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On the surface, this seems like a straightforward problem/question, but I seem to be going around in a circle . . .
I came across a quotation in a novel that I want to save for possible use in a future presentation. The novel is a Kindle book that I purchased and downloaded from Amazon.com.
EE 12.60 gives an example for Electronically Readable Text (Kindle) that is clear and straightforward. But I ran into trouble as I tried to apply it.
My problem is the publication information. I looked in the book itself: the only publication information “printed” in the book is that it is copyrighted by the author. I then turned to the listing on Amazon.com, where it tells me that the Publisher is CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, with a 2012 publication date. Upon further checking I discovered that this “publisher” is a tool owned by Amazon.com that supports self-publishing. I did some more checking to see how others cited material published by CreateSpace, and found discussions involving CreateSpace management that stated very clearly that CreateSpace is not a publisher and should not be referenced as such. They consider themselves a vehicle to support electronic self-publishing. Some people suggested citing it as “printed by Create/Space,” but that also seems to be somewhat misleading.
If I then go to EE 12.20 on Self-published Works, it seems to focus on printed works, and I have no idea on how to incorporate the author’s address, which I do not have, into a format for an e-book.
To add one additional layer to my confusion, I discovered that the book was originally published in 2001 as a “real book.” Apparently he then republished it as an e-book in 2012. Since I don’t have the original book, I think this information is probably irrelevant for my purposes.
My thought for a Source List Entry is:
Fox, Jimmy. Deadly Pedigree. Kindle Edition. Self-published using CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2012.
And for a Reference Note is:
Jimmy Fox, Deadly Pedigree (self-published using CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2012), 34; download from Amazon.com.
I would appreciate your thoughts and suggestions.
Tom
Tom,
Tom,
Your questions are going to be answered by questions.
First question: As I think
First question: As I think about it, not really. I had about decided to cite them as the publisher using the text in my original question, and ignoring their comments that they are not publishers. In fact, they are the publishers, or at the very least the publishing vehicle for this book.
Second question: this is a more complex question, at least in my mind. There is nothing on the copyright page of the e-book that indicates the book had been previously published. Searches on the internet found it was published in print form in 2001 by another published. On his Facebook page he says that he changed publishing venues because he "became fed up with the fortress wall surrounding Traditional Publishing.” He also indicates that the book won awards as early as 1995, although it was not “published” until 2001. And, finally, on his website he refers to the version available on Amazon.com as a “new edition,” but nowhere is there any indication whether changes were made to the contents. So I think the best I can do is to acknowledge that the book was previously published, but not indicate what, if anything, changed.
With that in mind, and referencing EE 12.75 and 12.81, I would suggest the following:
Source:
Fox, Jimmy. Deadly Pedigree. 2001. New edition (Kindle) self-published using CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2012.
Reference Note:
Jimmy Fox, Deadly Pedigree (2001), (self-published using CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2012), 34; download from Amazon.com.
Tom
Tom,
Tom,
That book does seem to have had an interesting life. Your analyses of the issues are well thought-through. Your background raises one basic question: Is this CreateSpace version a new edition or a reprint.
If the author made substantial alterations of content, then it would be a new edition. If the author made no alterations, but simply reproduced the existing text in a new media, it would be a reprint. In this case, the author is calling it a new edition—in which case, we would take that statement at face value—unless we're writing a review of the book rather than just a citation.
For the reference note, you question using this:
Jimmy Fox, Deadly Pedigree (2001), (self-published using CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2012), 34; download from Amazon.com.
EE would tweak this in a couple of ways so that the citation follows standard conventions that readers recognize and software developers expect when they design their templates. That standard pattern is this:
NEW EDITION:
<Author>, <Book Title>, <edition> (<Place of Publication> : <Publisher>, <year>), <page>.
REPRINT:
<Author>, <Book Title> (<first pub date>; Reprint, <Place of Publication> : <Publisher>, <year>), <page>.
You point out that CreateSpace rejects the label of “publisher.” Traditionally they would be, because they are the commercial entity that converts the manuscripts of self-publishing authors into a distributable format. Legally, they don’t want that label.
The alternative is to handle it as one would an “imprint” series of a publishing house that is trying to distance itself from a certain genre of publication; or when a publisher prints a work for an organization but does not want to deal with or be blamed for editorial issues. Standard ways to present that relationship in the "publisher" field would be this:
Allegheny Imprint, Adirondack Publishing, …
Adirondack Publishing, for the Allegheny Historical Society …
Applying all this to the Fox book, if we consider it a new edition, we’d have this:
Jimmy Fox, Deadly Pedigree, Kindle ed. (http://www.Amazon.com : Privately published, CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2012), 34.
If we treat it as a reprint, we’d have this:
Jimmy Fox, Deadly Pedigree (2001; Reprint, http://www.Amazon.com : Privately published, CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2012), 34.
As you'll note, both of these versions follow the pattern illustrated for a reprint at EE 1.1, as well as the the reprint and new edition examples that are given and discussed in Chapter 12: Books, CDs, Maps, Leaflets & Videos. Specifically, they
identify the edition in the field that templates use for "edition" data (i.e., between the book title and the parens)
put all publication data inside the parentheses, including the first known publication date, because the function of those parentheses is to corral all publication data into one clearly defined unit.
use the traditional pattern for the data inside those parens, so that the citation fits the three basic fields that software uses for book publication data.
cites the exact URL in the "place of publication" field as we would do for any other published-online book or edition.
As for the last bullet, why would we not use "download from Amazon," as illustrated at EE 12.60? In the 12.60 case, the e-book is an exact image of a print book by a standard publisher—a book that's being marketed by that publisher in two versions: print and digital. Amazon's only function is to provide a digital download rather than shipping it. In contrast, this edition of the Fox book is available only in digital format and is self-published by an author who chose to use Amazon's self-publishing platform.
Thank you for your usual
Thank you for your usual thorough and insightful reply, especially as it applies to a novel rather than the more usual reference material normally discussed in this forum. To be honest, I hesitated to post my question for that reason, but decided to do so because I felt that some of us, including me, are quite likely to come across a similar problem with a source we need to use sometime in the future.
I appreciate your final comment about “download from Amazon” as illustrated at EE 12.60. I admit to being very confused about that when I first saw it, and your explanation clarifies it for me.
As a “bonus,” this is the quote that we have spent the last few days figuring out how to reference:
. . . genealogy [is] a synthesis of history, sociology, anthropology, psychology, economics, even literature. . . . [L]ong before language, there were the rudiments of an appreciation of genealogy in the behavior of proto-humans. It was the mother of biography, the father of heraldry, the thinking ape’s response to the genetic imperative to love one’s own kind. Religions and dynasties have risen and fallen on the real or faked facts of genealogy. Billions have perished over slight differences in armorial bearings. . . . [G]enealogy should be considered the original social science, the flesh and bone of myths and sagas, perhaps the first application of that uniquely human faculty, memory.
Jimmy Fox, Deadly Pedigree, Kindle ed. (http://www.Amazon.com : Privately published, CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2012), 34.
Admittedly it is very flowery and overdone, but I thought it might be useful in some context.
Tom
Interesting, Tom. That is
Interesting, Tom. That is definitely the kind of passage one doesn't expect to see in a novel. As for the need to cite novels: well, of course. Novels offer many observations about human behavior and, as students of history, we analyze the characters we are researching. If a novelist has made an observation worth quoting, then the novel deserves to be cited. (Says she who--ahem--feels that her own historical novel offers a few quite sage observations.)