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First Bible Stories was proposed for deletion. This page is an archive of the discussion about the proposed deletion. This page is no longer live. Further comments should be made on the article's talk page rather than here so that this page is preserved as an historic record. The result of the debate was delete

This entry consists of three somewhat POV lines giving publishing details of a non-notable children's book published by Backpack Books in 2003, plus a list of chapter headings. I reckon it's an advertisement. After trying various combinations, I found the same title+ISBN at barnesandnoble.com, where the year is given as 2002 and the editor named as "The Staff of Barnes & Noble" (!)--a different edition, a different book? I found no trace of a Backpack Books issue of the title in 2003 (excepting always the good old Wikipedia article googlehit), but then searching is a bit hampered by First Bible Stories, as such, being all over the place. (Hey, maybe we need an article on this category of children's books?) In any case, I suggest delete as advertising.--Bishonen 08:41, 7 Aug 2004 (UTC)

  • Object. This is no more an ad than any other stub about a book. Temp Tom 08:55, 7 Aug 2004 (UTC)
  • Delete - advert. Dunc_Harris|☺ 10:02, 7 Aug 2004 (UTC)
  • Delete. No evidence that the book is in any way notable. Andrewa 10:49, 7 Aug 2004 (UTC)
  • Delete: non-notable: how many bible-story books can there be anyway? Do we need the Bible rehashed as a chapter list in articles for them all? TPK 11:41, 7 Aug 2004 (UTC)
  • Delete & start again: The trouble with making a clear delete strike here is that this particular title belongs not not one book. There are many, many books in the genre, and more than one has taken this title. As Bishonen says, an article like Children's Bibles or similar could mention notable titles and discuss somewhat how this genre began. Before there were fictions for children (1749), there were children's Bible stories. Geogre 12:03, 7 Aug 2004 (UTC)
  • Delete. — Chameleon Main/Talk/Images 13:43, 7 Aug 2004 (UTC)
  • Keep. Not advertisement as I dont go for that, real book, not POV, and I find it interesting so someone else must too. "Antonio Yo Quiero Sexo Bell! Martin"
    • But, Antonio, how can anybody find the book interesting as long as the article doesn't tell us anything interesting about it? The interestingness doesn't do the reader any good if it stays in your head. Put it in the article. Bishonen Quiere Sexy Antonio Martin 14:29, 8 Aug 2004 (UTC)
  • Delete. Ambi 01:20, 8 Aug 2004 (UTC)
  • Delete as non-notable. Honestly, have you seen any other articles that were nothing but chapter lists? I mean, don't you want the Wikipedia to be a good encyclopedia? How does an article like that help? --Ardonik 05:23, 2004 Aug 8 (UTC)
  • Delete. I thought I was going to read something about the J and E stories of the documentary hypothesis, and instead all I saw was this... Fire Star 15:09, 8 Aug 2004 (UTC)
  • Comment I wanted to vote "delete." I was ready to vote "delete." I applied my own notability test, which is that the Amazon sales rank exceed 0.5 * the number of articles in Wikipedia (i.e. greater than 160,000). It's not sold by Amazon. It is sold by http://www.bn.com . Barnes and Noble gives it a "Barnes and Noble sales rank" of 7,725. This needs to be explained somehow. Maybe the Barnes and Noble brick-and-mortar stores have it stacked high on a table near the checkout line. Or maybe it ranks 7,725 among illustrated religious books for children. I don't know. I don't move in Christian-kiddy-lit circles. If nobody can explain this sales rank away, I'm open to the possibility that this might actually be a genuinely notable book. The article is still unacceptably full of promotional and POV language. [[User:Dpbsmith|Dpbsmith (talk)]] 15:20, 8 Aug 2004 (UTC)
    • I'll have a shot at explaining it away, Dpbsmith, even though I can't find any actual sales figures to use in illustration, and I'm very sorry for boring everybody. But this is the principle: I don't think a bn sales rank of 7,725 for a book published by bn means that much. See, this book doesn't just happen to not be stocked by Amazon. The reason it's not available through Amazon is that it's a bn book, produced by bn, sold by bn and noone else. Since real book sales figures seem to be a big secret, I'll just make up a reasonable example, based on the fact that although bn is a big outfit, compared to Amazon it's small potatoes. Say that bn sells 10 books where Amazon sells 100. OK? Now say that First Bible Stories (ed. bn) and Kiddy Bible (ed. anon) are both reasonably popular, each selling 10,000 copies/year. Kiddy Bible is sold everywhere, so out of those 10,000, 8,000 copies are sold through Amazon, 800 through bn, and the remaining 1,200 copies through Christianbooks.com and other outlets. On the other hand, out of the 10,000 annual copies testifying to the equal popularity of First Bible Stories, every single one is sold through bn. OK? Now look at the resulting bn sales ranks for the two books:
Kiddy Bible: 800 copies. Rank: 456,789
First Bible Stories: Wow, 10,000 copies! Rank: 7,725
Talk about outranking! And, always keeping in mind that this is a book published by bn, the table near the check-out line sounds good too.--Bishonen 19:02, 8 Aug 2004 (UTC)
  • Besides the table at the door, don't forget price: sold-only-by-publisher means that the marketing expenses are zilch; combine this with either public-domain/copyright-expired content, or a labor-of-love text by a vanity author (50 bible stories in the re-imagined style of the one the missing parent read in the fragmentary memory of a sole (warm?) interaction before disappearing forever?!), and the publisher-retailer can run off 10,000 copies on their own presses on the day they would otherwise be idle because of, say, a temporary injunction against a borderline-libelous memoir, without changing other schedules. Those 10K can be quickly sold at a ridiculously low price (making a razor-thin profit margin) by making them look like an incredible bargain. The result is a big seller no more notable than the test marketing of 10K boxes of a non-starter breakfast cereal with, say, marshmallows in the shape of the star of a cartoon that sank without a trace in the first weekend. --Jerzy(t) 16:57, 2004 Aug 10 (UTC)
    • Considering casting a "Keep" vote: Aren't all cereals and cartoons notable?! --NoddaZogBubbid
  • Delete. I think Ardonik said it best. Skyler 03:19, Aug 9, 2004 (UTC)
  • Del. Not notable. --Jerzy(t) 16:57, 2004 Aug 10 (UTC)
  • Delete. Not notable in the slightest. Postdlf 03:31, 12 Aug 2004 (UTC)

This page is now preserved as an archive of the debate and, like other '/delete' pages is no longer 'live'. Subsequent comments on the issue, the deletion or on the decision-making process should be placed on the relevant 'live' pages. Please do not edit this page.

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