Hello,
I added the fine press Arion Press (WP). They are probably best known for their release of Moby-Dick, which is often considered the finest edition.
BookBrainz is missing some features that I think would make it better for recording information about high-end releases like this. There is no field for the amount of copies the printing is limited to (Arion’s Moby-Dick only 250) and you cannot set a publisher’s type to “fine press.”
I think “fine press” should be a distinct type since fine press publishers and collectors are distinct from those related to traditional publishing. There is an active community of fine press enthusiasts on LibraryThing, for example.
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This is something relatively simple I think you can request with a ticket, but you can also add this information in the annotation.
But for fine presses, I wonder if it isn’t better to use categories and tags… I feel there is no way to prove one publisher is a fine press, it’s more a mode of working, or an evaluation of their work. Fields should be for facts that can be proven, but editors can create categories (tags aren’t available yet) to track things they care about.
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You have a point. Maybe fine press characteristics could be added as characteristics to the editions themselves e.g. fields for binding method, stitching type, cover material, page material, and so on. This might need to be hidden behind an optional field in your user settings since non-book collectors would end up overwhelmed.
I did open a ticket for adding an edition numbering field.
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