Something weird is going on with a few books I edited..

[Pisceschick]

Hi! I noticed in September that an author had re-released some old books under a pseudonym, so I followed the manual about how to deal with those to get them combined. I noticed today that a new version of two of the five books was created by "amazon_kcw" and somehow the ASINs I entered in the ASIN field were bumped to the edition field. My browser field shows the ASINs in its dropdown history, and you can see in the changelog that I put the ASIN in the correct field. But a month later, this amazon import was able to override that somehow to create a dup entry? The removal doesn't show in the changelog.

I just thought it was weird and that I'd bring it to the attention of people that might want to know.

Here's the info for the two books...

On to Richmond
My version: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1...
amazon_kcw version: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1...

Spring Will Come
My version: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1...
amazon_kcw version: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1...

[Cait]

Pisceschick wrote: "...somehow the ASINs I entered in the ASIN field were bumped to the edition field..."

Actually, it looks from the changelog like you originally also put the ASIN in the edition field when you created the first record, then went back and added it to the ASIN field after saving it.

"But a month later, this amazon import was able to override that somehow to create a dup entry? The removal doesn't show in the changelog."

This is weird, though. The removal of the ASIN ought to have been in the changelog if it was done through the front end or through the existing import back end. Perhaps this is the beginning of the Amazon alternate cover imports? If it's a new import process, it might not be going through the same logging code. However it's happening, it really should not be stealing the ASIN from existing records. (And also, why would it not include the cover?)

[Pisceschick]

Cait wrote: "Actually, it looks from the changelog like you originally also put the ASIN in the edition field when you created the first record, then went back and added it to the ASIN field after saving it."

Yeah, I think it's because the "Kindle Edition" format line is right above and my mind just associates those two fields. I know to check for it, which is why it got fixed before I was done. :D

The whole thing is just kind of odd, isn't it?

[Pisceschick]

I went a couple of #s up from the two created by the amazon_kcw and found another it created from a different author, though this one I think just needs to be combined because the original record was for the ebook format.

Original: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9...
amazon_kcw: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1...

[Plethora]

Casey - So you are saying that if a book exist in the Goodreads database with an ASIN but a new cover edition for example getting imported will remove the ASIN from the existing record?

[rivka, Former Moderator]

Bookworm, only in certain cases, where the data does not match. (Not covers, which the importer has no ability to compare.) In the specific examples linked in the first post, the author name didn't match. For good reason -- a pen-name -- but that's why that happened.

And this would be a good example of a case where the Goodreads record probably should take priority and a librarian can go ahead and move the ASIN back and merge the records.

[Pisceschick]

Thanks for getting back to me! I'm working on fixing these now.

[Nickname]

I noticed that books imported from Amazon are full of mistakes and wrong data.
For ex. I found a lot of books with Publisher & edition language in the title field, a lot of Italian edition have the edition language field filled as "Turkish", "English" or "Croatian" and in the title they have Publisher's name + (Italian Edition) (Try to search Italian Edition if you want to have a look on it).
But the biggest problem is a very strange thing that happens in the ASIN-ISBN field.
I find a lot of books which seems to have only a ISBN-13 field filled, but when I try to edit it and I open the edit book record page, the ISBN3 field disappear and the ASIN field seems to be filled, when I click on save, the book page has the right ASIN code but the ISBN field would be cleared. So there is no way to find the book with an ISBN search (it's possible if I create a new book record and merge the edition, ok but It's very strange).

[Nickname]

Casey wrote: "Thanks for bubbling these issues up, Nickname.

Our engineers will be looking into fixes for these.

Do you know what book you were seeing the ASIN-ISBN field problems with or has this been a probl..."

First of all thank you and all the GR's team for give us an amazing website like this.

The book's I've found seem to have only an ISBN13 field filled but when I try to edit them, they really have only an ASIN. At the moment I haven't any books with this problem but I ask to other Italian librarians. Thank you again!

[Nickname]

Casey wrote: "Thanks for bubbling these issues up, Nickname.

Our engineers will be looking into fixes for these.

Do you know what book you were seeing the ASIN-ISBN field problems with or has this been a probl..."

Here some examples, I've found them by searching the keyword (Italian Edition), they are a lot:

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1...
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1...
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1...
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1...
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1...
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1...

[Nickname]

Casey wrote: "Thanks again, Nickname!

First, a response to the disappearing ISBN13 issue:

After looking into this, we found out that the disappearing ISBN13 issue was happening because some books imported from..."

Thank you Casey! Is it possible to do something about the wrong import of the "edition language" field, too?
A lot of Italian books are imported in GR from Amazon as Turkish, English or Croatian, but they're Italian. However, thank you and all the team for looking into these issues :D

[Keith]

Casey wrote: "After looking into this, we found out that the disappearing ISBN13 issue was happening because some books imported from..."

As I wrote in another thread in which Casey is not visibly participating:One other case where ASIN comes in handy (for links to Amazon sales pages if nothing else) is where an ASIN has been assigned to a pre-ISBN book sold as used, especially for books old enough to have more than one pre-ISBN edition, such as Remembrance of Things Past which I could swear had an ASIN when I created it, but which doesn't show even a field for such a record in the Librarian Edits now.

[Cait]

Casey wrote: "Now Kindle books imported from Amazon should only have ASINs and will have blank ISBN10/13 fields. Non-Kindle books should have only ISBN10/ISBN13 fields and blank ASIN fields."

You mean Kindle/Audible, yes? Audible editions also have ASINs.

[Debbie's Spurts (D.A.)]

I'm not sure the asin for an audible edition on amazon.com matches to the asin it has on audible.com.

I don't think that's an issue for the amazon data feed; just soemthing that might be questioned later.

[rivka, Former Moderator]

Casey, we don't (yet?) have a format dropdown option unique to Audible editions, so they just would say "audiobook" for format. They may have an indication in the edition field that they are from Audible.

Here's one: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9...

[Cait]

As far as I can recall I've only ever seen "Audiobook" as the Audible format, yes. The feed from Amazon might say "Audible Audio Edition" somewhere (but not in the format field), or so I'd guess from looking at listings on Amazon.

[Lobstergirl]

Another case where the edit log is misleading: when you correct a Kindle edition that has an ISBN, so that the ASIN will remain and the ISBN will vanish, the log does this:

ISBN 13: 9781234567898 to ''

making it look like you just deleted the ISBN and didn't replace it with anything.

[Nickname]

Lobstergirl wrote: "Another case where the edit log is misleading: when you correct a Kindle edition that has an ISBN, so that the ASIN will remain and the ISBN will vanish, the log does this:

ISBN 13: 9781234567898..."

This is a strange thing that happens with kindle editions imported from Amazon before 2013. For other books imported later it has been fixed time ago.