Book Reviews – LLBooks.net

This is an unofficial FAQ for the abebooks.com BookSleuth Forum, created by members, and will be revised periodically. Most of the replies to this message have been incorporated into this first post, so it is not necessary to read to the end of the thread.

This is a collaborative effort. Nobody here is being paid to find books for others, so we would appreciate if you would stick around and try your hand at solving some of them. We have a list of STUMPERS THAT WILL NOT DIE that especially need your attention!

JOINING ABEBOOKS

Before posting, you will be required to register for a free account and login. Now, the important part: no matter where in the forums you happened to be, upon logging in, you will be plunked into the abebooks.com COMMUNITY FORUM, which looks very similar to the BOOKSLEUTH FORUM. You will need to navigate back to BookSleuth first using the navigation links at the top or right side of the screen.

A note about the UK forums: if the book you are seeking could be British in origin, you may have better luck posting on the BookSleuth UK Forum, but you are certainly welcome to post it on the .com side, as well!

FORMING YOUR QUERY

Place your query in the proper folder. You have “General,” “Children’s,” “Romance,” “Science Fiction,” and “Non-Fiction” from which to select. If you have more than one book to be identified, make a separate post for each book.

Give your discussion a title more meaningful and distinctive wording than “Looking for a book.” EVERYONE who comes to BookSleuth is either LOOKING for a book or helping to IDENTIFY a book. For example: someone who forgot the title of A Christmas Carol by Dickens may use the title “Miser boss visited by 3 ghosts at Christmas” or some such wording relevant to the book being described. You want people to open your post, so advertise it!

Include details. Put the year range you read the book, and if it was old or new when you read it. It also helps to know what country the book was in when it was read, about how many pages, paperback or hardcover, dust jacket or not, illustrations or not, colour of cover, where you got the book (borrowed from the library, at a school book fair, etc.). Anything at all may trigger a clue. Also, if someone has already suggested a title and it’s not the right one, please list that in your query.

GETTING YOUR ANSWER

Please don’t leave an e-mail address and expect us to send you the answer. Instead, keep checking back. If you don’t want to take the time, then subscribe to the thread (‘Click here to be notified when anyone posts in this discussion’ is shown just after you post). The forum DOES NOT automatically notify you when you have replies; you must opt for this. [There is some question as to whether the subscription link actually works, so bearing that in mind, you may also try changing the 'E-mail Notification' option under 'My Preferences' to 'Yes.']

FOLLOWING UP

Make sure you login when you come back because if you don’t, replies to you will show ‘Unread’ even if you’ve read them. When you read your answers, please let us know whether or not you think the book(s) suggested are the correct solution. Even if you have to buy the book first, or borrow it from the library, it is nice to let us know that you are taking it from there. Nothing burns many Sleuths more than researching a query for hours for folks who never come back to read solutions. While we don’t do this for glory, a “thank you” certainly makes *you* look polite.

A tip for finding your post again once it’s fallen off the front page: Login and click on ‘My Preferences’ and change to ‘Advanced View.’ Go ‘Back to Discussion List’ and under the ‘Show Discussions…’ at the top is a drop-down bar. If you select ‘With Unread Msgs “To:Me”‘ then you’ll see any posts that people have replied to.

Alternately, you can go to the category you posted in and click the little plus sign next to the word ‘Msgs.’ That will expand the category and allow you to see more of the messages. Click on ‘Next 50′ at the bottom of the page for even older messages.

BUYING THE BOOK

If your BookSleuth query is identified and you wish to buy a copy of the book, consider purchasing from abebooks.com booksellers, since abebooks hosts this forum. (If you do buy it from another venue, that’s fine, but don’t go shouting loudly about it here.) You can locate copies for sale by using the search box in the red bar at the top of the screen, or by pressing ‘Advanced Search’ for more search options.

NAVIGATING THE FORUMS

Within any given thread, posts are organized in chronological, not discussion topic, order. This means that there can be several tangential conversations going on simultaneously. At the top of each message, though, there are numbers that tell you that the post is a reply to another one. If you click on the in reply to number, you will be taken to the message that the other was responding to. Also, the numbers at the bottom of each thread (‘Navigate this discussion: 1-20′) allow you to go back and forth in a thread.

When you reply to a post, you have the option of changing the person to whom you address your message. To do this, you must be in ‘Advanced View’ (see above). After you click ‘Reply,’ there is a triangle next to the person’s name above the entry box, and if you click on the triangle, you will see a list of names from which you can choose. (The box labeled ‘Others’ next to this does not seem to work as it should, so just ignore it.)

MISCELLANEOUS

There is no way to move your post to a different category, change your title, or delete a thread after you’ve posted, so use care the first time. If you do need to post it again in a different category or with a different title (for goodness’ sake, it wasn’t “Looking for a book,” was it?), you may wish to delete your other post or at least edit it to say you reposted in the (fill in the blank) category.

If your post has had no responses after a period of time and you think your discussion title was good, you may want to post a follow up with any additional clues you remember. Even a one word reply (like “bump”) will place your thread back to the top of the category for exposure to new members or infrequent visitors. There is no standard amount of time to wait before doing this, and there is a fine line between persistence and annoyance. Years-old stumpers have been solved because the poster joins the BookSleuth community and brings it back to the forefront from time to time, but threads that are bumped every 2 days (or worse yet, reposted, with or without having read replies) will likely be ignored.

There’s a lot more, including various settings on your preferences and profile (go ahead, click on it and fill it in, you may make a friend!), forum options like setting obnoxious posters on ‘ignore,’ and computer nerd stuff like how to make links and photos appear in your posts, creating fancy signatures, etc., but they’ll be saved for another post. This one’s already long enough.