Wikipedia:Notability (books)

This page documents an English Wikipedia notability guideline. Editors should generally follow it, though exceptions may apply. Substantive edits to this page should reflect consensus. When in doubt, discuss first on this guideline's talk page.

Shortcuts WP:BK WP:NB WP:NBOOK

This page in a nutshell: A book is presumed notable, and to generally merit an article, if it verifiably meets through reliable sources, one or more of the following criteria: The book has been the subject[1] of two or more non-trivial[2] published works appearing in sources that are independent of the book itself.[3] This can include published works in all forms, such as newspaper articles, other books, television documentaries, bestseller lists,[4] and reviews. This excludes media re-prints of press releases, flap copy, or other publications where the author, its publisher, agent, or other self-interested parties advertise or speak about the book.[5] The book has won a major literary award. The book has been considered by reliable sources to have made a significant contribution to any of the sciences, humanities or arts, or to a notable or significant motion picture, or other art form, or event or political or religious movement. The book is, or has been, the subject of instruction at two or more schools,[6] colleges, universities or post-graduate programs in any particular country.[7] The book's author is so historically significant that any of the author's written works may be considered notable. This does not simply mean that the book's author is notable by Wikipedia's standards; rather, the book's author is exceptionally significant, and the author's life and body of written work would be a common subject of academic study.

This guideline provides some additional criteria for use in deciding whether a book should or should not have an article on Wikipedia. Satisfying this notability guideline generally indicates a book warrants an article.

A book that meets either the general notability guideline or the criteria outlined in this or any other subject-specific notability guideline, and which is not excluded under the What Wikipedia is not policy, is presumed to merit an article.

This is not an absolute guarantee that there will necessarily be a separate, stand-alone article entirely dedicated to that book. Editors may use their discretion to merge or group two or more related topics into a single article.

Failure to satisfy the criteria outlined in this guideline (or any other notability guideline) is not a criterion for speedy deletion.

The criteria provided by this guideline are rough criteria. They are not exhaustive. Accordingly, a book may be notable, and merit an article, for reasons not particularized in this or any other notability guideline.

Claims of notability must adhere to Wikipedia's policy on verifiability. It is not enough to simply assert that a book meets a criterion. Verifiable reliable sources that substantiate that claim must actually exist.

"Notability" is not a reflection of a book's merit. A book may be brilliantly written, fascinating and topical, while still not being notable enough to ensure sufficient verifiable source material exists to create an encyclopedia article about that book.

Though the concept of a "book" is widely defined, this guideline does not provide specific notability criteria for the following types of publications: comic books; graphic novels (although it does apply to manga); magazines; reference works such as dictionaries, thesauruses, encyclopedias, atlases and almanacs; music-specific publications such as instruction and notation books and librettos; instruction manuals; and exam prep books. Specific guidelines may be developed. Until then, this guideline may be instructive by analogy.

The criteria set forth below apply to books in electronic form (e-books) as well as to traditional books. An e-book that does not meet the criteria of this guideline is nevertheless notable if it meets the criteria of the notability guideline for web-specific content. An e-book that meets the criteria of this guideline does not need to meet the criteria of that guideline in order to be notable.

A book is presumed notable if it verifiably meets, through reliable sources, at least one of the following criteria:

1. The book has been the subject^[1] of two or more non-trivial^[2] published works appearing in sources that are independent of the book itself.^[3] This can include published works in all forms, such as newspaper articles, other books, television documentaries, bestseller lists,^[4] and reviews. This excludes media re-prints of press releases, flap copy, or other publications where the author, its publisher, agent, or other self-interested parties advertise or speak about the book.^[5]
2. The book has won a major literary award.
3. The book has been considered by reliable sources to have made a significant contribution to any of the sciences, humanities or arts, or to a notable or significant motion picture, or other art form, or event or political or religious movement.
4. The book is, or has been, the subject of instruction at two or more schools,^[6] colleges, universities or post-graduate programs in any particular country.^[7]
5. The book's author is so historically significant that any of the author's written works may be considered notable. This does not simply mean that the book's author is notable by Wikipedia's standards; rather, the book's author is of exceptional significance and the author's life and body of written work would be a common subject of academic study.

The five preceding criteria do not necessarily apply to books excluded by the threshold standards, and do not apply to not-yet-published books.

A book should, at a minimum, be catalogued by its country of origin's official or de facto national library (if that country has such a national library). For example, in the United States books are catalogued by the Library of Congress; in the United Kingdom at the British Library; in Australia at the National Library of Australia; in Canada by Library and Archives Canada; in France at the Bibliothèque nationale de France; in Singapore at the National Library Board; in Brazil by the Fundação Biblioteca Nacional; in Argentina at Biblioteca Nacional de la República Argentina; and in India at the National Library of India. For a complete list, see List of national libraries.

However, these criteria are exclusionary rather than inclusionary; meeting these threshold standards does not imply that a book is notable, whereas a book which does not meet them, most likely is not. There will be exceptions—books that are notable despite not meeting these threshold standards—but good reasons for the notability of such books should be clear.

A book included in Project Gutenberg or an analogous project does not need to meet the threshold standards.

Wikipedia should not have a standalone article about a book if it is not possible, without including original research or unverifiable content, to write an article on that book that complies with the policy that Wikipedia articles should not be summary-only descriptions of works, contained in criterion 1 of WP:INDISCRIMINATE.

Self-publication and/or publication by a vanity press do not correlate with notability.^[8] Exceptions do exist, such as Robert Gunther's Early Science in Oxford and Edgar Allan Poe's Tamerlane, but both of these books would be considered notable by virtue (for instance) of criterion 1.

Many vanity press books are assigned ISBN numbers, may be listed in a national library, may be found through a Google Books search, and may be sold at large online book retailers. None of these things is evidence of notability.

That a Wikipedia article on a book has been created by the author of that book or by any other interested party such as an editor or member of the editorial staff of that book has no bearing on whether or not that book is notable, though it does mean the person creating or editing that article has a conflict of interest and is expected to abide by the relevant Wikipedia guideline with regard to conflict-of-interest editing and the mandatory disclosure requirements for paid editing by the Wikimedia Foundation's terms of use. See Wikipedia:Conflict of interest and Wikipedia:Autobiography for more information. Failure to properly disclose a COI may result in the blocking of a user's account, though it is not necessarily a basis for nominating the associated article for deletion.

A book's listing at online bookstores Barnes & Noble.com and Amazon.com is not an indication of notability because the websites include large numbers of vanity press publications. A listing at any other online bookstore that includes large numbers of vanity press publications should be treated in the same way.

Articles about books that are not yet published are accepted only if they are not excluded by the Wikipedia is not a crystal ball policy, and only under criteria other than those provided by this guideline, typically because the anticipation of the book is notable in its own right. In such cases there should be independent sources which provide strong evidence that the book will be published, and which include the title of the book and an approximate date of publication.

The vast majority of books whose Wikipedia articles are nominated for deletion, and whose notability could reasonably be called into question, are contemporary. Nevertheless, the notability of books written or published earlier may occasionally be disputed and the criteria specified above, intended primarily for contemporary books, may be unsuitable because they would be too restrictive and would exclude articles on books that are worthy of notice.

Common sense should prevail. In such cases, possible bases for a finding of notability include, in particular, how widely the book has been cited or written about, the number of editions of the book, whether it has been reprinted, the fame that the book enjoys or enjoyed in the past, its place in the history of literature, its value as a historical source and its age.

Textbooks and technical books serve a very different function and come to be published through very different processes than other types of books. For these reasons, most of the standards for mainstream books are inapplicable to this kind of book because they would be too restrictive and would exclude articles on books that are worthy of notice. Again, common sense should prevail. In such cases, possible bases for a finding of notability include, in particular, whether the book is published by an academic press,^[9] how widely the book is cited by other academic publications or in the media,^[10] the number of editions of the book, whether one or more translations of the book have been published, how influential the book is considered to be in its specialty area, or adjunct disciplines, and whether it is, or has been, taught, or required reading, in one or more reputable educational institutions.

Articles on books should not be split and split again into ever more minutiae of detail treatment, with each split normally lowering the level of notability. While a book may be notable, it is not normally advisable to have a separate article on a character or thing from the book, and it is often the case that despite the book being manifestly notable, a derivative article from it is not. Exceptions do exist, especially in the case of very famous books. For example, Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol clearly warrants a side article on its protagonist, Ebenezer Scrooge. When a book has been split too finely to support the notability of individual subtopics, merging content back into the book's article is appropriate.

In some situations, editors decide that a separate article about a book, regardless of whether the book is notable, is not the best choice. The main alternatives include merging the content about a book to an article about the author, to an article about a book series (if it is part of a series), or to a list.

For example, it may be more appropriate to feature material about the book in the author's article, rather than creating a separate article for that book. Similarly, a single article giving an overview of a whole book series (e.g., the Nancy Drew Mystery Stories or the Aubrey–Maturin series) may be preferable to having separate articles about individual books in the series. It may also be appropriate to merge an article on a book into an article that is a bibliography or list of books (e.g., the List of Oz books). This might, for example, facilitate the inclusion of material on individual anonymous works that, because those works are anonymous, cannot be merged into their authors' articles.

If the book cannot be merged only because no article about the author or list for the series currently exists, consider writing the author's article or the list yourself, or request that it be written.

• Clicking on any linked ISBN number on Wikipedia takes you to Special:Booksources where preformatted links for the specific book are provided, allowing access to multiple library catalogues, bookseller databases and other book resources.

  This might be an issue as different formats of a book (i.e. ebook, audiobook, printed book) will have different ISBNs, and they will often not be sequential, especially for older books that were originally published before ebooks or audiobooks existed.

• The British Library's online catalogue^[11]
• The Library of Congress online catalog:^[12] a searchable database useful in identifying publisher, edition, etc.
• The Literary Encyclopedia:^[13] 3,300 profiles of authors, works and literary and historical topics and references of 18,000 works.
• Norton Anthology of World Literature:^[14] useful in the exploration of world literature.
• WorldCat:^[15] search for a book in library catalogues. Contains 1.8 billion items in 18,000 libraries worldwide.

Formerly:

• Questia Online Library, allowed full-text search, and paid subscription reading access to 64,000+ books and 1,000,000+ journal, magazine, and newspaper articles in their collection. Their strength was full text of recent academic books by major publishers such as Oxford University Press, University of North Carolina Press, and Greenwood Press, along with thousands of older academic books that are available only in larger university libraries.

• Wikipedia:Citing sources
• Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Novels
• Wikipedia:Naming conventions (books)
• Wikipedia:No original research
• Wikipedia:Identifying reliable sources
• Wikipedia:Verifiability
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Books
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Novels