#bookbrainz

Should official scans for physical books be submitted as digital versions?

s/versions/editions/

For instance, most of the works physically released by Mises Institute are also available as free ebook downloads from their website, and most of them are scans of these physical releases.

If it gets a separate ISBN, I'd consider it, but I don't know if there'd be much to gain... it sounds like the format is the only real difference. Oh wait. If someone is trying to fetch metadata for the ebooks, it won't match if only the print editions are available. Hmm, it would probably be good to have them as a separate edition then, but it doesn't necessarily need to be distinct from other digital editions of the book. The

only other option would be to leave the format unselected, but I don't feel like that'd be the best approach.

I see.

If I've got some time later, I'd like to check if it's possible to build a few scripts to import Goodreads entries to BBz

It would streamline adding new entries a lot

Actually, I probably wouldn't worry about it if it is just a scan. At that point, whatever is scraping for metadata should handle falling back to the print edition. Yeah, I feel better about that. It feels better to be lazy.

Ah, also, another question

There's this

And that's a box set containing 5 different books, but it's its own thing, it has its own ISBN and own entry in Goodreads and other platforms

So I'm not really sure of how *this* shoudl be approached on BBz

Like, it's not a single book containing all others, but 5 books in one boxset, with each book having the ISBN of the bookset instead of its own.

It's an edition comprised of multiple works. I think that's how to handle it. Series ordering for it is the more painful issue

So we'd add an edition containing all 5 separate books?

I believe so, but you might double check the developer docs

Like, let me try to break it down into individual parts:... (full message at <https://matrix.chatbrainz.org/_matrix/media/v3/...>)

I understand Edition Groups to be basically various releases of the same work in different formats or with minor differences.

So adding all of them under an Edition Group would probably be confused because you'd have one Edition Group with 5 different books, considering that the entire boxset can be re-released in a different format or with minor differences.

The box set would get it's own edition group, I think. The box set would be its own edition. I still don't understand edition groups in BB...

It might be best to think of a boxed set as a single big book instead of separate, since they are all published together as effectively one book

We should probably have an option for "boxset", though.

For formats? Yeah... that and an option for the number of books sounds like a good idea. That's analogous to mediums in MB

Like, here we should have a "Boxset" or "Collection" format, and then we should maybe get to pick the specific books or their formats.

Because it is completely possible for a boxset to include Paperback + Hardcover + Audiobook CD + eBook code or something similar