Help:Screen:NewPub

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This page is a help or manual page for the ISFDB database. It describes standards or methods for entering or maintaining data in the ISFDB database, or otherwise working with the database. Other help pages may be found via the category below. To discuss what should go on this page, use the talk page. If, after exploring the Help system, you still have a question, please visit the Help desk and let us know. We probably know the answer, but we need your help to know what we left out of the help pages. If you are new to editing the ISFDB, please see Help:Getting Started.

The New Magazine, New Anthology, New Collection, New Omnibus, New Nonfiction, and New Fanzine ISFDB screens allow you to enter information for a new publication that has contents. Each of these screens are identical, except that the publication type is prefilled with "Magazine", "Anthology", etc. These can in fact be changed, so there is no functional difference between the different links except convenience in having the publication type prefilled. In addition, there is one further publication type, "CHAPTERBOOK", which does not have an associated link, but which can be selected after coming to this screen from any of the links.

In addition, it may be sometimes useful to use this screen for entry of a novel, even though there is a separate "New Novel" link. This is because the "New Novel" screen does not include contents, and a novel with contents beyond the novel itself, such as an introduction, can be entered by choosing one of the non-novel links, such as "New Magazine", and changing the publication type to "NOVEL".

These links are visible from the ISFDB home page, and from some other pages within the ISFDB.

The following is a detailed definition of exactly what should be entered in each field on this screen. These definitions are intentionally very complete. If you are looking for a quick summary of how to use this screen, please refer to Help:Getting Started which gives a simplified description of how to enter a book's publication details.

The screen is divided into two main sections. The first few fields define the publication itself, without regard to its contents.

Contents 1 Publication Information 2 Content Information 2.1 What to include 2.2 General contents 2.3 Reviews 2.4 Interviews 2.5 Letters to the Editor

Publication Information

• Title - The title of the publication. The title should appear exactly as published, even though this may be different from the canonical title.
  • Books. For a book, use the title page to get the title. This is typically the page with the copyright information on the back. Don't use the title on the cover, spine, or page running heads.

    Some books, mostly hardcovers, have both a "half-title" and a "full-title" page. The half-title generally comes first, and omits the author's name and the sub-title, if any. It may include a list of other works in the series, or by the author. The full-title lists both title and author, and normally gives the publisher's name, and often the publisher's city or cities. If both are present, take the title from the full-title page.

  • Omnibuses. If the book you are entering is an omnibus, it may have multiple title pages, one for each novel it contains. In these cases, if there is an omnibus title, such as "SF Special No. 33", enter that. Otherwise enter the individual titles, separated by a slash, like this: "Conan the Conqueror/The Sword of Rhiannon".
  • Magazines. For the title of a magazine, the best source is the information (often below the table of contents) about the publisher, giving the address; this often says something like "IF is published monthly by . . . ." If this is not present, the magazine cover and the heading on the contents page are about equal in priority; again take a good guess. The name on the spine should be used last. You may find sometimes that the publication information only says "Published by . . ." without giving the magazine name; and then the title on the contents may differ from the cover. In these cases, either choose something that seems reasonable to you, or agree an approach for that publication on the magazine's project wiki page. Also, please note that the title should be of the form Magazine Title, Date, such as Asimov's Science Fiction, June 2004. This helps differentiate different issues of the magazine. See the note on missing and variant dates below for more on formatting this part of the title.
  • Subtitles. If the title has a subtitle, enter it, with a colon and a space used to separate the title from the subtitle. For example, the 1986 edition of George MacDonald's "Lilith" has "Lilith" on the title page, and below that, in a smaller font, "A Romance". This should be entered as "Lilith: A Romance". It is sometimes a judgement call as to whether a change of font or a colon indicates a subtitle or just some creative license on the part of the typesetter. If in doubt, take your best guess and document the guess on the publication's wiki page.
  • Case. Titles should have case regularized unless there is some specific evidence that the author intended certain letters to be in a specific case. For example, if the title is "EXTRO" in all caps, the title should be entered as "Extro". This applies to the titles of short stories as well as books. Typesetting style is not important; for example, Fantastic Universe typically printed story titles in lower case, but these titles are regularized for the ISFDB. Regularized case means that the first word is capitalized, and all later words are also capitalized except for "and", "the", "a", "an", "for", "of", "in", "on", "by", "at", "from", and "to". Hyphenated words have the first letter after the hyphen capitalized.
  • Symbols and punctuation. Strange symbols should be entered if appropriate typographical characters exist. If not, do what you can and make a note as necessary on the wiki page. For example, John Varley's story "Press Enter" is often titled with a black rectangle, indicating a computer cursor, at the end. Other characters should be entered in Unicode if possible; this includes accented characters, and symbols such as em-dashes. An ellipsis should be entered as the sequence "space", "period", "space", "period", "space", "period". If the ellipsis is in the middle of the title, it should be entered with a space after it as well, prior to the start of the following word. Em-dashes should be entered directly adjacent to the words on both sides. Hyphens and spaces make different titles: "Hell Fire", "Hellfire", and "Hell-Fire" are three different titles, and should be entered as such. If you are using a Windows computer, you can use the Windows Character Map to enter unusual characters; to access the Character Map, go to Start->All Programs->Accessories->System Tools.
  • Missing or variant dates. The date part of a magazine title should be given after the title, following a comma and a space. The month should be given in full and then the year in full. If the issue is a quarterly, or a bimonthly, give the date in the form given on the magazine -- for example, "Fantastic Universe, June-July 1953" or "Interzone, Fall 1979". A hyphen should be used between two months used for a bimonthly issue. If the magazine has an overprinted date, then use the later date; this happened, for example, with some issues of the pulps, which were delayed in release and were overprinted with a later date to keep them on the newsstand for longer. If there is no apparent date, or the date is incomplete, a volume/issue number may be substituted. The date is always preferable, even if the magazine typically gives the issue number -- Interzone, for example, frequently quoted the issue number on the cover, only showing the date on the contents page. Information can also be drawn from bibliographic sources when useful, but this should always be noted in the "Note" field. For example, the first few issues of the British edition of Science Fiction Adventures are dated simply 1958, but per the Tuck encyclopedia these are in fact bimonthly, starting in March of that year. If you have access to such a bibliographic source you can use this data, but be sure to make it clear in the notes field what information was drawn from secondary sources. If you don't have access, and find yourself entering data for a magazine without clear date or numbering characteristics, it is best to post a query to the Community Portal page of the ISFDB Wiki and ask for assistance with that magazine. Some issues of the Australian magazine Void are not easily distinguished, for example.
• Author - The name of the author of the publication. The name should be entered exactly as it actually appeared in the publication. This includes pseudonyms, abbreviated names ("I. Asimov" instead of "Isaac Asimov", "Robert Heinlein" instead of "Robert A. Heinlein"), etc. As with the title, take the name from the title page in preference to the cover or spine of the book.
  • Editors, authors, translators, etc. If the book has a known author (or authors), use that name (or names). If it is an anthology, use the name of the editor. If the book is a single-author collection or omnibus, but has an editor, as occasionally occurs, the editor does not appear in this field, the author does. An omnibus should show the names of the the authors of all included fiction. There is currently no support in the ISFDB for translators, or photographers; this information should just be entered in the notes field.
  • Anonymous or uncredited works. If a work is credited to "Anonymous", then put "Anonymous" in the author field. The same applies for any obviously similar pseudonym, such as "Noname". If the work is not credited at all, use "uncredited", with a lower case "u". This applies to editorship of anthologies that are not credited. If a work is attributed to a role, e.g. "Editor" or "Publisher", then use that name as the author, even if it you have clear evidence as to who the author really is. For example, editorials in magazines were frequently uncredited, or credited to "The Editor"; these should be entered with the Author field set to "The Editor". The intent is that the record made from the publication should reflect what can be found in the publication. If there is external evidence (such as a collection of editorials from a magazine, making it clear who the author was) that identifies the author, then you can add a variant title to that item, using the real name. This will attach the work to the true author's bibliography, without giving incorrect data about what is actually in the source publication.
  • Case. Case should be regularized. A few magazines and books had typographical conventions that include, for example, printing an author's name in all lower case, or all upper case. These should convert to leading capitals. If a name includes an element that typically is not capitalized, it should be uncapitalized regardless of how it is presented in the publication. For example, if a magazine gives a story as by "L. Sprague De Camp", the name should be entered as "L. Sprague de Camp". Author names that vary only in capitalization are not tracked as variants.
  • Pseudonyms. If you know that a particular author's name is a pseudonym, leave it as the pseudonym rather than changing it to the real name. The only exception is when a reprint shows both the original and subsequent names. For example, Isaac Asimov's "Lucky Starr" books were originally published under the pseudonym of Paul French, but were later reprinted with the cover giving both names: "by Isaac Asimov, writing as Paul French". In these cases you can simply give "Isaac Asimov" as the author. When a book is known to be ghost-written, this should be treated as a pseudonym; the ghost-writer will eventually show up as having a pseudonym of the well-known author, but that data is not entered via this field.
  • Accented characters. If you are entering a name such as "Philip José Farmer" that is printed with an accented e, that accented character should be reproduced in your entry of the name. Two versions of an author's name that are printed with and without accents are treated as variants; you should not convert one form to another. However, if an accented form is given on a story title, but an unaccented form is given on the table of contents, use the accented form as the standard.
  • Collaborations. If a story has two authors, it doesn't matter which order you enter them in -- the ISFDB does not record any order internally regardless of how the authors are entered.
  • Writers "with" other writers. In some cases a writer is quoted as writing a story "with" another author; this can indicate that the more famous author did little more than lend their name to a project which was written almost entirely by a lesser known author. However, if both names appear on the title page, both names should be entered. A note can be added to the note field explaining the situation and giving a source.
  • Ranks, suffixes, prefixes. If an author is given as "Captain Robert L. Stone" then that should be entered in the database. Abbreviated versions of the rank should be entered as given, rather than expanded. For example, during World War II, on at least one occasion Amazing Stories printed an issue of stories from active service members, giving their ranks as part of the author attribution. These ranks should be included in the author names, and made into variant names for the relevant authors . Suffixes such as "Jr" should follow a comma and space, and be followed by a period if they are abbreviations. This should be regularized if they are not presented this way in the publication. E.g. "Sam Merwin Jr" should be entered as "Sam Merwin, Jr."; similarly, it's "Edward Elmer Smith, Ph.D."; or "Frederick C. Durant, III". Other prefixes and suffixes should follow analogous rules.
• Add Author. If there is more than one author or editor for this publication, this button will create a second author field. As many authors as you wish can be added.
• Year - The date of publication. Dates are in the form YYYY-MM-DD, where month and day are filled in if known, otherwise they have the value 00. Under certain circumstances, it is allowable to use a date of 0000-00-00, which means that the publication date is unknown. Examples:

  1956-00-00
  1956-11-00
  1956-11-26

• 8888-00-00 means that the book has been announced but not published and is reserved for well known examples like Last Dangerous Visions.
• For books, to identify the year, try to spot a statement (often on the verso of the title page) that says something like "Published in June 2001"; the copyright date is often misleading, since works can be reprinted. Look out for signs that this is a reprint; indications often include a series of numbers (e.g. "3 4 5 6 7 8 9") at the bottom of the verso of the title page; this particular string indicates that this is a third printing. If you know you are holding a reprint, and there is no way to date that particular publication, leave the year field as 0000-00-00. It is sometimes possible to find dates of reprints from subsequent printings which list all printings and their associated dates; if you enter a date from a source like this, include a note explaining your deduction. Note that we are interested in recording each different reprint of a publication, since there can be some significant differences between them, such as cover art, or price.
• For magazines, the month on the cover is rarely the month of actual publication. However, since this is a well-known fact about magazine publication schedules, and also because there is no good way to determine actual publication date, both month and year should be given where possible. For bimonthly magazine dates, use the earlier month: "January-February 1957" should be entered as "1957-01-00", for example. If a bimonthly magazine only quotes a single month in the title, use that month. E.g. the March 1959 issue of Fantastic Universe was preceded by January 1959 and succeeded by May 1959; it should be entered as "1959-03-00". If a bimonthly issue spans a year boundary, such as a December-January 1960 bimonthly issue, use the earlier year and month: "1959-12-00". For magazine cover dates that cannot be assigned to a specific month, use the year only: "Spring 1943" is just entered as "1943-00-00".
• If you use a secondary source, such as a bibliography or sf encyclopedia, to find dates, make sure that you note the source of the information on the publication's bibliography wiki page or the publication's notes field.
• Note also that the publication date does not always perfectly match the calendar date. For example, a January issue of a magazine is usually available in December of the previous year, and often earlier than that. Books with a January publication date may often be bought in the closing weeks of the prior year; they will show the later year's copyright date, even though that year has not yet started. In these cases, the convention is to use the official publication date rather than to try to identify when a book actually first became available. If there is a large discrepancy -- for example if a book was printed but unexpectedly delayed before release -- then this can be noted in the notes field.

• Publisher - The name of the book's publisher. Use the official statement of publication where you can. The publisher has in the past not been a key entity in the ISFDB, but publisher and imprint support is in the process of being improved, and a process of determining canonical names for publishers and imprints is in progress. For the time being you are free to choose an imprint ("Ace Books"), a division ("Berkley") or the parent corporation ("Penguin Group (USA)") as you wish. Imprints are often a suitable choice since they may be genre specific. A good rule of thumb is to choose a publisher name that would not surprise the reader; thus "Del Rey Books" is a better choice for that imprint than "Ballantine Books", even though Del Rey was in fact an imprint of Ballantine, because Del Rey's imprint is the prominent label on the cover of those books, whereas "Ballantine" appears only in small print at best. However, if both an imprint and a publisher are listed, and particularly if both are known for publishing genre fiction, consider listing both. For example "Del Rey / Ballantine" may be an even better choice than either "Del Rey Books" or "Ballantine Books".

• For self-published works, fanzines, bibliographic pamphlets and the like, use the name of the editor/author if no other publisher information is visible. Sometimes a fan organization or something similar will be quoted as the publisher, e.g. for books or booklets issued as sf convention special publications: these are not strictly publishers, but should be treated as such for this field.
• Where multiple forms of a name exist, it is not important to always enter exactly the form of the name as it appears on the book. For example, an imprint may say "A Tor Book", "Tor", "Tor Books", "Tor Books Science Fiction", or "Tor: A Tom Doherty Associates Book". Sometimes several of these varying forms will be on a single book. These can be converted to a canonical form; in this case "Tor Books" would be a sensible choice. The ISFDB does not currently have a page to identify and document canonical forms for publishers but may do so in the future.
• Case should be regularized unless there is a clear reason not to. For example, a Tor book often gives the imprint name as "TOR Books"; this should be entered as "Tor Books". DAW, however, is an acronym, and so "DAW Books" is the correct form for that imprint. Publishers of magazines are often printed in uppercase -- e.g. Fantastic Universe's statement of printing shows "KING-SIZE PUBLICATIONS, INC." as the publisher; the form "King-Size Publications, Inc." should be used here.
• If you are entering both the imprint and publisher name, as in "Del Rey / Ballantine", then it should be entered as Imprint / Publisher with the imprint first, spaces around the slash, followed by the publisher name. Note, it's still ok to enter things like "Imprint, an imprint of Publisher". The things we want to avoid are the Imprint/Publisher (with no space) and Publisher / Imprint (imprint / publisher flipped around) and formats.
• Library records, and in some cases the copyright pages of books, often list publishers with a preceedign city, as "London: Mammoth Books Ltd" or "New York: Giant Press inc". In such cases, list only the actual name of the publisher, not the city. (Existing records shoould not be changed to matfch this standard without considering how to avoid data loss). The city or country can be listed in the notes field of the publisher record, or on an associated wiki page, or both. Where needed to avoid confusion, a country suffix may be used, so we might have, for example, "Mammoth Books (UK)" and "Mammoth Books (Canada)".
• Science Fiction Book Club books should be entered as "Publisher / SFBC" where Publisher is the publisher name stated on the publication. Also see How to enter a SFBC publication.

• Pages - The page count of the publication. For books, the general convention is to use the last printed page number. For magazines, the convention is to use the actual page count - including the cover. For example, early issues of Fantastic Universe had the pages numbered from 1 to 192, not counting the front or back covers. This would be entered as 196 pages. If a publication is not paginated, leave the field blank and put "Not paginated" in the note field.

• Some magazines that use a page numbering system that does not start from 1 in every issue. These are usually cases where the magazine has a volume and issue number, and the pagination restarts at 1 for every volume, but not every issue. In these cases, calculate the actual total number of pages, and add in additional page count to represent the covers. Enter this number. You should also make a note in the note field, e.g. "Actual page numbering runs from 193 to 384".
• When a book has a section with Roman numeral page numbers for introductory material, followed by Arabic numerals for the main text of the book, enter the page number as e.g. viii+320, where viii is the highest numbered page with a Roman numeral page number. Pages without numbers that fall between the two types of page numbering can be ignored.
• Books in dos-à-dos format, such as Ace doubles, have two sets of page numbers, one for each half of the book. This can be entered as "256+320" for example.
• It is fairly common for the last page of text in a book to have a different graphic layout which may not include a page number. The "last printed page number" rule would then use a page number before the end of the work. In these cases, count forward to the end of the text and use that as the last page number.

• Pub Format - This is the binding format of the publication. For books, commonly used formats are:

• hc - hardcover. Used for all hardbacks of any size. A book is a hardback if it is constructed so that the cover is intended not to be flexible; there exist leatherbound paperbacks, for example, and these should not be marked 'hc'.
• tp - Trade paperback. Used for anything significantly larger than a paperback. 7.5" x 5" is a common size, but there exist many variant sizes larger than this, all of these should be simply recorded as "tp". This includes large format artbooks in paper covers, for example.
• pb - Paperback. Typically 7" x 4.25"; low-height paperbacks such as Ace Books from the fifties are about half an inch shorter, but this does not need to be noted.
• ph -- Pamphlet. Used for short (in page count), unbound, staple-boud, or otherwise lightly bound publications.
• Digest -- includes both standard digest size, at about 7" x 4.5", and also large digest, such as recent issues of Asimov's, which are about 8.25" x 5.125".
• dos - Dos-a-dos. Use this for books published in dos-a-dos format, such as Ace doubles and Capra Press back to back books.
• ebook -- all electronic formats. Specify the particular formats available in the publication notes.
• audio -- use for all audio books, followed by an indicator of format, as:
  • audio (CD) -- Compact Disk
  • audio (CAS) -- Cassette tape
  • audio (DAT) -- Digital Audio Tape
  • audio (LP) -- Long Playing record (vinyl)
  • audio (MP3) -- Digital recording in MP3 format

• For magazines, use one of the following:

• Digest -- includes both standard digest size, at about 7" x 4.5", and also large digest, such as recent issues of Asimov's, which are about 8.25" x 5.125".
• pb -- For magazines published in a paperback format.
• Pulp -- the common pulp size: 6.5" x 9.5"
• Bedsheet -- e.g. early issues of Amazing; or the 1942-43 version of Astounding: 8.5" x 11.25"
• Tabloid -- e.g. the British Science Fiction Monthly: 11" x 16"

• For publications which don't fit the above categories, use the closest approximation and make a note in the note field. If a magazine is between sizes for the above categories, use the closest one and make a note. Small variations don't need to be noted; e.g. Interzone is generally a quarter-inch or sometimes more away from the standard bedsheet size, but can just be listed as bedsheet.

• Pub Type - Identifies the type of publication. It is a drop down menu of the following choices:
  • ANTHOLOGY. Used for anything containing fiction by more than one author. For example, "Late Knight Edition" contains stories by both Damon Knight and Kate Wilhelm, individually; this is an anthology, not a collection. If a book of Conan stories contains stories which are all partly or wholly by Robert E. Howard, it is a collection; if one or more of the stories is by Lin Carter or L. Sprague de Camp, not in collaboration with Howard, then the book is an anthology.
  • CHAPTERBOOK. This is used for anything smaller or flimsier than a standard paperback. These are often, but not always, saddle-stapled; publications from conventions are frequently in this format. This format is also used for separate publications of a single work of short fiction, even if bound as a standard paperback or hardcover. It is also used for an ebook or audiobook edition of a single work of short fiction.
  • COLLECTION. A single-author collection. See notes under ANTHOLOGY, above. Note that the "single-author" can be a collaboration: e.g. a collection of stories by Frederik Pohl and C.M. Kornbluth would qualify as a collection. However, if such a collection included one story by Frederik Pohl alone, it would be regarded as a single-author collection of Frederik Pohl's. If it also contained one story by Kornbluth alone, it would be an anthology.
  • MAGAZINE. It can be difficult in some cases to determine if something should be regarded as a magazine or a book. Some magazines were published in book format; some books were published as series with letter columns and regular dates of publication. Borderline cases should be discussed on the magazine or book wiki pages, but generally a magazine must have a common title from issue to issue, and an enumeration or dating system of some kind. This still leaves anthology series such as New Worlds Quarterly as judgement calls. In these cases, look for a consensus on the publication bibliographic wiki page. If no discussion exists, use your best judgment and document the decision on the wiki page.
  • NONFICTION. Used for books that are predominantly or completely non-fiction. A single story in an essay collection of Isaac Asimov's does not make it a collection. This type supersedes the other types; if a book is non-fiction, you don't need to worry about whether it's a chapbook, or whether it is better described as a collection or an anthology. A publication that collects both non-fiction and fiction together should be classified by whichever appears to be predominant. Mixtures of both are more usual in magazines than in books, so the question does not arise often.
  • NOVEL. Used when the book is devoted to a single work of fiction. The addition of multiple short stories makes the book a collection, not a novel (A single story is a judgment call, see below). However, sample chapters placed at the end of a book for advertising reasons do not make a novel into a collection. If a book is packaged as a single volume work, and then republished as a multi-volume work, all the publications are novels; there is no need to classify the single volume work as an omnibus. Conversely, if a book is originally published as multiple volumes, and republished as a single volume, the latter is a novel unless the presentation within the single volume makes it clear that the works are presented as separate novels. For example, "The Lord of the Rings", by J.R.R. Tolkien, was originally published in three volumes; the single volume edition is to be categorized as a novel. Sometimes a novel is bound with a single short work of fiction by the same author (an example is this edition of The Misenchanted Sword). In such a case it is often preferred to class the publication as a novel with a "Bonus story" rather than a 2-item collection or omnibus. This is particularly true if the publication has the same title as the novel. It is a judgment call, however.
  • OMNIBUS. A publication may be classified is an omnibus if it contains multiple works that have previously been published independently, and at least one of them is a novel. However, generally this category should not be used unless the other categories do not seem appropriate. For example, if a publication contains stories that have previously been published independently in pamphlet form, this should be classified as an anthology. A collection such as Robert Heinlein's "The Past Through Tomorrow" should be categorized as a collection, although one of the works is a novel. "Omnibus" is appropriate for such publications as the Science Fiction Book Club's collections of three independent novels by different authors under one set of covers; or for a single-volume edition of all the Amber novels by Roger Zelazny. If none of the contents have been published before, the inclination should be to classify the publication as an anthology, rather than an omnibus, but this does not have to be an absolute rule. The distinction between "Omnibus" and the other types is somewhat subjective and may require discussion and consensus on the publication biblio wiki page.
  • Boxed sets. A boxed set will typically contain books that have their own ISBNs. In such cases the boxed set is not of interest, as it is only a form of packaging; a note can be made in note field for the books contained in the boxed set, but the boxed set itself does not need a separate entity. If a boxed set or other packaging format does not have separately identifiable publications, however, then the whole package is an omnibus, anthology, or collection, as appropriate.
  • Fixups. Sometimes an author will assemble material published separately into a novel. This will generally be classified as a novel. Some fixups are less coherent, consisting of largely independent stories, formed into a whole by the addition of linking material between the stories. In this case it is acceptable to call the book a collection or a novel; the decision should be discussed on the author's project page if there is any doubt.
  • "Split" novels. Occasionally a novel will be published as a single volume, and then republished (perhaps in another country) as two or more separate volumes. For example, Peter Hamilton's "Night's Dawn" trilogy was republished as six volumes in the US. The first book, "The Reality Dysfunction", was republished as "The Reality Dysfunction, Part One: Emergence", and "The Reality Dysfunction, Part Two: Expansion". The other two volumes were treated similarly. In these situations, the books should be treated as novels, even though they form only part of a work published as a novel. Also note that the original book is still treated as a novel; it does not become an OMNIBUS because it contains two works later republished as novels. Situations like this should be documented in the notes, and if necessary discussed on the bibliographic comments page for the publications.
• ISBN / Catalog # - A field for identification numbers. It should hold the ISBN if the publication has one, otherwise it should hold the publication’s catalog number if available. Note that prior to 2007 all ISBNs were 10 digit long while around 2007 they were expanded to 13 digit. Some books printed around 2007 specified both the 10 digit and the 13 digit version of the ISBN. The ISFDB software supports both formats, so if two forms of ISBN are present, you can enter either one.
• If there is no ISBN specified (they were introduced in the late 1960s and became widespread by the mid-1970s), then enter enter the catalog ID provided by the publisher and prefix it with # as in #UQ1064.
  • You may enter the ISBN with or without hyphens. If the ISBN is valid then ISFDB will display it with hyphens. One exception to the enter-as-stated rule is ISBNs delimited with spaces instead of hyphens. The ISBN should be entered using hyphens.
  • You may also see an ISBN of the form "0-586-06604-7-275"; the last three digits after the last hyphen indicate a price, and are not part of the ISBN; they should not be entered.
  • In some cases you will see a nine digit SBN, without a leading zero (for English language publications); in this case you can add the leading zero and enter that number.
  • If you entered a value that was not exactly as stated in the publication, then please add a comment about this in the Note field.
  • For magazines, it is allowable to enter the ISSN. For works that predate ISBNs, the book's catalog number/ID may be placed here. If the book had neither an ISBN nor a catalog number, the field should be left blank and a comment should be added to the notes field that a catalog number or other identification was not stated.
  • If a publication has more than one number, then enter the one that seems most reasonable in the ISBN field but then also add a comment to the notes field about the various numbers and where they are located in the publication. For example, a book may have both an ISBN and a catalog number. In this case the ISBN would go in the ISBN field and you would make a note, for example, that the ISBN is on the spine and catalog number is on the front cover.
• Price - The original cover price of this publication. Enter a single price, preceded with a currency symbol. For books published in both the USA and Canada, only the USA price should be noted. The original price of a 40 year old book isn't relevant in a purchasing sense anymore - the information is used to differentiate print editions, or to construct statistics on book pricing, which is difficult to do if two prices are present.

Prices under a dollar are listed as e.g. $0.25, for 25¢. Odd pricing formats can be ignored -- for example, occasionally a price of 20¢ will be printed as 20c; this can be entered as $0.20.

For books priced in other currencies, use an appropriate symbol;

• British currency should be indicated by a UK pound sign: "£", but if you can't generate one on your keyboard you can use an L: "L2.50" means two pounds fifty pence. Note that for Windows machines, the "Character Map" system accessory can be used to generate the pound sign as well as other characters or from the keyboard Windows users can hold down either ALT key, enter 0163 (zero 163) on the numeric keypad, and release the ALT key.
• For older British books, 3/6 is used to mean three shillings and sixpence; a price of three shillings exactly would be 3/-. Note that between about 1968 and 1971, British books were usually printed with both decimal and pre-decimal prices. In these cases enter only the pre-decimal price, as the decimal price was not the currency used at the time of printing, but was printed in case the book remained for sale after the date of decimalization.
• Enter Canadian dollars with a leading C, for example, C$3.95.
• Enter Australian dollars with a leading A, for example, A$3.95.
• Pick an appropriate code for other currencies but also add a note explaining the currency as these books will be uncommon enough in ISFDB that most viewers will not recognize the code. For example you could use Y4800 or ¥4800 but would would add a note that the book price was stated in Japanese Yen.

If there is any ambiguity about the price, add an explanation in the Notes field. Overprinted and changed prices should use the most recent price; if the price change is via a label, however, the price change should be ignored. For example, British distribution of some American magazines included a label giving a British price; these are not the British reprint editions of those magazines, but simply American magazines with a label affixed.

• Artist - Cover artist. Enter the artist for the cover art if known. If not known, leave blank. If the artist is not credited, but a signature is visible on the artwork, this can be used; if you do this, clarify in the Notes where you found the information. If you believe you recognize the artist's style but can see no actual attribution, make a note in the Notes field but don't enter the artist's name. If you know from a secondary bibliographic source who the artist is, but there is no attribution, enter the artist's name and also add a comment to the Notes field explaining the attribution. Note that entering this information will actually create a "COVERART" content record, behind the scenes, with a title of "Cover: " followed by the title of the publication.
• Add Artist. If the cover art is credited to more than one artist, this button will create a second artist field. As many artists as you wish can be added.
• Image URL - A URL to an image of the cover art. Note that for verified publications please select an image that matches the publication. If the only image that's available is close but not an exact copy of your publication then add a publication note explaining the differences. The ISFDB does not host images, so this must always point elsewhere. Since the images are displayed directly in ISFDB pages, you should not use images from external sources without permission. Common image sources are:
  • Visco which covers only magazines and not books. The ISFDB has explicit permission to use Visco's images and has logic to add a credit to Visco.
  • Amazon - ISFDB has implicit permission to use Amazon's images as an Amazon associate. A good-quality medium-sized image available usually even for those books that generally only display a tiny thumbnail marred by "Search Inside!^TM" is images.amazon.com/images/P/0123456789.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg : i.e. the 10-digit ISBN without dashes. Check that the image is actually the correct one for your edition though: and beware if it's a publication still in print, as it seems Amazon use this for the CURRENT edition and may change it without warning. A more stable alternative seems to be to search for the ISBN on another Amazon site and find one without the "Search Inside" problems: e.g. Amazon.UK may have "Search Inside" whereas Amazon.com do not, or vice versa. Use the "See Larger Image" before choosing the picture.
    
    • Sometimes you will see an Amazon image that's framed by a large white border such as ec1.images-amazon.com/images/I/51cXim2%2BwSL._AA240_.jpg. The "._AA240_" tells Amazon what size image (as a square) you want displayed. Amazon's logic seems to be that they will scale an image down to the size you want, but will not scale up. Instead it wraps the image in a white border. When you see a postage stamp size image on Amazon the best course seems to be to use the original (unscaled) image which you can get to by removing the "._SS500_" or "._AA240_" size indicator, for example, ec1.images-amazon.com/images/I/51cXim2%2BwSL.jpg , and let ISFDB scale it.
  • Fantastic Fiction - ISFDB has explicit permission to use Fantastic Fiction's images, but please first check to see if the image is available on Amazon and use that as Fantastic Fiction's bandwidth is limited.
  • Phil Stephensen-Payne's "Galactic Central" - ISFDB has explicit permission to use images hosted by "Galactic Central".
  • Fantascienza.com - ISFDB has explicit permission to use images hosted by Fantascienza.com. To find the URL of a publication, select 'titolo' (title) in the search box on the home page and type the title (in Italian or English), then follow the links. The format is: www.fantascienza.com/catalogo/cov/DD/DDddd.jpg, where "DD" are the first two characters of the five characters code DDddd in square bracket.
  • icshi We are now permitted to link directly to the covers: if you do so, please at least credit 'Icshi" in the notes, and an occasional hyperlink or two back to the site would be appreciated.
  • vanvogt Japanese site, but English text with lots of pretty covers and artist info. Yutaka, the sitemaster says "You may link my pictures to anywhere you like, but I'll be glad if you would let me know where you use them" - so drop him an email if you need to use one of them on the ISFDB.
  • Magnus' van Vogt site Icelandic site with good selection of covers Magnus is very generous too: "Hi. Feel free to link however you want, I have free bandwidth where I'm hosting the images."
  • Besides the sources listed above other image sources are Ace image library and Bookscans ("Graphically illustrating the evolution of vintage American paperbacks - 1939 through 1959"). Note that these sites have not given ISFDB explicit permission to use the images and so ideally you should ask on a case by case basis for permission.
• Before using a different source, ask for permisison, and if you get it, post a copy on the wiki so that other editors may use the same source. More information about this, and a sample letter requesting permission, can be found at ISFDB:Image linking permissions.
• Note - A note specific to this particular publication. These notes should be permanent comments that reflect something indisputable about a Publication, e.g. a mis-spelled title on the contents page.
  • Temporary comments'. Temporary comments that support the bibliographic effort but will be eventually deleted (once all issues are resolved), belong in the "Bibliographic Comments" field in the Wiki; e.g. information about incorrect data that is in the process of being corrected.
  • Miscellaneous data. Miscellaneous additional bibliographic information can be recorded here, such as the volume/issue information for a magazine.
  • Printings. Information about which printing is being recorded should be recorded here: commonly this is done as "Stated third printing of 1970 Signet edition", to indicate not only which printing it is, but that the book explicitly states this (as opposed to a deduction made from bibliographic sources). If the information on printing number and date is derived from a number line, you can mention that: "Stated 35th printing (per number line) of 1972 Bantam edition". If there is no printing information beyond the edition date, and no specific "first printing" statement, it is likely that this is a first printing, and you can put "Appears to be first printing of 1974 Puffin edition."
  • Sources. You do not need to record the source of data if it is taken from one of the standard bibliographic sources used in verification. For example, if the month of publication is drawn from the Locus index, while the book only shows the year, you do not need to say "Date per Locus1"; the verification flag showing that Locus1 has been consulted provides this information. Other sources used to update the record should be mentioned; though complex issues may be discussed on the author's wiki page or the publication comments wiki page.
  • Errors in sources. If you find an error in a source, make a note here -- e.g. "Locus1 incorrectly gives page count as 506".

Content Information

The second part of the screen defines the contents. This in turn is divided into three sections. The first part, "Content", includes everything in the publication, including reviews and interviews. The second part, "Reviews", and the third part, "Interviews", provide additional details about the reviews and interviews, but do not substitute for an entry in the contents section for those items.

What to include

Sometimes it is not clear whether to include a content item in the ISFDB. Some examples:

• Fiction. Included; see NONGENRE, below, for a discussion of non-sf.
• Tables of contents. These are not included. However, a good rule is that anything listed in the table of contents should be included.
• Editorial. Always included. Enter them using the "ESSAY" Title type, not "EDITOR".
• Science fact articles. Always included.
• Blurbs. Magazines often include lead-ins, or blurbs, before a story; these are not indexed.
• Biographical sketches of authors. Include these when they are separate entries. Don't include them when they are part of a blurb or lead-in.
• In Times to Come. Notes about what will be in future issues can be included if they are significant; for example, a single filler line at the bottom of a page, saying "Don't miss Arthur C. Clarke's great new story 'The Pacifist' in our next issue!", doesn't get indexed, but a section titled "In Times to Come", describing future issues, should be indexed. Other pieces may fall into this category; for example, a notice that the editorship is changing, or that a key figure associated with the magazine has died. The boundary between inclusion and non-inclusion is a judgement call here, and depends on length and significance.
• Advertising. No advertising of any kind is indexed, including calls for subscriptions, back issues, and plugs for conventions.
• Essays. Opinion pieces and essays are always included.
• Letter column. Letter columns should be included; index them as ESSAYs.
• Calendars. Calendar pages, such as "The Analog Calendar of Upcoming Events", should be indexed as ESSAYs.
• Artwork. Cover art is always included. Interior art is usually included; see INTERIORART, below.
• Photography. Treat as artwork.
• Quotes and other filler material. For example, Analog has periodically placed quotes of interest to its readers in filler positions. These are not included unless they fall within some other category, such as the table of contents rule mentioned above.
• Statements of ownership. Statutory statements of ownership and circulation are not included; nor are colophons, lists of editorial positions, and similar material.
• Inserts. An item inserted into a book or magazine should be indexed under the same rules as if it were included in the main body. For example, some David Weber books include an Honorverse CD; this has its own ISBN and should be indexed as a separate title, and a note included in the book to mention that the CD is included. A poster insert in a magazine should be indexed as artwork, and a note would mention that it was an insert.
• Cartoons. Signed or significant cartoons are included; list as artwork.
• Acknowledgements. Generally do not include. Occasionally an acknowledgements section may contain more than a simple listing of copyright dates and thank-yous to friends and researchers; if it contains material such as reminiscences, opinionation or anything else likely to interest a reader or researcher, consider including it.
• Forewords, introductions, prefaces, afterwords, endnotes, etc. These should all be included; enter them as ESSAYs. Occasionally something like an endnote will be set in the fictional world of the novel; these do not get indexed separately as they are regarded as part of the novel's text.
• Story introductions. In some cases, anthologies or collections include introductions (or, less often, afterwords) to individual works. If these are short and amount to blurbs, they should not be indexed separately. When they amount to critical essays or otherwise have significant content, they should be included. This is always a judgment call. Such story introductions are often unsigned and untitled. If they occur in a single-author collection without a separate editor, they can usually be safely attributed to the author. If they occur in a collection or anthology with a single editor, they can usually be safely attributed to the editor. In an anthology (or collection) with multiple editors, such introductions (if they are being entered into the database) should be attributed to "uncredited" if there is no clear indication of who actually wrote them. If untitled, such items should be listed as "Story (Introduction)" (where "Story" represents the title of the story being introduced) or some similar form. In borderline cases, signed intros are more worthy of inclusion than ones which would need to be attributed to "uncredited".
• About the author. Biographical notes are included; enter them as ESSAYs.
• Dedicatory material. Not included. This comes in two kinds: dedication statements made by the author, and material from other writers used as dedicatory or other introductory material. For example, Denise Levertov's poem "Come into Animal Presence" is printed near the begin of Le Guin's collection "Buffalo Gals and Other Animal Presences". It appears in the table of contents, as well; so this is a borderline case. However, unless there appears to be some strong reason to include it, do not index these items.
• Reader polls. A clipout coupon (or something similar) for readers to send in to vote on their favourite stories should not be included. A significant amount of text accompanying the poll coupon may be worth indexing, per the other rules above -- e.g. whether or not it is mentioned in the table of contents. The results of reader polls are likely to be worth recording, however; they will be ESSAYs.

General contents

The content is defined by a set of six fields: page, title, date, entry type, length, and author. There is room for nine content items in the initial screen display; additional content items can be created by clicking on the "Add Title" button at the bottom of the content section. The screen will redisplay with a tenth content record visible. This can be repeated until sufficient content items are available to enter everything in the publication.

The content records are intended to record all the fiction, essays, and artwork in the publication, as well as some other material. See the discussion of the "entry type" field, below, for more details about how to record specific types of content.

The information stored in these six fields resides primarily in the "Title" records within the ISFDB. You can think of the content records as defining a set of titles. Entering these titles on this screen connects them to the parent publication, but does not modify the publication itself. The only exception is that the page field is not part of the title record or of the publication; it is an attribute of both of them, as it defines the page within the publication where that particular piece of content is to be found.

• Page - The page on which this item of content can be found. The page number refers to the pagination provided in the publication, not the actual count of pages from the start. Use the lower case form of Roman numerals, for pages in introductory material. This will happen, for example, for material on the inside cover of a magazine, since the pagination usually starts inside. For material after that last page, count forward; for magazines this can extend to the back cover, but for books the inside and outside covers should not be given page numbers.
  • The following special locations can be used:
    • fc -- front cover
    • fep -- front end paper, or inside front cover of a magazine
    • bp -- unpaginated pages that precede pagination
    • ep -- unpaginated pages that follow pagination (although generally we would expect people to count forward to find a page number)
    • bc -- back cover
    • bep -- back end paper, or inside back cover or a magazine
    • ## (actual count) -- actual handcounted pages, not counting the front cover or front endpaper, for a book without page numbers
    • <text> -- descriptive of the location in some other way. E.g. "Inset artwork on poster inserted with this magazine".
  • Interior art as the first page of a story. If a magazine presents a story with artwork on the first page, but no text from the story, that page should still be counted as the first page unless there is no title, author's name, or other direct evidence that the artwork is part of the presentation of the story. If the table of contents lists the page with the artwork as the first page of the story, then use that page as the page number for the story as well as the artwork. If it is simply a page of artwork, with no text to indicate that it belongs to the story on the succeeding pages, and no indication in the table of contents that it is part of the story, then do not count it as the first page of the story.
• Title - The title of the work. The title should appear exactly as published, even though this may be different from the canonical title. Note that if you are cloning a publication, this field is not editable for existing content records.
  • Novels. For a novel, the title should be identical to the title of the publication in which the novel is published, unless the novel is included in an omnibus or collection. There can be differences in unusual cases: for example, a publication title might be "The Official Dune", for Frank Herbert's preferred text, but the novel contained in that publication might still have the title "Dune", depending on how the work is presented. Usually, however, the title page will provide the novel's title. This is typically the page with the copyright information on the back. If you're entering a novel from within an omnibus, there may be a separate title page for each novel. Note also that if you're entering a novel using the "New Novel" screen, you will not be given an option to enter the novel title separately from the publication title. This should never matter, since for a novel the publication and title should use the same form of the title, but if it does -- for example if this is a scholarly presentation of the work, and the novel is given a separate title page within this presentation -- then you should use a different type, such as COLLECTION or ANTHOLOGY.
  • Subtitles. If the title has a subtitle, enter it, with a colon and a space used to separate the title from the subtitle. For example, the 1986 edition of George MacDonald's "Lilith" has "Lilith" on the title page, and below that, in a smaller font, "A Romance". This should be entered as "Lilith: A Romance". It is sometimes a judgment call as to whether a change of font or a colon indicates a subtitle or just some creative license on the part of the typesetter. If in doubt, take your best guess and document the guess on the publication's wiki page.
  • Short fiction, essays and poems. For short stories, essays and poems, take the title from the heading on the page where the work begins, rather than from the table of contents, if there is one. This distinction is not too important, and if you know that one form of the title is the usual one (e.g. the contents page has "Night Fall" but the story heading is "Nightfall") then use the one you know is standard. You can also choose to use the table of contents version where the story heading gives a non-standard presentation of the title form--e.g. if the table of contents says "Bell, Book and Candle" and the story header says "Bell, Book & Candle", you can use the former. If both the table of contents and the story title agree, though, the form given should be used, even if it is different from the standard.
  • Excerpts. Sometimes an excerpt from a forthcoming book will be printed at the back of a book. This should be treated as short fiction. If the excerpt has a title that makes it clear that it is only an excerpt, use that title. Otherwise, use the title given, but add " (excerpt)" to the end; e.g. "A Feast for Crows (excerpt)".
  • Omnibuses, nonfiction, anthologies and collections. Like novels, the title of an omnibus, nonfiction booklength work, anthology or collection is duplicated from the publication title at the time the publication is created. Unlike novels, however, these titles never show up as content records and cannot be edited by editing the publication. These title records will show up, however, if there is a discrepancy between the publication type and the title type. See the help for the entry type field for more discussion.
    • When recording an omnibus publication, please record all of its contents. If it contains one or more collections, please record both the collection titles and the individual short fiction or essay titles as part of the omnibus's contents.
  • Artwork. Interior art should have the same title as the fiction or essay it is associated with. If it is independent of other content, and has no apparent title, give it the title "Untitled". Cover art should never be entered directly as content, so there is never a need to enter a title for cover art records. Cover art is always titled "Cover: " followed by the title of the publication. Artwork on the back cover of a publication is treated as interior art.
  • Case. Titles should have case regularized unless there is some specific evidence that the author intended certain letters to be in a specific case. For example, if the title is "EXTRO" in all caps, the title should be entered as "Extro". This applies to the titles of short stories as well as books. Typesetting style is not important; for example, Fantastic Universe typically printed story titles in lower case, but these titles are regularized for the ISFDB. Regularized case means that the first word is capitalized, and all later words are also capitalized except for "and", "the", "a", "an", "for", "of", "in", "on", "by", "at", "from", and "to". Hyphenated words have the first letter after the hyphen capitalized.
  • Symbols and punctuation. Strange symbols should be entered if appropriate typographical characters exist. If not, do what you can and make a note as necessary on the wiki page. For example, John Varley's story "Press Enter" is often titled with a black rectangle, indicating a computer cursor, at the end. Other characters should be entered in Unicode if possible; this includes accented characters, and symbols such as em-dashes. An ellipsis should be entered as the sequence "space", "period", "space", "period", "space", "period". If the ellipsis is in the middle of the title, it should be entered with a space after it as well, prior to the start of the following word. Em-dashes should be entered directly adjacent to the words on both sides. Hyphens and spaces make different titles: "Hell Fire", "Hellfire", and "Hell-Fire" are three different titles, and should be entered as such. If you are using a Windows computer, you can use the Windows Character Map to enter unusual characters; to access the Character Map, go to Start->All Programs->Accessories->System Tools.
  • "Standard" titles. Often the title of a short non-fiction piece will be "Introduction", "Editorial", "About the Author", "Foreword", or one of several other similar titles. If an author has written many "Introduction"s over their career, their bibliography will show several identical titles, with no way to distinguish them except to click on each one and find out the publication history. For this reason, some editors enter such titles with " (<title>)" appended. For example, one might enter Susan Wood's introduction to the Le Guin collection "The Language of the Night" as "Introduction (The Language of the Night)". This is not currently settled policy, as not every editor does this. However, please be consistent within a given author; that is, if you enter "Introduction" without any qualifier for one of their introductions, do so for all of them.
  • Variant titles with carets. The old (ISFDB1) format indicated variant titles by including all of the titles in the title field, separated by carets, like so: "The Book of Poul Anderson^The Many Worlds of Poul Anderson". This is still supported for display; it is listed as a variant title. However, new data should not be entered in this format. To record variant titles, see Help:How to record a variant title.
• Date - The original publication date of this title. Note that if you are cloning a publication, this field is not editable for existing content records. If you leave this field blank it will default to the same date as the publication which contains it. This is the right thing to do if this is a first publication of the work. Otherwise, check the copyright and acknolwedgements pages to see what date is given to the title. For works that have had variant titles, the date to enter is the first under any title and any pseudonym; variant titles do not have their own dates. If a work has been heavily revised to the point that it is essentially a different story, the date used should be that of the first version that is essentially the same. Major revisions of this nature are a feature of James Blish's work, for example. If there is some ambiguity about whether two versions are the same or should be treated differently, discuss the stories on the author's project page.
  • Serializations.
    • Books: If a work has been serialized in a magazine, there may be a difference in textual content between the first magazine publication and the first book publication. "Skylark of Valeron", for example, appeared as a magazine serialization in 1933-4, but was not published in book form until 1949. In these cases, record the first book publication date. A note in the title field can record the magazine serialization date, if there is one.
    • Magazines: Serial installments of a work are always given the date of the magazine in which they appear even if the work has been published previously in book or serial form. Novel length works (40,000+ words) printed as a single installment in a magazine are treated as serials and given the date of the issue in which they appear; the Title Type is "Serial" and the text "(Complete Novel)", preceded by a space, is appended to the title. See "Beyond This Horizon" for an example of a novel which was published as a multi-part serial, a book, and then as a single installment serial.
  • Sources. If you know that a book's first edition is prior to the date in the title, the best thing to do is find a copy of the first edition, and enter that publication. Then the title record can be updated to match the earlier publication. If you're unable to locate a copy of the earlier book, it is generally not a good idea to use a copyright date without further checking. Copyright dates occasionally differ by a year from the date of publication of the book they refer to. Instead, look for secondary sources, such as bibliographic reference works, and enter data from there. Record your source in the notes field.
• Entry Type - The type of item being recorded. Note that if you are cloning a publication, this field is not editable for existing content records. The options are:
  • SHORTFICTION. Any form of fiction other than a novel should be given this entry type. A novel is defined as work of over 40,000 words; this cannot easily be determined by looking at a publication, so typically you should enter SHORTFICTION for anything you are not certain is a novel. Note that frequently a magazine will describe a story as a complete novel, even though it may be substantially below the 40,000 word mark. The description in the magazine should not be relied upon for this distinction.
  • ANTHOLOGY and COLLECTION. These are rarely the correct type for a content entry. If you create a new anthology or collection, an "ANTHOLOGY" or "COLLECTION" content record is automatically created by the ISFDB, but it is not displayed. However, if you are entering an omnibus, or a dos-a-dos book such as an Ace Double, which has an anthology or collection as one of the components, then you should create an anthology or collection entry as well as entries for the constituent stories. The difference between an anthology and a collection is that a collection is by a single author; stories by that author in collaboration with other authors are permissible, but if there are any two stories in the book that are by different authors then it is an anthology.
  • COVERART. If you are entering a publication, use the "Artist" field on the publication record instead. If you are entering a title record directly (e.g. when adding a variant title) then you are unlikely to need this record type unless for some reason the cover art has more than one title associated with it.
  • EDITOR. Do not use; this is present for historical reasons only and will eventually be removed.
  • ESSAY. Used for editorials, opinion pieces, and items such as "The Story Behind the Cover", "Next Issue", and letter columns. Occasionally the boundary between ESSAY and SHORTFICTION is blurred: for example, Fantastic Universe had a one page description of the cover in most issues. Some of these were formulated as if they were pages from stories; these are entered as SHORTFICTION. In other cases a brief framing paragraph at the end or beginning makes it clear that the text is discussing the cover, rather than intending to be a piece of fiction; these are entered as ESSAY. Review columns and interviews are also entered as ESSAYs. If an interview column contains only one interview (as is usually the case), then the interview column does not need to be entered at all; instead, just enter the interview information in the Interview section. The details of what was reviewed, or who was interviewed, are recorded with REVIEW and INTERVIEW types, which are entered via the special Review and Interview sections described below. See also NONFICTION.
  • INTERIORART. There are three ways in which this can be used. First, if a single artist does all of the interior art for a book (e.g. Pauline Baynes for many of the "Narnia" editions), then a single content entry, without a page number, is appropriate. If each story in a collection, anthology or magazine is illustrated by one artist, the artwork can be indexed with a single entry for each artist and story. For example, the December 1956 issue of Infinity Science Fiction contains the story "My Sweetheart's the Man in the Moon" by Milton Lesser, which is illustrated by Stallman. The story starts on page 5 but the first piece of artwork is on page 9. In this case there is only one illustration for the story, but if there were multiple illustrations a single entry would still suffice. The page number given is the page number of the start of the story in this case; the title is the title of the content item being illustrated. An alternate option is to enter the first page where artwork appears. Page 9 would also be acceptable in the above case. It is also acceptable (but not required) to enter all pages where multiple artwork appears in a story. See this issue of Analog for an acceptable implementation. The multiple pieces of artwork should not be merged. If the illustration has a separate title or caption, document in the illustration's Notes field. The third way to use this entry type is to capture illustrations that are not attached to individual stories, or to capture illustrations of stories which are illustrated by multiple artists (a rare situation). In these cases each entry indicates a specific illustration, and the page number is the page number of the illustration itself. Illustrations not attached to a story are given a title of "Untitled".
    • Rules for including artwork. If artwork illustrates a particular story, it should be included. If it does not, but is a significant piece of artwork, or is signed by or credited to a well known sf artist, then it should be included. Credited cartoons are always included. Uncredited full-page cartoons in digest magazines of at least 1/3 page cartoons in pulp and bedsheet size magazines are always included. The title should be "Cartoon: " followed by the caption, in the original case, between quotation marks. If there is no caption the words "no caption" should be used without quotation marks. See the February 1957 issue of Dream World for examples (http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?DRMWRLDFEB1957) If an article is illustrated with diagrams, or with photographs, these do not need to be included; they are not "artwork" in the sense that we are indexing.
  • INTERVIEW. Generally you do not need to use this type; use the special interview details section lower down the editing page.
  • NONFICTION. Generally not used for content, since it refers to book length works. This might occur as an element of an omnibus.
  • NONGENRE. Used for fiction which is not speculative fiction. Note that there are stories that are widely known within sf, such as "Everyone Knows Joe", by C.M. Kornbluth, which are not science fiction by any means, but which are often included in genre collections for one reason or another -- in this case, because of Kornbluth's prominent reputation in the field. These stories can be marked NONGENRE. You do not generally need to read every story to check if it is a genre story or not; stories in genre publications can be assumed to be genre unless you have some specific reason to believe otherwise.
  • NOVEL. Used for a fiction piece of more than 40,000 words. As noted above, under SHORTFICTION, you should generally ignore any statements made in magazines about something being a novel; this statement is often made about much shorter works. If you know something has been independently published as a novel, it is safe to mark it as a novel when you see it as a content element in a larger publication. For Ace Doubles, each content title will typically be a NOVEL, rather than SHORTFICTION, unless one of the constituent works is itself an anthology or a collection.
  • OMNIBUS. Do not use; the omnibus content type is created automatically by the ISFDB when an omnibus publication is entered. It is not displayed with the publication and never needs to be entered manually.
  • POEM. Self-explanatory.
  • REVIEW. Generally you do not need to use this type; use the special review details section lower down the editing page.
  • SERIAL. Use for an entry that would otherwise be either SHORTFICTION or NOVEL, but which is being serialized. Include "(Part 1 of 3)" etc in the title of the work. Occasionally this will lead to odd situations. For example, Frederik Pohl's novel "Jem" was serialized in Galaxy; it was initially intended to be a four part serialization, so the first two parts were listed as "Part 1 of 4" and "Part 2 of 4". By the time the third part was printed, it had been changed to a five part serialization, so the titles of the next two parts were "Part 3 of 5" and "Part 4 of 5". In this case it makes sense to go back and change the title of the first two parts; a note should be added to the note field of the publication to make it clear what has been done and why, if such a situation arises. Also, note that if the combination of story title and author name that is used in the serial was never used on a published version of the story, you will need to create a variant title of this novel to link it to the title used in the published version. For example, "The Space Merchants" by Frederik Pohl and C.M. Kornbluth was originally serialized as "Gravy Planet". This had to be created as a variant title to connect the serialized pieces to the published novel.
• Length - The length of the item in words. Note that if you are cloning a publication, this field is not editable for existing content records. The length field should be left blank except for SHORTFICTION, and in a couple of other cases where it makes sense: NONGENRE and NONFICTION, for example. The options are:
  • sf - Shortfiction - This is the default story length for shortfiction and means the length is not defined.
  • ss - Shortstory - A work whose length is less than or equal to 7,500 words. (Roughly, 20 or fewer pages in a book.)
  • nt - Novelette - A work whose length is greater than 7,500 words and less than or equal to 17,500 words. (Roughly 20 to 50 pages in a book.)
  • nv - Novella - A work whose length is greater than 17,500 words and less than or equal to 40,000 words. (Roughly 50 to 100 pages in a book.)
  • jvn - Juvenile - This story is targetted at the Juvenile or Young Adult market. Note that this code is not available when editing the Contents section of a publication but you will see it when editing title records.
  • nvz - Novelization - Indicates that this story is a novelization of movie, TV show, game or other non-written work. Note that this code is not available when editing the Contents section of a publication but you will see it when editing title records. This is because it applies to the work as a whole, and not to any particular publication of the work.

In addition, this field has a special function for omnibus titles. Any text entered in this field for an omnibus (the record for the omnibus itself, not the record for one of the novels contained within the omnibus) will be displayed after an "O" in a bibliography display of the omnibus. For example, this field can be used to show a sequence of novels within a series. To show that the omnibus contains the first and second novels in a series, enter "/1,2". This will result in a display of "O/1,2" in the bibliography entry for this title. See Tanya Huff's page for an example. Other possible uses include "/1N/2C" to indicate the omnibus contains a novel and two collections.

• Author - The name of the author of the work. This will be duplicated from the publication author field for novels, anthologies, collections and omnibuses. The name should be entered exactly as it actually appeared in the publication. This includes pseudonyms, abbreviated names ("I. Asimov" instead of "Isaac Asimov", "Robert Heinlein" instead of "Robert A. Heinlein"), etc. As with the title, take the name from the title page in preference to the cover or spine of the book. Note that if you are cloning a publication, this field is not editable for existing content records.
  • Anonymous or uncredited works. If a work is credited to "Anonymous", then put "Anonymous" in the author field. The same applies for any obviously similar pseudonym, such as "Noname". If the work is not credited at all, use "uncredited", with a lower case "u". This applies to stories and essays that are not credited (often the case for short announcements in magazines, for example), and artwork that is not attributed and for which no signature can be identified. If a work by its nature has no author or editor, use "N/A"; this applies to unedited letter columns. Letter columns with embedded editorial responses should be credited to whoever writes the responses, or to "uncredited" if this is not obvious. If a work is attributed to a role, e.g. "Editor" or "Publisher", then use that name as the author, even if it you have clear evidence as to who the author really is. For example, editorials in magazines were frequently uncredited, or credited to "The Editor"; these should be entered with the Author field set to "The Editor". The intent is that the record made from the publication should reflect what can be found in the publication. If there is external evidence (such as a collection of editorials from a magazine, making it clear who the author was) that identifies the author, then you can add a variant title to that item, using the real name. This will attach the work to the true author's bibliography, without giving incorrect data about what is actually in the source publication.
  • Case. Case should be regularized. A few magazines and books had typographical conventions that include, for example, printing an author's name in all lower case, or all upper case. These should convert to leading capitals. If a name includes an element that typically is not capitalized, it should be uncapitalized regardless of how it is presented in the publication. For example, if a magazine gives a story as by "L. Sprague De Camp", the name should be entered as "L. Sprague de Camp". Author names that vary only in capitalization are not tracked as variants.
  • Short stories and artwork. For short stories that appear in magazines and anthologies, the author's name should be taken from the story heading, rather than from the table of contents, if there is one. However, as with titles, this is not particularly important, and if they differ, and one is the generally used canonical form of an author's name, take the canonical one -- e.g. if the story heading says "P.J. Farmer" but the table of contents has "Philip Jose Farmer" then use the latter. Similarly, if you are entering the artist for interior illustrations, and the artist is credited as "Emsh", enter "Emsh", but if the contents page says "Illustrations by Ed Emshwiller", feel free to enter "Ed Emshwiller" as the artist even if the individual stories assign them to "Emsh". In tables of contents, magazines sometimes abbreviated long names (e.g. collaborations) to fit into the available space, but used longer forms of the names on the story titles. In these cases the longer form of the names should be used.
  • Pseudonyms. If you know that a particular author's name is a pseudonym, leave it as the pseudonym rather than changing it to the real name. The only exception is when a reprint shows both the original and subsequent names. For example, Isaac Asimov's "Lucky Starr" books were originally published under the pseudonym of Paul French, but were later reprinted with the cover giving both names: "by Isaac Asimov, writing as Paul French". In these cases you can simply give "Isaac Asimov" as the author. When a book is known to be ghost-written, this should be treated as a pseudonym; the ghost-writer will eventually show up as having a pseudonym of the well-known author, but that data is not entered via this field.
  • Accented characters. If you are entering a name such as "Philip José Farmer" that is printed with an accented e, that accented character should be reproduced in your entry of the name. Two versions of an author's name that are printed with and without accents are treated as variants; you should not convert one form to another. However, if an accented form is given on a story title, but an unaccented form is given on the table of contents, use the accented form as the standard.
  • Collaborations. If a story has two authors, make the first author you enter the author who is first, alphabetically. The ISFDB distinguishes between a story by "Robert E. Howard and L. Sprague de Camp" and one by "L. Sprague de Camp and Robert E. Howard". Since the order of author entry does not indicate primary author, use alphabetical order.
  • Writers "with" other writers. In some cases a writer is quoted as writing a story "with" another author; this can indicate that the more famous author did little more than lend their name to a project which was written almost entirely by a lesser known author. However, if both names appear on the title page, both names should be entered, in alphabetical order. A note can be added to the note field explaining the situation and giving a source.
  • Ranks, suffixes, prefixes. If an author is given as "Captain Robert L. Stone" then that should be entered in the database. Abbreviated versions of the rank should be entered as given, rather than expanded. For example, during World War II, on at least one occasion Amazing Stories printed an issue of stories from active service members, giving their ranks as part of the author attribution. These ranks should be included in the author names, and made into variant names for the relevant authors . Suffixes such as "Jr" should follow a comma and space, and be followed by a period if they are abbreviations. This should be regularized if they are not presented this way in the publication. E.g. "Sam Merwin Jr" should be entered as "Sam Merwin, Jr."; similarly, it's "Edward Elmer Smith, Ph.D."; or "Frederick C. Durant, III". Other prefixes and suffixes should follow analogous rules.
• Add Author. If there is more than one author or editor for this publication, this button will create a second author field. As many authors as you wish can be added.

Reviews

Review columns (or individual reviews within a volume of critical essays) are entered as ESSAY types in the general content record, but you should also record the books reviewed, and who reviewed them, in this section. Each set of review details is defined by five fields: page, title of the work being reviewed, date of the work being reviewed, author of the work being reviewed, and reviewer. There is room for three reviews in the initial screen display; additional reviews can be created by clicking on the "Add Review" button at the bottom of the review section. The screen will redisplay with a fourth review record visible. This can be repeated until sufficient review records are available to enter every review in the publication.

Note that you should only include books that are actually commented upon. If a reviewer mentions that a publisher has re-issued a work, but does not comment on the quality of the book, don't include it. Even a brief comment, such as "recommended", is enough to qualify, but without any comment the review should not be listed. For old reviews of Ace Doubles a reviewer would occasionally review one side of the book and simply mention the name of the book on the other side without comment. In these cases only enter the title that was actually reviewed.

Note also that only books and magazines are entered; if the column reviews fanzines, you don't need to enter the review records for these, only the ESSAY record. Non-sf works should be entered but if an onerous number of non-sf-related works are reviewed in a column you are entering, discuss the situation on the Bibliographic Rules page to decide what can be eliminated.

• Page - The page on which this particular review can be found. See the general help information for page numbering. Note also that the ESSAY content entry for the overall review column will have a page number of the page it starts on, but the individual reviews should be indexed to the page within the review where they start. For a review column on pp. 110-112, some reviews will start on p. 110, some will start on p. 111, and some will start on p.112.
• Title - The title of the work being reviewed. If the review uses a non-canonical title which is already recorded in the ISFDB as a variant of the canonical title for this work, simply enter the title used in the review. If the review uses a title which differs from any of the known titles for this book, but which still serves to unambiguously identify the book (e.g. if the review has a misprint, or abbreviates the name of the book), then enter a corrected title, but make a note in the notes field for the publication that the review title was spelled incorrectly, and give the form of the title actually used in the review.
• Date - The date the review first appeared. Normally the date of the publication in which the review appears unless it is a reprint. (Note: if you leave this field blank it will default to the date of the publication being added or modified).
• Book Author - The author of the work being reviewed. If the review uses a non-canonical name which is already recorded in the ISFDB as a pseudonym or alternate name of the canonical name for this author, simply enter the version of the author's name used in the review. If the review uses a version of the author's name which differs from any of the versions of this author's name known to the ISFDB, but which still serves to unambiguously identify the book (e.g. if the review has a misprint, or abbreviates the author's name), then enter a corrected name, but make a note in the notes field for the publication that the author's name was spelled incorrectly, and give the form of the name actually used in the review.
• Add Book Author. If there is more than one author or editor for the work being reviewed, this button will create a second author field. As many authors as you wish can be added.
• Reviewer - The name of the reviewer. This will generally match the name of the reviewer recorded in the general contents section of the publication, as the author of the review column. This name should not be corrected if mis-spelled, or given in a variant form; it follows the same rules as the rules for author name in a content record.
• Add Reviewer. If more than one person wrote this review, this button will create a second reviewer field. As many reviewers as you wish can be added.

Interviews

Unlike review columns, interviews are generally not entered separately in the content records. The only exception is if a content record exists for multiple interviews, in which case it is indexed as an ESSAY type.

Each set of interview details is defined by five fields: page, interview title, date the interview was conducted, name of the person being interviewed, and name of the interviewer. There is room for two interviews in the initial screen display; additional interviews can be created by clicking on the "Add Interview" button at the bottom of the interview section. The screen will redisplay with a third interview record visible. This can be repeated until sufficient interview records are available to enter every interview in the publication.

• Page - The page on which this particular interview can be found. See the general help information for page numbering. Note also that the ESSAY content entry for the overall interview column will have a page number of the start of the column, but the individual interviews should be indexed to the page within the interview column where they start. For a interview column on pp. 110-112 which interviews more than one interviewee, the second interview may have a page number of 111 or 112.
• Title - The title of the interview column. Follows the same rules as the titles of all content items.
• Date - The date the interview was conducted.
• Interviewee - The name of the person being reviewed. If the interview uses a non-canonical name which is already recorded in the ISFDB as a pseudonym or alternate name of the canonical name for this person, simply enter the version of the interviewee's name used in the interview. If the interview uses a version of the interviewee's name which differs from any of the versions of this interviewee's name known to the ISFDB, but which still serves to unambiguously identify the book (e.g. if the interview has a misprint, or abbreviates the interviewee's name), then enter a corrected name, but make a note in the notes field for the publication that the interviewee's name was spelled incorrectly, and give the form of the name actually used in the interview.
• Add Interviewee. If more than one person is being interviewed, this button will create a second interviewee field. As many interviewees as you wish can be added.
• Interviewer - The name of the interviewer. This name should not be corrected if mis-spelled, or given in a variant form; it follows the same rules as the rules for author name in a content record.
• Add Interviewer. If more than one person conducted this interview, this button will create a second interviewer field. As many interviewers as you wish can be added.

Once you're done entering the data, check it over, and then press the "Submit Data" button. This will put your data into the "submission queue". It won't immediately update the ISFDB. The submission queue is managed by the ISFDB moderators, who periodically look at the submissions and decided whether to approve or reject them. If you check back after a while you'll find you submission has been dealt with, and, most likely, approved. If you now search for your novel's title, you should see your book's data is now part of the ISFDB.

Letters to the Editor

Letters should be entered with the following format: Letter (publication name, publication date). Example. If the letter has a title the editor has the option to append it by adding a colon, a space, and the text of the title to the letter entry. Example. Entries should currently be restricted to significant letters by well-known sf personalities.

Letters may eventually be assigned their own Entry Type. if they are, existing titles will have to be modified manually.