My parents used to have this set and it got me through so many school projects. People don’t use physical encyclopedias these days thanks to Wikipedia. Then again, I’m thinking of another type of encyclopedia. We’ll get to the questions in a bit. First, I’m going to clarity a bit.
Many authors might not consider this because it doesn’t really work for stand-alone authors or some genres. You need to have a lot of material to make an encyclopedia that collects everything from your works. I could probably do one for Legends of Windemere or all of my books. In fact, I used to have a notebook that listed all of the people, places, and things from my books. This was back in high school and I thought making a big compendium would be cool. Now, it seems like a daunting task that I wouldn’t be able to tackle without giving up a year of my life. Searching through every book to make sure I don’t miss a single character, monster, location, spell, and relic would take months if not longer. So, this is really an idea that I’ve abandoned. That doesn’t mean I’m not curious.
So, here are the questions:
- Do you own or have you ever read a compendium/encyclopedia from an author?
- Do you think they are worth creating when you or fans can make a wiki site?
- If you had to make a compendium about your life, what would be one thing that you could not forget?
Legends of Windemere 
I’ve heard of authors paying for one to be created. 🙂
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Never thought of that. Guess it works if you can afford it.
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I have several in my collection: LoTR, Pokémon, Star Wars, Marvel. So yes, I would read others.
I know people who do wiki sites. I’m not inclined to do one myself. I would rather have the book to look at.
I wouldn’t do one on my life, but I would do one on the series I’m working on. That’s why I’m writing a series bible for each.
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I’m not sure how wiki sites work. Been told that the authors/creators can’t be behind them.
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I have never read a compendium/encyclopedia from an author. I never thought of creating a Wiki site. I guess that is a real thing. I could not forget the feeling of being published for the first time.
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Great answers.
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😀
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The very idea makes me tired. I think I’ll have an adult beverage and sit this one out.
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Good idea.
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I was deeply involved with Pern fandom for years, and I know I still have my Dragonlover’s Guide to Pern somewhere in the house.
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How massive is that?
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It’s a large sized book, but only about 1″ thick.
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I’ve read the Star Wars ones. We used them for role-playing. As for my books, I’ve considered creating a Wiki and inviting readers to add to it as a way of interacting with them. Not sure how to answer the third question…
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I’ve wondered about the wiki thing. Just not very good at web design and too busy to attempt.
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Yeah, I’m not too sure how it works either. I’d have to look into it. I originally thought of it as a good way to keep everything in my expanded worlds straight for myself.
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I’m noticing not many people tried for the third question. Actually, I can’t tell if anyone did.
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I’ve been thinking of creating a wiki for series I’m working on but at the minute everything is in a folder. I did recently catalogue my research library though.
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That’s cool. How did you catalog it?
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I downloaded an app to my phone called My Library and scanned in the ISBN bar codes. That added all info: cover, title, author, publication year, publisher, number of pages, ISBN, category, and a summary. I can daily carry it with me to make sure I don’t duplicate anything when hunting in 2nd hand bookstores. For a copy I can share, I exported it as an excel file to my Google drive. There were some things I had to add manually, particularly with older ore obscure books with no ISBN, but I got through 270 books in about 5 hours.
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That should be ‘easily carry’, not daily…
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That’s really cool.
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