I may have added some covers this afternoon without sourcing. The system seems to allow that. I'll check and let you know in a few minutes.

Yeah, the system does allow it - and truthfully I don't disagree with the idea that 'any edition cover is better than no cover at all' - but if someone is trying to replace a cover with a different cover, than a source is a must so the librarian can make sure someone isn't trying to replace the correct cover with an incorrect one.

Reply to post #17 (show post):
Okay, at least I'm not losing my mind over that. I hate it when I imagine things that aren't true! ;-)

I just added a cover for "Bride for a Duke" by Fenella J. Miller. It's a screen cap from my owned Kindle edition. If I add more covers like that, how should I notify librarians? Add the cover, then report it? Or do it via edit and cite the owned cover?

I have another book I'm going to add next, an additional edition of an existing book. I'll put in the source note that I own the copy.

Just do an "add cover" - those go through the queue too, and I know you're doing all of these from book-in-hand scans, so I won't give you the side-eye when I'm processing the queue. :)

Ha! "Bride for a Duke" is all messed up. I reported it.

g r r r r r r r . . . .

Fixed both the ones you reported.

Keep an eye out as you work on some of your records - I've noticed a few are missing the 'language' setting (likely during the import). Without a language specified, they don't show up in search or from the Editions page (unless you select "All" languages).

Oh, and to actually answer your question... since the author re-published it, it's a new edition.

Reply to post #22 (show post):
Okay. I'm not sure how I would know one of those was a "new" edition. And how would a person -- librarian or otherwise -- know how to figure on these messed up (for lack of a better term) titles? Most of mine are from the original September 2013 upload from GR, so I don't even know what to look for.

I will, however, pay more attention to the language thing. ;-)

I suppose, going from the Zebra one you reported earlier, I'd say the average person would use cover (if there is one), publication date (if there is one) and/or publisher (if there is one) - any or all of those to determine if the one they have in hand is in the db or not.

As an example: I currently have in hand an edition of Mary Stewart's This Rough Magic, published in 1964. I went to the all editions page for This Rough Magic and did a quick 'Find' (because there's a lot of editions) - first searching for the pub year, which got me 1 edition, but it has a different publisher than mine does. Just to make sure (cuz I'm a tad obsessive), I did another find for publisher and found 4, but none of them with the right pub date. So I know I have to add my edition as a new one.

If there are only a few editions in the database and none of them have the same pub date and publisher, it's safe to say 'add a new edition'. If you find one that has all the same information but a different cover, it might need to be added as an alternate cover edition (which we note in the synopsis, at the beginning).

In the case where you might know for certain the author has re-published a work, it's definitely a new edition from the old mainstream pubbed edition.

In the case where there are records that are empty enough that they could conceivably apply to multiple editions (say, editions that have a title and an author... maybe a format, but not anything else), then that record is fair game to be edited to be an accurate representation of the edition you have in hand, if it isn't already listed.

Does that make sense? Or am I completely missing your point?

I'm also noticing that you're at a slight disadvantage too, in that I'm seeing a lot of the authors that are tied to your books are 'strays' - author records that should be merged with the 'real' author record. Undoubtedly this can be blamed on the original import, which was done before BL had a database. I and other librarians have been slowly trying to merge these records, but sheer numbers and the whole disambiguation thing has made it more tedious than you can imagine. Because a lot of your authors are older ones, they've not made it onto the radar before now.

Once I get a bit of free time, if you don't have any objections, I'll make a point of visiting your shelves and browsing through, looking for records that might have stray authors or missing languages. You have a lot of books (me=jealous) so it'll be an ongoing project, but worth it in the long run.

Reply to post #24 (show post):
No, you got my point perfectly.

I'm just not sure I got yours!!!! ;-)

I'll just keep working at it and try to figure it out. I know that there are going to be horrific problems because of that massive upload in Sept/Oct/Nov 2013 when the mass exodus occurred from GR, which is when most of mine were installed.

It appears, too, that a lot of the KDP authors have exacerbated the problem with republications and revisions and new editions. I think most of those books are so unreadable that I'm not going to put a whole lot of effort into them! I'm nasty, I know, but some of them are already removed from publication so there's not much to do about them ayway.

Reply to post #26 (show post):
I don't think it's nasty - I think it's pragmatic. If the authors themselves are going to treat their work as transient, I see no need to beat ourselves up trying to accurately archive it.

I'm sincerely sorry if my attempts at explanations make things more confusing - to be honest, I tend to come from a print point of view and often forget how messy KDP and ebook only publications can get.

Feel free to hit me with questions on a case by case basis - there are so many variables with some of this stuff it's impossible to cover them all in one go. :)

Reply to post #27 (show post):
I have enough working experience with print via bookstores and libraries to understand exactly what you mean on that score.

And it's not your instructions/explanations are lacking -- it's me. I'm a learn-by-doing type person, so instructions without exercises tend to go over my pointed little head. Once I get to a point where I can go step by step through a process, I'm okay. . . . usually.

There's also, I think, a complication with BL in that there are so many inaccurate records that muck up everything else. And it's that much worse for those of us who have a lot of those inaccurate records. So it's just a matter of working through it. Or not.

;-)

I totally understand the learn-by-doing - so please do hit me with any scenarios that don't make sense.

I've hit a few of the last pages of your shelves and yeah - you have a lot of books attached to author records that need merging with the 'real' author record. I've been merging them as I come across them - but that's ALL I'm doing; I know you're working on your records too and I don't want to over step or end up doing things at cross-purposes. But it occurred to me that it could be super aggravating to work with records that are linked to the wrong authors and make it even more difficult to figure out what records need to be edited, or combined or merged.

:)

Yes, the issues with the author names are frustrating, so any effort on that front is bound to be helpful.

Another problem with the self-published books is that many of the authors don't have any front matter with publisher, copyright date, etc. I just updated "The Mary, a ghostly love tale" and I have no idea if I screwed it up more, but the ASIN that was on the record was wrong, and I don't know where it originally came from or why it was wrong. As far as I can tell, the KDP edition has been around since I purchased it in early 2013, and the ASIN format hasn't changed since then. So, I fixed it and I hope it's now correct.

But as we saw so very recently, it's not just the self-publishing authors on KDP -- the Katherine Howe book, hardcover published as recently as 2009, now has a new title!!! No one makes it easy.