Help:How to update a publication

Suppose you notice that a particular publication is entered incorrectly. Perhaps you have a copy of that book, and you can see that the ISFDB is missing information about the price or cover artist, or that the title is not entered accurately. To correct these mistakes, run through the following checklist first to make sure you're really updating the right record.


 * First check to make sure you're really talking about the same edition and printing of the book. Suppose the ISFDB copy say "Tor Books, 1996, $13.95", whereas your copy says 1996 also but is priced at $14.95.  Is this an error?  Not necessarily -- there may have been multiple printings of this edition, with different prices (and sometimes different cover art).  Checking the printing indicators at the front of the book, and see if you can tell which printing yours is.  Ideally each publication would list the printing and edition info in the notes, but in most cases there are not multiple printings in a year so the year is sufficient to identify the book.
 * If you decide your book is in fact different from any publications already entered, then go ahead and enter it. There is a help page for entering novels, and a help page for other books.
 * If your book is really the same publication, then the next thing to check is the notes. There are two places for notes.  First, if there are notes on the ISFDB publication record, they'll display when you view the publication.  See this issue of Fantastic Universe, for example.  Second, there may also be notes in the Wiki that relate to this specific publication; a link on the publication display page labeled "Bibliographic Comments" will lead you to the Wiki page for that publication.  In either set of notes you may find information about the discrepancies you see.
 * If you've checked those sources, and have determined that you do indeed need to update the publication, then click on the "Edit This Pub" link in the left navbar. This will display the publication and all its contents.  You can edit any or all of it or add contents, but note that you cannot delete any of the content records in this form -- you will need to use the "Remove Titles From This Pub" tool to delete contents instead.  For detailed help on the fields on this screen, see the edit publication help page.
 * Once you make your changes, click Submit Data to create a submission record. When a moderator approves the submission, your changes will appear for that publication.