Editions and pressings: why it matters
Every catalog on ctlgs splits the work from the object. One entry for Dune the book; separate entries for the 1965 Chilton hardcover and the 2021 movie tie-in paperback. One entry for Videodrome; separate entries for the Region 2 DVD and the restored 4K disc.
This is the single idea the whole site is built on, and it is borrowed openly from record collecting, where nobody would accept being told they own "the album". They own a pressing: this label, this year, this country, this matrix number. Discogs made that the unit of its catalog, and it is why the catalog is useful. Books, films, gigposters, gear and comics all have the same structure, and almost nothing catalogs them that way.
What breaks when you only have titles
You cannot say what you own. "Forty books" is not a collection, it is a count. Forty editions with publishers, years and codes is a collection.
You cannot avoid duplicates. The question in a shop is never "have I read this" — it is "do I have this one", and only an object-level catalog can answer it.
You cannot price anything. The 1965 Chilton Dune and the tie-in paperback differ by four orders of magnitude. A title-level entry averages them into nothing.
You cannot record what you know. Collectors accumulate exactly the detail that title-level catalogs throw away: the printing, the misprint, the colourway, the region code, the cartridge that shipped with the first run.
How it looks in each catalog
| catalog | the work | the object you own |
|---|---|---|
| books | Book | Edition — a printing, with its publisher, year and ISBN |
| home video | Film | Release — a disc or tape, with its region, format and catalogue number |
| gigposters | the show and the band | Poster — a print run, with its size, printer and run size |
| comics | Series | Comic — an issue and printing, with its cover and date |
| hi-fi and music gear | the maker | Gear — a model, with its years and specifications |
| video games | Game | Release — a boxed version for one platform and region |
The vocabulary changes by category because collectors' vocabulary changes by category. The structure does not.
Then your copy sits under the object
The object is shared: everyone cataloguing the 1965 Chilton Dune edits the same entry, and the work of pinning down what it is gets done once. Your copy is yours: one record per copy, with its condition, where you keep it, what you paid.
That is the part most sites have no room for, and it is the reason to catalog at this level at all — see tracking what you own.
When two objects are really one
The flip side of all this is that splitting too far is also wrong. A reprint with a different barcode is a different object; the same printing with a sticker on the shrinkwrap is not. The test contributors use is whether a collector would knowingly pay a different price for it, or go looking for one rather than the other. If yes, it is its own entry. If no, it is the same entry, and the difference belongs in Notes.
Variants and limited editions goes through the harder cases.
Last updated 2026-11-06