Offprints/Detachable Booklets (1 Viewer)

Jason

Founding member
more thoughts on bibliographic details that I couldn't find an existing thread on...

Some of the periodical offprints/detachable booklets are considered books within the database:
  • A Signature of Charles Bukowski - 1960
  • Signature 2 - 1961

While some others are excluded:
  • A Charles Bukowski Album - 1961
  • Grip the Walls - 1964
  • Night's Work (Including Buffalo Bill) - 1966

Seems like the latter three could be included if the first two are, or did I miss the details in another discussion at some point?
 
Frankly, it seems that NONE of them are proper "A" items as they are 1) Offprints (or issues made from official releases for the author) and not official releases and 2) they are virtually indistinguishable from regular copies made to look like these rare releases. I also do NOT consider Pastoral an actual "A" item as it was never published. The publisher printed copies and has only sold maybe 10 copies in the last 20 years. I'd call it an unpublished broadside and NOT an "A" item.
 
For what it's worth I always intended to change the book status of the Targets signatures in the database, I just never did it. The Wormwood issues that are all-Bukowski are classified as books, the others aren't because they are sections of the magazine, not books. (Whether or not they are "detachable." And didn't I read somewhere that all those copies of 55 Beds that appeared separately were bootlegged by someone and didn't come from Malone? The paper doesn't feel the same...)

My own personal definition of "book" would also exclude Poems and Drawings, since the cover is the Epos magazine cover, unlike the Wormwood all-Bukowski issues, which were presented more like Bukowski chapbooks (though they usually had the WW issue number on the front).

All of these technicalities are the realm of the bibliographer, not me. But the database should be consistent, whichever way it goes.
 

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