I don't know anything about Jibby Jones so this explanation is hard for
me to follow.
What we need to know is:
1. Is the book "Jibby Jones" that you just produced, a REWRITE of
several short stories that now has a single cohesive narrative plot, or
is it a COMPILATION of several short stories, that were not
SIGNIFICANTLY rewritten from their original magazine publications, and
that are perhaps only loosely related vignettes? This will determine
whether this book "Jibby Jones" is released as-is or if it has to be
reworked into an omnibus.
2. What does the rest of the Jibby Jones corpus look like? This is what
the spreadsheet is for - I was not aware that Jibby Jones is a series,
or I would have asked you to do this before you started. But for series
like these, we need a spreadsheet listing all of the short stories and
where they appear, so that we can get an idea of what should go in an SE
omnibus and what novelizations can be produced individually.
Naming a handful of stories I have never heard of or read, and some
other unrelated novel the guy wrote, is not useful because I don't know
what's going on. We need a spreadsheet to 1) understand what to do with
this book "Jibby Jones" and 2) make a clear plan for future producers
who want to work on more Jibby Jones stories.
Can you put that together before we continue?
On 1/18/26 10:53 PM, Sergio Tellez wrote:
> Thanks Alex! I checked the few scans and transcriptions currently
> available online for the Jibby Jones stories and I believe the ones
> featured in the 1923 and 1924 books are interconnected to some degree
> and meant to be read as part of a new standalone publication.
>
> Checking the "Jibby Jones's Treasure Trove" and "Jibby Jones & The Liver
> Coffee" as featured in American Boy magazine shows that, while the
> majority of the text remains almost identical in both printings despite
> being split into two chapters each in their book-form format, the
> paragraphs that begin each story have changed or outright removed
> between their magazine and novel presentations.
>
> In the case of "Treasure Trove," the first two paragraphs that served as
> a "the story so far" introduction (the meeting with the Tough Customer,
> what happened to the swimming-hole, and the current status of their
> treasure hunt) have been replaced with two sentences that continue the
> story as if it were a regular book chapter. (American Boy, January,
> 1922) <
https://archive.org/details/americanboy213unse/page/26/mode/2up>
> (I.A. 1923 Book Scans) <
https://archive.org/details/
> jibbyjonesstoryo00butl_0/page/246/mode/2up>
>
> As for "Liver Coffee," the first four paragraphs, which concern their
> damaged boat and their interest in acquiring money to repair it, have
> been rephrased to add the element of alligator-hunting as per the
> central theme of the book. (American Boy, April, 1923) <https://
>
archive.org/details/the-american-boy-v-24n-06-1923-04-jvh-exciter/
> page/16/mode/2up> (H.T. 1924 Book Scans) <
https://babel.hathitrust.org/
> cgi/pt?id=umn.31951000897205m&seq=194>
>
> I also consulted the transcription for another Ellis Parker Butler work,
> Swatty <
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/44154>, and, while I couldn't
> find digitized scans of its original short story elements at the moment,
> it seems to follow the same pattern of re-contextualizing the events
> that happened in each story to share a new or existing overall narrative.
>
> standardebooks/68409604-b0b1-4782-8faf-e417c07a15a7n%
40googlegroups.com
> <
https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/standardebooks/68409604-
> b0b1-4782-8faf-e417c07a15a7n%
40googlegroups.com?
> utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer>.