Goodreads Librarians Group discussion
This topic is about
The Girl on the Train
Book Issues
>
The same eBook listed twice
date
newest »
newest »
The ISBN you provide links to an ebook on Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2...Please provide a link to the Nook edition with this ISBN.
The only Nook edition I can find for this book does not have an ISBN or EAN listed: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3...So basically I think the question is: Is it allowed to merge a Nook edition without ISBN/EAN into the ebook that does, if any discerning info is the same (cover, publisher, date of publication, [page count])?
I haven't managed to find one for this title, btw, but I didn't look that closely. There are 141 editions and the sort by date published seems to only look at the year, not the actual date.
According to the policy (as I understand it), there should be NO Nook entry unless it has a 294 ISBN and not a 978 ISBN. Should not the Nook entry that you found be removed or merged given that it's a book for an ISBN of 978?
As I said, I haven't found another edition it can be merged into. (Please give a link if you have.) The ebook with the ISBN you gave has a different cover.Also, B&N may not be used as a source for book info on GR (see my comment in the other thread: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...).
JSWolf wrote: "According to the policy (as I understand it), there should be NO Nook entry unless it has a 294 ISBN and not a 978 ISBN." The format should not be set to 'Nook' if the identifier isn't a BN ID, correct. A librarian can change that to ebook to correct the issue.
JSWolf wrote: "Should not the Nook entry that you found be removed or merged given that it's a book for an ISBN of 978?"
Not necessarily. Only truly duplicate books should ever be merged and in many cases there are differences that would prevent that. As lethe mentioned, different covers cannot be merged and you will often find that ebooks sold by B&N have different page counts than the same ebook (with the same ISBN) sold through another vendor. In the examples you gave check out the page counts listed for your identical book. Kobo has it listed as 352 pages but the B&N edition has 336. In this example B&N is using the page count that corresponds to the hard cover print edition and the Kobo count is likely due to conversion from epub to kepub format. So, are they really identical? Sure GR can't use book seller data but what happens when the user who bought an ebook from B&N wants to catalog their book in hand and can't find an existing corresponding edition? They add one. Fun stuff.
The page counts not being the same are irrelevant. The page counts on Kobo are given by the publisher and not based on any eBook format. Besides, according to the staff, eBooks don't have page numbers. What matters is the ISBN number and format they are both the same and thus, the same eBook.
lethe wrote: "As I said, I haven't found another edition it can be merged into. (Please give a link if you have.) The ebook with the ISBN you gave has a different cover."lethe, as it was published by PRH (Riverhead Books) it's clearly not a Nook Press book and should not have been added as a Nook format here. This is the edition it should be merged into:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2...
Here's the Nook edition that's not a Nook edition that you found earlier:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3...
It can't be merged into that as the cover is different.I have no idea when a Nook is an actual Nook (apart from having a 294 ID), but I've changed the format to ebook and the publisher to the imprint.
lethe wrote: "It can't be merged into that as the cover is different."So then just update the book details in effect creating an ACE, problem solved. ;-)
lethe wrote: "It can't be merged into that as the cover is different.I have no idea when a Nook is an actual Nook (apart from having a 294 ID), but I've changed the format to ebook and the publisher to the imp..."
All you've done is confuse things even more. It is NOT a different edition/version and is THE SAME. So you have a correct entry with the ISBN and an incorrect entry with no ISBN. What will it take to get you to realize they are the exact same eBook?
Those differences that would prevent merging means error(s). The solution is to fix the errors so they match and then merge.
I am SO sorry, but they have different covers. Goodreads is very particular about covers. Different covers cannot be merged.Might I suggest you read the Librarian Manual, so you know what is and isn't allowed on GR?
https://www.goodreads.com/help/librarian
lethe wrote: "I have no idea when a Nook is an actual Nook (apart from having a 294 ID), but I've changed the format to ebook and the publisher to the imp..."It's only a Nook edition when it has the 294... BN ID because it was published through NP/Pubit, the self publishing platform of B&N.
B&N refers to all ebooks for sale on their site as "Nook Books" but GR does not.
Example of Nook book that can have a Nook edition (format) on GR: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/ready...
Example of Nook book that cannot have a Nook edition (format) on GR:
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/twelv...
The former is a self published author who published through the Nook Press platform without purchasing an ISBN for that edition.
The latter is a Big 5 publisher just selling on B&N not publishing through them.
So now that Tal has pointed out what's what, is this going to be properly fixed?
lethe already fixed it by updating the book details, eliminating the Nook edition and creating an ACE edition since it had a different cover than the first ebook that was added to GR with that ISBN. Because the covers were different they were not duplicates.Books with one ISBN can be published with multiple covers. It happens all the time especially with big 5 pubs. A brief search turned up at least 4 different covers for the ebook edition assigned that particular ISBN, three variations of the original cover plus the new movie tie-in cover.
Since The Girl on the Train was the first variation to get added to the database it gets to keep the ISBN and the other editions with different covers get added to the database as separate ebook editions with their respective covers and the ISBN left blank, otherwise known as ACE's (Alternate Cover Editions)
Details on ACE editions (why they are allowed and how to add them) can be found here: https://www.goodreads.com/help/show/8...
The cover on the formerly Nook edition is wrong. Where that cover came from I have no idea. So why not fix the listing so it can be merged? The problem was not the Nook edition needed to become an ebook edition. The problem was that the Nook edition is a duplicate of the ebook edition and needed to be deleted or merged. What do I have to do to get this through so things can be properly fixed?Both listings are for an ePub edition with the EXACT SAME ISBN. So please fix this the correct way.
When will you get it into your head that we cannot delete covers (or merge editions with different covers) unless they are VERY OBVIOUSLY wrong? I'm starting to think you are just trolling.Please read the librarian manual, starting with this section on covers (and acceptable sources for covers and other book data!): https://www.goodreads.com/help/show/4...
lethe wrote: "When will you get it into your head that we cannot delete covers (or merge editions with different covers) unless they are VERY OBVIOUSLY wrong? I'm starting to think you are just trolling.Please..."
The problem is that the cover is wrong. Given that they are the the exact same eBook, they should have the exact same cover. Why is it you don't get that they are the same eBook? What is it about the Nook listing that's not the same? I don't give it. This is not rocket science. It's very simple. Two identical eBook in two different listings.
Just to let you know, I'm done here. Feel free to go on talking to yourself.
Publishers release books with the same ISBN with different covers all the time. That does not make any of them wrong. They are all valid editions. No one is going to merge different covers.
Take a close look at the following book covers: (they were all published and sold at various times since the book was first published with the EXACT same ISBN.) 
<-first edition with that ISBN to get added to GR
<- new cover with cover blurb from Tess Gerritsen
<- new cover with movie promotion blurb
<- new movie tie-in coverAll the books have the same ISBN. There is nothing to be fixed, the covers are not wrong they are simply different. Because GR does not support multiple covers per edition, each different cover is treated as a separate edition known as an ACE. If you had read the link I previously gave that explained ACE covers this discussion would have ended yesterday. This is not rocket science after all. ;-)
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-g...
ISBN-13: 9780698185395
https://store.kobobooks.com/en-us/ebo...
ISBN: 9780698185395