Goodreads Librarians Group discussion
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Announcement: Updated Policy on ISBNs and ASINs
The only obvious solution is that all editions sharing an ISBN should be able to be found by searching for that ISBN. It makes absolutely no sense that only the latest edition should have the ISBN attached, just like it didn't make sense before that only the first edition did. Since publishers keep recycling ISBNs, they should just not be used as unique identifiers or index keys.
Lisa wrote: "Lisa Vegan (LisaVegan) | 2379 commentsDebbie's Spurts (D.A.) wrote: "Guess we no longer get to think of goodreads as a library of our books."
Yes, this. I am so disappointed. Then again, I've been displeased with almost every "improvement" made the last 5 years, since the Amazon purchase.
I realize the goal here is to sell new books. I have many older edition though and it would be good for Amazon/Goodreads to know that other members seeing these have often led to them purchasing new editions of those books.
Yes. This.
GR used to be a place where I would find out what my friends were reading.
We shared books, wrote reviews and and (over) encouraged each other.
Now it is a place where authors spam us, harass us and stalk us.
And GR wants to sell us more books.
Ian wrote: "The only obvious solution is that all editions sharing an ISBN should be able to be found by searching for that ISBN. It makes absolutely no sense that only the latest edition should have the ISBN attached, just like it didn't make sense before that only the first edition did. Since publishers keep recycling ISBNs, they should just not be used as unique identifiers or index keys.I agree.
But then the SPAs won't be able to shove their latest re-re-re-release into someone's face and claim that NOW they need to change their review because "new edition!"
It's not that the first (older) edition always got the ISBN, it was the first edition that was added here. So really it could be the newest or an older one with no set "rule". Whichever came later (was requested to be added by a user, for example), then no ISBN.Basically it was a mess before also, and all that was originated by the fact that when they created the database they didn't think of shared ISBNs and made them the primary key, as someone more expert than me has said.
Moloch wrote: "Since it's obvious to everyone that this policy change was made for the benefit of authors, I think lethe's proposal * could have been a good compromise. In the same way that Goodreads Authors can ..."Thanks, Moloch.
It is obvious that staff didn't think this through.
rivka wrote: "Hi everyone,We’re implementing a policy change to how we record ISBNs and ASINs. As you all know, we have required that a book’s ISBN/ASIN remain with the original edition. If a subsequent editio..."
Hello, Rivka.
I have a question. If I have editions from Smashwords and Wattpad, and if I change the cover of the book, how I can edit it here?
Thank you.
Justine Akehurst wrote: "As there could be multiple editions, with the same ISBN, are you also making available an optional "Edition" field, that can help to disambiguate the different editions under the same ISBN?"There already is an edition field.
Mod
In my opinion, by making this policy change, GR is in fact acknowledging that ISBN reuse is more widespread problem than many people think. (If it was a minor problem, GR wouldn't care so much about it to make a policy change).So GR should face the reality, that (many) books have the same ISBN, and solve this properly by allowing multiple books in their database to have the same ISBN. This way, when searching by ISBN, all books with this ISBN would be returned instead of just the first or last or "whatever policy change GR will make in the future" book.
But even if GR is unwilling to make the proper solution, GR should not make policy changes that reward bad behaviour (ISBN reuse). If a publisher breaks the rule about ISBN uniqueness, he/she/it shouldn't be rewarded for it. (The previous policy of first come, first served in regard to ISBN's can be seen as a punishment for bad behaviour.)
I followed the instructions for the first of my titles with existing alternate-cover editions. I did the librarian note and deleted the ISBN from the old edition, no problem, but it won't let me add it to the new edition, saying that ISBN is already taken by an existing title.What do I do?
Sandra wrote: "Wow. That's a big change and hard to get my head around. Not sure what I feel about it, at all."I agree 100% except I DO KNOW what I think. It is a terrible change, absolutely self-serving to Amazon. I'm sorry to criticize so sharply but Goodreads has become a commercial venture to the owners, Amazon.
Danita L wrote: "Sandra wrote: "Wow. That's a big change and hard to get my head around. Not sure what I feel about it, at all."I agree 100% except I DO KNOW what I think. It is a terrible change, absolutely self-serving to Amazon. I'm sorry to criticize so sharply but Goodreads has become a commercial venture to the owners, Amazon."
Yes, of course. It's sad, and in the long run not even best for Amazon, in my opinion. But Amazon does have the power and they are wielding it, as is Goodreads. For the last 5 years the changes here have been gradual but frequent, and to be expected, unfortunately.
How can you take an ISBN that belongs to a particular publication and attach it to a different publication - and I don't mean different title. That has little to do with it. An ISBN is a particular publication's unique identifier and contains information including country of publication and publisher. Taking an ISBN assigned to a book published by Penguin in UK and adding it to a different edition of that book published in US by Berkley is very wrong! It actually makes the ISBN invalid. In fact in many countries this is illegal. Why do you think booksellers and repositories (WorldCat for example) have several records for a single title that may have been published in three different countries, by three different publishers/imprints, and in three different formats?!
I just can't believe that GR which is all about books and reading can do this. Maybe it is true, GR is about being another Amazon outlet. So disappointing.
Debbie's Spurts (D.A.) wrote: "Member book cataloging and locating of books just took a backseat to matching current retail product data on Amazon for the sake of books for sale. From Goodreads having a library of book data pages to having product data pages like retailer Amazon. . . .What next? Amazon folding Goodreads features and all our reviews and book catalogs directly to their site as soon as a comfortable chunk of the alternate covers now match product page where the merge/sync is easier? "
You just nailed it - there is NO OTHER REASON for this change. Readers who use Goodreads are serious readers. The average person out there who reads 10-15 books a year does not use Goodreads and many have never heard of Goodreads.
I have a master's in Literature, I've owned a bookstore for years and I work at the library several times a week. There is absolutely no way that serious readers want the ISBN attached to the most current edition.
The response to why this change is being made is a corporate response - in other words, you are hearing it directly from AMAZON.
When you look at a book page now, you see on the right hand side FICTION DEALS - See All Goodreads Deals….
Really? We are serious readers and in general, we are intelligent. These aren't "Goodreads Deals", they are AMAZON deals. You can buy KINDLE, an Amazon product. Then AMAZON, and then a small print drop-down menu of other Stores.
Make no mistake, this IS A RETAIL MOVE by owner, Amazon. For those who have not heard, Goodreads WAS PURCHASED BY AMAZON in 2013 and all changes since then have been made to benefit Amazon.
Here are a couple of URLs . . .
Amazon purchase of Goodreads stuns book industry
https://www.theguardian.com/books/201...
Amazon Buys Goodreads
https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/b...
Amazon refused to make any public statements about purchasing Goodreads and there is nothing on the main pages of Goodreads that indicates that it is owned by Amazon. Read the ABOUT page and there is absolutely no mention of the sale to Amazon in those pages. Readers are not made aware that Goodreads is now a COMMERCIAL PRODUCT of Amazon. Only the "librarians" were made aware by Goodreads that there had been a purchase - about 20,000? when there are 65 million members. And why wasn't the general membership made aware?
65 Million MEMBERS
2 Billion BOOKS ADDED
68 Million REVIEWS
And it is no mistake that these and other changes (like gutting the Publisher Giveaway program) are coming at 5 years after the purchase. Many corporate purchases include a 5-year contract which state that no major changes will be made to the original product for 5 years. Well, readers, that 5 years is over. We can expect many more corporate retail Amazon changes to Goodreads over the rest of the year.
Mod
That is not what this policy change does. It only affects books where the same ISBN (or ASIN) has been used on more than one version of the book.
Lesley~aka Ella's Gran wrote: "How can you take an ISBN that belongs to a particular publication and attach it to a different publication - and I don't mean different title. That has little to do with it. An ISBN is a particul..."
You misunderstand. The ISBN has been re-used by the publisher. GR is not assigning the ISBN to another edition.
Mod
I would like to delete the originally published editions since I have the rights now. The original books are not available for purchase. Can I just delete each of those copies? These are books written by my alter ego, Maryn Sinclair.
I don't understand this completely but it won't affect me much anyway. I'm in the UK and a lot of the books that I buy are Kindle books.
I also get a lot of review books in hard copy and use Netgalley.
On new books a lot seem to have been added without adding the cover properly.
For Kindle books American users with librarian status seem to have added the US cover to a lot of Kindle books even if they are actually the UK edition - they don't bother checking the ASIN number and just adding the cover to those that match. I got told off and then my Librarian status revoked for changing covers. I didn't do this lightly and I stopped doing it for, say, paperback acquisitions with multiple covers after I was first told off. I always checked Kindle editions - that I was matching covers with the right ASIN for a UK edition, and that there was a picture of the US Kindle edition. With my new books I can't combine multiple unlinked entries for the same book and I can't add a cover to the correct edition. I do sometimes add a new edition without any ISBN to the entry which shows multipled editions and entries, so that I can add the cover for a forthcoming hardback or paperback original edition.
rivka wrote: "Z-squared wrote: "Can I get a clarification about what to do when isbns have been recycled for completely different works?"This is addressed in the updated section of the Manual:
In the other ..."
Nope, that's clear. Thanks!
Polly wrote: "I would like to delete the originally published editions since I have the rights now. The original books are not available for purchase. Can I just delete each of those copies? These are books writ..."No. GR doesn't delete books.
Mod
Please see http://www.goodreads.com/help/show/22... and http://www.goodreads.com/help/show/32...
However, I would like to mention again that questions about specific books should not be asked in this thread. Please start a new thread in Book Issues instead.
I spend a lot of time fixing Harlequin books, which are frequently a mess and have spectacular ACE problems. I'm already pretty used to researching pub dates, both original and specific. Here are a few tricks other librarians who don't mind a challenge might find useful:1) Amazon is usually right but often wrong. Amazon previews, however, are infallible if the preview includes the copyright page. Sometimes those details won't match the Amazon listing itself, but photographic evidence is hard to beat.
2) WorldCat can sometimes help, but it just gives a year for publication. And like Amazon, it can be wrong. Though unlike Amazon, it's easier to find multiple editions that share an ISBN for comparison.
3) Abebooks is pretty great because it often has edition-specific info. When searching for books by title or ISBN, just be sure to check the box for "seller-supplied images." Those listings, especially when approached like crowd-sourcing, can be great for confirming or denying what other resources say. Plus they do a much better job of showing all the available editions for sale that share an ISBN, something Amazon does not do. And because Abebooks is owned by Amazon, cover images from there are OK, I believe...?
4) Amazon.com versus Amazon.co.uk may have different book listings. Same goes for other Amazon country pages. Same goes for Abebooks and its country-specific pages. Cruising those other country pages is particularly useful for verifying editions meant for markets outside the US.
5) It's not just self-published authors who reuse ISBNs. It happens all the time with big publishers, including in the present day. Publisher pages typically don't include info about any other edition than the one currently for sale. Plain old Google searches can help here, especially books.google.com--I don't use cover images I find outside of approved sources, but as far as I'm aware, nothing stops librarians from using the information gleaned from these sources. Right...?
6) Be aware that sometimes publishers will also re-use ISBNs for different formats published at the same time, i.e., both the ebook and paperback edition sharing the same ISBN. Or a hardcover book club edition and a regular paperback edition. Not sure what to do about that with respect to the new policy, but a commonsense approach might be first to GR wins...?
I think you should have made ISBNs non-unique in the database before making this change and any further changes that have anything to do with ISBNs.
If I read a book that was published in 1967, THAT'S the edition I want to honor. I have many old books on my shelf, some of which have no ISBN. I had to search through all the offered covers to find the one that matched.If Goodreads is part of Amazon and I can search Amazon by an ISBN and find my exact copy, this should not be an issue here. Ditto with WorldCat which is the site the Librarians prefer as a reference when we ask for them to 'add pages' for those not recorded on Goodreads.
I feel as if Goodreads is punishing the readers for the publishers issuing so many variants and reprints of the same books.
I hate this idea of defaulting to the newest, the shiniest, the most today.
I really hate this idea that Goodreads keeps getting more complicated and user unfriendly. I cannot fathom what they expect Goodreads to be if not an easy, fun site for READERS who will hopefully buy their reading fun from the parent company.
Melanti wrote: "And not having the ASIN/ISBN breaks the links to all the stores - such as Amazon - which then makes it harder to find the book again.."This change is confusing me a bit. I do use added Store links to purchase books on here for convenience - so when I want a certain used copy (due to the cover) of an older book, using my Abebooks tab will now just pull up the newer editions and not the one I wanted to automatically go to? Since the store code uses search by ISBN, and if the ISBN used is now only the current one, it may not be the version I was looking to purchase? Or I am not getting it?
I too also like searching by ISBN when coming from the bookstore to quickly enter the edition I just purchased, especially if I'm having trouble finding the one with the right cover by the searching by title and want to make the process easier.
Here's a great example of what I would call The Law of Unintended Consequences. Then again, my thinking processes tend to be logical so perhaps the consequences are intended and I'm just not seeing it.• Current GR listing, publish date Oct 5, 2017, ISBN 9781909245648: Faith of our Families: Everton FC, an Oral HistoryWhen this edition is added (request is awaiting a response), the primary edition, being older, will be stripped of its ISBN, which will be moved to the newer edition. The primary edition's list price is £25.00 UK/ $31.95 US; I have no idea what the press run was. The Limited Edition's list price is £50.00, with a press run of 250 copies. The edition that, due to price and press run, will be in fewer hands is the one that will carry the ISBN. There may or may not be hyperlinks between the two because, you know, Goodreads doesn't consider that information to be important enough to require. Depends on the conscientiousness of the volunteer who handles the request, I suppose.
• Special numbered limited edition of 250 copies, publish date December 15, 2017, ISBN 9781909245648 (same): Faith of our Families: Everton FC, an Oral History
And this makes perfect sense ... how?
The policy is a cause for celebration ... for what reason?
A Librarian would want to be part of this travesty ... why?
After thinking and experimenting I have decided I am very happy with the new policy.It the past, librarians had to deal with junk edition records where the ISBN and image did not match. Often times these were data imports from book seller listings. A book seller usually only cares about selling for much as possible and not bibliographic accuracy.
The old policy meant that edition records were sacrosanct. We could not change the ISBN. We could not change the image. That was true even when the ISBN and image did not match.
The new policy allows me to move the ISBN away from the junk records and to either add the ISBN to a record with the correct cover or to add a new record with the correct cover. As the ISBN is now with the "latest" cover it's an in-policy move.
The new policy allows me to slay robots. It used to be that we had some records created by robots. Humans would correct the details but the robots would come back and wipe out the human's work. Now what I can do is to create a new record with the current cover and to move the ISBN to it. Again, it's in-policy as I'm moving the ISBN to a record with the most recent cover. As it's a human created record Goodreads will block robots from updating it.
The main hassle created by the new policy is that it used to be that once a record had an ISBN that it then become the anchor record for that ISBN. GR policy prevented people from shifting the ISBN to another record. As it was the anchor, the record's description could contain links to all of the other records related to that ISBN. Now that the anchor record can be moved we also need to move the description and to update the list of links as the old anchor now needs to be mentioned in the list of links.
The new policy will create confusion for those that have linked to edition records that about a specific ISBN. Now the ISBN can be yanked away and there seems to be no requirement to update the description explaining that it used to have the ISBN and which record now has it. The message from Rivka is that a librarian note be added. Those are not visible to readers meaning they will see a record with no ISBN and no explanation in the description of what happened.
Andrew wrote: "I think you should have made ISBNs non-unique in the database before making this change and any further changes that have anything to do with ISBNs."I believe the main reason ISBNs are unique is robots. There are many robots that search for a record by ISBN and then update it. If search by ISBN started returning a list of records then the robots would need to be updated.
Elizabeth (Alaska) wrote: "Lesley~aka Ella's Gran wrote: "How can you take an ISBN that belongs to a particular publication and attach it to a different publication - and I don't mean different title. That has little to do w..."That still doesn't justify removing it from the original edition/printing it was assigned to! No ISBN should be removed from one book and placed on another. If the publisher has re-used the ISBN on a new edition/printing then both should have that ISBN as assigned.
rivka wrote: "2. Click on “Add a Librarian Note” at the top of the book edit page. Add a comment explaining that you’re moving the ISBN/ASIN to the latest edition (preferably with a link to the other edition, though this isn’t required)."I don't think normal users can see an edition's librarian note. I've always done librarian notes for the readers in the description in italics and prefaced with the words "Librarian note: ..."
As non-librarians may well have saved or bookmarked a link to a GR edition record I believe we should be putting the notes in the description explaining that the record is for ISBN 123...890 and that a newer edition of the same book has been published with the same ISBN. I only use the librarian note feature to leave messages for other librarians about why specific edits should not be done to a record.
Quite a lot of English books I read, own, buy for others have ISBNs reused as the editions are available only in limited countries. I don't usually get the covers that are released in Europe/US. This was what prompted me to become a librarian so that I can add editions on my own instead of relying on friendly librarians to create ACEs every time. Used to take me 10 mins to simply go through the list of all editions for a book, verify that my cover doesn't exist (it usually didn't), create a new entry mentioning ACE information and cross-link both original and ACE editions so that next time someone searches for the ISBN they don't have to go through all the editions again to identify their book. Simply click on linked ACE in the ISBN-edition and get to the different cover. This new policy is going to be very inconvenient as it's not always easy to find exact publishing date for covers. Those who worked on ACE requests will know that Amazon and Publisher websites almost always have the date an edition was released with particular ISBN as pub date even if they update their cover. We can't simply use this date as publishing date as that is not when new cover was published. Books in hand usually mention the year of publication and probably the month (very rare for my books) but never the date. It's going to be a real pain to sort through the dates and identify whether we need to move the ISBN or not.
I'm hoping it is okay to let the ISBN remain on existing GR edition when it's not easy to determine the pub date for ACE edition that is about to be added. That is what I'm going to do for my books anyway - and stay away from all ACE requests from now on. Who has time, energy and patience to go through so many hurdles to determine a trivial piece of info just to follow a policy that doesn't come across as well thought out.
Case in point: I bought Leigh Bardugo's Six of Crows a week ago to gift to a friend. I went through the list of all editions on GR and this cover isn't available. ISBN attached to my edition is already being used by an Orion edition published Jul 2016 with a different cover. My edition simply says 2016 with no mention of month or date. I can't use Mar 2018 as pub date as the book clearly mentions "Published in 2016". I went through Amazon US, Amazon UK, country specific Amazon, publisher websites and they had several different dates (2 Jun 2016, 17 May 2017, 12 Jul 2016) but none carry my edition's cover. I went through several seller websites (not to use their info but just to check what dates they used) but none of them have my cover. I bought it in a bookshop nearby (weird I know!) and I've already wasted 45 mins going through all the sites trying to understand if I can move the ISBN or not.
I'll follow whatever us librarians followed until now - create a new edition with new cover, use 2016 as pub date, cross-link both ISBN and ACE editions so that when people search for ISBN they can find both covers and shelve whichever matches their edition.
And I'm gonna stay away from ACE requests as it's simply not worth it.
EDIT:
I'm staring at the last section of ACE in manual with horror - are you suggesting that ISBNs have to be moved to a newer edition of a totally different book in case it's found that new book re-uses ISBN from an older book that is totally unrelated? *shakes head in disbelief*
Dobby0390 wrote: "Here's a great example of what I would call The Law of Unintended Consequences. Then again, my thinking processes tend to be logical so perhaps the consequences are intended and I'm just not seeing..."Hear, hear!
Michael wrote: "I'm hoping it is okay to let the ISBN remain on existing GR edition when it's not easy to determine the pub date for ACE edition that is about to be added. That is what I'm going to do for my books anyway - and stay away from all ACE requests from now on. Who has time, energy and patience to go through so many hurdles to determine a trivial piece of info just to follow a policy that doesn't come across as well thought out."Wholeheartedly agree.
Michael wrote: "I'm staring at the last section of ACE in manual with horror - are you suggesting that ISBNs have to be moved to a newer edition of a totally different book in case it's found that new book re-uses ISBN from an older book that is totally unrelated? *shakes head in disbelief* "
Madness, isn't it?
I'm not yet sure what to think about this change, but some of my thoughts:I can see the positive sides of being able to move the ISBN/ASIN to the newest edition, which can work if someone makes a request here for a recent cover change. But for some book that had two different covers years ago it can be more difficult and I think there are less benefits. So I think I'm more in favour of a situation we are not required to move the ISBN/ASIN. Maybe only at request of the author as some have suggested. Or 'if you're not sure about the date, you can leave the ISBN on the edition first added'.
The worry that editions are more difficult to find: I don't see how that changes. When there are ACEs for a work, one edition is easy to find (with the ISBN/ASIN) and the other(s) less easy. The only thing that changes is which of those editions is the easy to find one.
(Side note: in my experience, the SPAs with he most editions for a work are not those who republish their book with a new cover, but those who publish a new edition without any change except a new ASIN every few weeks and have 25-30 editions (and less people who have shelved the book than the number of editions).)
Personally I have not often created links to the other editions in the ACE notes, because I'm always struggling with the html code for text links. Only recently I realised you can change the text on those special book links/author links, which makes it more easy to add them.
rivka wrote: "Hi everyone,We’re implementing a policy change to how we record ISBNs and ASINs. As you all know, we have required that a book’s ISBN/ASIN remain with the original edition. If a subsequent editio..."
Hi,
I updated the ISBN for the currrent book on sale. Are you able to check a nd make sure everything is correct?
Thanks. I like to be able to find the edition I have read and place it on my shelf. The cover usually helps, but not all covers are shown. Content entered about a book or author on Amazon can often be mis-spelled for older works.
rivka wrote: "Scott wrote: "GR needs to make it a priority to figure out a way for books to share ISBNs."We appreciate your feedback and hope to implement something like this in the future."Seriously, that was something that should have been implemented before making a policy change like this. Then you could have kept everybody happy.
Personally, I don't much care which edition gets the ISBN if it can't be put on every edition which has used that ISBN, because both arguments for keeping it on the original edition and for putting it on the newest are wrong: as long as there are multiple editions with the same ISBN, you can never guarantee that your edition is the one that will be found in a search by ISBN! In the first place, it is probably never going to be true that all the ISBNs on first editions have been moved to the latest; and it hasn't been true that the edition recorded with an ISBN on GR has always been the first published. Of course, if you have a middle edition of three or more, yours is not likely to be the one found in an ISBN search.
Midwest's concept is entirely workable - though it would of course need some work by the developers. I publish data, and I need to use DOIs, which are quite analogous to ISBNs. They need to be unique, and they need to be permanently locatable online. When I first publish an annual dataset, it gets a DOI like https://doi.org/10.1109/5.771073. I can then reference each release as, for instance, https://doi.org/10.1109/5.771073#2017, https://doi.org/10.1109/5.771073#2018.
Lizz wrote: "As a developer, I propose that Goodreads implement a search function that shows all editions with the same ISBN/ASIN, so that the readers can choose among them. The database can keep them separate by item or entry ID."Since this would be The Real Fix, history suggests it is also Never Gonna Happen.
One thing that might help with finding the right edition from the (often stupefyingly long) Editions pages without having to alter the database schema would be to add a drop down to permit filtering by language just as we can already filter by format. Even if there are 500 editions of a book, narrowing it to the 200 English-language Paperback editions will cut search time in half without a giant development effort, and probably in half again via sorting by pub date which also already exists.
But really, when the DB already is not keyed by ISBN, the continued choice to make ISBN record-unique is, frankly, stupid. Fix it, dear Henry, dear Henry.
While you are at it, change the name from Goodreads to Goodsells, to reflect the evident change in philosophy. Will end as a shopfront for Amazon.
Well, I think I won't be touching ISBNs from now on if I can help it. I'm someone who cares about correct data but I don't have the extra time to check und crossreference which edition is actually the absolute newest thing on the market. And I much rather just leave the field blank than mess something up or make a mistake, because the former has always been acceptable, the latter is a breach of librarian ethics and policy and I would really like not to be kicked out of the librarian programme.Anyways, looking at the big picture, I find this policy change rather pointless. While this might please some users who didn't like the former policy, it angers other users that were formerly fine with how this went. However, it doesn't get to the root of the problem: ISBNs will still be missing somewhere. There will still be editions you won't be able to find via ISBN search. There will still be editions without an ISBN in one's library export files (which, to be honest, is the one thing that bugs me the most).
You know what would be neat: changing how ACE work in general - that way everyone would be happy and we could resolve some or most of the issues. It would be nice to have something that works like combining different editions of a book just on a micro level of different editions for the same ISBN. So basically a nested structure: ISBNs as identifiers on the first level, ACEs under an ISBN on a second level with an additional identifier but all carrying that ISBN. One could still choose one's ACE but it would have an ISBN. Naturally, this would mean a lot of programming effort but we got rereading eventually, so maybe we can still hope and dream about a time when every edition on GR has an ISBN and the matching cover and info that goes with it.
ETA: Well, I forgot about reusing ISBNs across different works, which means, this won't work. My bad. Maybe just make ISBNs non-unique? That should pretty much solve all our problems.
Ellie wrote: ISBNs as identifiers on the first level, ACEs under an ISBN on a second level with an additional identifier but all carrying that ISBN. Since the last digit of an ISBN is a check digit, so that only 1 out of 36 possible values (10 numeric, 26 alpha) is actually used, could this be done by assigning the unused 35 values to ACEs? Not sure if this would work for ASINs...
Chris wrote: "Since the last digit of an ISBN is a check digit, so that only 1 out of 36 possible values (10 numeric, 26 alpha) is actually used, could this be done by assigning the unused 35 values to ACEs?"No, the state of the computing art is way beyond that kind of technique. That's so 60s! :-) It would take more work to program that than to just set up the ability to assign one ISBN to numerous editions.
Luci wrote: "I don't understand this completely but it won't affect me much anyway. I'm in the UK and a lot of the books that I buy are Kindle books.
I also get a lot of review books in hard copy and use Ne..."
Because you messed Amazon business.
I made similar changes and removed ASIN books which weren't books and lost my librarian status too. Some ASIN numbers I found were used books with ISBN, others were shoes, handbags etc. There were several issues where ASIN didn't lead to any records with Google or amazon etc. search. There were lot of wrong covers etc.
This wasn't my first revoked librarian status. I lost my librarian rights in early days (don't remember exactly), because I wanted to add different language editions. Then they just wanted to keep things simple, english and one edition basis.
It is pity that this is best international bibliophiles can get. Other sites are much worse. At least they added multiple read option.
I've followed the instructions - I think meticulously - but the old cover still appears in my dashboard at https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3.... Are you able to update my old cover to the one I prefer (on Amazon) here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01L8QV9YU
Michael wrote: "I'm staring at the last section of ACE in manual with horror - are you suggesting that ISBNs have to be moved to a newer edition of a totally different book in case it's found that new book re-uses ISBN from an older book that is totally unrelated? shakes head in disbelief"I would tend to think that's the best reason for this policy change. ISBNs are not supposed to be reused for different books. So, if we have a new book that provably has this ISBN, it should mean that the previous book was entered with an incorrect ISBN. Now, I'm sure that isn't always the case, but it's not our (or Goodreads) job to deal with the fact that somebody misused an ISBN.
Derek wrote: Chris wrote: "Since the last digit of an ISBN is a check digit, so that only 1 out of 36 possible values (10 numeric, 26 alpha) is actually used, could this be done by assigning the unused 35 values to ACEs?"No, the state of the computing art is way beyond that kind of technique. That's so 60s! :-) It would take more work to program that than to just set up the ability to assign one ISBN to numerous editions.
Unlikely, but I won't press the point. Actually I'm just glad I'm not a librarian. The seething discontent on this thread just goes to show that it's a bed of nails. I wish you all luck with this latest change. Bye.
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Yes, this. I am so disappointed. Then again, I've been displeased with almost every "improvement" made the last 5 years, since the Amazon purchase.
I realize the goal here is to sell new books. I have many older editions though and it would be good for Amazon/Goodreads to know that other members seeing these have often led to them purchasing new editions of those books.
Lizz wrote: "As a developer, I propose that Goodreads implement a search function that shows all editions with the same ISBN/ASIN, so that the readers can choose among them. The database can keep them separate by item or entry ID. I do not believe that it should be one way or the other. You can accommodate both sides of the argument."
This, or any other workable work around would be much appreciated, but it sounds as though a decision to implement this as of NOW has already been made. It's a shame.