Talk: Book

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Usage

{{Infobox Book |
image        = |
book name    = |
author       = |
cover artist = |
publisher    = |
release date = |
media type   = |
pages        = |
isbn         = |
canon        = |
era          = |
timeline     = |
series       = |
preceded by  = |
followed by  = 
}}

Title

Might I venture to suggest that perhaps "title" would be a better field name than "book name"? -- Aidje 20:18, 29 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Multiple editions

This infobox seems to fall short when there are multiple editions of a single book. Take, for example, The Last Command: it was originall released by Bantam on May 1, 1993 as a limited edition hardback. It was then released by Spectra on April 1, 1993 as an unlimited edition hardback. Then it was released by Spectra again as a paperback on January 1, 1994. And that's not even all of the editions. The problem with this is that it causes multiple publishers, multiple publish dates and multiple ISBNs—this infobox provides no method of entering all of the information, and no guideline as to how to choose which info to use. -- Aidje 15:28, 2 May 2005 (UTC)

  • Slow response, but perhaps we can note that information parenthetically? Bantam (1993), Spectra (1994). Or for ISBNs: 131494039 (unlimited hardback), 113414445 (paperback), 12111687 (audiobook), etc. Or we could list the original release in the info box, and include other releases as a section in the article. --SparqMan 20:15, 9 Dec 2005 (UTC)

Awards/accomplishments

Might we add a section to note any awards won by a book, or time spent on the NYT Best-Sellers list? --SparqMan 20:11, 9 Dec 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia's infobox

Just for everyone's information, Wikipedia has a Star Wars infobox now. We could steal elements from it, but I think what we have now is ok.-LtNOWIS 18:01, 4 April 2006 (PDT)

I think we should incorporate their features of indicating levels of canon and indicating what novel precedes and follows. Adamwankenobi 18:20, 6 April 2006 (PDT)
  • I think all non-reference books are C-canon. But yeah, "book before" and "book after" would be nice. Sadly, I don't know how to do templates. -LtNOWIS 10:00, 7 April 2006 (PDT)
I'll add the feature to the infobox if no one objects. Adamwankenobi 17:03, 7 April 2006 (UTC)
OK, I've added some new features to the infobox. Tell me what ya think. Adamwankenobi 23:19, 7 April 2006 (UTC)
Looks good except for three fields we could omit. I'm not sure we need language (all Star Wars canon is first published in English, save for the Japanese-language manga and some of the magazines in the List of unlicensed sources) or genre (it's pretty much all science fiction, right?), and the size and weight seems a bit superfluous (I'm not about to weigh my books.) —Silly Dan (talk) 16:44, 7 April 2006 (PDT)
My thoughts as well. I mainly had copied the fields directly from wikipedia. I'll remove those three. Adamwankenobi 23:56, 7 April 2006 (UTC)
Well, amazon.com gives the size and weight on every book, so I gues that can stay. Adamwankenobi 23:58, 7 April 2006 (UTC)
Not out-of-print RPG supplements, they don't. —Silly Dan (talk) 00:23, 8 April 2006 (UTC)
Problem solved. Adamwankenobi 01:28, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

New box

Is there a reason "type" was changed to "media type" and "publish date" was changed to "release date"? That's just going to add even more work to fix all of the pages using the old box. --Xwing328 17:16, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

This was done in order to clarify things. The extra work would happen anyway with the other updates. Adamwankenobi 17:23, 8 April 2006 (UTC)
  • I created a new self-collapsing infobox with many of these fields over at {{Media}}. Since it is self-collapsing, it can also be used for books, reference books, and comics as well. Thoughts? RMF 05:24, 11 April 2006 (UTC)
    • I like it. But wait a few days to implement it, as I've got a few changes I need to make to it. Adamwankenobi 17:00, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

Preceeded by / Followed by

Just to clarify, the "preceeded by" / "followed by" fields in this infobox are for the adult novels that come before and after the adult novel in question. I'm hoping to implement this feature into the young adult books, comics and video games infoboxes as well. IMHO, this should make it easier for our readers to find a work's place in chronology. At first I thought these fields should be used for any work that comes before or after the book in question, but this would get too complicated, and it will be easier and more convenient this way. Adamwankenobi 00:46, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

Can we put the preceded by/followed by above, like how it is in the battle infobox?Nick sponge 01:39, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

Release date

What happened to the release dates on the books? Why did they just disappear? -- SFH 00:49, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

  • The field used to be publish date, but has now been changed to release date now. The book pages have to be updated for the new template design. --Xwing328(Talk) 01:37, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

Canon

I think the canon field sould produce a link to Star Wars canon, for those who don't know what things like "C" means. I would do this but I don't want to mess up the template, lol. -- beeurd talk 16:38, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

  • I added some links like you suggested, for canon, era, and ISBN. I'm also going to add an ISBN link that takes it directly to the book source page. However, this will only work if only one ISBN is put in the field. If anything else is added, the link will be messed up. —Xwing328(Talk) 16:34, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

Interior artist credit?

I recently added some children's book articles to the 'pedia, and noticed that there's a space for cover artist, but not for interior artist. This seems like a good idea for a modification of the existing template. Is there any reason to NOT do it? --JMM 17:15, June 2, 2011 (UTC)

  • I can't think of any. MasterFredCommerce Guild(Whatever) 17:20, June 2, 2011 (UTC)
    • Title the field "Illustrator(s)." MasterFredCommerce Guild(Whatever) 17:21, June 2, 2011 (UTC)
      • OK, one person agreeing is enough for me. :) The change has been made.--JMM 17:47, June 2, 2011 (UTC)

Proposed change–Series

I think the Series field should be changed so that any text is not automatically italicized. My reason being not all series are entirely italicized because they may be conjectural. For example: Darth Bane trilogy, Tales series, Coruscant Nights trilogy, Republic Commando series, ect. So, what do you think? The biggest negative impact would be that all the previous uses of the template would have to be fixed, therefore, possibly making this change unreasonable. So that's why I'm asking rather than acting. Fe Nite (talk) 16:57, May 22, 2013 (UTC)

This has bugged me for a long time. It absolutely should not force italics, but it would be a lot of work to clean up after the change, as there are 845 transclusions of this template currently. That's why I haven't previously done this. The best solution might be to add a new field to the template for series-without-forced-italics, and then simply start using the new field instead when articles are expanded/rewritten (e.g. a "reload the infobox" objection would include replacing the old field with the new, and the field will be replaced on the preload). This way, existing uses don't break the moment the change is made, and no concerted effort needs to be made to fix 845 articles as quickly as possible. Both fields can be kept until the old one is no longer used a few years down the road (which will be determined by a tracking category added at the same time as the new field). There are other fields in other templates with this problem as well; Template:Short story and its "published in" and "reprinted in" fields come to mind, as demonstrated on Imprint. As this problem affects multiple templates, I would suggest bringing it up in the Senate Hall for wider discussion. —MJ— Comlink 17:16, May 22, 2013 (UTC)

Page Count

I've noticed that the page count field (and note generally on editions) tends to arbitrarily uses numbered/content pages vs physical pages. X-Wing:_Starfighters_of_Adumar for instance, lists 320 pages. The total page count as noted in WorldCat and Library of Congress records for the ISBN is 291. My physical copy only has 291 pages, matching that info. If you count the title/front matter and marketing material at the end (a bunch of summaries of other Star Wars books) *then* it gets to 320 pages. X-Wing:_Rogue_Squadron, on the other hand, lists 388 pages which matches the page numbering and *excludes* the marketing pages, etc.

I presume that the proper count is the total numbered pages (291 and 388 with the above examples), but I don't see any specific guidance on this so I thought I'd raise it. 216.189.169.71 04:16, 13 June 2022 (UTC)

  • I'd say that the number of actual content pages should be used, especially of that is what the library of congress does VergenceScatter (talk) 04:57, 13 June 2022 (UTC)