Tracking down all of Isaac Asimov's books

Wow. I'm impressed!

I found the section on "STATISTICS — How Many Books?" in Part III of Mr Cooper's bibliography. I was hoping, once and for all, to see the final count of Asimov's books. As Mr Cooper says, 'The question of how many books Isaac Asimov wrote is surprisingly hard to answer definitively. Most sources are content to approximate the total as “almost five hundred”' - and I was expecting Mr Cooper to have finally counted them.

But, of course, nothing about Asimov's work is simple.

There are a total of 684 publication entries contained in this catalogue; of
these, 133 represent later printings, variant forms, or later editions with only minor revisions to the
content (or revisions carried out by others after Asimov’s death), and cannot by even the most relaxed
standard be counted as separate Asimov works.

After excluding these entries, we are left with a total of 538 Asimov books if we use the most permissive
possible standard of counting essentially everything published associated with his name.

As mentioned above, the total of 538 books is reached by using the most unrestrictive selection criteria
possible, [such as books where] Asimov had little or no involvement with them. [...] After making all these exclusions, we arrive at a “realistic” total of 469 Asimov books.

It is possible to tighten the criteria still further, and consider only those books for which Asimov was
mostly or entirely responsible. [...] Asimov’s total even according to “strict” criteria comes to 316 books – of which 122 are specifically intended for children, leaving 194 books produced by Asimov for the general audience.

I think 316 books is a good count. Books written for children are still books. Noone would exclude the Harry Potter books from JK Rowling's count, for example.

I have only about 50-70 of them (depending on which of Mr Cooper's definitions I use). Time to get collecting!

P.S. And thank you, @skybrian, for finding this and sharing it!