Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/At Dawn (novel)


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was   delete. Wily D 08:17, 22 October 2012 (UTC)

At Dawn (novel)

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I'm nominating this after an ongoing reversion war with an editor, since this is one of the most neutral ways to go about this without continuing with the reversion war. The issue is that this book is not notable right now and might never be. There are only two usable reviews out there, one for Publishers Weekly and one for Kirkus Reviews, only one of which is actually linked in the article. Two reviews are not enough to show notability. There's a link to the author's page for a review from another author, but we only get the blurb and have no way of knowing exactly whether or not the quote is taken in context or not. That's another issue with the page: it suffers from a non-neutral point of view and reads as highly promotional. There's also some original research going on in the article, with the content being sourced by primary sources that don't entirely back up everything in the article. I've also noticed a rampant amount of copyvio, as evidenced by the bookjacket summary being used in the article. WHile the article for Hughes needs work as well, I initially redirected it to the author's page but the reversions have gotten so bad and there's a good argument for outright deleting the page, so I'm listing it here. The book is listed as publishing on the 16th, but is already available for sale so I can't say for certain that it'll receive any more publicity than it already has. We can't keep an article based on the idea that it might eventually get reviews. That violates WP:CRYSTAL. Tokyogirl79 (talk) 19:02, 10 October 2012 (UTC) *Keep. While I don't know the exact protocol to officially repudiate a Request for Deletion, I hope the response I'm writing here will be sufficient enough for why I believe that prematurely deleting this page will be a grave mistake. With that, I find Tokyogirl79's comments to be absurd and, for reasons beyond me, negatively biased towards Jobie Hughes as though her remarks are meant to be personal and done solely out of spite. To counter her first claim, i.e., that the book is not notable, I couldn't disagree more. This is the debut literary novel from a very established writer whose first two books both hit #1 on the New York Times bestsellers list, and collectively held onto the top spot for 10 total weeks. Though "At Dawn" is being marketed as a "debut," Jobie Hughes is not a debut author, nor is he somebody coming onto the scene for the first time. He's established to the point that he's had a blockbuster Hollywood film adapted from his first novel by DreamWorks Studios. While I agree with Tokyogirl79 that two reviews are insufficient by themselves, let's not forget that the book is still a full week away from being published. Per the author's own website, he'll be kicking off a four-city book tour that begins this Saturday, Oct. 13th, and will include seven different book signing/reading events in addition to three individual radio interviews. Based on this publicity alone, and given his publishing background and the feature articles that have been written on him in the past (one in the Wall Street Journal, another in New York Magazine--both of which are used as citations on the author's main wikipedia page), I think it's safe to assume many more reviews and interviews will be forthcoming leading up to the book's release... In response to Tokyogirl79's claim of copyvio evidenced by the book jacket summary being used in the article... She was right, the old synopsis did in fact use the book jacket synopsis pretty much verbatim. But since I was one of the fortunate few to receive an early galley of Mr. Hughes's novel two months ago, I have rewritten the article's synopsis so that plagiarism is no longer an issue while the integrity of the synopsis remains in place and is as strong as it originally was. Furthermore, I believe the content of this page is very neutral, and contains nothing promotional whatsoever aside from the only two reviews currently available, both of which are glowingly positive. But when did including Critical Reception become a promotional ploy? To use Tokyogirl79's own words, "I can't say for certain that it'll receive any more publicity than it already has." No, she can't. Which is precisely why I believe deleting this article is premature, especially when the book hasn't even been released. I firmly believe the publicity has only just begun, and it's my greatest hope that the editors who decide the fate of such pages will give this particular page a fighting chance. As an author with strong publishing credentials, I believe Jobie Hughes is owed that much. ohioana (talk) 21:16, 10 October 2012 (UTC)
 * Delete. It did occur to me to suggest redirecting this to the author's page but I will bow to Tokyogirl79's hands-on experience; I know how frustrating these reversion wars can be for the well-intentioned patroller and she's given this more thought than I have.  I do not believe that this meets any of the five criteria of WP:BKCRIT, although the two reviews are, as she says, usable.  If at some future point the book meets any of the categories, the article can go to deletion review.   Ubelowme U  Me  20:41, 10 October 2012 (UTC)
 * Comment. The author of this book has been considered sufficiently notable to have a Wikipedia article, but after reading  this, I'm not sure that even that is merited.  Mr. Hughes was apparently a student doing work-for-hire and was paid a pittance to collaborate on two notable books with an extremely well-known author, James Frey; that collaboration is now ended.  I do not regard this as "strong publishing credentials"; I regard this as a strong hint that no one will ever hear of Mr. Hughes' work again.  There is a strong odour of publicity-seeking around all this and I ask the closing admin to take that into consideration when considering the arguments put forward by the SPA creator.  Ubelowme U  Me  21:50, 10 October 2012 (UTC)
 * The thing is, books do not gain notability by being written by a notable writer. (WP:NOTINHERITED) Very, very few writers are ever notable enough to where all of their works are considered notable. To get to that point you have to be as wildly notable as say, Edgar Allan Poe or Shakespeare, and even then the general idea is that being that notable means that their works would've been discussed at some level or depth in some format. As far as publicity goes, we can't keep article based upon the idea that it may eventually get coverage in various sources. That's not how Wikipedia works. We can't keep articles because you personally think that it'd get notice.Tokyogirl79 (talk) 00:59, 11 October 2012 (UTC)
 * And as far as reception sections go, I'm a big fan of them because it enables me to keep so many articles. BUT one of the biggest issues of reception sections is that you must find a neutral way of summing up the reviews. The way you've written them are done in a fashion to ensure that the reviews are written in the best way possible, which is seen as promotion. The PW review wasn't really all that glowing, saying that the book "is ultimately marred by a familiar plot, too-perfect characters, heavy-handed morals, and an obsessive symmetry". You seem to be bent upon writing the review section in a way that only highlights the positives of the book, which is when something goes from being neutral to being promotional. That's why you can never really take reviews blurbs posted on author or publisher sites as the core truth. It's in the best interest of the author/publisher to promote the book in the best light possible because they want sales. Saying that PW said "it's good BUT..." doesn't look as good on the book jacket or author website. I'd also like to say that this sentence: "A type of bildungsroman, the book has been hailed as "a fresh and original coming-of-age story set against our modern times."[3]" has been said by no one other than the publisher and again, the publisher is going to say praise for their books, which is why you can't use publisher praise to show notability and it should be avoided in general. And again, just because someone is known for one element does not guarantee publicity later on when they publish something that isn't what they initially gained publicity for. Considering that Hughes only received notice for the Lorien Legacy in relation to his working relationship with Frey going sour, it's not like he was repeatedly reported on otherwise. You can't guarantee publicity and that there's so little of it right now at this point at time and considering how little attention the book has gotten so far, there's good enough reason to justify that it might never receive enough publicity to really warrant having an article. This is one of those things that is better served by being redirected to the author's article, but since you've pretty much stated that this isn't an option I've listed it for AfD to let it be settled here.Tokyogirl79 (talk) 01:30, 11 October 2012 (UTC)


 * Delete. What can we say?  Utterly fails WP:BK.  Is there anyone who can read WP:BK and honestly say that this insignificant novel actually satisfies the requirements for inclusion?  The answer, obviously, is no.  It's as simple as that.  The article must be deleted.  The argument that this non-notable book is somehow notable because its author used to be a ghostwriter is downright absurd.  BTW, everything put out by the New York presses gets reviewed in PW and Kirkus, so those reviews actually mean absolutely nothing when it comes to notability. Qworty (talk) 08:10, 11 October 2012 (UTC)
 * I do have to argue that it does count towards notability, at least technically. They're just not enough to show it passes WP:NBOOK since there's only two of them. I've used them before in articles, but I've had enough people argue about the brevity of the reviews, saying that they're ultimately trivial sources at best. It's one of those things that at this particular point in time is something that falls under the column of reliable reviews, but probably won't in another 4-5 years of Wikipedia evolution.Tokyogirl79 (talk) 09:34, 11 October 2012 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Literature-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 14:57, 11 October 2012 (UTC)
 * Everybody with a book coming out of New York gets PW and Kirkus. Are we now going to say that every book published by a New York press is by default notable?  I think not. Qworty (talk) 19:03, 11 October 2012 (UTC)
 * To be fair, not every book published out of New York gets a PW review. There are so many books being published these days it is almost unimaginable, more English-language novels were published in 2010 than during the entire Victorian era (somewhere over 100,000). We should expect to have a lot of notable books because the pool is so large. PW is a good resource to help determine which ones are notable. --Green Cardamom (talk) 21:08, 11 October 2012 (UTC)
 * I would say that the lack of PW and Kirkus reviews would certainly be an indication of a lack of notability, but PW and Kirkus reviews by themselves--as we have in this instance--are insufficient to establish notability. Qworty (talk) 21:23, 11 October 2012 (UTC)


 * Delete support the delete because there are not enough sources. The book was added too soon. Once the sources are available the article could probably be recreated. Or maybe incubate it to make it easy. -- Green Cardamom (talk) 21:24, 11 October 2012 (UTC)
 * I have no problem with either of those options- incubation would probably be a good option in this case because while we can't predict that there won't be coverage, it has a better chance than some of the other stuff that gets added to the mainspace.Tokyogirl79 (talk) 02:24, 12 October 2012 (UTC)


 * Delete without prejudice. Someone jumped the gun on this. This is why we have Special:Mypage. Reexamine in ten years.--Auric (talk) 13:18, 14 October 2012 (UTC)
 * Weak delete. Under WP:BK, reviews can establish notability. There are two reviews in independent sources. The problem is that the guideline goes on to say, "Some of these works should contain sufficient critical commentary to allow the article to grow past a simple plot summary." I'm not sure this is the case with these reviews, which are quite brief. The book does not satisfy any of the other criteria in WP:BK. Hence delete unless and until more substantial coverage can be found. --Batard0 (talk) 09:03, 19 October 2012 (UTC)
 * Merge into Jobie Hughes. I don't see that sufficient notability has been established to justify a seperate article about this book at this stage. If more reviews or notable attention can be found, I would change my vote. Fireflo (talk) 11:41, 19 October 2012 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.