Incorrect cover for edition data

[Fran]

This edition: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13... has had the wrong cover uploaded. Originally it had no cover, and someone has added any old cover and not the one that's correct for that edition.

I have this edition, and have just been adding it to my shelves, so I've made the rest of the data complete and correct (date published, publisher, no of pages, etc).

The cover that has been added is for the Australian edition (see http://www.angusrobertson.com.au/book...), which doesn't appear to be on the site.

What's the correct thing to do in this case? Add a new edition with the cover I've got and swap the data? So the one that I've linked to becomes the Australian version and the new one I add becomes the UK edition that I own?

I know it's policy not to change covers (unless it's to revert a change), so I'm guessing that's what I should do, but what if someone had added that edition via ISBN (which is how I came to it, as I always search by ISBN). Then their edition would change to the Aus version!

Thanks for any advice.

[Monique]

You should manually add your edition minus the ISBN but with the correct cover. It is possible that both covers and both editions use the same ISBN so some research will be needed there. Then add a note to the description of the book and add a Librarian note that this is an alternate cover edition for that ISBN.

[rivka, Former Moderator]

Fran wrote: "someone has added any old cover and not the one that's correct for that edition."

It seems just as likely that they have added the cover they have. A book first printed in 2022 is likely to have more than one printing (with the same ISBN), and it's not uncommon for them to have different covers. See http://www.goodreads.com/help/show/85...

Edit: This seems especially likely since your edition has a different page count than the one the last librarian had.

[Monique]

Oops! Forgot to add that once you have added the alt cover edition, you should combine it with the rest of the editions.

[Fran]

Yes, I'm aware of adding alternate cover editions, and that the same ISBN can be reused and have different covers.

However, I'm a collector of Tamora Pierce books and I'm confident that this isn't the case here. I don't actually have the Australian editions of this series (because they're expensive to import to the UK), but I still have a fair amount of reason to believe that what's happened here is that someone's just added a cover to an edition that didn't have a cover, without heeding ISBN or other data.

The first UK edition (1999) has the same cover, but different ISBN. The edition I linked to initially is the UK reissue of 2002. The final UK printing was in 2005 and had a different cover and ISBN again.

The cover that I'm questioning is the Australian cover that was published in 2007, based on the US mass market reissue of 2006. The title had to be changed on the cover, because the book was retitled for the UK edition and before Tamora Pierce got dropped by Scholastic in the UK (she's no longer published here at all) in 2006/7 the Australian editions used to be the same as the UK editions. So, the first copies of the Circle of Magic series available in Australia were the same as the UK ones (visually, certainly, and I believe the ISBNs were the same too). After Scholastic UK stopped publishing Tammy, the Australian editions are based on the US versions (hence the 2007 Aus reissue cover).

Anyway, I digressed a bit there. The main point of evidence against the cover in question being an alternate cover for the same ISBN is that if you search for both 0439982944/9780439982948 and 1862917477/9781862917477 the former will return you listings with the cover I have which should be on the edition I'm questioning (or no cover image) and the latter will return you the Australian 2007 cover that's currently on the edition I'm questioning (or, again, no cover image). You will also note that results for the first ISBN I've listed tend to give you UK websites, and the latter Australian.

Here is an example from dymocks: 9780439982948 (no cover) and 9781862917477 (cover).

This is a fairly good listing showing all the editions I've mentioned, although it doesn't show a cover image for 9781862917477 and has got the 1999 and 2002 reissue a bit confused (there's 3 listings that show '1999', but one is a UK 1999 copy and one a Aus 1999 copy with the same ISBN, and the third is the 2002 reissue with the 0439982944 ISBN).

I hope that explains why I'm confident in saying this is not an alternate cover for the same ISBN. If need more evidence I can probably track down someone with the Australian cover image to confirm the ISBN for you.

[rivka, Former Moderator]

Have you tried contacting the user who added the cover image?

[Fran]

Nope. If that's what you recommend in these situations, then I'll do that after the bank holiday weekend (I'm going away). Thanks.