Site information page updated 28 August 2021.

All the book titles in SF Encyclopedia author Checklists are links, highlighted in the traditional blue. Most of them link to the Affiliate Choice page which can otherwise be reached and personalized via the Shopping button in the Extras panel to the right of every SFE page. The link copies the title and author to the Affiliate Choice page, where you can pick a shopping site and search for the specified book using the Search selected shop button. The benefit to the SFE is that we receive a tiny affiliate fee if you buy anything – not necessarily the book whose title you clicked on in the first place – after going to the shop.

As explained on the Affiliate Choice page, there's also a Search ignoring author button which is handy when looking for a book about a particular author (and thus listed under further reading in his or her entry) which was written by someone else. A third button, labelled Just visit shop, takes you to the selected shopping site without running a book search on arrival. Finally, Search Picture Gallery avoids shopping sites altogether and looks for the book cover among the many thousands of images in our famous Gallery feature.

In the online Third Edition of the SF Encyclopedia, Checklist links for titles that could be found as ebook editions at the SF Gateway site would take you there rather than to our own shopping page. SF Gateway is run by our former publishers, Gollancz; buying ebooks there did not benefit us directly but made Gollancz happy, which was also good for the SF Encyclopedia. With the end of our Gollancz contract, the automatic redirection to SF Gateway sales pages has ceased.

Occasionally Asked Questions

Q. Do you link to specific editions like the first editions recorded in your Checklists?
A. No. The searches cover any edition with the same title and author.

Q. Will you be adding further shopping choices?
A. We certainly hope to, but registering as an official affiliate can be a fiddly business. Some shopping outlets insist on various complex, time-consuming US tax forms and declarations, and a sense that life is too short does occasionally intrude. Others allow only generic links, and it seems a bit pointless to have a specific book title link merely going to the front page of a sales site.