Help requested with Kindle/ebook books

[Andy]

Hello,
My copies of the Sherlock Holmes books are currently unavailable, so I figured I'd download the PC Kindle and get the free books so I could read them. I found them and several others at feedbooks.com, downloaded them, set them up with the Kindle and everything was grand. Then I figured I'd add them to my shelves here. Need to keep up with the Book Challenge, right? ;-) That's when everything got a little confusing.

Here's a link to my Sherlock Holmes shelf. The ones with the missing covers are the real books that I own, but are stored away someplace safe. http://www.goodreads.com/review/list/...

1) Although the books I downloaded were in Kindle format, there are no records specifically for them. There ARE however ebook records. Do we just use them and keep on truckin' or should there be records created that are identical except that they say "Kindle" for the format?

2) There are two copies of "A Study in Scarlet" and "The Sign of the Four". As far as I can tell, they are the same information. Could somebody merge them into the more detailed/correct record?

3) There are only five books here of the nine at feedbooks. I feel reasonably confident that I can create the records and eventually add the list of characters, but where did the librarian (Paolo?) find the pulication month and year? I've looked in the books and on feedbooks, but didn't see anything obvious.

Here are the links to the books at feedbooks if it will help anything.

Thanks,
Andy

http://www.feedbooks.com/book/57
http://www.feedbooks.com/book/2
http://www.feedbooks.com/book/1421
http://www.feedbooks.com/book/58
http://www.feedbooks.com/book/1
http://www.feedbooks.com/book/63
http://www.feedbooks.com/book/64
http://www.feedbooks.com/book/65
http://www.feedbooks.com/book/66

[Vicky]

1) I think where Feedbooks is concerned, we're better off keeping them as a generic eBook record. Otherwise we could end up with 4 different formats for each book. Feedbook's editions are converted to .mobi files for ease of use with the Kindle, but they're not a "Kindle Edition" in the sense that books created specifically and primarily for the Kindle would be. Others might disagree with me there.

2) I got these two merged.

3) I have no idea on the publication date - I also looked at one of their editions and didn't see anything obvious (I even looked in the files meta data to see if there was anything there too). You could always try sending Paolo a message if you want, but I don't think the information is necessarily imperative if you can't find it.

[rivka, Former Moderator]

Vicky wrote: "I think where Feedbooks is concerned, we're better off keeping them as a generic eBook record."

Agree entirely.

[Andy]

Cool. I was thinking the same thing, since I have at least five more that I didn't see here.

I'll take care of the others this evening.

Thanks for your help and advice, Vicky.

(I already have a thanks-for-all clause with rivka) ;-)

[Andy]

Ok, tonight I added:
        


Since this is a new experience for me, I'd really appreciate it if somebody could double-check and let me know what I did wrong.

[Vicky]

They all look good to me! :)

[Andy]

Hi... It's me again. :-(

If I'm reading this... maybe understanding would be a better word... If I'm understanding this correctly, on April 6th, Atrium updated the default description to Spanish which also updated THIS book. A Study in Scarlet
What would be the best way to solve this problem? I'm going to change this particular book to NOT use the default description, but I'm gonna go out on a limb and say the default description shouldn't be Spanish for an English book.

I probably should have asked before, but is there some kind of formula we can use to estimate pages, since feedbooks only shows the number of words? Of course, the Kindles, both real and PC can't tell what page I'm on, so it's kind of a moot point, isn't it. :-s

(sigh)

Boy, I'm glad I'm just a little librarian, instead of actually working here. ;-)

[rivka, Former Moderator]

Yes, for a book originally/primarily published in English, the default description should be in English.

[Andy]

Andy wrote: "I probably should have asked before, but is there some kind of formula we can use to estimate pages, since feedbooks only shows the number of words? ..."

I guess it's not a issue. In the update status, it accepts a percent done, which is fine.

I fixed the description in the feedbooks edition, but I have no idea how to even FIND which edition has the default description, let alone how to fix the problem. (I think I might be confused... I don't see any way to revert to an earlier version. Am I missing it, or do you just make another edit, getting the information from the change log?)

[rivka, Former Moderator]

It actually doesn't matter which edition was the source of the default edition. Just find one with a good replacement, and make it the default instead.

[Tntexas]

rivka wrote: "Yes, for a book originally/primarily published in English, the default description should be in English."

Just to be sure on something, default descriptions should be in the language the original book was published in, but descriptions for various translations should be in the language of the translation. Shouldn't they? So an English translation of a book originally published in another language should have, for that particular edition, a description in English and vice versa. Right? I'm asking because I've changed a couple of descriptions to match the language of the edition, but it occurred to me that I might ought to double check that.

[rivka, Former Moderator]

I would say it depends. If a book was originally published in Greek, but we have four Greek editions, a couple Spanish editions, an Italian edition, and 20 English editions, it makes sense for the default description to be in English, right?

The idea of a default description is that no edition should have a blank description if there is one available. Whatever makes it simplest to have as many editions as possible have descriptions that match the edition's language sounds like our best bet.

[Andy]

rivka wrote: "It actually doesn't matter which edition was the source of the default edition. Just find one with a good replacement, and make it the default instead."

(sigh)

It's disgustingly obvious now that you've explained it. I just knew I didn't want to go through 300+ editions looking for the one that had the default description to fix it.

Isn't that a little TOO easy for people to mess up though? In the last year the default description for this book has changed three times and needs to be changed again.

[rivka, Former Moderator]

I honestly don't even know how to figure out which book was the source of a default description. Not sure you can do so (unless it has clues, like belonging to the only audiobook edition).


Andy wrote: "Isn't that a little TOO easy for people to mess up though?"

What would you suggest instead?

[Andy]

rivka wrote: "What would you suggest instead? "

Well, we could only grant the right to change the DEFAULT description to a super, instead of a regular librarian, but that feels a little too extreme, and I'm sure they're busy enough already.

Maybe just have a dialog box that asks if you are sure that you want to change the description not just for the current book, but for all books using the default?

Do we even NEED to ever change the default description? When you create a brand new, never before entered book (NOT an edition) that would have a description that would be the default for all editions created for it. When you create a new edition, you start out with a copy of the default description, and you're allowed (actually, encouraged) to edit it, but there's no need to maintain a connection to the original description.

Does that make any sense?

[rivka, Former Moderator]

Andy wrote: "Maybe just have a dialog box that asks if you are sure that you want to change the description not just for the current book, but for all books using the default?"

Given that the relevant box defaults to unchecked, I doubt that would have any effect except irritation.

Default descriptions need to be changed all the time. Typos, wrong language, accidentally being specific to a given edition, etc.

[Andy]

rivka wrote: "Default descriptions need to be changed all the time. Typos, wrong language, accidentally being specific to a given edition, etc."

First of all, I just want to make sure you understand that I'm not arguing, just trying to make sure I've expressed myself clearly.

From the evidence, I would guess that the descriptions are stored in a separate table from the rest of the edition data, and are linked to a default record with the default description in it. If you choose, you can dissociate your edition from the default, and create a description specific to it. If the default description was copied into a new record instead of linking to a new edition, you could have a problem with a typo or other error being propagated throughout the system if the person creating the new edition didn't use her own new description. I just think the default should be a starting point, not something permanent.

After reading and re-reading my post and yours I'm wondering if we're just interpreting the word change differently. I agree that a default description may need to be changed in the sense of editing it, but I don't think it should ever need to be changed in the sense of switching one description to another description. :-s

[rivka, Former Moderator]

What if the default is edition-specific or in another language? Why wouldn't you want it to be changeable then?

As far as tables and programming details, I don't know that stuff. ;)

[Andy]

So you're saying that the first edition created for a book (which would have the default description) might be in Sanskrit or something, but most others would be in something a little more normal? :-) Yeah, I guess you would need to switch it there.

I dunno. It's just not the way I would have done it. :-D Of course, in my local database, I didn't store descriptions at all. I had a blank field I was going to use to store the plot, but I never used it.

[rivka, Former Moderator]

I know we've changed how defaults work a few times, so this is a somewhat evolved version of how it works. Definitely better than some of the earlier incarnations, but not perfect.

[Andy]

Just trying to get my money's worth out of the thread. ;-)

I've been getting a lot of free books from feedbooks since I started using the Kindle app and more since I actually got a Kindle, but it doesn't seem to be a terribly common thing to do. I've added 20 books so far, but do we really want to do that? F'rinstance, I checked for the number of ebook editions for The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn; there are currently 81 and 112 Kindle editions. That just doesn't seem right. Is there a better way?

Thanks.

[rivka, Former Moderator]

You could decide you like one of the exiting editions and use that. But books in the public domain will have hundreds of similar-but-not-identical printings, whether those are ebooks or of the dead-tree variety.