Your publishers

Blog post: http://www.librarything.com/blogs/librarything/2010/08/your-publishers/

I've pushed a Stats/Memes page that shows how your books stack up against LibraryThing Publishers:

Yours: http://www.librarything.com/profile/MEMBERNAME/stats/publishers
Mine: http://www.librarything.com/profile/timspalding/stats/publishers



The "All" vs. "Yours" toggle is also present on the LibraryThing Publishers page:
http://www.librarything.com/publishers

As you may have noticed, the list of publishers is growing, as is the titles they cover. I've silently upped the list a few times—to be announced on Monday. Another raft will go live on Monday.

One caveat: At present we are only detecting if the publisher sells it. This produces some odd results in the case of Penguin Australia, who sells titles from Penguin UK and so forth. Originally we were going to split them up into different publishers, but the links all go to the Australia site, and it wouldn't be correct insofar as—as I understand it—Penguin Australia doesn't sell all Penguin books. I see no best way around this.

Love it, as usual.

The "All" vs. "Yours" toggle does nothing on my page, and everyone else's page is marked "private".

Fixed. Thanks.

From where exactly is this pulling data? I ask because one of my audio books clearly marked Tantor Media audio is showing up as a Penguin Australia. Not.

As I understand, it lists the books as from the publisher if the publisher has an edition, even if it isn't your edition. Probably because all publisher editions get combined into one work, unless there are significant differences. (I have a Complete Pelican Shakespeare, but it shows up as being from Penguin Australia, because Penguin also has a Complete Shakespeare.)

Fixed.

What's the book, Bookmarque? It's coming from their upload. Click on the link, get the work page and see if it works?

As I understand, it lists the books as from the publisher if the publisher has an edition, even if it isn't your edition.

No, it's based on edition--on ISBN to be precise.

Are Pelican and Signet imprints of Penguin, then?

http://us.penguingroup.com/static/pages/publishers/index.html - not listed here, is why I ask

OK. I'm confused.

It's The House of Mondavi which I have as an audio.

So if this is taking my books and putting them against a list of publishers who published a version of my book even though I don't have one they published, I get it listed anyway? What use is that to me and do you know how seriously huge the list will become? Am I missing something?

Edited after I saw Tim's edit.

That makes more sense. I must have a wonky ISBN.

>9 Bookmarque:

See http://www.penguin.com.au/products/9781592402595/house-mondavi-rise-and-fall-ame...

It's published by Gothom Books, which is an imprint of Penguin Books USA. "Tantor Media" appears to be an Audiobook publisher. It may be that audiobooks can have two publishers, as it were.

I don't know about Signet. Give the example, or click through to the Penguin Australia site and let's see.

http://www.librarything.com/work/12349/book/10309281 -> Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (Signet Classics)

ETA: Nevermind about my copy: went the faster route second instead of first and Signet is listed in the Penguin AUS imprint list.

So...I guess I don't see the value in this if "my" publishers show editions I don't own.

12> They don't, see Msg 7. ISBN-based, so if you're showing a book as belonging to the wrong publisher, your ISBN probably got changed.

That's what I said, but see message 10 which to me, doesn't place blame on the bad ISBN.

I only have 2 publishers, even though I have over 400 books? Not that it's a contest or anything, just that it seems unlikely.

Thanks for the effort,

k4k

Not all publishers have set up LT-for-Pubs yet, k4k. Only the ones who have will be listed.

>15 krazy4katz: You have only two LibraryThing Publishers.

<checks out new toy&gtl;

Rats. Only one publisher for me, and it's not even on my continent.

14> Yeah, you're right. Your ISBN is Tantor - if I search it in Google, I get the Tantor edition on Amazon, Abebooks, etc. And the Gotham Books edition has a different ISBN. ???

Well, OK, the value of this totally eludes me, but I will have to admit that I had the same initial reaction to some other features that I now use and like.

If it goes by ISBN, how does my copy of The Portable Cervantes end up under Penguin when I don't even list an ISBN for that book?

Otherwise seems fine and will get more interesting if more publishers join in.

THAT is very interesting. I'll look into it.

Short answer. Not sure how it happened, but saving the book again resolved the issue.

I guess I don't have anything by a LT Publisher. It would be nice if that were the case if you could put up a No Books Found notice or something so I don't sit around several minutes waiting for something that's never going to show.

The ALL link does nothing for me.

I also have 1 book in 3 different publishers and there is no way to display them. There in no grey bar that pops up for it.

And the grey bar still covers the header text.

I can't shift to "all" from my page (or someone else's), and I can't shift to "yours" from the main publisher page.

The All/Yours toggle is not working for me.

Are you getting "yours" on the http://www.librarything.com/profile/MEMBERNAME/stats/publishers page?

Me? Yes.

I've changed the "changing" (ajax) effect so that it creates a light yellow background when it changes. Can you tell me if it happens when you click "yours" or not at all?

T

I also have 1 book in 3 different publishers and there is no way to display them. There in no grey bar that pops up for it.

Can you explain this again?

It's now saying "None" when you have none. jjwilson, that's you.

For me, from http://www.librarything.com/profile/justjim/stats/publishers clicking on All does nothing, neither changes the information displayed nor displays any background change.

For info, this is what the information bar says the links are going to do:-

All
javascript:loadpublishers(0,0,1,0,0,157657); return false;
Yours
javascript:loadpublishers(0,-1,1,0,157657,157657); return false;

Windoze 7, FF 3.6.2

Okay, try now.

Like a charm!

Clicking All now works for me and it all toggles properly. (If the yellowness is supposed to be in the blue bar with the links, I'm seeing that.)

When I click 'All collections' under Penguin I go to my 'Your books' with just those books showing. If I change viewing style I lose* the filter and get all my books even though .../yourlibrary&publisher=669 is still on the end of the URI.

*or 'loose' if you still prefer that ;) (you make one little Twitter typo...)

Working now! Thanks for the fast response, Tim.

(P.S. I'm seeing the yellow background when it changes.)

> 27 , yes. I get a listing of my books as a total by various collections. But there are a couple problems.

1. If I click on the All Collections or Your Library for Penguin Australia (73). It takes me to that collection. At the top it says that it is all my books by Penguin Australia. On the left it says 1-20 of 73 and on the right it has 1 2 3 4 for pages. As soon as I hit next page, it loses the Penguin Australia filter and goes to all books and it shows on the top 21-40 of 6500 and the pages go from 1 to 325.

2. I don't have 73 books from Penguin Australia. Just looking at page 1 (all I can see) they are books I bought in the US and that were published in the US.

I live in the US, but I do buy books from overseas, so its possible I have some, but unlikely 73, and not the ones I have seen so far.

I also have 1 book in 3 different publishers and there is no way to display them. There in no grey bar that pops up for it.

Can you explain this again?

I have 1 book from Beacon Press. On the page it says:

In your books

Your books include 1 title by Beacon Press

I doesn't display the book, there is no link and the grey box doesn't pop up when I mouse over the area. So there is no way to see it.

I also have 1 book from Bethany House and Taylor Trade Publishing with a similar problem.

The Links work now (All and Yours), but no yellow shows up.

I was excited to see a publisher I discovered awhile back for several YA series. But then I was reminded how--and I understand why--publishers tend to not keep historical information on past titles, considering the 2 I see linked now versus the 11 I have otherwise cataloged from this publisher.

In any case, this is a great feature that I know will cause me to pay more attention to the publishers of my more recent books at least. Thanks!

Psst. You still can't get there from here.

When I followed the publisher's link to my catalog, it showed me the four books, but when I changed the catalog view so I could see the covers, it started showing me my whole library.

Thanks. It's not persisting between sorts and so forth. I'm working on it.

This is a really nice feature. It would be more interesting if it were not confined only to publishers who have chosen to participate. Whilst a full publisher page, complete with links, etc., likely depends on cooperation, just totaling and summarising publishers on the new Stats page shouldn't. If it's just done by ISBN prefix it should be possible to total up my books and show the results. And would it be possible to create a placeholder publisher page for all ISBN prefixes, even if the publisher has not joined yet, just as we have author pages for all authors, not just those who are members? That would be great, and would help make the feature feel more complete.

44> This includes going to the next page in my library, I assume?

Not sure it is working for me.

Either it is picking up extra books OR the Penguin Australia list is wrong.

For me it lists 3 DAW books in the Penguin list - unless of course Penguin Australia also sell some (but not all) titles from DAW.

47: DAW is owned by Penguin USA.

#48

That isn't quite true - DAW Books is privately owned by Betsy Wollheim and Sheila Gilbert. However it is true that DAW has a very close relationship with Penguin USA with Penguin USA being its distributor.

Presumably that distribution arrangement carries through to Penguin Australia for some titles.

I'm getting a Dorling-Kindersley book listed with my Penguins. The Pilates Promise

As mentioned above, all my Penguins are either US or UK, none from Down Under.

>8 keristars: Yes, Pelican is a Penguin imprint, as is Puffin.

I guess I still don't get why Zondervan says I have only 1 book, when a search of my catalog shows 2, and the work pages for both link back to the publisher page.

All of my Penguins are also US or UK too. I also have a Signet book on the list: http://www.librarything.com/work/1835127/book/53151352; this is a recently published edition. But I have other Signet titles -- most of which date back to the 60s or 70s -- that aren't on the list. Maybe they are pre-ISBN and/or maybe Penguin has some more recent arrangement with Signet?

>50 staffordcastle: Dorling Kindersley is an imprint handled by Penguin Australia, according to http://www.penguin.com.au/imprints.

Check your book's ISBN, which may be triggering the association for your particular edition whether or not it is true, as in: http://www.penguin.com.au/products/9781405303361/pilates-promise-10-weeks-whole-...

ETA: I get a similar situation with a current Penguin title showing up as being available from Penguin Australia, which is probably why the message on the work screen says, "An edition of this book was published by Penguin Australia" and not, say, "Your edition..."

My understanding is that the publisher isn't determined by the publisher field of the ISBN. Instead, each publisher submits a list of their books, including the ISBN, and LT matches their whole ISBN to the whole ISBN in each members' catalogs.

>54 jjwilson61:

If true (and that's my understanding, as well), inevitably / eventually a specific ISBN will be claimed by more than one publisher. LT will have to determine which publisher would get credit for that work, or if that work would be listed under multiple publishers.

54>

inevitably / eventually a specific ISBN will be claimed by more than one publisher

Unless one or both of the publishers is either doing something shady or has an outright error in their data, this should not take place. ISBN re-use happens within publishers, but should not happen between publishers.

#56: Penguin Australia and Penguin US certainly use the same ISBNs, no?

#56

Not necessarily true lorax.

Say for example DAW decides to participate in their own right (for brand visibility purposes for example).

Precursor is published by DAW (with ISBN 0886779103) so will appear on their list. It currently appears on the Penguin Australia list with that same ISBN.

From my understanding there is nothing preventing a publisher from uploading any ISBN in their list. There may be errors, or a publisher may list books that they merely distribute, or as prosfilaes mentions there may be issues if two, or more, (semi-) independent regions of the same publisher list the same ISBN.

58>

Well, yes, those are the sorts of "outright errors" or "doing something shady" I was thinking about. (I'm not making distinctions between multiple imprints from the same publisher as being different publishers, here.)

I guess I still don't get why Zondervan says I have only 1 book, when a search of my catalog shows 2, and the work pages for both link back to the publisher page.

Actually, "The Story," which you have as ISBN 0310936985 wasn't listed by them. That is, it isn't in the list they uploaded. I'm not sure why.

I'm also not seeing it on the work page. But it could, if they had another ISBNs for it listed.

or if that work would be listed under multiple publishers

We'll have to do that. It makes sense that you'd want to check out the Australian page if you were in Australia, but the US one if you were in the US. It is, I admit, somewhat confusing at present, when the only Penguin, Signet, DK and etc. books are in the Penguin Australia catalog.

It's conceivable we'll do something more clever, like showing Penguin Australia's duplicates of US or UKL titles only when you're in Australia. But you can see the problem.

We've taken over Penguin Publishing, mate. Pass me a beer and slip another shrimp on the barby if you ever want to see it again.

I apologize, but I guess I don't understand this feature. I went from 2 publishers to 1 in slightly more than 24 hours. I hope they aren't getting sick...

k4k

The bug with sorting and paginating through publisher results in your catalog is fixed.

>62 krazy4katz:

Penguin, right? They just deleted an reuploaded all their stuff. We're processing it now...

The Penguin fellow—a capital fellow*—just updated the Penguin Australia description to:

"Penguin Books Australia is home to some of the country's biggest selling and award-winning authors and illustrators. In addition to publishing our own books, we also carry the following imprints in Australia: Allen Lane, BBC Children’s Books, Claremont, Daw, Dial, Dorling Kindersley, Dutton, Fig Tree, Frederick Warne, Hamish Hamilton, Ladybird, Lantern, Mentor, Meridian, Michael Joseph, NAL, Onyx, Penguin, Penguin Classics, Penguin Ireland, Picture Puffin, Plume, Puffin, Puffin Baby, Rough Guides, Signet, and Viking."

Apparently they retain the ISBNs, even when they get a new cover. (This is more demonstration of the little known fact that ISBNs don't fully determine the cover--officially they only need to be changed when the inside contents change.) Unfortunately Amazon's cover system presumes a 1/1 relationship between covers and ISBNs.

*What do I say in Australia, a mate?

Are they only listing the books that they currently have in print? (As, like saltmanz, some of my numbers are low).

I like the publishers' pages.

>66 christiguc:

Yes. We'll add back-info at some point, although it's going to be complicated. (Publishers are shifting things.)

I hope you're still processing it, because mine still shows my decidedly non-Penguin Australia copy of The Neverending Story as Penguin Australia. Strangely enough, if you click on the link that takes you to Penguin Australia's listing of the book, it says it right there - Publisher: Penguin UK.

Assuming this doesn't disappear (and your comments on them reusing ISBNs makes it sound like it's around for good), this significantly deters from the usefulness of the feature. I'd rather have NO publishers listed for my books than a bunch of incorrect ones.

The bug where it only showed the "see" link when you had more than 1 book is now fixed.

#65 Sounds like a fair dinkum, beaut bonzer bloke. *cringes*

>70 justjim:

Er, ok.

Incidentally, here's an example of a book with two publishers. There are only about 10 right now, mostly from Tundra.

http://www.librarything.com/work/192011

They are shown in "copies" order, so if some no-name company produces an edition of Pride and Prejudice, Penguin will show up first. I'll probably put in some sort of "show more" thing after three or four, but it isn't necessary now.

>65 timspalding:

we prefer "guy"?

>66 christiguc:
our catalogue is only titles that are currently under print. Unfortunately if we were to push the backorder, then the links generated would be invalid as only current titles are available to view on the website.

>68 brightcopy:

The decision was made to list all our imprints and imports as "Penguin Australia" rather than "Penguin UK" etc, as it would be very confusing if you saw "Penguin UK", clicked on it, and it went to the Australian website. At least this way, when/if Penguin UK or USA decide to jump onboard, it'll say "an edition of this book was published by Penguin UK, Penguin Australia" etc.

That said, we're more than happy to work with Tim and the gang and take all your ideas onboard to make the Publisher feature and our titles more accessible.

72> The problem is that it's saying your publishers, i.e. my publishers. It's saying (or at least implying) that my book is published by Penguin Australia. I understand what you're saying but I think it's better to put the actual publishers and have a "bad" link that put the incorrect publisher and have a "good" link.

It's a pretty general principle in LibraryThing that we don't put edition-specific stuff in a work. This feels kind of like that. It's making an incorrect statement about my book that really doesn't apply. It should either say the correct publisher or say nothing at all.

#60

I think for some of the imprints the name (for example DAW or Hamish Hamilton or Rough Guides) is extremely important. It is what people look for, and I presume that the commercial guys at those imprints would want their imprint name associated with their books in an ideal world.

So I think that eventually imprints will need to be handled better.

As you know some of us often buy from other countries, and not just because the book is unavailable in their territory. So I think there should be an option to see all publishers of that title (maybe in the same language, although there will be some who are multi-lingual who will want all languages) not just those in your own country.

#66

Some of the publishers don't even list all the books they have in print (Angry Robot - I'm looking at you).

I see the publisher feature as primarily a way to help drive interest in and presumably sales of books currently published by that publisher. If it works it benefits the users - they can easily find new stuff that may interest them. There are also the various fun stuff like this feature. Personally I'm not too fussed about stuff that may have been published by a publisher 50 years ago and then not reprinted.

I am now able to look through all my books from Penguin Australia when I go to my collections. They have also gone from 73 to 65.

It still lists an Ace book, many Roc books and several Berkley books. Also Razorbill, Peachpit Press, Alpha - none are on the list from Penguin Australia.

I can now see my single books.

On the publisher's page the grey bar no longer covers text, and the counts in the grey bar match the total number of books it says I have.

Thank you for fixing it all Tim.

Collectorator, you probably need to go here to find publishers.

Good luck ;)

Sorry.

60> Actually, "The Story," which you have as ISBN 0310936985 wasn't listed by them. That is, it isn't in the list they uploaded. I'm not sure why. I'm also not seeing it on the work page.

I'm not either. Hunh. Swear it was there before, but why would it disappear? Ah well, thanks for checking it out.

Just looked at my publisher titles and I have 13 by Penguin Australia. No problem there as 11 are UK published titles which seem to be on an imprint held by them. However 2 of the books are manual entries with no ISBN:-
http://www.librarything.com/work/191941/book/43954225 - Excalibur by Bernard Cornwell
http://www.librarything.com/work/2802244/book/42262089 - The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13 3/4 by Sue Townsend

These 2 are hardbacks published by Book Club Associates a UK book club.

Now it is possible that I added these and then selected covers from amazon before I realised that bad things happen when you do that. Once I realised that I went back in and changed the covers to self scanned ones and where necessary deleted any extraneous data such as ISBNs.

Dave

I've gotta go read the thread to date, I know; but I'm beflummoxed over one "Penguin Australia" entry in my library: a 1957, 2nd State copy of James Agee's A Death in the Family, ostensibly published by McDowell, Obolensky in New York. {If you must, see http://www.librarything.com/work/61274/details/39900496}. What am I missing here?!?

>82 dfmorgan: Perhaps since your book is part of the larger work that does have an edition published by Penguin Australia, your book is connected to that publisher.

http://www.penguin.com.au/products/9780140232875/excalibur-warlord-chronicles for Excalibur by Bernard Cornwell

http://www.penguin.com.au/products/9780141010830 or http://www.penguin.com.au/products/9780141315980 for The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole

>83 jasbro: A new edition (2006) was published by Penguin UK, which Penguin Australia sells. See "Publisher information page" link on the work page: http://www.penguin.com.au/products/

Thank you, amarie. Unfortunately, having read the thread now and looked again at the publisher info, I just don't see that it's going to be relevant to most of my library. I'll watch, and see how it develops; but, for the time being, I'm clearly more interested in Controversial-Books-That-People-Can't-Agree-On.

@84 Thank you amarie.

However my understanding, from msg 7, is that an edition will show as being published if the ISBN matches and those 2 books do not have an ISBN in my collection. I don't doubt that they are currently within Penguin Australia's list of titles which is where the other 11 come from.

Again thanks amarie

Dave

Spotted in another msg above that a fresh save cured someone elses no ISBN book showing and I have just resaved those two and bingo no longer showing.

Dave

In the "Members" section of publisher pages, it shows the same data under "Private watch list" as under "Your interesting libraries". This is wrong, my interesting-library people are not on my watch list.

I am showing only one title from Gefen, but I have received two Early Reviewer selections from them. Looks like they haven't listed Resistance Fighter on their publisher page.

I just spent forever trying to find the way to the Publisher's page. Please give it a tab? Or something easier to find?

The two ways to get there are find a book from that publisher and click the link on the right of the book page; or go to Stats/Memes:Publishers and choose one there. Which is fine for people who know about it, but less than obvious - a tab or a Home page module would be very handy.

I agree. We are working on it. My current plan is to replace Local with Book world, which will have both, and some other things.

#92 - Thank you. Patience, I shall have it.

>92 timspalding:: Tim, as one who uses "Local" all the time, (a) adding publishers there seems to be an unnatural fit, unless there will also be further enhancements to be had from synergies between the two features; and (b) I would really, really, really hate to have "Local" cluttered with extraneous publisher information. Apart from individual LT Member's pages, "Local" seems to be the ultimate in micro-LT, and the antithesis of the macro-LT "Publishers" feature.

I disagree. Local is just one LT feature and for it doesn't really need a tab all to itself.

On the other hand, Talk is one feature and yet gets two tabs...

Mmmmmmm! I was pining for such a feature after the introduction of LibraryThing Local in Recommended Site Improvements! Glad to see that it has been introduced (and hope that my favorite publishers choose to opt in to the program/feature)!

So can we there from somewhere yet ?

>98 FicusFan:

Profile ---> Statistics/Memes ---> Publishers

(assuming that "there" refers to your publisher page)

> 99 Still can't get there from here !

If its going to be buried there is no point in having it.

You didn't say "from here", you said "from somewhere" ;)

I don't see this as something that's ever going to be one click away. Tim said something upthread (message 92) about putting it on a Book World tab with Local and some other stuff.

Yeah from 'somewhere' that isn't buried, same as 'here' - public part of the site.

'Can't get there from here' is a local thing
(ME, NH).

Can't sell it to publishers who aren't on board if they can't come to the site and easily find it.