Help:Screen:EditPub

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. For more on this and other header templates, see Header templates.

The Publication Editor allows you to modify information for a publication that already exists. The screen is very similar to the publication cloning screen; see the help for cloning for more information about the differences.

This screen is accessible via the "Edit this Pub" link, which is displayed in the left navbar whenever a publication is displayed.

Note that this screen does not permit removal of content items from the publication. There is a separate tool, Remove Titles from this Pub, for that purpose.

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 which are for Publication Information and Content Information.

Publication Information

Title

• 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 between spaces, 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 of a novel, omnibus, nonfiction, anthology, collection, short fiction, essay, or poem has a subtitle, enter it in the Title field using a colon to separate the title from the subtitle. For English language titles, the colon should be followed by a space. 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". For titles written in other languages, use language-specific rules for the use of colons. For example, in French, colons are both preceded and followed by a space (e.g., "Défricheurs d'imaginaire : une anthologie historique de science-fiction suisse romande"). If multiple subtitles exist, they should all be entered and separated with colons and spaces, e.g. A Son of the Ages: The Reincarnations and Adventures of Scar, the Link: A Story of Man from the Beginning. Note that 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 in the publication's Notes field.
  • Exceptions to the Subtitles rule. There are two scenarios where subtitles should not be entered in the Title field:
    • The subtitle is "A Novel" or its equivalent in the language of the title. This subtitle is generic and should not be entered in the Title field.
    • The title page displays the series name (and sometimes the title's position within the series) where the subtitle would normally be. The series information should not be treated as a subtitle or recorded in the Title field. Instead it should be recorded in the "Series" and "Series Number" fields of the Title record. You may still record it in the Notes field for the sake of completeness. For example, if the title page says "Song of the Dragon" and then "The Annals of Drakis: Book One" below it, you would enter "Song of the Dragon" in the Title field, "The Annals of Drakis" in the Series field, and "1" in the Series Number field. You could then optionally update the Notes field of the publication record with detailed information like "The title page states 'Song of the Dragon' over 'The Annals of Drakis: Book One'."
  • Case. Titles should have case regularized according to language-specific rules 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, the magazine Fantastic Universe typically printed story titles in lower case, but these titles are regularized for the ISFDB. For English titles, the ISFDB case regularization rules are as follows:
    • the first word is capitalized
    • all later words are capitalized except for "a", "an", "and", "at", "by", "for", "from", "in", "of", "on", "or", "the", "to", and "with"
    • hyphenated words have the first letter after the hyphen capitalized
    • exception: cartoon captions use the original case (see Template:TitleFields:TitleType for details)
  • Symbols, punctuation and non-English characters. Strange symbols should be entered if appropriate typographical characters exist. If not, do what you can and explain the issue in the publication notes. 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 "period", "period", "period" with no spaces in between the periods. 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. See How does the ISFDB deal with Unicode and accented characters? for more information about non-English characters.
  • Fonts. Do not use embedded HTML outside of Notes/Synopsis fields. If the title has one or more words in italics, boldface, or another unusual font, and the font seems important, it can be shown and/or described in a note.
  • 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 preferable, but the usage (be it the one of the magazine like Interzone or the one of the country of publication as in France) or an erratic or undocumented publication schedule may lead to the use of only the issue number. 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

• Author - The name of the author of the publication. The name should be entered exactly as it is actually given on the publication's title page. This includes pseudonyms, abbreviated names ("I. Asimov" instead of "Isaac Asimov", "Robert Heinlein" instead of "Robert A. Heinlein"), etc. Any variation of the author credit appearing in other parts of the publication (e.g. the cover or spine of the book) should be noted.
  • Editors, authors, translators, etc. If the publication is explicitly credited to an author (or authors) on its title page, use that name (or names). If it is an ANTHOLOGY, multi-author OMNIBUS, or multi-author work of NONFICTION, credit the editor as the "author" of the publication. For MAGAZINEs and FANZINEs, credit the issue editor as the "author" of the publication. (Note that for non-genre MAGAZINEs/FANZINEs, "Editors of PERIODICAL NAME" may be used instead of some or all editor names if they are unknown or unclear or not of genre interest -- see Help:Entering non-genre periodicals for details.) If the book is a COLLECTION or a single-author OMNIBUS, but also credits an editor, that credit can only be noted in the Note fields of the publication record and the title record. A multi-author OMNIBUS that has no editor credit (and no secondary source for the editor credit) should credit the authors of the contained fiction. (It is suggested that when there are five or more authors, that the editor should be entered as "uncredited".) There is currently no support in the ISFDB for translators or other non-author roles; this information should just be entered into the Note field (using the {{tr|translator name}} template).
  • 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". If you are working from a secondary source which does not specify the author, but does not explicitly state that no author is credited in the publication, use "unknown" rather than "uncredited". The intent is that the ISFDB record should reflect what is stated in the publication. This applies to editorship of anthologies that are not credited. If there is a publicly available source which identifies the publication's author/editor, the publication's main title record will be later turned into a variant title using the author/editor's canonical name.
  • 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 be converted 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.
  • Initials. Initials should normally be entered followed by a period and a space as "Gordon R. Dickson" or "K. D. Wentworth", even if the period or space is omitted in the publication. However, when it is clearly the author's choice to omit the period, or when the author has a single letter name that is not an initial (e.g. "Harry S Truman") the period should be omitted. In the rare case where an author prefers two (or more) initials as if they were a name (such as "TG Theodore"), without a period or space, and is so credited, we follow the author's preference. A possible clue to such cases occurs when most authors have initials shown with period and space, but a particular author is handled differently in a magazine or anthology. Checking other sources, such as a Wikipedia article or the author's web site, is a good idea. Such non-standard forms should be mentioned in a publication or title note.
  • Spaces in Names: Spaces within a name should be regularized. If a name differs from a canonical name or existing alternate name only by the lack of, or addition of, blank spaces, it should be entered as the existing name or alternate name. For example, a book credited to "Ursula LeGuin", "Lester DelRey", or "A. E. VanVogt" should be listed by including the missing space, e.g. "Lester del Rey". Conversely, if a book were credited to "John De Chancie", the extra space should be removed, and the book credited to "John DeChancie". One effect of this rule is to avoid subjective judgements when there appears to be a "partial space" in a name.
  • Alternate Names. If you know that a particular author's name is an alternate name, enter that alternate name rather than changing it to the canonical name. If the title page shows both an original and a subsequent name, use the original name. For example, Isaac Asimov's "Lucky Starr" books were originally published under the pseudonym of Paul French, but later reprints were given both names: "by Isaac Asimov, writing as Paul French". In these cases you should still enter Paul French as the author and record the dual credit in the notes. If the cover shows both names but the title page shows only one name, use the name from the title page -- no matter which it is -- and record the discrepancy with the cover credit in the notes. When a book is known to be ghost-written, this should be treated as an alternate name; the ghost-writer will eventually show up as having an alternate name of the well-known author, but that data is not entered via this field.
  • Non-English characters. Non-English characters, including accented Latin characters and all other Unicode characters, should be entered exactly as they appear in the publication. See the ISFDB FAQ for more information on accented characters.
  • Collaborations. If a work has multiple authors, it doesn't matter in which order you enter them. The ISFDB does not record author order regardless of how the authors are entered.
  • Writers "with" other writers. In some cases a writer is credited as writing a story "with" another author. If both names appear on the title page, both names should be recorded in the ISFDB. Although the "with" convention can indicate that the co-authors' contributions were not equal (often the more famous author did little more than lend their name to a project which was written almost entirely by the lesser known author), the "Author" field treats them as regular co-authors. A note can be added to the record explaining how the work is credited and giving additional information about the nature of the collaboration if publicly available.
  • 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 alternate 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."; "Frederick C. Durant, III"; and so on.
  • Duplicate Names. See Help:How to enter duplicate record names
• 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

• Date - The date of publication, in the form YYYY-MM-DD. The list below provides instructions for how to determine the date. DO NOT GUESS. Some date handling details are different for different types of publications. See Dating Periodicals and Dating Books for handling details specific to those publication types.
  • General Publication Date Policy - The ISFDB records a publication's date, as best it can be determined, according to the following general rules:
    • Start with the publication's stated publication date as the basis unless known to be/demonstrably for another printing or a misprint, in which case the inappropriate date should be recorded in the publication notes and otherwise treated as if absent.
    • A missing date, or a correction for an inappropriate date, may be supplied from secondary sources, as long as the source is recorded in the publication notes, along with the publication's original statement (or lack thereof). See Secondary Sources of Dates.
    • The base date optionally may be made more precise (e.g., supplying the month or day of publication) using information from a secondary source, if that source's date is otherwise consistent with publication's stated date. The source, and which details of the date were obtained from that source, must be recorded in the publication notes. See Secondary Sources of Dates.
    • Discrepancies between the publication's stated date and dates from secondary sources should be recorded in the publication notes.
  • Partial/Incomplete Dates - If the day or month is not known, use 00 in its place. Examples:
            1956-00-00 - "Published 1956"
        1956-11-00 - "Published November, 1956"
        1956-11-26 - "Published November 26, 1956"
  • Future Publication Dates - ISFDB captures records for some publications that have been announced for release in the future.
    • New publications announced for the near future (within the next 90 days) should be given that future publication date.
    • Do not create records for newly announced publications scheduled for release more than 90 days into the future, as these plans often change.
    • New publications announced for the future but with an unstated or unknown release date should be given the date 9999-00-00. Do not use this if the date is stated or known, and do not use this as a substitute or placeholder for a publication with an announced date more than 90 days into the future.
  • No Publication Date - When a publication's date is unknown or unavailable, use one of these special date values:
    • 0000-00-00 - The publication date is unknown
    • 8888-00-00 - The publication was announced (to be released in the past) but was not published.
    • 9999-00-00 - The publication has been announced (to be released in the future), with no known scheduled release date.
  • Dating Periodicals - Except for reprints (see Periodical Reprints), use the issue's "cover date", regardless of when the issue became available. The date usually appears on the cover or web page.
    • If more than one month is stated, use the earliest year and month. E.g. "December 1959/January 1960" should be entered as "1959-12-00".
    • For cover dates that cannot be assigned to a specific month, use the year only. E.g. "Spring 1943" should be entered as "1943-00-00".
    • If a more specific publication date consistent with the cover date is available, that may be used, as long as its source is recorded in the publication notes.
    • Periodical Reprints should be given the date of the publication of the reprinting, with the source of the date recorded in the publication notes. Follow the instructions in Dating Books.
    • Discrepancies between the cover date and any other source of date should be recorded in the publication notes.
  • Dating Books - Follow the General Publication Date Policy, and see Secondary Sources of Dates for more information about other sources of dates. A source used that is not the publication itself must be recorded in the publication notes, and recording of the book's actual statement (or lack thereof) is strongly encouraged.
    • Try to find 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 or copyrighted before publication. Also, some reprints reproduce the original publication date statement instead of providing an updated date for the reprinted edition. See Book Reprints for more information about identifying and dating reprints.
    • Sometimes a publication date is represented as a series of two-digit numbers on the verso of the title page, e.g., "98 99 00 01 02 03", which is shorthand for "1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003". The earliest date in the list applies to this printing. Later dates do not indicate that future printings are planned or scheduled. Whether such a number line refers to publication date or reprint number may be ambiguous (e.g., "01 02 03 04 05"), and care must be taken when assessing the meaning.
    • If there is a single statement about simultaneous publication in multiple locales but with differing dates, use the earliest date if this record is for all of the locales, and use the locale-specific date if this record is for just one of the locales. E.g., "Published in the USA March 1990 and Canada April 1990" should be entered as "1990-03-00" if this single record represents both locales or just the USA edition and should be entered as "1990-04-00" if this record represents just the Canada edition.
    • If multiple dates are stated, other than in the context of simultaneous publication in different locales, use the most recent date stated unless that is determined to be inappropriate (in which case, treat the date as missing and record that determination in the notes). The earlier dates in this list are a record of publication dates for earlier printings, and this publication's statement may be used as a Secondary Source of dates for other records in the database.
    • Book Reprints - The ISFDB records each different reprint of a publication, since there can be some significant differences between them, such as cover art, or price.
      • The date recorded should be the publication date of the reprint, not of the original edition.
      • Look out for signs that this is a reprint, such as a series of numbers at the bottom of the verso of the title page whose lowest number is higher than "1" (e.g. "3 4 5 6 7 8 9" indicates a third printing), a list of previous publication dates, or differences in price/cover/ancillary content between this publication and similar publications.
      • If you know, or suspect, you are holding a reprint, try to assess the likelihood that any stated date applies to this specific printing. If there is a stated date, and it does not seem suspect, use it. If the stated date is suspect and/or there is no way to determine the date, use one of the special date values described in No Publication Date. Here are some examples of indications about a stated date's reliability:
        • Suggesting reliable: The publication also lists past publication dates, the stated date is later than dates for previous printings, a later printing's list of previous printings corroborates this printing's statement.
        • Suggesting suspect: The stated date is earlier than a stated date on contained material (ads, artwork, sometimes an introduction), contained advertising lists for sale publications not available at the stated date, the identical statement in another printing is known to be incorrect, multiple printings (especially with different prices) state the same date.
  • Discrepancies Between Stated Date and Reality - 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.
  • Secondary Sources of Dates - A "secondary" source is any source other than the publication itself. Dates, and date details, may be obtained from any of the following secondary sources, as long as the source and the publication's original statement are recorded in the notes. Editors are encouraged to provide page numbers or (stable) links for the secondary source information, where available. This list is roughly in descending order of how authoritative ISFDB considers them. For sources other than those with first-hand involvement, bibliographic databases and library catalogs are usually more authoritative than other sources, such as reviews or interviews. Also, databases and catalogs in the same country or region as the publication are usually more authoritative than databases and catalogs based elsewhere. Editors are strongly encouraged to seek independent corroboration of dates from sources lower in the list.
    • First-hand participant (publisher, editor, author, contributor, artist) website/blog/catalog
    • A later printing/edition's historical publication statement
    • Other bibliographic databases and library catalogs, such as the ISFDB Verification Sources (list and details)
    • Second-hand participant (new book seller website/catalog, new book announcement/list, new book review, etc.)
    • Calculation based on codes, known announcement + publication timings, etc. (e.g., for book clubs)
    • Other sources, such as interviews and used book seller websites/catalogs

Publisher

• 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" would be the 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 preceding city, as "London: Mammoth Books Ltd" or "New York: Giant Press inc". In such cases, list only the actual name of the publisher, not the city. (Existing records should not be changed to match this standard without considering how to avoid data loss). The city or country can be listed in the notes field of the publisher record, or on an associated wiki page, or both. Where needed to avoid confusion, a country suffix may be used, so we might have, for example, "Mammoth Books (UK)" and "Mammoth Books (Canada)".
• Science Fiction Book Club books should be entered as "Publisher / SFBC" where Publisher is the publisher name stated on the publication. Also see How to enter a SFBC publication.

Pages

• Pages - This field is used to record the number of pages in the publication, or its "page count". For books, the general rule is to use the last printed page number, with exceptions explained below. For magazines, the rule is to use the actual page count - including the cover. For example, early issues of Fantastic Universe numbered the interior pages from 1 to 192, not counting the front or back covers. This would be entered into the ISFDB record as "196".

• Some magazines 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, and the page numbering is continuous from one issue to the next within that volume. In these cases, manually count the number of pages, including the covers, and enter this number in the page count field. This should be noted in the record, 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 both sets of numbers. For example, a book with a page count field of "viii+320" has "viii" as the highest numbered page with a Roman numeral. (Note that there are no spaces in the page count.) Pages without numbers that fall between the two types of page numbering can be ignored. Note that you should include the enumeration of the pages in Roman numerals even if there is no material that requires a separate content record (such as an introduction or preface) in those pages. This is in contrast with the situation with unnumbered pages prior to page 1; see the following bullet point for what to do in that case.
• Sometimes a publication will have unnumbered pages before page 1. If there is any material in these pages which needs to be entered as part of the contents of the book, you may record this by entering the count in squared brackets. For example, [6]+320 would be a publication with six unnumbered pages and then 320 numbered pages. There is no need to record these unnumbered pages if they contain no content that needs to be recorded. At times you will need to count backwards from the first numbered page to see which is page 1 and then would count the unnumbered pages that are before this. Likewise, you may record the count of unnumbered pages at the end of a publication. For example, 320+[4]. As before, only do this if there is additional content in these pages that requires the creation of a content record, as when there is an afterword or book excerpt which appears on unnumbered pages.
• Some publications, e.g. dos-à-dos books and certain omnibuses, have multiple sets of page numbers, one for each part of the book. These sets should be separated with the plus sign, e.g. "256+120+174".
• For multi-volume publications, use commas to separate the page counts for each volume, e.g. "vii+387, xii+422".
• For ebooks, do not enter in this field the number of pages. The estimated number given by the publisher or some sites may be specified in the "Notes" field.
• It is fairly common for the last page (or more) of text in a book to be unnumbered. In this case, count forward to the last page of text and use that as the publication's page count. For example, if a novel ends on the unnumbered page after page 244, enter the page count as "245" with an explanatory note about the unnumbered last page.
• If a publication is not paginated (no printed numbers), you may leave the field blank. You also have the option of manually counting the pages and entering that number in squared brackets in the page count field. For example "[48]". In either case, enter "Not paginated" in the note field.
• For more information and examples about this field for books see this how-to.

Pub Format (Binding)

• Format - This is the format of the publication. Select one of the following choices from the drop-down list:

• Print books
  • 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, which should not be designated as "hc".) Unlike other formats, this designation takes preference over "dos" for the case of hardcover dos-a-dos publications, such as Up to the Sky in Ships / In and Out of Quandry.
  • tp - trade paperback. Used for any softcover book which is larger than a standard paperback, except when the format is either "dos" or "ph" (see below), in which case those designations take precedence. Any other book that is at least 7.25" (or 19 cm) tall, or at least 4.5" (11.5 cm) wide/deep, and is not a hardback, should be entered as "tp". 7.5" × 5" is a common size, but there exist many variant sizes larger than this, including large format artbooks with paper covers, for example. (For the purposes of this database "height" and "width/depth" are the dimensions of the cover; neither should be understood to mean the "thickness" of a book.)
  • pb - paperback. Typically 7" × 4.25" (18 cm × 11 cm) or smaller, though trimming errors can cause them to sometimes be slightly (less than 1/4 extra inch) taller or wider/deeper. For books as tall as 7.25" (19 cm) or as wide/deep as 4.5" (11.5 cm) use "tp". Low-height paperbacks such as Ace Books from the fifties, and similar publications can be about half an inch shorter. Such variations in size below the typical 7" × 4.25" do not need to be noted unless significant. If a book qualifies as a "dos" or "ph" (pamphlet), those designations take precedence over "pb". (For the purposes of this database "height" and "width/depth" are the dimensions of the cover; neither should be understood to mean the "thickness" of a book.)
  • ph - pamphlet. Used for short (in page count), unbound, staple-bound, or otherwise lightly bound publications.
  • digest - Used for books which are similar in size and binding to digest-formatted magazines, using the standard digest size of approximately 7" × 4.5" (17.8 cm x 11.4 cm).
  • dos - Used for dos-a-dos or tête-bêche formatted paperback books, such as Ace Doubles and Capra Press back-to-back books. This format is not to be used for hardcover dos-a-dos books.
• Audio books
  • audio CD - Compact disc with standard audio tracks
  • audio MP3 CD - Compact disc with mp3-encoded audio tracks
  • audio cassette - Cassette tape
  • audio LP - Long-playing record (vinyl)
  • digital audio player - Player with a pre-loaded digital file of the audiobook
  • digital audio download - Digital recording in any format that is downloaded directly from the Internet. This category includes podcasts.
• Print magazines
  • digest - includes both standard digest size, at about 4.5" x 7" (11.4 cm x 17.8 cm), and also large digest, such as recent issues of Asimov's, which are about 5.125" x 8.25" (13.0 cm x 21.0 cm).
  • pb - paperback-formatted magazines, i.e. periodical publications which otherwise would qualify as paperbacks (see "pb" in the Print books section), e.g. the 1964-1967 issues of New Worlds
  • pulp - the common pulp size: 6.5" × 9.5" (16.5 cm x 24.1 cm). For ISFDB purposes this may also be used as a designation for the quality of the paper. There are some untrimmed pulps that are as large as 8" × 11.75 (20.3 cm x 29.8 cm)"
  • bedsheet - 8.5" × 11.25" (21.6 cm x 28.6 cm), e.g. early issues of Amazing; or the 1942-43 issues of Astounding
  • tabloid - 11" × 16" (27.9 cm x 40.6 cm), usually newsprint, e.g. British Science Fiction Monthly
  • A4 - 21 cm × 29.7 cm or 8.3" × 11.7", used by some UK and European magazines
  • A5 - 14.8 cm × 21 cm or 5.8" × 8.3", used by some UK and European magazines
  • quarto - 8.5" × 11" (21.6 cm x 27.9 cm), usually saddle-stapled, instead of side-stapled or glued
  • octavo - 5.5" × 8.5" (14.0 cm x 21.6 cm), usually saddle-stapled, instead of side-stapled or glued
  • tp - trade paperback magazines, usually perfect-bound, i.e. periodical publications (often POD) which otherwise would qualify as trade paperbacks (see "tp" in the Print books section)
  • Note: If a magazine is between the sizes of these categories, use the one with the closest description, and add a note in the record. Small variations do not need to be noted.
• Electronic books and periodicals
  • ebook - Used for all electronic formats, including but not limited to EPUB, eReader, HTML, iBook, Mobipocket, and PDF. Specify the particular formats available in the record's note field. If unknown, specify the reader: iPad, Kindle, Nook, etc. This designation is also used for downloadable electronic issues of Internet-based periodical publications, aka "ezines".
  • webzine - Used for Internet-based periodical publications which are otherwise not downloadable as an "ebook". Not all webzines are eligible for inclusion in the ISFDB. Initiate discussions about inclusion/eligibility on the Community Portal.
• other - Choose this value if a publication can not fit comfortably into any of the above categories. This includes publications distributed via e-mail, on CD-ROM and other uncommon formats. Make sure to describe the details in the Note field. Assistance for clarification can be requested at the Help Desk.
• unknown - Choose this value if you're creating or updating a record from a secondary source and the publication format is unknown. This is the default choice when entering new publications.

PubType

• Pub Type - Identifies the type of publication. On the New Publication page, this field is not editable and the value is pre-filled based on which "New ..." menu option you previously selected. On the Edit Publication page, this is a drop down menu of the following choices:
  • ANTHOLOGY. A publication containing fiction by more than one author, not written in collaboration, should be typed as an ANTHOLOGY. 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.
  • CHAPBOOK. This publication type is a unique ISFDB designation for a separate publication of a single work of SHORTFICTION (q.v.), a single POEM or a single SERIAL installment of a longer work. In addition to the single SHORTFICTION, POEM or SERIAL content record, such publications may also contain one or more ESSAY and INTERIORART content records. This type covers all bindings and formats, including ebooks and audiobooks of less-than-novel length fiction.
    • Do not use this type for publications which contain a single ESSAY without a SHORTFICTION, POEM or SERIAL content. Those publications should be entered as NONFICTION.
    • Publications with more than one SHORTFICTION, POEM or SERIAL content record should be entered as ANTHOLOGY (for multiple-author publications) or COLLECTION (for single-author publications). The following types of SHORTFICTION titles are ignored when deciding whether the publication is a CHAPBOOK:
      • Supporting and incidental material such as excerpts, synopses, and fictionalized essays
      • Up to one bonus short story, poem or short serial installment, but only if the publication's title page lists only the main title and the main title's author(s)
    • Do not merge a CHAPBOOK's title record with its identically titled content record. (The "Check for Duplicate Titles" function no longer matches such records for merging consideration.)
    • CHAPBOOK title records should not contain a synopsis nor be entered into a title series. Both of those should be added to the content title record.
    • This type should not be confused with the generally accepted publishing format for pamphlets called chapbook or the term used for books intended for intermediate readers called chapter book.
  • COLLECTION. A publication containing two or more works of SHORTFICTION or POEMs by a single author or authors writing in collaboration should be typed as a COLLECTION. The typing of individual publications which contain works with various combinations of author credit should be discussed on the Community Portal on a case-by-case basis. The title page credit should be the major factor in determining the types of these kinds of publications. Excerpts from other works published after a NOVEL for promotional purposes do not make the publication into a COLLECTION.
  • FANZINE. This publication type is to be used for non-professional or amateur-published magazines.
  • MAGAZINE. This publication type is to be used for both professionally published magazines and newspapers. As a general rule, a magazine must have a common title from issue to issue and an enumeration (or dating) system of some kind. However, note that in some cases it can be difficult to determine if something should be entered as a magazine or as a book. For example, some magazines were published using a physical format which made them look like books. Conversely, some series of books were published with titles which included their publication date and included letter columns. Borderline cases such as the New Worlds Quarterly anthology series should be discussed on ISFDB:Help desk or the Community Portal.
  • NONFICTION. This publication type should be used for books that are predominantly or completely non-fiction. This includes book-length works of non-fiction or books containing essays by one or more authors. A publication that contains both non-fiction and fiction should be typed by that which is predominant. A single work of fiction in an Isaac Asimov essay collection does not make it a COLLECTION. A book of fiction (NOVEL, COLLECTION, or ANTHOLOGY) containing a generous, but not predominate, amount of non-fiction, such as introductions, essays, and other non-fiction works, should not be typed as NONFICTION. Mixtures of fiction and non-fiction are more usually found in magazines than they are in books, so the question does not often arise.
  • 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. 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 as an omnibus if it contains multiple works that have previously been published independently, and at least one of them is a NOVEL, ANTHOLOGY, COLLECTION, or NONFICTION. 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 on ISFDB:Help desk or the Community Portal.
  • Boxed sets. Boxed sets which have additional data elements (ISBNs, cover art, etc) not present in the individual books that they collect should be entered as OMNIBUS publications. Boxed sets which do not have additional data elements and are merely bundlings of pre-existent books should not be entered.
  • Other Types
    • Fixups. This is a single work composed primarily of several previously published works. It should generally be typed as 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 these cases, it is possible that the publication could be typed as either COLLECTION or NOVEL. The decision should be discussed with other verifiers or on a community page if there is any doubt. Factors that should be taken into consideration: table of contents page, title pages for the constituent parts, the publisher's marketing of the book, and the author's personal designation of the work.
    • "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 field.

ISBN

• ISBN - Enter the ISBN if the publication has one. Note that prior to 2007 all ISBNs were 10 digits long while around 2007 they were expanded to 13 digits. Some books printed during the transition period specified both the 10 digit version 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.
  • You may enter the ISBN with or without hyphens. If the ISBN is valid then the ISFDB software will display it with hyphens.
  • If the ISBN is delimited with spaces, enter the ISBN using hyphens instead of spaces.
  • If the ISBN is of the form "0-586-06604-7-275", do not enter the last hyphen and the three digits that follow it. They indicate the publication's price and are not part of the ISBN.
  • Some English language books published during the late 1960s and 1970s used nine digit "SBN"s without a leading zero. When entering these publications, add the leading zero.
  • If you entered a value that was not exactly as stated in the publication, e.g. an SBN, explain the details in the Note field.
  • Note that magazine ISSNs should not be entered in this field. This is because ISSNs identify the magazine as a whole rather than a particular issue. If an ISSN is present, you can enter it in the Note field of the series that this magazine issue belongs to.
  • If a publication has more than one ISBN, then enter one in the ISBN field and list the others in the Notes field.

Price

• Price - The original cover price of this publication. Enter a single price, e.g. for books published in both the USA and Canada, only the USA price should be entered in this field. Instead, additional prices can (and usually should) be entered in the Notes field. This is done because the value in this field is used to differentiate between print editions, search the ISFDB data or construct statistics on book pricing, which would be difficult to do if multiple prices were present in the same field.

The numeric price value should be preceded with a currency symbol (like "$", "€" or "£") or an alphabetical abbreviation of the currency (like DM, Lit or Ft). See below for a list of commonly used currency symbols and alphabetical abbreviations. The only time a currency symbol is not used is when entering older (pre-decimalisation) British prices which are discussed below.

Prices under a dollar (or other currency unit) are entered as a decimal, 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 should be entered as $0.20. Note that a few currencies like the Bahraini dinars use three digits after the decimal separator.

Period (".") should be used as the decimal separator and comma (",") as the thousands separator, regardless of currency or native number format, e.g. €7.80 or Lit 1,000.

Do not enter a space when the currency is represented by a symbol (e.g. $, £, €, ¥, ℳ, F). When using an alphabetical (non-symbolic) form or abbreviation of the currency (e.g. DM, Lit, Ft), enter a space between it and the numeric amount. The currency's "Yes"/"No" value in the "Abbrev." column of the Help:List of currency symbols table determines whether it's a symbol or an abbreviation.

Special note on British currency:

• British currency should be indicated by a UK pound sign, "£". For example, "£2.50" means two pounds fifty pence. If you can't enter "£" on your keyboard, you can use an uppercase "L" instead. As long as the "L" is followed for a digit, it will be automatically converted to "£" when the submission is created. Note that for Windows machines, the "Character Map" system accessory can be used to generate the pound sign as well as other characters. Alternatively, Windows users can hold down one of the ALT keys, enter 0163 (i.e. zero followed by 163) on the numeric keypad, then release the ALT key. Mac users can type OPTION-3.
• In the 1970s, many British books cost less than a pound and so would be priced in pence alone, e.g. 25p. These should be regularized like dollars and cents, e.g. 25p should be entered as £0.25 and 95p as £0.95.
• Older British books were priced in shillings, or shillings and pence, where 20 shillings equals one pound and 12 old pence equals one shilling. Shillings were indicated with a variety of suffixes, e.g. 3s, 3', 3", 3/ all mean 3 shillings. Any number after that is additional pence, usually 6 (half a shilling) but sometimes 3 or 9 (a quarter of a shilling or three-quarters of a shilling). A "-" indicates zero pence, for example 5/-. The older the book, the more likely the pence prices are to reflect quarter shilling ranges than half-shillings. We always record the pence in ISFDB even if 0 (indicated by "-"), and use the "/" separator, e.g. 3/6 is used to mean three shillings and sixpence even if the book says 3s6 or 3'6; a price of three shillings exactly would be 3/- even if indicated on the book as 3s, 3" or 3' or even plain "Three shillings".
• Even older British paperback books, and magazines, may have been priced in pennies alone, indicated by a "d" suffix. E.g. 6d is six old pence, or half a shilling, 9d is nine old pence or three-quarters of a shilling. These are entered the same way as other pre-decimal prices but using the '-' for zero shillings, e.g. -/6 and -/9 in these examples.
• Note that between about 1968 and 1971, British books were usually printed with both pre-decimal and 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. The official date of conversion to decimal currency was Feb. 15, 1971. For a couple of years afterward, the pre-decimal price might be shown in brackets after the decimal price for people still not used to decimal currency: these can be ignored or left in notes.
• British books are often priced for several other commonwealth countries such as Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Malta, Gibraltar, South Africa, East Africa, Trinidad (W.I.), and countries with a significant English-speaking population such as Spain and the Republic of Ireland. These additional prices are usefully entered in notes. Some of these countries also have pre-decimal formats based on the British pound and post-decimal formats similar to Dollar prices, and some have changed yet again to € (Euro) prices. If in doubt, enter these in notes exactly as stated.

See Help:List of currency symbols for information about other supported currencies. If the currency that you are trying to enter is not listed, use the most commonly used symbol or abbreviation.

If you believe that the currency is uncommon enough that most ISFDB users will not recognize it, add an explanatory note. For example, if you enter ₹2,000 in the price field, add a note that the price was stated in Indian rupees.

Overprinted prices should use the visible price. However, if the price change is via a stickered label, the price change should be ignored. For example, copies of the British distribution of some American magazines were stickered with a British price. These are not British reprint editions of those magazines, but simply imported copies of the American edition, so a separate publication record with a separate price value should not be created for them.

If there is any ambiguity about the price, add an explanation in the Notes field.

Artist

• Title - Title of the COVERART record. Note that this field is not displayed when entering new publications or editing/cloning publications without COVERART records. If this field is displayed, its value should be the title of the publication.
• Date - Date of the COVERART record. Note that this field is not displayed when entering new publications or editing/cloning publications without COVERART records. If this field is displayed, its value should be the date of the first known appearance of the COVERART title.
• Artist - Cover artist responsible for the cover art. If not known, leave blank. If there is no cover art, leave the field blank, but consider adding a comment in the Notes field to that effect so that it's clear to other editors that the artist field has not been simply ignored. For other sources of artist attribution use the following rules in the order they are listed below:
  • If the artist's canonical name is stated in the publication, enter it
  • If the artist's alternate name is stated in the publication, enter it and make sure to create a Variant Title later
  • If the publication has no explicit artist credit, but another printing of the same book credits the artist:
    • Import the COVERART title from the printing with the artist credit
    • Adjust the COVERART title's date to reflect its earliest known appearance
    • Update the Notes field with the source of the attribution
  • If the cover has the artist's initials, enter the artist's canonical name if known and update the Notes field with the source of the attribution
  • If the cover has an artist-specific symbol (e.g. a stylized version of the artist's initials), enter the artist's canonical name if known and update the Notes field with the source of the attribution
  • If the cover has a recognizable signature, enter the canonical name if known and update the Notes field with the source of the attribution
  • If the publication has no explicit artist credit, but a secondary source credits the artist, enter the canonical name and update the Notes field with the source of the attribution
  • If the publication has no explicit artist credit, but the credit is implied (e.g. a small section is reproduced as a credited INTERIORART work), treat it as a "secondary bibliographic source" scenario described above: enter the canonical name and update the Notes field with the source of the attribution
  • If the publication has no explicit artist credit and no secondary or implied credit, but the artist's style is recognizable, leave the "Artist" field blank and update the Notes with the name of the artist and reason for attribution
• Additional Note on Cover Artists and Designers: Note that entering the artist's name in the "Artist" field will actually create a "COVERART" content record behind the scenes; the COVERART record will have the same title as the title of the publication. The cover designer (as opposed to the cover artist) is only entered in this field if he or she also did (parts of) the cover art. Otherwise the cover designer can be recorded in the note field.
• Add Artist - If the cover art is credited to more than one artist, use this button to create a second artist field. As many artists as you wish can be added.
• Add Cover - If there is more than one COVERART record associated with this publication, use this button to create an additional record. This typically happens when dealing with "dos-a-dos" books.
• 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.

ImageURL

• Image URL - A URL to an image of the cover art.
  • Make sure to select an image that matches the publication, especially if the publication has been verified. If the only available image is close but not an exact copy of what appears on the cover of the publication, add a publication note explaining the differences.
  • If you have a scan of the image on your hard drive, you can upload it to the ISFDB Wiki -- see How to upload images to the ISFDB wiki for details. Use the "Upload cover image" or "Upload new cover image" link on the publication display page to simplify the uploading process and then enter the URL of the Wiki-hosted image in this field.
  • The URL entered in this field should always point directly to the image, not to the Web page that contains the image. If the external site hosting the image requires you to link to the Web page that contains the image (e.g. SFE3 -- see below), then append the "pipe" character ("|") and the Web page's URL at the end of the URL of the image.
  • Only use images hosted by ISFDB or by external sites which have given ISFDB explicit permission to link to them. At this time these sites are:
  • 1632.org and ericflint.net and grantvillegazette.com and riversofwar.com Permission to link to any of these 1632, Inc. domains granted by "Head Geek" Rick Boatright via email to moderators on 2011-06-18.
  • Ace image library "I give you permission to use whatever images that you need from the ACE IMAGE LIBRARY for the ISFDB and appreciate the credit notation for this usage. I should note that a couple of the AIL images (primarily for original cover art or prelliminary drawings as well as a couple of the inserts or daybills for the Man From U.N.C.L.E movies) have been permitted to the AIL from other sources. These are noted on the appropriate AIL page and if you use these you may wish to credit them as "Original art / movie art for ........ . Permission for use given to AIL."
  • Amazon - As an Amazon associate, ISFDB has implicit permission to use Amazon's images. Things to keep in mind when linking to an Amazon-hosted image:
    • Check that the image is actually the correct one for your edition.
    • Keep in mind that if a publication is still in print, Amazon may replace its image with an updated one without warning.
    • A good-quality medium-sized image is usually available by clicking on the "See This Image" link under the smaller cover image. Some Amazon pages do not have this link, but the larger version can be obtained by right-clicking on the image and copying its URL. This works even for those books that generally only display a thumbnail marred by the "Look Inside" banner.
    • Many images displayed by Amazon contain additional formatting such as borders, shades, framing, shrinking and so on. The formatting is embedded in Amazon URLs by adding an underscore and a special code. For example, "AA" adds white borders, "SS" changes the size of the image, "SL" creates a small thumb, and "CR" adds cropping. Except for "CR" (see below), these formatting codes are not supported by the ISFDB software. Remove them from the URL before entering it into the database. This is accomplished by removing everything starting with the penultimate period up to the final period.
    • If an Amazon image contains unwanted elements, e.g. a large background or other books, you can add cropping before the final period in the URL. The format is "._CR102,6,148,257", where "._CR" tells Amazon to crop the images, "102" is the left border, "6" is the top border, "148" is the width and "257" is the height. Follow this link to ecx.images-images-amazon.com/images/I/41SpdLJPcRL._CR102,6,148,257.jpg to see the result.
  • Armchair Fiction. Permission has been granted by the owner, Gregory Luce, via an Armchair Fiction employee, Susan Greer: "I have consulted the owner of Armchair Fiction, Gregory Luce, and he has authorized me to give permission to link to images on our website. Thanks, Susan Greer".
  • Black Bed Sheet Books / Downwarden.com. Permission has been granted by the owner, Nicholas Grabowsky (Downwarden) to link to images on this website: I'm the publisher/owner of Black Bed Sheet Books and give permission for ISFDB to use images from www.downwarden.com
  • Bookscans ("Graphically illustrating the evolution of vintage American paperbacks - 1939 through 1979") "The ISFDB hereby has permission to link to any page or picture on the BookScans web site."
  • Collectors Showcase This is a great source for images of pulps, digests and early hardcover editions, and not just French publications.
  • Dagan Books Permission to link images use other public information given by Carrie Cuinn, the site owner, on 2010-12-15.
  • De Boekenplank is a website devoted to Dutch-language SF. Permission to link images granted by the site owner, Kees Buis, via e-mail to the ISFDB moderators on 2011-04-27.
  • Diamond Bay Research and Yunchtime. Permission granted by Lex Berman, the sites' owner, via e-mail.
  • DrangStories.com. Permission granted by the owner, Steve Pendergrast aka Peter S. Drang, via e-mail on 2023-06-08.
  • 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.
  • 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 one. Fantastic Fiction's bandwidth is limited and displaying the image in the ISFDB record may take time. Also, the quality of their images vary greatly so they should only be a source for otherwise unavailable images.
  • Fantlab.ru Permission to link images granted by the site owner, Alexey Lvov, via e-mail from one of the moderators, User:Papyrus, in January 2011.
  • Phil Stephensen-Payne's "Galactic Central" - ISFDB has explicit permission to use images hosted by "Galactic Central".
  • Howard Works Permission to link images granted by the site administrator, Bill Thom, via e-mail on 2017-11-29.
  • 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.
  • jeddicon.com Permission to link images given by the site owner on 2020-08-29.
  • Lawrence Dagstine Permission to link to Wordpress-hosted filed displayed on Lawrence Dagstine's Web site (lawrencedagstine.files.wordpress.com) granted by the site's owner on 2024-03-21.
  • The Luminist League Permission to link images given by the site owner on 2010-12-16.
  • 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."
  • Mondourania Italian language site. Has images of covers from many Italian SF publications. Automatically credited based on ImageURL domain.
  • Nathan M Hurst. Permission has been granted by the owner, Nathanmhurst, to link to images on this website.
  • Nitchevo Factory -- see wp.com.
  • Ofearna. Permission has been granted by the owner, Ofearna, to link to images on this website.
  • Open Library is an open source project sponsored by the Internet Archive. All their content is available for reuse under a free license. They grant permission for the sort of hotlinking we do at http://openlibrary.org/dev/docs/api/covers, and we now automatically include a backlink based on their domain, as we do for most whitelisted sites.
  • Jennifer R. Povey's site. Permission granted by the owner on 2020-03-07.
  • Pulpcovers.com. Permission granted on this Talk page in 2013.
  • SciFiwise.com. Permission granted on the "About" Web page under "Policies and Legal Stuff" on 2023-06-23.
  • SFE - The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, 3rd edition. Permission granted by Dave Langford via e-mail after consulting other SFE3 editors. Note that we are only allowed to link to SFE3-hosted images that reside in the following sub-directories: /clute/, /langford/ and /robinson/. Images residing in other sub-directories were provided to SFE3 by third parties and SFE3 can't give us permission to link to them. In addition, all SFE3-hosted images must have a link to the associated "Gallery" page added after a "pipe" ("|") character. For example, the value of the "Image URL" field of the Blow, Blow Your Trumpets publication record is "http://sf-encyclopedia.uk/gal/clute/FrazerS-Blow.jpg|http://sf-encyclopedia.uk/gallery.php?id=FrazerS-Blow.jpg", where the first URL is that of the image itself and the second URL (after the "|") is that of the "Gallery" page which provides additional information about the image.
  • Smashwords. Permission granted by Mark Coker, the site's owner, via e-mail on 2017-07-07. Images should include a link to the Web page hosting the image. For example, the value of the "Image URL" field of The Book of Deacon publication record is "https://dwtr67e3ikfml.cloudfront.net/bookCovers/e3ba312dc241e64efa4ceabb6954251e6a9ddce9-thumb|https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/9354", where the first URL is that of the image itself and the second URL (after the "|") is that of the Smashwords Web page for the publication.
  • SF-Leihbuch German SF. Images should include a permanlink to the Web page hosting the image after a "|". The permalink URL is displayed at the bottom of all SF-Leihbuch Web pages. Permission granted by the site administrator in May 2019.
  • Starship Sloane Publishing "a small, independent, traditional publishing company establishing itself in the literary marketplace." Permission granted by the owner via email on 2023-12-06.
  • The Trash Collector Small images, but wide variety. Scott Stine, owner, says "Feel free to link to the pictures on my website. [...] Thanks for writing and asking permission, and good luck on your worthy endeavor."
  • Urania Mania. Mostly Italian covers, permission granted in 2012-04.
  • 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.
  • http://vonniewinslowcrist.files.wordpress.com and http://vonniewinslowcrist.wordpress.com, owned by Vonnie Winslow Crist. Permission received in 2017-03 -- see FR 1009.
  • Robert G. Williscroft's Web sites: http://argee.net/, http://thrawnrickle.com/, http://slingshotnovel.com, http://starchildcompact.com, http://ivy-bells.com, http://relativitybirthdaypresent.com, http://chickenlittleagenda.com. Permission received via e-mail on 2017-10-10.
  • wp.com, used by Nitchevo Factory.
  • Before using a site not listed above, ask the Webmaster of that site for permission. If you receive permission to link to a new source, post about it on the ISFDB Community Portal. This will notify other editors that they may use this new site and one of the moderators will update the list above. More information about the process of requesting permission and a sample letter can be found at ISFDB:Image linking permissions.

Pub Series

The Pub Series and corresponding Pub Series # fields allow the entry of a Publication Series name. A Publication series is a group of publications marked out by the Publisher in some way. Unlike ordinary content-based series, different publications or editions of a book may belong to different Publication series. The Pub Series # field is to indicate this publication's numerical place in the series. Not all Publication Series have numbers. if no number is known this field is left blank. See Help:Screen:PublicationSeries for more detail on Publication Series.

PubNote

• 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 the printing number and date is derived from a number line (aka "printer's key"), 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." For more information on number lines/printer's keys, see:
    • Wikipedia
    • Editions and Printings, How to Tell the Difference: a Guide for Book Collectors
    • First Edition Identification on Raptis Rare Books, which discusses different conversions used by different publishers
  • 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".
  • Templates and HTML. Certain templates and a limited subset of HTML can be used in note fields. See Help:Using Templates and HTML in Note Fields. HTML is never required.

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 review and interview columns. 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 the columns containing those items.

General contents

When you are viewing or editing an ISFDB publication record, the data in the upper part of the page is from the publication record and the data in the Contents section is composed of ISFDB title records. Any changes in the Contents section -- other than the page numbers -- will be update the original title record which can be referenced from multiple publications. If your change only applies to the way the title appears in the current publication -- which is often the case -- then changing all publications is not what you want to happen. For this reason any title that appears in more than one publication is greyed out and not editable in the Publication Editor. The only two fields that you can edit are the page number field and the "Story length" field, which is only meaningful for short fiction.

If you need to make a change to a title, author name, date or title type and find that you can't do it directly because the field is not editable, use the [Add Title] button and set up the new title record which matches what's in your publication. You can then remove the old/incorrect title record using the “Remove Titles From This Pub” option which is available from the publication display screen.

If you need to change an attribute which applies to the title record itself and should affect all publications that the title appears in, access that title's Bibliography page and use Edit Title to make the change directly.

What to Include

This section will help editors to determine whether a contained work should be entered as a separate content record in a ISFDB publication record.

Contents always included

• Fiction: All forms of fiction are always included.
• Essays: Shorter works of nonfiction (other than reviews and interviews; see below) contained in a larger work, i.e. book or magazine, are entered as ESSAY type in the "Regular Titles" section of the data entry form. These include, but are not limited to:
  • Forewords, introductions, prefaces, afterwords, endnotes, etc.: These should all be included. Occasionally some pieces 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.
  • Editorials: These are entered as ESSAY type, not EDITOR.
  • Science fact articles: Restricted to those published in a speculative fiction publication.
  • Letter columns. Letter columns should be included as a separate content record. Entered as ESSAY type.
  • Individual letters to the editor published in magazines: Entries may be restricted to significant letters by well-known speculative fiction personalities. Editors have the option to include other letters. All letters should be entered using the following format: "Letter (Title of Magazine, Date)". If the letter has a title, append a colon, a space, and the text of the title: "Letter (Title of Magazine, Date): Letter Title".
• Reviews: Reviews of books and short fiction that are eligible for inclusion in the database based on the Rules of Acquisition should be entered into the "Reviews" section of the data entry form. A title in this section is automatically typed as REVIEW.
  • Reviews of media products (films, TV shows, games, music and dramatized recordings), stage productions, magazines and fanzines (regardless of their genre), and books that are not eligible for inclusion in the database (graphic novels, nongenre novels by authors that are below the threshold, nonassociational nonfiction works), should not be entered into the "Reviews" section of the data entry form. A record should be created in the "Regular Titles" section typed as ESSAY. If the review is not titled, this title format is suggested: Review of "Work" by Responsible Person(s). Descriptions of the type of work are also encouraged. For example: Review of the graphic novel "Agatha Heterodyne and the Clockwork Princess" by Phil & Kaja Foglio.
• Interviews: These are entered into the "Interview" section of the data entry form, crediting both the interviewee and the interviewer. A title in this section is automatically typed as INTERVIEW. An author profile, which is usually entered as ESSAY, may contain substantial direct quotes from the author, and may also be entered as INTERVIEW.
• Interior artwork: Works of art published inside the publication are entered into the "Regular Titles" section of the data entry form and typed as INTERIORART. For more information, see INTERIORART. Note: Cover art credit is entered into its own separate section of the data entry form. If there is a significant reproduction of the cover art inside the publication, it can also be entered as a separate INTERIORART record.

Contents included with exceptions

• 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" and other biographical sketches: Include these when they are separate entries in the publication and are of substantial length or quality. Don't include them when they are part of a blurb or lead-in, or otherwise insignificant. Eligible works should be entered as ESSAYs.
• Forthcoming announcements: 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 doesn't get indexed, but an article, e.g. "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.
• Calendars: Calendar pages, such as "The Analog Calendar of Upcoming Events", should be indexed. Insubstantial listings should not.
• Acknowledgments: Generally do not include. Occasionally an acknowledgments 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.
• Reader polls: A clip-out coupon (or something similar) for readers to send in to vote on their favorite stories should not be included. A significant amount of text accompanying the poll coupon may be worth indexing, per the other rules. For example, a listing in the table of contents. The results of reader polls are likely to be worth recording, however; they will be entered as ESSAYs.
• Dedicatory material: Dedications, as a rule, are never included, with one exception: when work from other authors is used as dedicatory or other introductory material. For example, Denise Levertov's poem "Come into Animal Presence" appears in introductory section of Ursula Le Guin's collection Buffalo Gals and Other Animal Presences. It is also included in the table of contents. Such an exception warrants that the work be indexed in the publication record.
• 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, with a note in the record that the CD is included. A poster insert in a magazine should be indexed as INTERIORART, with a mention in the Note field of the publication record that it was an insert.
• Photography: As a general rule, photographs are not indexed. But, if the photograph illustrates a work, it should be entered as INTERIORART. Author photographs are usually not indexed. This determination is left to the record's primary verifiers.
• Cartoons. Signed or significant cartoons are included; enter as INTERIORART. At the editor's discretion, incidental works may be omitted.

Contents never included

• Tables of content: Do not create a separate content record for a table of contents. The contents shown in the table are included if they meet the individual criteria as explained in other areas of this help section.
• Blurbs: Review quotes and author blurbs presented either on the back covers or dustjackets of books, or on the pages before the title page should not be indexed. Magazines often include lead-ins, or blurbs, before a story and these are also not included.
• Advertising: No advertising of any kind is indexed, including calls for subscriptions, back issues, and plugs for conventions.
• Quotations and other filler material: These are not included unless they fall within some other category, such as the table of contents rule mentioned above. For example, Analog periodically places quotes of interest to its readers in filler positions. This rule also applies to uncredited spot illustrations whose only purpose is to fill the last page of a story or essay.
• Statements of ownership: Statutory statements of ownership and circulation are not included; nor are colophons, lists of editorial positions, and similar material. Information from this statement, such as circulation figures, may optionally be included in the Note field in a record's "Metadata" section.

The Content Fields

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. Hint: If you need to add several blank title records, then "Add Title" once and start pressing the space bar. With most browsers this will repeat the button press and it will be easy to add a number of blank title records. It's OK to have extra blank records at the end when you are done since ISFDB will ignore them.

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

• Page - The number of the page on which the content begins. This is the number which is actually printed on the page of the publication, not the count of pages from the start. Caution: Do not use the table of contents to determine the page numbers of a publication's contents. Enter content page data by going through the publication and entering the numbers which are printed on the pages on which contents begin.
  • Pages without a printed page number - For contents starting on pages which do not have a printed page number, the following rules apply.
    • Unnumbered pages within a range of numbered pages - Quite often in book publications and occasionally in magazines, the publisher/designer chooses not to print a number on the page on which a story, artwork, or essay begins. If the page is not numbered, and is within a range of numbered pages (i.e. the pages which follow the first numbered page within a publication), its page number can be derived from the nearest numbered page.
    • Unnumbered pages within a range of unnumbered pages - If a content starts on an unnumbered page within a range of unnumbered pages, its page number should first be derived and then entered in squared brackets. The page number can be derived by counting forward from the first page of the section of unnumbered pages. For example, if a content appears on the fifth page in a range of unnumbered pages, enter "[5]". Do not use brackets for unnumbered pages which fall within a range of numbered pages. (See the first bullet under this subsection.) If the entire publication is unnumbered, determine the pages for contents manually, starting from the first page after the front loose endpaper, and enter the page numbers for contents in brackets.
    • Special designations
      • fc - front cover of a magazine which doesn't include the covers in its pagination.
      • fep - front end paper of a book publication, or inside front cover of a magazine which doesn't include the covers in its pagination.
      • bp - unnumbered pages that precede pagination (although generally you can derive the page number and enter it in brackets).
      • ep - unnumbered pages that follow pagination (although generally you can derive the page number and enter it in brackets).
      • bep - back end paper of a book publication, or inside back cover of a magazine which doesn't include the covers in its pagination.
      • bc - back cover of a magazine which doesn't include the covers in its pagination.
      • rj - inside of dust jacket ("reverse jacket").
  • Roman-numeraled pages - For pages in introductory material which use Roman numerals, use the lower case form. If a work appears on an unnumbered page within a range of Roman-numeraled pages, its page number can be derived from the nearest numbered page.
  • Exception for works which have illustrations preceding their title pages - If a magazine presents artwork for a story or essay preceding the piece's title page, and it is apparent that the art accompanies the text, the starting page of the story or essay should be the page number of the artwork which illustrates it. If you're creating content records for both the work and its illustration, they would have the same starting page. (See "Sorting" below for multiple works appearing on the same page.) If there is no indication that the artwork is related to the text on the succeeding pages, and no indication in the table of contents that it illustrates the work, then do not count it as the first page of the work.
  • Sorting - If the entered page number causes the item to appear in the wrong position relative to the other items in the publication, you can append an optional "sorting" number which will control where the item will display in the contents section of a publication record. To enter a "sorting" page number, append the "pipe" character ("|") to the end of the regular page number value and then enter the number that the software will use to determine where to display the content. For example, a content entered as "10|1" will display as appearing on page 10, but will be displayed in the publication record as the first item. The "sorting" number can be either a whole number like 23 or 355 or a decimal number like 3.2 or 567.001. The only limitation is that the total number of characters in the "Page" field cannot exceed 20. Other uses for sorting contents using the pipe method:
    • Multiple titles, i.e. two or more short works (story, poem, essay or artwork) appearing on the same page. For example, the first work on page 25 should be entered as "25|25.1", the second as "25|25.2", etc.
    • Books where numbering is restarted for various reasons, like Ace Doubles, omnibuses, etc.
    • Contents appearing on unnumbered pages prior to page 1, using decimals in the sorting number. For example, use "[4]|0.1" if the first content in the publication appears on the fourth unnumbered page, and use "[6]|0.2" if the second content appears on the sixth unnumbered page.
    • Uncommon page numbers like A-1, B-2, etc.
    • Boxed sets, to sort individual volumes within the set.
    • Unpaginated publications, like ebooks or audio recordings. In these cases, enter the pipe first and then proceed to number each content in the order in which they appear.
    • Artwork appearing on unnumbered plates.

Title

• 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.
  • 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 are not displayed as content records unless 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.
  • Short fiction, essays and poems. For short stories, essays and poems, when working from a primary source, always take the title from the heading on the page where the work begins. The title shown in/on the table of contents, running page headers, index, front cover of the publication, secondary bibliography, or a promotional website listing is secondary. Any differences between titles in the publication may be noted in the publication notes, but this is not required. If titles are being entered solely from a secondary source, please record the source in the note field.
  • Subtitles. If the title of a novel, omnibus, nonfiction, anthology, collection, short fiction, essay, or poem has a subtitle, enter it in the Title field using a colon to separate the title from the subtitle. For English language titles, the colon should be followed by a space. 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". For titles written in other languages, use language-specific rules for the use of colons. For example, in French, colons are both preceded and followed by a space (e.g., "Défricheurs d'imaginaire : une anthologie historique de science-fiction suisse romande"). If multiple subtitles exist, they should all be entered and separated with colons and spaces, e.g. A Son of the Ages: The Reincarnations and Adventures of Scar, the Link: A Story of Man from the Beginning. Note that 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 in the publication's Notes field.
  • Exceptions to the Subtitles rule. There are two scenarios where subtitles should not be entered in the Title field:
    • The subtitle is "A Novel" or its equivalent in the language of the title. This subtitle is generic and should not be entered in the Title field.
    • The title page displays the series name (and sometimes the title's position within the series) where the subtitle would normally be. The series information should not be treated as a subtitle or recorded in the Title field. Instead it should be recorded in the "Series" and "Series Number" fields of the Title record. You may still record it in the Notes field for the sake of completeness. For example, if the title page says "Song of the Dragon" and then "The Annals of Drakis: Book One" below it, you would enter "Song of the Dragon" in the Title field, "The Annals of Drakis" in the Series field, and "1" in the Series Number field. You could then optionally update the Notes field of the publication record with detailed information like "The title page states 'Song of the Dragon' over 'The Annals of Drakis: Book One'."
  • SERIALs. If the title of a SERIAL installment is unique, e.g. "Butterflies in the Kremlin, Part Eight: As the Bear Turns" or "Ciężki bój (cz. 1)", then use the full form of the title. If, on the other hand, the title is shared by at least one other SERIAL installment of the work, append a space and a parenthetical statement such as "(Part 1 of 3)" to the title. For novel length works (40,000+ words) printed as a single installment in a magazine or fanzine, append a space and "(Complete Novel)" to the title.
  • 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 different title than the work from which it is excerpted, use that title. Otherwise, use the title of the excerpted work, but add " (excerpt)" to the end; e.g. "A Feast for Crows (excerpt)".
  • 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 or caption, give it the title of the publication in which it appears, disambiguating if necessary. [Note: occasionally a work may actually be titled "Untitled" which can correctly be given as the title of the work in the ISFDB record.] Cover art should have the same title as the title of the publication that it is associated with. Artwork on the back cover of a publication is treated as interior art. For works with multiple illustrations per story (usually a magazine or anthology) where the illustrations are not individually named, use the format "Story Title" for the first illustration, then "Story Title [2]", "Story Title [3]", and so on.
  • Case. Titles should have case regularized according to language-specific rules 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, the magazine Fantastic Universe typically printed story titles in lower case, but these titles are regularized for the ISFDB. For English titles, the ISFDB case regularization rules are as follows:
    • the first word is capitalized
    • all later words are capitalized except for "a", "an", "and", "at", "by", "for", "from", "in", "of", "on", "or", "the", "to", and "with"
    • hyphenated words have the first letter after the hyphen capitalized
    • exception: cartoon captions use the original case (see Template:TitleFields:TitleType for details)
  • Symbols and punctuation:
    • An ellipsis should be entered as the sequence "period", "period", "period" without spaces in between the periods. If the ellipsis is in the middle of the title, it should be entered with a space after it, 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.
    • Quotes can be entered either as single (') or double (") quotes. They are considered interchangeable typographical artifacts and no variant titles should be created for versions of the same story that use different types of quotes.
    • Strange symbols should be entered if appropriate typographical characters exist. If not, do what you can and make a note as necessary in the publication notes. 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. Note that 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.
  • Fonts. Do not use embedded HTML outside of Notes/Synopsis fields. If the title has one or more words in italics, boldface, or another unusual font, and the font seems important, it can be shown and/or described in a note.
  • "Standard" titles. The title of a non-fiction piece of the ESSAY type may have a standard, or generic, title, such as "Introduction", "Editorial", "About the Author", "Foreword", or several other similar titles. If an author has written many "Introduction"s over their career, their bibliography will show several identical titles, with the only way to distinguish them is clicking on each one to find out its publication history. For this reason, you should parenthetically append the container title (title of the novel, collection, anthology, etc) to the title of the essay, i.e. "<generic essay title> (<container title>)" in order to create a unique title. For example, Susan Wood's introduction to the Le Guin collection The Language of the Night was entered as Introduction (The Language of the Night).

Date

• Date - The original publication date of this title. The format of the field is "YYYY-MM-DD" (ex: 2024-04-16 is today).
  • Note that if you are cloning a publication, this field is not editable for existing Content titles.
  • If you leave this field blank for a title in the Content section, then the title's date will automatically default to the date of the publication that contains it, which is OK if this is the first publication of the title. If, however, this is not the first publication of the title, then you need to find when the title first appeared and enter that date manually. You may need to check the copyright/acknowledgments pages or other bibliographic sources to find the first publication date.
  • When entering a variant title record, enter the earliest known date when this variant record was published. This includes variant title records created for new titles, new alternate names, new translations and/or significant textual revisions. If it's not clear whether textual revisions were significant, discuss the issue on Help desk‎. If the variant title is a translation but was published before the canonical title see the remarks on How to enter translations.
  • 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. Therefore, record the first book publication date. A note in the title field can record the magazine serialization date, if there is one. (Note that as more fully explained in Help:Use of the SERIAL type#Date Rule, the ISFDB uses the date of first book publication even if the magazine text is known to be the same as the book text.)
    • Magazines and fanzines: Serial installments of a work, including novel length works (40,000+ words) printed as a single installment, are always given the date of the issue in which they appear even if the work has been published previously in book or serial form. 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.
  • Excerpts. Use the date when an excerpt was first published in that form, not the date when the original text it is taken from was published.
  • Plays and Scripts. Use the date when a play or script (teleplay, screenplay, radioplay, etc) was published, not the date when it was performed or broadcast. (If a dramatic work has been performed but not published in writing, it should not be entered.) In some cases plays and scripts are not published until many years after they are first performed.
  • 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.

EntryType

• Title Type - The type of title 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 title 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. Some books contain fictional essays, purporting to be written by a character in the book, as introductions or afterwords. There is no "FICTIONAL ESSAY" title type, so you have to choose whether the title is better described as SHORTFICTION or ESSAY.
  • ANTHOLOGY and COLLECTION. These are rarely the correct type for a content title. 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 title 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.
  • EDITOR. This title type is created automatically for new Magazines/Fanzines and typically is not entered manually. The primary exception is when converting another type of publication, e.g. an Anthology, to a Magazine, in which case you will need to change the publication's "ANTHOLOGY" title to an "EDITOR" title.
  • 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. Some books contain fictional essays, purporting to written by a character in the book, as introductions or afterwords. There is no "FICTIONAL ESSAY" title type, so you can choose whether the title is better described as SHORTFICTION or 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 title, 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 title 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 title 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 Analog, January 1965 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 title 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 title indicates a specific illustration, and the page number is the page number of the illustration itself. If an illustration is independent of other content, and has no apparent title or caption, give it the title of the publication in which it appears, disambiguating if necessary.
    • Maps. These are considered interior art for ISFDB purposes and are typed as INTERIORART. The format for titling maps is "Title of Work (map)", for example: Brightness Reef (map). Optionally, if a map is titled you can use the stated title of the map without appending the name of the work, for example The Land of Nehwon (map).
    • 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. 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.
    • Cartoons. 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 Dream World, February 1957 for examples.
  • 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.
  • 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 a title that would otherwise be either SHORTFICTION or NOVEL, but which is being serialized in a magazine, a fanzine or a series of chapbooks. Also use when a novel length work (40,000+ words) is printed as a single installment in a magazine or fanzine issue. Note that all newly added SERIAL titles need to be turned into variants once the original submission has been approved -- see Help:How to connect serials to titles for instructions.

Length

• Length - This field is only used for SHORTFICTION titles. It indicates the number of words in this SHORTFICTION title. Note that if you are cloning a publication, this field is not editable for existing content records.

The allowed values are:

• short story - A work whose length is less than or equal to 7,500 words.
• novelette - A work whose length is greater than 7,500 words and less than or equal to 17,500 words.
• novella - A work whose length is greater than 17,500 words and less than or equal to 40,000 words.

For variant titles, including translations, use the length value of the parent title. See Help:How to Count Words in Prose Fiction Titles for further instructions and suggestions.

Author

• Author - The name of the author of the work. For novel, anthology, collection and omnibus works, this will be the same as what's entered in the publication author field. 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. Take the author credit from the title page rather than the book's cover or spine. If the publication contains multiple works, use the author credit given at the beginning of each work. If an individual work doesn't have an author credit, which is common in single-author collections, use the form of the author's name stated on the publication's main title page. If necessary, a variant title record linking the work to its canonical author should be created after the submission has been accepted. There is a special rule for in-universe essays, which are written as if by a character in the story, often as an introduction or afterword. Even if these are signed by the fictional character, they should be recorded as by the stated author of the work. 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". If you are working from a secondary source which does not specify the author, but does not explicitly state that no author is credited in the publication, use "unknown" rather than "uncredited". The intent is that the ISFDB record should reflect what is stated in the publication. 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. 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 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". If there is a publicly available source which identifies the uncredited title's author, it will be later turned into a variant title using the author's canonical name.
  • 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 be converted 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.
  • Initials. Initials should normally be entered followed by a period and a space as "Gordon R. Dickson" or "K. D. Wentworth", even if the period or space is omitted in the publication. However, when it is clearly the author's choice to omit the period, or when the author has a single letter name that is not an initial (e.g. "Harry S Truman") the period should be omitted. In the rare case where an author prefers two (or more) initials as if they were a name (such as "TG Theodore"), without a period or space, and is so credited, we follow the author's preference. A possible clue to such cases occurs when most authors have initials shown with period and space, but a particular author is handled differently in a magazine or anthology. Checking other sources, such as a Wikipedia article or the author's web site, is a good idea. Such non-standard forms should be mentioned in a publication or title note.
  • Spaces in Names: Spaces within a name should be regularized. If a name differs from a canonical name or existing alternate name only by the lack of, or addition of, blank spaces, it should be entered as the existing name or alternate name. For example, a book credited to "Ursula LeGuin", "Lester DelRey", or "A. E. VanVogt" should be listed by including the missing space, e.g. "Lester del Rey". Conversely, if a book were credited to "John De Chancie", the extra space should be removed, and the book credited to "John DeChancie". One effect of this rule is to avoid subjective judgements when there appears to be a "partial space" in a name.
  • 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.
  • Alternate Names. If you know that a particular author's name is an alternate name, enter that alternate name rather than changing it to the canonical name. If the title page shows both an original and a subsequent name, use the original name. For example, Isaac Asimov's "Lucky Starr" books were originally published under the pseudonym of Paul French, but later reprints were given both names: "by Isaac Asimov, writing as Paul French". In these cases you should still enter Paul French as the author and record the dual credit in the notes. If the cover shows both names but the title page shows only one name, use the name from the title page -- no matter which it is -- and record the discrepancy with the cover credit in the notes. When a book is known to be ghost-written, this should be treated as an alternate name; the ghost-writer will eventually show up as having an alternate name of the well-known author, but that data is not entered via this field.
  • Non-English characters. Non-English characters, including accented Latin characters and all other Unicode characters, should be entered exactly as they appear in the publication. See the ISFDB FAQ for more information on accented characters.
  • Collaborations. If a work has multiple authors, it doesn't matter in which order you enter them. The ISFDB does not record author order regardless of how the authors are entered.
  • Writers "with" other writers. In some cases a writer is credited as writing a story "with" another author. If both names appear on the title page, both names should be recorded in the ISFDB. Although the "with" convention can indicate that the co-authors' contributions were not equal (often the more famous author did little more than lend their name to a project which was written almost entirely by the lesser known author), the "Author" field treats them as regular co-authors. A note can be added to the record explaining how the work is credited and giving additional information about the nature of the collaboration if publicly available.
  • 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 alternate 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."; "Frederick C. Durant, III"; and so on.
  • Duplicate Names. See Help:How to enter duplicate record names
• Add Author. If there is more than one author or editor for this publication, this button will create a second author field. You can add as many authors as required.

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. (No ESSAY entry is needed for a single, standalone review (one review with no additional text) unless it is a regular feature with a recurring title.) Each set of review details is defined by five fields: page, title of the work being reviewed, date of the review, author of the work being reviewed, and reviewer. There is room for one review 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 second review record visible. This can be repeated until enough review records are available to enter every review in the publication.

• 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).
• 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 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 first published.
• Interviewee - The canonical name of the person being interviewed, whether or not it matches the form(s) of the name used in the interview. This is done so that the interview is displayed on the interviewee's summary bibliography page. The interview's title, however, should be entered exactly as it appears in the publication, even if it contains a non-canonical form of the interviewee's name. If no name is used in the title, and the interviewee is referred to in the body of the interview by a non-canonical form of his/her name (whether a misspelling, abbreviation, or pseudonym), that name should be recorded in the record's note field.
• 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 or modifying 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

Individual letters to the editor published in magazines: Entries may be restricted to significant letters by well-known speculative fiction personalities. Editors have the option to include other letters. All letters should be entered using the following format: "Letter (Title of Magazine, Date)". If the letter has a title, append a colon, a space, and the text of the title: "Letter (Title of Magazine, Date): Letter Title".