Publisher error duplicating ISBN, how to handle

[Karl]

One of my friends asked me to sort out an issue as he has the book with ISBN 978-1-78370-184-1, which is a Templar Edition of Alice Through The Looking Glass, however when he typed the ISBN in, he got a new novel by the same publishing company coming up, The Nutcracker and the Mouse King - which is not published until August. Checking on Amazon, the ISBN gives the same problem (you will note the images are for the old book, but the new details are present) and on a few other book databases the new details are in use. Presumably the publishers have accidentally issued the same ISBN on pre-order details for the new book and it's overwritten the old book. Though I don't think the actual book with this ISBN was ever on Goodreads looking at the logs.



Alice Through The Looking-Glass is a very similar edition by Palazzo Editions, which the Templar one is effectively a UK imprint of with a different cover and peripheral pages.

How should I handle this? Remove the ISBN from the yet to be published book and add the other book using the correct details, or what?

[rivka, Former Moderator]

Karl wrote: "Remove the ISBN from the yet to be published book and add the other book using the correct details"

No, please don't do that. Goodreads policy is that in cases of an ISBN being reused, the first book or edition in the database keeps the ISBN.

This book should be treated like the second kind of alternate cover edition: https://www.goodreads.com/help/show/8...

[Karl]

But it's definitely a mistake, it's a totally different book and the ISBN is probably wrong on the pre-order information. The entry in Goodreads is not the first occurrence of the book in the world, just was the first to be entered on to the database. The book that is in the database does not yet exist and will most likely be published on a different ISBN when it eventually comes out.

Looking at the guidance you included, it sounds very much like the case of the ARC Exception, where the ISBN is for a future edition. I understand why we do not alter ISBNs when they are duplicated, but this is more an error correction - the difficulty arises purely in so far as I do not know the correct ISBN for the existing entry in the database yet. Perhaps I should try and contact the publisher to find it out.

[Philip]

#3 - Publishers have been known to often re-use ISBNs. It should not be common, but it really is, so Rivka's comment stands.

[lethe]

I can understand having this rule for actually existing books already in the database, but for a book that hasn't even been published yet it seems unreasonably rigid.

When after publication it turns out that the ISBN was indeed incorrect for Nutcracker, can the ISBN then be moved to Alice?

[Karl]

Aye, lethe makes the point I was trying to make - it's ridiculous for a non-existent book to take precedence over one that exists.

[Z-squared]

I think if you can provide us with something from the publisher that says, indeed, ISBN 1783701846 has not nor ever will be published with the Nutcracker, then we can change it. But right now, it's listed with that ISBN through onix, not just Goodreads. This error, if it really is one, is propagating through multiple retailers and ISBN databases.

[rivka, Former Moderator]

Z-squared wrote: "I think if you can provide us with something from the publisher that says, indeed, ISBN 1783701846 has not nor ever will be published with the Nutcracker, then we can change it."

Correct.