Category talk:Verified publishers

OK, I'll bite. What evidence is needed to verify a publisher? And do we want to anyway? BLongley 22:17, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

I ran through my Corgi books today, picking one from every year I own (more if the publisher info changed that year) and I'm now pretty sure that Transworld Publishers WERE a publishing company, and that they're now a division or a wholly-owned subsidiary company of some sort. There seems some evidence of Australian and New Zealand Subsidiaries too - is a reference in a British printing enough or should those come from true Australian and New Zealand publications? I don't even know if locally-printed editions existed, or if all antipodean editions were sourced from the UK publisher. BLongley 22:17, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

I'm also pretty sure that Corgi have always (well, since 1956 at least) been an imprint. I checked some British-printed and priced Bantam "UK" pubs too, which all confirmed Transworld's status as a true publishing company. Nothing really supported Bantam UK as a separate imprint from Bantam (US) though - if we want those separated I think it will have to be for OUR OWN, ISFDB, reasons. BLongley 22:17, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

I'm leaning towards a "first listed price" separation (IF we need one) rather than where it was printed, or listed parent publisher: there are too many editions available where they've sold a book to another country under another imprint without changing the copyright page. But then again, I've got British printed pubs with no British price on that were definitely available here (not re-imported), and are surely of British origin. But I'm definitely leaning towards "the imprint being the most important thing" today: "real Publishing companies" isn't adding much for me. Of course, going back to looking at Triad might put me off that as well. :-/ 22:17, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

Still, it's been a good exercise and I encourage everyone to pick an imprint or publisher they care about and go try this. I think I wanted to justify "Corgi" as a better imprint name than "Corgi Books" or "Transworld/Corgi" or "Corgi/Transworld" - I think I've mostly proved to myself that adding "Transworld" to the Corgi name is redundant, they're ALL that way: and that the "Books" suffix for some years hasn't really added anything either. Not that I'm going to take one day's evidence and trample over everyone else's edits - but I'd like some more data for and against any separation or merging, even for the wiki pages that won't be linked to direct from the ISFDB. Thanks Marc, hopefully you've inspired some more activity! BLongley 22:17, 13 September 2008 (UTC)