Goodreads Librarians Group discussion
Questions (not edit requests)
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Old books with no ISBN, but has ASIN added by Amazon
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Since there's some 35+ years between the introduction of ISBN's and ASINS, there's only two possibilities here:1. They are e-book reproductions of physical books published pre-ISBN, in which case, I would suggest the ASIN is valid, and repesents a different edition.
2. They are private vendor copies of the physical books, which as I understand it shouldn't be getting added anymore by the import bots (but I expect some slip through)
I think in the first case, completing the information like any other e-book available in kindle format is fine. The second case, I would say don't add them if they aren't already there, ASINS on GR are for kindle editions.
I'd like to hear from Rivka though, what to do about the ones that are already I the database if we come across them. I know vendor bundles that weren't published as bundles, get NAB'ed, should we do the same with single books?
The single books with ASINs are, as you say, Marketplace books. I think they shouldn't be NAB'd because they are books. It's quite possible they are duplicates of another edition if they didn't have the ASIN, which I believe should be deleted. But I do hope Rivka will chime in on this one.
This is the book in case:http://www.amazon.com/Many-Happy-Retu...
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2...
I was adding it to the database, but I wasn't sure if I should include the ASIN info
Then I should leave as it is now, right?
Don't include the ASIN. Only Kindles and Audibles have ASINs.
Well, yes, I was kind of assuming that there is a valid copy and that we merge them into a valid copy of the actual book, then NAB the asin, sort of like we do for DVD's where people have reviews intended for the book. (I just got rid of about 7 or 8 of these *without* ASINS today for The Tao of Pooh, and I know there's a couple of dozen more on just that book alone, I just didn't have the energy to fix them all today. That's without even touching the ones that actually have ASINS - these were just empty info marketplace copies of the Penguin edition.)
Wellington wrote: "I was adding it to the database, but I wasn't sure if I should include the ASIN info"This is not in the librarian manual, but it should be.
Right, what Lobstergirl said (to both bits: Don't include it for those, and that really should be in the manual)
Krazykiwi wrote: "Well, yes, I was kind of assuming that there is a valid copy and that we merge them into a valid copy of the actual book, then NAB the asin, sort of like we do for DVD's where people have reviews i..."Ah, I see. I don't know what I've done with these in the past, but I'm pretty sure I didn't go through any NAB function. I don't see them too often, and thanks for opening that door for me.
Got it and it's a good idea to add it to the manualKrazykiwi wrote: "Well, yes, I was kind of assuming that there is a valid copy and that we merge them into a valid copy of the actual book, then NAB the asin, sort of like we do for DVD's where people have reviews i..."
That's an interesting approach to avoid multiple entries
It's the proper way to do it, and that method actually is covered in the manual explicitly, when items have ISBN's that shouldn't. It happens, publishers often list isbn's on all sorts of things that aren't books, and that means they end up imported here too. I'm simply extrapolating it's a good way to handle ASIN's too, so that they don't get reimported (which is why we NAB the ISBN's - if you just remove them, they'd just show up again.) On the other hand, as mentioned, marketplace items aren't supposed to be coming in from the Amazon imports anymore, so perhaps it doesn't matter.
How do we know marketplace ASINs aren't reused? After all, when the sale is complete, the ASIN essentially expires.
We don't. Which is another reason to NAB them I guess. We don't add any other second hand copies of books as separate editions, so there's no reason at all to add those.
Krazykiwi wrote: "We don't. Which is another reason to NAB them I guess. We don't add any other second hand copies of books as separate editions, so there's no reason at all to add those."I would think that would be a reason *not* to NAB them. If the ASIN is re-issued to a new Kindle, it would not be imported because it has been NAB'd.
There are lots and lots of old books in the database, and most of them were probably imported because of Amazon Marketplace.
Ah. I see what you mean. No, ASIN's aren't recycled, but once they're issued a marketplace vendor *could* probably get away with reusing one, but I don't know why they'd want to.I misunderstood then: We do know that ASIN's aren't recycled because ASIN's are guaranteed to be unique within the marketplace. Sometimes a self-pub author manages it by uploading something with a different title as a new edition of the previous item, but they're not even supposed to do that.
Krazykiwi wrote: "Ah. I see what you mean. No, ASIN's aren't recycled, but once they're issued a marketplace vendor *could* probably get away with reusing one, but I don't know why they'd want to."Ah, that's good to know. I'm working right now with a bunch of titles published in the early 50s. I need to keep a better eye out.
As to the NABing - would you merge/create an edition without the ASIN and then NAB the edition *with* the Marketplace ASIN? Would you add a librarian note to the NAB'd edition so that it doesn't get separated and re-combined?
I'd probably treat them exactly as the DVD's are in the manual: If there's no reviews, NAB it. If there are, merge, recreate, then NAB it.The whole procedure *for items with ISBNs* is listed out at the bottom of this section in the manual:
https://www.goodreads.com/help/show/1...
I'm just suggesting we get "Second hand copies of print books on Amazon's marketplace with an ASIN" added to that list, and then do the same for invalid marketplace ASIN's. I don't think I'd be comfortable actually doing this yet without Rivka's ok though.
(ETA: It does actually mention ASIN's there, which I didn't remember at all. Which makes me a little more comfortable with it :)
But the book *is* a book. It just was born before ISBNs and ASINs. We don't want to NAB a real book, just do away with the ASIN. I don't know why just because it came into the database with an ASIN you think it should be NAB'd, lock stock and barrel.
I didn't suggest that at all. We aren't NAB'ing the book, we'd be NABBING the edition with the ASIN, because it's not a valid *edition*. If there *is* a valid edition to merge it into, then you'd do that first, and then get rid of the ASIN and prevent it ever being imported again. And if there is not a valid and correct edition, you'd make one.
Or you could just ignore it and leave it be, if you don't care. There's plenty of rubbish in the database, I'm just suggesting a procedure to fix some of it, if you wish.
This is the same procedure that we've been doing for years for the rest of the NAB list (I've done it I don't know how many times for DVDS with reviews meant for the novel, and no I don't know why publishers keep putting ISBN's on DVD's, but they do).
Krazykiwi wrote: "We aren't NAB'ing the book, we'd be NABBING the edition with the ASIN, because it's not a valid *edition*. "It might be the only edition of the book. My question above was about deleting the ASIN in the edition. How do you then create an NAB with the ASIN?
Then you would follow the procedure as listed *in the manual*. You remove the ASIN, correct the entry, and create ANOTHER edition with the ASIN to NAB, in order to make the ASIN invalid forevermore.
Krazykiwi wrote: "Then you would follow the procedure as listed *in the manual*. You remove the ASIN, correct the entry, and create ANOTHER edition with the ASIN to NAB, in order to make the ASIN invalid forevermore."Which is what I asked above. When creating the edition, do you then add in the same title? Why? Would you put something in a librarian note? I'm afraid the librarian manual is confusing, no matter how many times I read it.
I guess what I'm asking is how you NAB a book that is a book. Just putting the ASIN into a NAB record isn't covered in the manual.
Yes, you add it again, uncombined, and *with* the ASIN, so you can NAB that edition. The bots will never import anything that is in the NAB list, and NAB'ed items don't show on author pages (even if the author doesn't get changed, which happens sometimes). Adding it again and Nabbing it is to prevent the ISBN (or in this case, ASIN) ever showing up in the system again.
I suppose you could add a librarian note, but the changelog would make more sense. I generally write in the changelog when Nabbing something, to explain why it's not a book.
You more or less have to do this with ISBN's, if you just remove them, they will almost guaranteed just pop up again. It may or may not be useful with marketplace ASINS, because they were never supposed to be imported in the first place, they aren't imported anymore (the Amazon import bot clearly can tell the difference between a proper book ASIN and everything else), and that's why I was asking for Rivka's opinion what to do with the ones that are already here.
It is in the manual: https://www.goodreads.com/help/show/2...Do not add an Amazon-assigned ASIN to books that were released without ISBN numbers.
Arenda wrote: "It is in the manual: https://www.goodreads.com/help/show/2...Do not add an Amazon-assigned ASIN to books that were released without ISBN numbers."
Yes, but I think the question was what to do with ASINs on non-ISBN books already in the database. So far I've always just deleted them, but apparently there's a chance they will get re-imported then?
Leave it blank or start working with the ASIN numbers assigned by Amazon?