that pays the bills". Always ok to post on my page (or drop me a mail) - it may take a few hours (or a day) to get to it but I will see it and respond. I don't use Twitter so I would not know of the Twitter practices of publishers. And this year the usual implications don't apply - some publishers are better in resetting dates than others, some simply reset the date on the old due date. :) Annie 13:51, 26 June 2020 (EDT)

Nomination for Moderator

Annie, I've never nominated anyone for moderator before, and I'm a bit unsure of how to approach it. I don't know Zapp at all, and I guess I'm not likely to meet him since he's German. But I've been impressed by a number of interactions I've had with him recently, and think he could be a good moderator. He's been contributing for five years or so, and I've always approved his submissions. Would you support his nomination? I think highly of your opinion. Bob 15:43, 27 June 2020 (EDT)

Sorry for the delay - decided to have a almost no-internet weekend. :)

I like Zapp and he does great work in cleanup. But if you look at his Talk page, the last few weeks (or months), he still has considerable issues with the overall DB design and what fits where. He is a lot better than he used to be but at this time I think he can use a few more months of "Second set of eyes" before he is cut on his own. Plus the beginning of summer is not really a good time to train a new moderator with gaps in understanding -- summers can be complicated in terms of coverage.

If you decide to nominate him, I won't vote no but I will probably be neutral at this time. I would prefer to wait a few months -- until summer vacations end and he has a chance for discovering a few more interesting details around the DB. :) I know that noone is born knowing everything but as we do not have a "half-moderator" (aka you can approve your own but you can also ask for help), we just make sure we can keep an eye on new moderators and assist as much as we can. Annie 13:56, 29 June 2020 (EDT)

I agree to wait a few months. My recent interactions with him have been very positive, but I can understand your reservations. I'll take another look in September. I'm firmly of the belief that the only way to become a good moderator is to moderate; half-measures just wouldn't work very well. Yes, there will be mistakes, but that's how all of us learn. Bob 17:49, 29 June 2020 (EDT)

Oh, I agree :) But I also believe that when we throw someone in the shark tank, we should at least try not to hit their head on the way down - and if we do, we should at least have the medics around. :) Annie 17:54, 29 June 2020 (EDT)

Gateway by Pohl-what do i have?

Annie Refer to the Gateway by Frederick Pohl. I just received a book from Ebay and am confused by what I have received. You may need to refer to the second hardback by St. Martins/SFBC. Now I already had two copies (1 with DJ and 1 without) and both had a gutter code of O44 on page 277. The one with a DJ said Book Club Edition on the front flap and 1810 on the back flap. Check. Ok. But the book I just received does NOT say Book Club Edition and it does NOT have a gutter code on 277 or 278. It does say 1810 on the back. The only thing on the copyright page is Copyright 1977. Note: the other (first) St Martins was 313 pages so my book must be a SFBC. I have read the ISFDB page on gutter codes but am lost if there is no code at all.Dosgamer 07:32, 1 July 2020 (EDT)

The 1810 is the SFBC code of this so my guess is this is what you have. The gutter codes are printing codes - which may have disappeared after the first few years. Can you look around page 277 (10 pages after and before) if you can spot a gutter code anywhere? If none, then you can add a note that you are verifying with a book with the correct SFBC code on the back and other details but without a gutter code - and then verify. If it says 1810 on the back, it is a BCE. If the flap does not say BCE, note that on the notes as well.

BCE books can be weird sometimes. Annie 13:48, 1 July 2020 (EDT)

The Black Song

How come we've had a few days of 200+ items in the queue, yet when I screw up an entry by hitting submit prematurely, and decide to spend 2 minutes redoing it properly before cancelling the bad original, you already jumped on my mistake? ;-) ErsatzCulture 14:03, 29 July 2020 (EDT)

I was at the bottom of the queue working on my own stuff (aka Fixer - in addition to the big standard queue, I also have a lot of Fixer in the queue - which does not count for the counters you are seeing) and clearing other things as they were coming when possible. It happens that way sometimes - I had been staying away from the main queue due to some Fixer and non-ISFDB things lately -- so you just got lucky I guess. It's vacation season - the queue can get a bit weird during these times. I actually almost decided to leave it alone and let you cancel but could not resist - I need some fun now and then when working the queue. :) Annie 14:56, 29 July 2020 (EDT)

Head of Zeus "Ad Astra" imprint

Hi, a pick-your-brains question for you, in the hope that it might preempt the sort of untidiness we have for some other publishers/imprints...

By chance I noticed that some upcoming UK/international titles from Head of Zeus are described as "Head of Zeus -- an AdAstra Book" or similar (sometimes styled "Ad Astra", sometimes "AdAstra") on Amazon & Kobo product listings, on their corporate site, and their PDF catalogues aimed at the print trade. Examples: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Ashes-Sun-Django-Wexler-ebook/dp/B0845NQVBR/ , https://headofzeus.com/books/9781800243859

As far as I can tell, the first pub affected is the Django Wexler ebook linked above, which came out a couple of weeks ago, but isn't yet in ISFDB. Neither of the previews on Amazon or Kobo mention this imprint on their title or copyright pages, that I can see. However the Kobo preview for the upcoming Pinsker book does have "An Ad Astra book" on the title page: https://www.kobo.com/gb/en/ebook/a-song-for-a-new-day-2

This makes me think the Pinsker book should use a new publisher entry, but the Wexler is more of a gr[ae]y area? I guess a strict application of ISFDB rules would indicate to use the existing "Head of Zeus" publisher, but I'm wondering what would happen if Fixer picked it up first, would it use what is in the Amazon publisher field? (Possibly more of a question for Ahasuerus, although I guess you'd be the one approving or editing the submission?)

I've not found any explicit statement regarding this imprint anywhere online, although there was an announcement for a not-ISFDB-relevant one earlier this year https://www.thebookseller.com/news/head-zeus-launches-adventure-imprint-aries-1204631 and we have an entry in the DB for their Zephyr children's imprint. ErsatzCulture 09:26, 4 August 2020 (EDT)

Fixer will use whatever the Amazon API and/or screen scrape finds for the book - unless he has something in the map for replacement on this specific string and it won't have anything until the first book is found and I ask for a replacement :) When I see it, if there is a look inside, I will check to see if it matches; if not, I will try to check the publisher's site (standard operating procedure for publisher's credits). If AdAstra/Ad Astra is on the title page, it will be used; if it is not - the current rules say to leave it at the parent. If it is invisible when I add, it will/can be corrected later. :) Annie 19:53, 4 August 2020 (EDT)

Dating Ace using ads

I overheard your comment to Rtrace and know that at least one moderator (no longer active I believe) had collated the ads and timeframes in spreadsheets. Such information would be interesting and useful. If it is not available to provide publicly from any individuals (for any of a variety of reasons), would it make sense to attempt collecting the information from our editors? Surely we must have one of the most complete collections between us and we are clearly crazy enough to spend time entering information for public benefit. Any comments? ../Doug H 13:59, 8 August 2020 (EDT)

Absolutely - this is why I was going to go beg other verifiers for information until we can figure out what this may have meant. I had not given up on it -- but my first priority was to deal with this 1978 date there (that sticks out like a sore thumb once it was pointed out). Want to organize it? :) Annie 14:08, 8 August 2020 (EDT)

It's a lot of data to collect in a haphazard way from a widespread audience. Anything obvious as a collection method, or is that where I start the appeal? ../Doug H 16:41, 8 August 2020 (EDT)

Sorry, I thought I posted and I probably just closed the window... I would start with going through the Ace books to see who has books and checking to see who has access to theirs at the moment -- and depending on that figure out what we can find from the books - ads? addresses? A specific way something is credited? Not sure but... it is a start. Annie 14:58, 11 August 2020 (EDT)

ISFDB has 7,000+ unserialized Ace publications. Based on Burroughs (several hundred pubs) there were 200 different ads and 14 different addresses during their publication span. Ace produced books in the Mystery and Western genres, although I don't know how about the overlap between including ads and these genres. Burroughs only goes back to the F generally (I saw one A), but they included ads. Do we need dates back that far? Cross-referencing 5-10K publications to 200-500 ads and 15 addresses along with price, cover artist (yes there's an issue of Lost on Venus where only the cover art changes) is a) too much to scan more than once and b) more than you'd want to track on one wiki page. So rather than go into data and alternatives, I posted a RFI (Request For Interest) hoping that someone would volunteer that they had most of it in a spreadsheet already that they'd be willing to share. We'll see. ../Doug H 16:01, 11 August 2020 (EDT)

Do we NEED them? Probably not. Do we want them? Well - I am a data junkie so imagine my answer. But starting with a subset also works. Annie 16:42, 11 August 2020 (EDT)

Enigmatic Novellas

I have a problem again. There is a series, Enigmatic Novellas, that were entered without titles; all were labelled "Enigmatic Novella #X" even though they do have individual titles. I ran into these because the first two are reviewed in a pub I've entered. I corrected the second one, which was actually a collection of two novelettes. But the first one threw me. It's a chapbook, which means that normally I would have to put the contents in the series, since chapbooks cannot be put in a series. But I can't get the contents to allow that either. So I re-entered the chapbook here , and there was able to assign it to the series. But the series was not recognized, and a new series with the same name started. I haven't deleted the old first pub in the series yet. So here things sit, with duplicate pubs in duplicate series.

The rest of the series also needs to have their titles changed as well, but I haven't attempted that yet. Help. Bob 00:47, 11 August 2020 (EDT)

They were entered as magazines - thus the weird look of them and the naming convention. And at least one of the editors (the people that edited) is a pseudonym - so the one that did not allow you to be put into a series must have had a parent -- the series goes there. In this case, you changed the EDITOR record to chapbook here but not the parent (which was converted to a novella instead -- you basically converted a child to a chapbook and a parent to a novella. Which caused a bit of a mess :).

The other problem comes from the fact that series and pub series are different things. So this is a Pub series now while the old series was a title series.

I am on my way out but if this is not sorted by someone overnight, I will work on it tomorrow. It sounds like the publications themselves (chapbooks and/or collections) need to be a publisher series? Do I understand what we have here? :) Annie 01:11, 11 August 2020 (EDT)

I did some untangling. More in the morning - and I will get you some notes on how to work on the rest so they do not get messed up. :) However, looking at the verification of the old EDITOR record here, it sounds like Locus1 called them magazines (so we added them this way). Which is not a problem for the conversion technically - but if we delete this one, we are losing a secondary verification - which is not ideal... So I think we should restore this one instead of the new you just added - but that is easy enough. Annie 01:20, 11 August 2020 (EDT)

Sounds good, Annie. It's clear to me now that you've explained that I didn't understand Pub series. I continue to be surprised by how many errors in entries I run into. Ahasuerus has scolded me for allowing poor entries from new editors, but I've run into others equally bad a number of times that "old hands" let through or generated themselves. Like this magazine designation. I understand some idiot at Locus messed up, but when someone attached the cover scans, I would have thought it would be obvious that these weren't magazines. Everybody makes mistakes (you fewer than most, by my experience) and I try to fix the ones I find. But I hope I keep learning, like this time about Pub series. Bob 13:47, 11 August 2020 (EDT)

There is also the fact that chapbooks were not in the DB from day 1 (or so I had inferred from reading some of the older threads). If you do not have a chapbook as an option, what would you do with these things :)? And some of them are collection/anthologies -- and we have a few different lines like that all over the place where they can be either. Not sure if this is what happened here but for some very old entries, this may also be coming into play. The DB is a very old one at this point and our policies had evolved. So some of those very old entries were IN policy when done -- but never cleaned up. Most of my edits before I started working on Fixer stuff were cleanup - moving data around, cleaning stuff exactly like this - where the policy changed but the data remained. Or it could have just been a decision to follow the source. Or an attempt to give the editors of the series some credits. Who knows.

As for mistakes - oh, I do make (and allow - although I tend to be more careful when moderating new people) a lot of messed up stuff (and find occasionally stuff I messed up earlier and want to kick myself for it). We all do - we are human. Part of why we watch after each other, why you will see random moderators seeing stuff and commenting on it is exactly that - when someone posts on your page about a pattern or something else, it is not about scolding, it really is about bringing your attention to something you may have not realized is there. We all have blind spots - and until someone shows them, you cannot see them. If you see me doing something weird, never hesitate to come ask me what the hell I am thinking :)

At least it is never boring around here :) Annie 14:56, 11 August 2020 (EDT)

O.K., now I'm thoroughly confused. These pubs are now in three places in the data base: Here they are called "Enigmatic Tales"; Here they were called "Enigmatic Novellas"; and Here we've started a Pub series also called "Enigmatic Novellas". Looking at the reviews in "All Hallows" it's clear why Locus considered the pubs a magazine:

From All Hallows #21, June 1999

“There has been a long, illustrious history of publishing the classic ghostly tale in chapbook format…With the debut of Enigmatic Novellas, the publishers of the outstanding quarterly Enigmatic Tales have thrown their collaborative hats into the ring with these two slender volumes.”

MOTHS (Enigmatic Novellas #1) by L. H. Maynard and M. P. N. Sims Enigma Press, 1998; 42pp; £4.00; ISSN 1464-1461 THE DARK SATANIC . . . (Enigmatic Novellas #2) by Paul Finch Enigma Press, 1999; 61 pp; £4.00; ISSN 1464-1461

From All Hallows #22, October 1999

“’Enigmatic Tales’ is a quarterly anthology of supernatural Fiction embracing just about everything except ‘strong swearing or explicit sex’. First impressions count, so it’s a good to see that the editorial team of Maynard and Sims have gone for decent production values and some nifty artwork.”

ENIGMATIC TALES edited by Len Maynard and Mick Sims Maynard Sims Productions, 1999, Issue No. 4 (Spring 1999); Issue No. 5 (Summer 1999) £3.00/US$6.00 each; ISSN 1462-9062

So I guess I'm at the point where we need to decide how to characterize the pubs in the data base. Clearly three separate entries in the data base isn't tenable. There does seem to be an ISSN. But one thing that really throws me is that the different entries seem to show different covers! One set looks like a magazine, the other like chapbooks. Any suggestions? Bob 04:49, 12 August 2020 (EDT)

One of the link should have been Enigmatic Tales - I think you copied the wrong one. So the way I read this is:

• ISSN 1462-9062 ENIGMATIC TALES is one set of magazines/anthologies
• ISSN 1464-1461 Enigmatic Novellas is another one. These should probably be novellas/anthologies and not a magazine despite the ISSN -- but let me do some digging.

That is why they have different covers - despite the same editors and similar names, they are two different publishing ventures. They share some contents and editors but are different publications. Let me look more into all of those and do some reordering and adding notes in all series and subseries based on what you posted above. At the end we will have 2 series somewhere - one for the initial novellas series and then one for the Tales series. We can all connect them in a superseries if we want (then we will need to keep them as magazines as we cannot put pub series and title series in the same structure. Magazines give me headache. :) Annie 10:34, 12 August 2020 (EDT)

I would rather see them connected in the notes for the seria (or even the notes for the individual pubs), and the existing ENIGMATIC TALES remain the magazine and ENIGMATIC NOVELLAS be a Pub series of chapbooks and/or collections (I don't know offhand if there are anthologies). I don't see a direct connection between the editors of the magazines and the chapbooks (what everybody except ISFDB considers chapbooks), although the magazine editors may be given some sort of credit inside the chapbooks. But those classifications are what the publications SEEM to be. Bob 13:48, 12 August 2020 (EDT)

Maynard & Sims edited both lines (is what I meant with the connection) :) Works for me. And yes - we won't have the names of Sims and Maynard in the chapbooks records unless one of them is an an anthology (and we can add notes to the pub series). Do you want to finish the conversion of the novellas or do you want me to give you a hand? Annie 13:52, 12 August 2020 (EDT)

Maybe you better help; I seem to have lost the cover for the fourth item. Incidentally, that item was reviewed as a chapbook in All Hallows #23, February 2000. Bob 16:49, 12 August 2020 (EDT)

OK then, I will look at these today and mop whatever else needs mopping. :) Annie 14:41, 13 August 2020 (EDT)

Personal Request

Annie, I find myself in need of an Arizona lawyer. My wife's second husband died recently without a will. My son is in Arizona right now and I think he should hire a lawyer to help settle the estate. Do you have a suggestion for such a lawyer? Bob 12:22, 14 August 2020 (EDT)

No, sorry. :( The only lawyers I know are the ones I and my company used for my immigration process and they are specializing only with labor and immigration law. Wish I could help. Annie 12:49, 14 August 2020 (EDT)

Not a surprise. We'll find someone. Thanks anyhow. Bob 13:04, 14 August 2020 (EDT)

Help! Micro-fiction

Christmas Eve was posted on jim-butcher.com as a gift to his fans on December 24th, 2018. Read the illustrated edition here! -- a new "edition" -- illustrated.

Microfiction Mike — Dresden Drop for 1/7/20. A visit to the mechanic. Set between White Night and Small Favor–shortly after the graphic novel Wild Card.

Journal — Dresden Drop for 2/4/20. An insight into Morgan’s thoughts during the events of Turn Coat. Contains major spoilers for Turn Coat, Changes, and Cold Days.

Goodbye — Dresden Drop for 3/10/20. The other side of Harry’s phone call in Changes. Contains RADIOACTIVE-LEVEL SPOILERS for Changes and Ghost Story.

Job Placement — Dresden Drop for 5/5/20. Nothing says “cozy, domestic cuteness” like a white court vampire and the scion of Bigfoot. Set between Skin Game and Peace Talks. Contains spoilers for “Bigfoot on Campus.”

Everything the Light Touches — Dresden Drop for 8/4/20. A short comic chronicling a typical morning for Mister. Set between Skin Game and Peace Talks. Contains major spoilers for Changes and minor spoilers for Skin Game.

um, do I/ how do I add these? Susan O'Fearna 19:15, 17 August 2020 (EDT)

Atom/ATOM imprint: all caps or not?

Do you know/recall anything about this one, specifically why we have it in all caps?

The publisher seems to use regular case at least as often as the all caps version e.g.

• Corporate page - "ATOM" is only used in the page title element and the logo, all the inline text uses "Atom"
• The Look Inside preview of Midnight Sun also has "Atom" more often than "ATOM" (although I suspect you might get shown a US edition by that URL, so you might have to take my word for it.)
• Their Twitter account uses "Atom"

I'm inclined to change it, but I assume someone set it up the way it is originally for a reason. ErsatzCulture 04:51, 4 September 2020 (EDT)

This one was set way before my time - despite appearances, I had been here for only 4 years. I suspect that early on, they used the all caps more - and no one had checked lately. Annie 09:44, 4 September 2020 (EDT)

Thanks. (And sorry for bugging you directly, rather than asking in Community Portal or similar - but given that this is publisher related, and a YA publisher at that, I suspected that no-one other than you would have any interest in this topic ;-) ). Unless you have any objections, I'll change this to "Atom", and add a note about the styling (similar to the "Ad Astra" vs "AdAstra" one I recently updated)? ErsatzCulture 10:07, 4 September 2020 (EDT)

Chances are I would have responded in CS as well anyway so no worries at all. Go ahead and do the changes. Annie 11:18, 4 September 2020 (EDT)

Actually as there are PVs, let’s post a “planning to change” in CS and then change in a week or so if no one objects too much. Annie 11:19, 4 September 2020 (EDT)

Ah, I hadn't thought to check - I'll have a look at some of them and see if I can find previews on Amazon or Kobo, in case it's something that might have changed over time. ErsatzCulture 11:55, 4 September 2020 (EDT)

Even if it had, we can have only ATOM or Atom (one of the oddities in the DB) and I am all for changing it down to normal and documenting it. But yeah... Ping a few PVs also - some of them may be around. :) Annie 11:57, 4 September 2020 (EDT)

One story broken into separate pieces

Hi, me again. I once mentioned correcting errors. But I need help figuring out the right format. This book is not a novel. It contains several completely independent stories ("Features five stories building the road to Infinity War" is stated on the back cover). The difficulty is that one of them, the Iron Man story is split into several parts that are inserted in between other stories. It is as if it were linking material, except that there is no direct connection between any stories. My confusion is: how to code the pages of a story that is not presented as one big chunk but rather as several non-consecutive pieces? HugoReader 03:53, 16 September 2020 (EDT)

There are two options:

• If it had been published in this split format in other places, you can always just add it as separate stories (and connect them as a series).
• If not, add it at the first page and then add the explanation and the rest of the page ranges in the notes.

I would use the second way in such cases... :) Annie 03:56, 16 September 2020 (EDT)

Thanks. I will submit an attempt soon. HugoReader 06:59, 16 September 2020 (EDT)

non-genre

Isn't a NONFICTION pub a non-genre anyhow? Or have all such pubs to get the mark? And what about this one? --Zapp 01:25, 24 September 2020 (EDT)

Nope. A book is not genre only when it is not a work of speculative fiction and is not related to speculative fiction. See the help page -- most of our non-fiction will be genre (otherwise most of it will not be eligible for addition at all -- most, if not all, non-genre non-fiction will be from above treshold authors.

A book of literary criticism or an art book about fantasy books covers will be non-fiction but still genre (because they are about or related to speculative fiction). Yes - "The Universe in a Nutshell" should be marked as non-genre - I had just done it. It is arguable if it belongs in the DB at all but he did write some fiction that is eligible so I guess it can stay.Annie 01:33, 24 September 2020 (EDT)

Thanks --Zapp 01:55, 24 September 2020 (EDT)

Nina Allan's Ruby

This is not a new novel, it is a variant of the Stardust collection with an extra story added and some other edits. Source - the official marketing materials I'd seen seemed to completely fail to let on it wasn't an original work.

(It's been showing up in my tools for months, but it feels like every time it gets close enough to be submitted, the release date gets pushed back again - IIRC that's happened at least twice.)

Are you OK to fix this? Off the top of my head, I wouldn't know how to merge a novel title & pub into an existing collection record, but I imagine the pain would be easier for a mod who at least can approve their own changes there and then. ErsatzCulture 09:36, 24 September 2020 (EDT)

So same as with The Race - the US edition adds an additional story - but in a slightly more complicated manner. I actually have PS Publishing's "Stardust" somewhere so I will compare texts again when the Titan book shows up. I changed it to a collection, add added notes for now -- and see where we are when it comes out and if it is the same text and if we need to merge actually. Let me know if that makes sense. Thanks for finding this!

Outside of her site, there is nothing anywhere on what that is - a reprint/rework AND a collection... annoying marketing departments. It had been on my radar to check anyway - she is one of my favorite authors.

Titan had been really really bad with dates this spring and summer (they are one of the wonkier publishers on dates at the best of times but this year with all the delays and closures had been really really bad) - some came out early, some got delayed a lot. It is on my constant review list and giving me a headache. Annie 12:49, 24 September 2020 (EDT)

Yeah, I'd noticed that with Titan. I wasn't sure if it was because of "transatlantic" publishers maybe printing in one location and then having international shipping issues - as Solaris also seemed to have at least one case where the UK physical got delayed - but then there was stuff like The Vanished Birds getting delayed (again multiple times I think) where they only have UK (or non-NA) rights, so maybe not?!?

What you've changed is absolutely fine by me, especially if you're familiar with the original version. (I've never read any of her fiction, but I check her blog once a month or so to see if there are any new posts, which I guess is where I must have spotted the post about this collection.) ErsatzCulture 13:39, 24 September 2020 (EDT)

Nah, it is just Titan being Titan. All publishers delay books now and again (And once a book slips, it is more likely for it to do it multiple times than not). Titan seems to publish one schedule externally and then follow a different one internally. Absolutely maddening when you are front-loading books. In other news, all of October is in now (minus a few more I am still processing) so if you want to add some more UK books, be my guest. Annie 13:57, 24 September 2020 (EDT)

I guessed October was in, I was scrolling through the forthcoming books list for that month earlier, to see what was already done, which was when I spotted Ruby.

If it's any use, these are the titles/pubs in the next 30 days that I've picked up on my semi-manual trawls, that don't seem to be in yet (although that could be because I haven't reprocessed the relevant scraped data, that they've been added since the last database backup on Saturday etc):

* Another Mike Ashley/British Library anthology (or maybe non-fiction this time? IIRC this had been showing up as a September pub until fairly recently

* Yet another Witcher omnibus/box-set

* A possibly off-topic puzzle book - worth submitting or not, do you think?

Plus the usual UK ebook pubs that you'd expect ErsatzCulture 14:40, 24 September 2020 (EDT)

I do the months in 3 passes these days: 0-9; 10-19 and then "everything in". So if you see a lot of books after the 21st (20 and 21 may make it in with the 10-19 group when 19 is a Tuesday), the month is in (or in the process of getting added anyway).

Fixer found the puzzle book, I killed it. A bit to the left on what we are trying to do here. If someone has it and wants to add it, fine -- but for me it is a bit out of scope so I am not adding it. Ashley will be in - the cover looks familiar so I may have seen it from Fixer too early to add (when the date was messed up) in which case I will have it in when I work through the rejected re-dates but I am not sure. Amazon US has a date of May 2021 so I would say to wait a bit on this one to get closer to pub date - I suspect it may make it in October but who knows. And feel free to add Sapkowski - Gollancz's ebooks reprints seem stable date-wise.. Annie 14:56, 24 September 2020 (EDT)

(Thread resurrect and indent reset) Did you get a copy of Ruby? Now that I have my titanbooks.com scraper working, I see that this is another book with different UK and US pub dates - UK tp was apparently Oct 6th, US tp Oct 20th (which is also what B&N shows), but the value currently in the DB for the top is the 13th. I'll submit an edit for these, but given how much of a pain this title/pub has been, though it might be best to check with someone who might actually have a copy first... ErsatzCulture 12:54, 29 October 2020 (EDT)

In the mail - arriving some time next week (Tuesday apparently). Welcome to Titan :) Annie 12:57, 29 October 2020 (EDT)

lookit!!!!!!!!!!!

Believing and Ingathering is not available as an EBook (and on the same day Battle Ground by Jim Butcher arrives, too....) !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Susan O'Fearna 21:49, 29 September 2020 (EDT)

Not available or NOW available? I need to untangle these dates on our record - something is wrong in this one... I got the hardcovers earlier this year (for both Henderson books) so I am all set :) And Butcher is making me very happy this year ;) Annie 17:35, 30 September 2020 (EDT)

Canonical Title discussion

Hi Annie, could you go over to Zapps talk page and have a look at this discussion? Thanks! MagicUnk 17:02, 30 September 2020 (EDT)

Posted. There is a secondary issue you missed here -- when there is a translation involved, the original language beats the timing consideration for determining the canonical title - original ("writing") language version beats everything regardless of what language something comes out it first. Will dig into this one later tonight. Annie 17:09, 30 September 2020 (EDT)

True I hadn't considered the original language (I remember having read discussions about this somewhere, but no idea where to dig it up). We may want to refine the rules text to clarify that original language the work appeared in trumps earlier translations? MagicUnk 17:24, 30 September 2020 (EDT)

Sure, if you think it is confusing, post over in R&S and post and we can easily adjust it. :) The rule as written is for British/American titles (first wins usually) and stories with one title in a magazine and a more popular one in collections for example (the second one wins). A lot of our rules around titles kinda assume a single language being involved. :) Annie 17:29, 30 September 2020 (EDT)

Let me just make sure that I understand the issue correctly. Are we talking about the following case described in Help:How to enter translations:

• If a work was written in one language, but a foreign language translation was published first, then the original language title should be considered the canonical title and the translated title should be considered variant title. The year of the canonical (i.e. parent) title should be set to publication year of the canonical title, not to the year of the translation (though the latter one was released earlier).

? Ahasuerus 18:30, 1 October 2020 (EDT)

Yep. MagicUnk proposes to add a link and/or a summary of that rule into the other help page. Annie 18:33, 1 October 2020 (EDT)

Title vs pub date confusion on The Unraveling

I just submitted this (title) correction for a novel that has been pushed back to 2021 but on closer inspection I see the sole (English language) pub for this title has the correct pub date, but it seems there was some prior edit history?

I assume what I've done is the right thing, but I'm slightly perplexed by that prior title history? If nothing else, doing edits in August for what was a late October pub is the sort of thing I'd expect to receive a nastygram for ;-) Maybe I should have queried the original two editors/moderators first, but as it's a forthcoming release, it felt like nudging you about it might be best in the first instance? ErsatzCulture 11:42, 1 October 2020 (EDT)

Click on the edits and see what was changed - it explains what happens. Because the German version came out back in 2018 and the series information and synopsis lives on the parent, the edits went on the English version. Common for cases where a translation comes out first. Annie 12:02, 1 October 2020 (EDT)

Thanks - I was a bit confused by it having a title date but seemingly no pubs until the one you/Fixer added a few weeks later. I realize the title date and pub date are in different tables/columns, and the UI allows you to change them independently (for good or ill), but having them be different seems illogical. Obv. the post submit page warns you if you've submitted a pub with a date earlier than the title one, but is there maybe no warning/report for title date that doesn't match any pubs? This report seems to cover that sort of thing, but says it's only for COVERART and SERIALs, which makes me even more confused, so I think I'll try to wipe all this from my mind now for my own sanity :-| ErsatzCulture 12:29, 1 October 2020 (EDT)

Pretty common for translations - we don't always have publications of the original in the DB - sometimes because it was not published yet (like here), sometimes because we had not added it yet. And a title needs a date so... we need to set something -- which is usually then clarified in notes if we are not adding a publication.

That's because that specific cleanup report is a work in progress - read through a few years of CS Talk pages and you will see why. Dates had been a bit of a... nightmare around here for a while.

A title and a book are two different artifacts and there are legitimate cases where a translation gets published before the original. In such cases the original title will be created long before a publication using it is there. If you have a book which contains titles which have dates later than the book itself, we have a report for that as well. Annie 12:37, 1 October 2020 (EDT)

Peter F. Hamilton & Macmillan UK

I submitted [6] and [7], but is the wrong "Macmillan" a Fixer bug, or some change in how we handle these publisher variants? ErsatzCulture 15:33, 8 October 2020 (EDT)

I thought I switched these. Human processing error. Fixer is not intelligent enough to differentiate in this case - I need to adjust. And I had not done a check sweep through August or through Macmillan since. Annie 17:55, 8 October 2020 (EDT)

No - I refuse to believe you are fallible ;-)

On the plus side, it prompted me to have a quick look at recentish "Macmillan" pubs, and change them where it looked right to do so. I didn't touch this one 'cos the price looked weird enough that I assumed it was an import, but I see you've updated it. ErsatzCulture 19:06, 8 October 2020 (EDT)

EDIT: on closer inspection, it looks like you made those changes yourself, and my edits are still in the queue? I dunno if there's anything extra in mine, I think I maybe added panmac.com URLs to one or more of them... ErsatzCulture 19:20, 8 October 2020 (EDT)

Yep - we had the same thought on these books :) I will approve yours shortly.

With the volumes I handle some days, it is a miracle I had not sent a Chinese book in Germany yet or something. I try to pay attention but things slip - thus me doing reviews and fixes later. :) Humans.... as Fixer will say.

Re that one: Yeah, I was just looking at that one again - something did sound weird - this is a US International book with an unclear publisher (look at the ISBN - 1-250 is Macmillan US and its imprints and subsidiary groups). The price is weird because it is a US book basically - but cannot be bought in USA so either it needs to be found in a publisher site or we use a non-US price or leave empty. I swapped with an AU price and will do more digging later. Annie 19:21, 8 October 2020 (EDT)

Song's of Maud'Dib title mismatch

The title [8] has a single publication a different title value. It looks like you edited the title of the publication from "Songs of Muad’Dib: Poems and Songs" to "Songs of Muad’Dib: Poems and Songs from Frank Herbert’s", but not all the way to "Songs of Muad’Dib: Poems and Songs from Frank Herbert’s "Dune" Series and His Other Writings". Am I missing something? (The publication's title page is the longest form). --GlennMcG 04:42, 21 October 2020 (EDT)

Nope, the only edit I did was this one and it did not touch the title. The one that changed the title was Ahasuerus 14 years ago -- and it was probably a copy/paste mistake that remained undiscovered for 14 years. :) Just edit it to the correct value - they should be matching. Annie 04:47, 21 October 2020 (EDT)

I'm a bit confused on reading edit histories then. When I look at the affected record column of [9] I see the title change at your mod. I've been checking out the raw xml views, and they don't seem to line up with the display exactly. --GlennMcG 15:16, 21 October 2020 (EDT)

When you look into a submission like this one, look at the third column ("Proposed Changes"). The fields in green are the ones changed by this specific edit (except if you leave a publisher empty - that will always be green). Incidentally, this edit is not even under me as a moderator - it is from the days before that :) Are you sure you are not mixing up AnnieMod and Ahasuerus (who did that very first edit at the bottom)? Annie 15:21, 21 October 2020 (EDT)

I am assuming the Annie and AnnieMod are both you. The point I was trying to make is that when looking at the summary table of edits, the affected record column changes when getting to your mod. --GlennMcG 15:39, 21 October 2020 (EDT)

I do understand the green/red diff markup, and must have misread the specific edit record when thinking it was 'Annie' that changed the title. --GlennMcG 15:44, 21 October 2020 (EDT)

It is me, yes. Ah, you mean "Affected Record"? For tracking changes you need to open the edits themselves - the Affected record can be a bit wonky on this for older records. No idea why it shows like that - we have some types of edits that do not show up in the list so there may be a missing one or something is lost in the DB. So it is possible that a missing record from the record change did something around that time. Or we changed how we record. Or who knows. Or someone made a mistake (unclear when). The older the changes are, the murkier it gets. The history is a newish feature and not everything is properly connected to the older records. We may be missing merges from early in time -- which may have brought a weird title... The more I look into it, the more it looks like there had been a merge or something similar to cause this... Hope that makes some (weird) sense. Annie 15:47, 21 October 2020 (EDT)

Severn House - messy pub dates for supposedly global editions?

Hi, sorry to bug you again, but it strikes me you might know more about this publisher, before I risk my sanity delving into what looks like a messy situation...

I just submitted a few edits for all 3 pubs of The Apollo Deception, and looking at another title on their website (although I haven't yet looked at Amazon, Kobo, Waterstones etc), I see the same pattern of:

• UK hc pub is published
• Ebook (if it exists) comes out roughly a month later globally
• US hc pub a few months after the UK hc, despite them both having the same ISBN (transatlantic shipping delay?)
• Similar UK-vs-UK delay for tp (if that exists)

A minor further complication is that in at least one case, the physical pub date on their site precedes the one listed by Amazon, Waterstones and Blackwells - which might make sense for ebooks being made available globally, but not physical editions, and especially if the US release is a few months later?!?

(EDIT: This appears to precede any Coronavirus-related delays)

Obviously with Fixer having problems with the Amazon UK API, it strikes me there could be more than a few pubs with misleading pub dates recorded here :-( ErsatzCulture 13:37, 26 October 2020 (EDT)

Severn House is one of the publishers which always has its dates messed up everywhere and very hard to sort out the inconsistencies. They also may have a "site only" period (we have a few US presses doing this so now and again I will go and adjust dates for them after a site sweep) where you have availability from the site but nowhere else. They are on my list of presses to figure out the logic of -- so in the meantime, I make sure the books are as close to reality as possible. I don't see Severn House often enough in Fixer for it to bubble on top of my list of special presses to research - but if you feel like working on it, be my guest :)

As for the missing UK APIs - these days, it is delaying when the books show up; once they are processed, they are getting adjusted - as much as possible and with as little mistakes as possible (but this is where sources being recorded IS important). And most of the UK publisher are recognizable enough for me to send me looking at UK sources. If you believe that all I do is approving what Fixer throws at me, we need to have a LOOONG conversation - especially in the last year. :)

Welcome to small presses - they always have their own oddities... Annie 14:19, 26 October 2020 (EDT)

Thanks (I think...) - I'll have a dig around to see if I can find out more, although I'm not very familiar with any of the authors they publish.

Re. Fixer, I've noticed any number of times from the "Recent Edits" or "Edit History" that much (most?) of what Fixer submits gets further edits by you or other mods, so I definitely didn't think you were just rubber-stamping Fixer submissions. ErsatzCulture 15:27, 26 October 2020 (EDT)

When it is publisher-driven, the authors are almost irrelevant - or at least they are if you are just adding all new books. :)

Fixer is a useful start for submissions - which is why we are using it to kickstart the process. With some publishers, the records are almost clean because they load properly into Amazon and do not mess up their fields but the further you move away from the few consistent ones, the worse it gets - towards the small presses, there are records where only the ISBN remains unchanged - Severn House is often in this group. Thus me digging for per publisher rules - makes it easier to know where to look when I see the name of the publisher. But there are a lot of publishers. :) Annie 15:54, 26 October 2020 (EDT)

Gallery / Saga / Pocket Books publisher weirdness with a 2019 Star Trek novel

The Enterprise War - tp and ebook pubs

Hi, not sure if this is you and/or Chris_J - I'm wondering whether the edit history is misleading me regarding what changed and when [10] [11] [12] - but have you any recollection why this was originally submitted by Fixer as published by Pocket, but is currently showing as Saga Press? A quick skim through all the other ST: Discovery books shows they are either Pocket or Gallery, but Saga doesn't come up at all for them, and a TV show tie-in seems a bit off brand for that imprint? (Amazon US currently shows Pocket Books/Star Trek for both the physical and ebook, FWIW.)

Did it maybe get changed from Pocket to "Gallery Books", and has then been over eagerly changed to "Saga Press" as part of the removal of "Saga Press / Gallery Books"? This would have a degree of plausibility, but doesn't match what the edit history seems to be. I'd be inclined to submit an edit to change these pubs (back?) to "Gallery Books" - which is what the Amazon Look Inside shows, albeit only for the Kindle version - but there have been enough edits on this already that I don't want to presume I automatically know best. Thx ErsatzCulture 14:57, 2 November 2020 (EST)

Here is your change - so it is Chris - you will need to ask him. Keep in mind that the "old value shows CURRENT value, not what it used to be when changed. The "New" value shows exactly what it was changed to. The fact that now it is different is because there was a publisher merge after that which eliminated the different Saga publisher records. Chances are that he meant to set it to Gallery and made a slip with autocomplete and it went into Saga. If Look Inside shows something else, go ahead and fix it. Annie 15:09, 2 November 2020 (EST)

Thanks - I've just nudged him to see if he thinks there might be any others similar affected, although I did have a look at the past couple of years of Saga Press pubs, and didn't see anything that struck me as obviously out-of-place. (Other than a Charlaine Harris novel, but that turned out to be genuinely published by them.) ErsatzCulture 15:45, 2 November 2020 (EST)

Tuck Encyclopedia

Hello I noted you made a change to the titles of these volumes but as far as I can tell the title it was and the title it changed to are identical unless I'm missing something very obvious. Care to explain ? --Mavmaramis 07:46, 10 November 2020 (EST)

The word “through” was written with a small letter in most of them. That is what the moderator note also says in the ones that were verified (through -> Through). :) Please note that if you are looking at an approved submission, the new and old values will always match - it is a quirk of the history - we do not have the old value as part of the saved submission. Thus the moderator notes explaining what changed. Annie 13:15, 10 November 2020 (EST)

Ahh alright. Didn't see the Moderator note and I was unaware of the matching values thing. Thanks for explaining. --Mavmaramis 11:07, 11 November 2020 (EST)

Trigan Empire

Hello. You left a note on my Talk page in regards to this publication. Not sure if you saw my reply of 28th October so just in case you didn't.
Yes confirm collection of seven graphic comic strips only. No other introductory or other text based material. It was obviously a volume that fell through the net. You may also want to review this publication as well since it's a photographic reprimt of comic strips. The only thing to bear in mind (not noted on the entry) is that it has a foreword by Kit Pedler (an above threshold author) and 5 pages of introductory material "© James Slattery 1979" [28 October 2020] --Mavmaramis 11:14, 11 November 2020 (EST)

Yep, saw it - sorry for the delay. :) The "above threshold" exception does not apply to non-genre (per our definition) non-fiction essays in otherwise ineligible books. The book needs to be deleted technically... I will look at it over the weekend again and if I do not see anything else that would make it per policy, I will delete it and let you know. Thanks for the answer! Annie 18:52, 11 November 2020 (EST)

Ok that fine. I merely mentioned those other details as they were not noted on the entry. The other thing is submission 4822648 which I submitted on the 5th but remains to be approved. Could you look into that please ? --Mavmaramis 12:03, 12 November 2020 (EST)

The moderator team had been a bit... scarce on the ground in the last week so non-trivial submissions are a bit behind. Let me look at that one. Annie 12:17, 12 November 2020 (EST)

And thanks for the additional details! :) Annie 12:21, 12 November 2020 (EST)

Adam Blade real authors

I'm just about to start on the early January UK books that Fixer hasn't already submitted. There are a couple of Adam Blade chapbooks out on the 7th, I've just submitted the ebook for one of them, and assuming I haven't screwed that up, I'll also submit the tp and the 2 pubs for the other title.

Just in case a different mod picks that up from the queue, can I ask you the question I posed in the mod note: what's the process for finding out who the real author is? Just wait until the preview shows up on Amazon or Kobo around pub date? Or is there some secret place where the real authors are listed? Thx ErsatzCulture 14:40, 19 December 2020 (EST)

Pretty much that - or google and see if someone admits to it. When we do not know, we add unknown and then I fix it when it becomes clear. sometimes wiki will have it before the publication date, sometimes not. Annie 14:46, 19 December 2020 (EST)

The Devil's Blade: UK ebook = US ebook?

I'm just looking at submitting the upcoming UK tp of this - and it looks like there's also a large format UK tp that never got added when first published, hohum - and it currently has 2 ebook records:

• US price: Note states "Despite the publisher, this is the US version of the book." - this is a Fixer submission that you moderated
• UK price: One of my early submissions when I wasn't as familiar with the weird things that publishers do

These have different ASINs, but I suspect they are one and the same - the ISBN for the "US" ebook is the same as the one listed on the gollancz.co.uk site with a UK price, and on Kobo GB.

Unfortunately the copyright page isn't available on either the Amazon UK or Kobo previews. Given how long ago these were submitted, I wouldn't expect you to have any recollection of the background to the pub note on the "US" record, but it feels to me like these two pubs should maybe be merged and have 2 ASINs and appropriate pub note? ErsatzCulture 16:26, 19 December 2020 (EST)

2020-04-02 was a long time ago and the whole industry was in a turmoil so I missed that this is a UK book. It happens. :) Fixed. I need to do my usual yearly check on the major UK publishers and fix the books which are in the wrong place. Annie 16:30, 19 December 2020 (EST)

Question on How to Enter a Pub

Annie, I just received a copy of "The Way of Kings", a tenth anniversary edition published by Dragonsteel, Brandon Sanderson's company. There are two problems. First, the volumes each have a different ISBN. Second, the first volumes pages are xxxi+534, and the second volume pages are xxi+535 thru 1206. Can you suggest how I should enter this pub? Bob 13:11, 23 December 2020 (EST)

As they have separate ISBNs, I would add them as separate books (as Volume 1 and 2 or whatever the title page has as a differentiator). Then the two new titles get varianted to the complete novel. Technically speaking, as they are a set, you can also add the set as a third book (and add a note that this is a "set in 2 volumes" and even link to the two volumes in question) - especially if there is a slipcase or something. If the set as a whole does not have an ISBN, then just leave that empty and add a note explaining what it is. Or you can simply add notes in the two single volumes that they were paired together.

As for the pages -- add the number of them (so xxxi+534 and xxi+672 respectively) and in the notes of the second, say that the pages start from 535 and go to 1206. Hope this makes some sense. Annie 13:22, 23 December 2020 (EST)

That makes a lot of sense to me (but then you usually do). Thanks, Annie. Bob 15:32, 23 December 2020 (EST)

Linden Lewis vs Linden A. Lewis

(This is possibly a Fixer issue, but I'll bug you about it in the first instance, as you might know Fixer submitted what it did ;-)

Noticed this just now whilst adding (or trying to) the Goodreads award finalists:

• Linden Lewis
• Linden A. Lewis

Both of them have pubs of "The First Sister" (2020), although - going solely off the covers - all pubs are credited to "Linden A. Lewis".

There's a 2010 title that is credited to "Linden Lewis". Doing some Googling I can't find any background on it, but it *appears* to be a different author - "Linden A. Lewis" website doesn't make any mention of it, and in fact refers to "The First Sister" as their debut. The implication is that "Linden A. Lewis" added the middle initial to disambiguate from a different author, rather than an Iain Banks/Iain M. Banks situation?

Questions:

• I'll do a bit more digging, but do you know of any other sources that might confirm these are definitely two different authors? EDIT: I see there's a brief author bio on Amazon UK for the "Linden Lewis" book that definitely doesn't match the details on "Linden A. Lewis" website
• Do you know why Fixer seemingly changed the author name to "Linden Lewis" on some of these pubs? It looks like there's a sequel due in mid 2021, so it might be good to not have it make the same error again? ErsatzCulture 10:53, 27 December 2020 (EST)

Fixer goes by what Amazon tells it via the API - which is based on whatever someone in Amazon connected. As it is a UK book, the US API is notorious for this kind of messes and I missed it when approving. Names like that can get tangled and often need fixing. So when author names are like that, I am untangling them while approving - if I see a mistake. Annie 19:23, 27 December 2020 (EST)

Well, I was responsible for adding the UK ebook, if I'd paid more attention at that time, maybe I wouldn't be stumbling across this ~5 months later ;-) Anyway, there are edits in the queue that should hopefully tidy this up. ErsatzCulture 06:51, 28 December 2020 (EST)