One ISBN, many books

[John]

I've checked through the previous postings and haven't found anything on this issue.

I tried to add an edition of A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. The ISBN on the back of the book is 1-55902-983-8. When I enter this number, I get the error message that the ISBN is already used by another book. Well, I go check a few online sources, searching on the ISBN and I find that there are many books out there using it. The really interesting part is that they are all from the same publisher: Aerie. It looks like they are the promotional publisher for Wal Mart. (The big orange circle w/ "2 for $1 gives it away.)

Any thoughts? Do you recommend that I post this edition anyway, sans ISBN?

[Debbie]

Cheapskates.

If the book were mine, I'd post it without the ISBN, yes.

[rivka, Former Moderator]

Agreed.

But I don't actually see how it saves them money. How would you know what you had in stock?

Yet more evidence that WalMart is eeeeeevil. ;D

[John]

Schneider, you might consider putting the ISBN in the book description with an explanation that the ISBN is not unique and that's why you didn't put it in the regular ISBN location.

I've done a little looking around and find that there are a number of books with this ISBN that do not have the WalMart 2 for 1 label. I searched the WalMart web site for this ISBN and it returned zero hits. Then I searched the WalMart web site for Call of the Wild and for Wuthering Heights (both books that have been published by Aerie with the 1559029838 ISBN). I got several hits in both cases, but none of the editions were published by Aerie and none had the 1559029838 ISBN. So it appears that WalMart no longer carries these books, at least not in their online inventory.

Alibris has 20 pages (500 books) with this ISBN. These are not 500 different titles, however. I didn't have the patience to check all 500 to see how many different titles there are, but there are quite a few.

Amazon has 26 listings with this ISBN, most of which are published by Aerie, but not all. According to Amazon a Quiet Vision Publishing edition of Anne of Avonlea has this ISBN, but a search of Quiet Visions website shows 4 editions of this book, none of which have this ISBN. Given Amazon's record of confusion regarding book details (i.e. the Shakespeare by Lewis Carroll book discussed earlier in a different thread), it's possible (likely?) that they messed up the details of this edition of Anne of Avonlea. Amazon also lists an edition of Treasure Island published by World Book that has this ISBN, but other booksellers (A1Books for example) list this same edition with a different ISBN. Once again, Amazon probably messed up. My faith in the accuracy of Amazon information is much shaken.

I tried to locate Aerie Books online with no success. If they have a web site, I couldn't find it. Do any GR librarians know anything about them? It would be interesting to ask them why they publish so many books with the same ISBN.

[This Is Not The Michael You're Looking For]

You also have to be careful about the Amazon search results in general. I searched for that ISBN as well, and some of the 26 books do not actually have that ISBN (e.g., The Call of the Wild). However, what is more interesting is that at least some of those with the identical 10 digit ISBN (1559029838) have different 13 digit ISBNs. For example, according to Amazon:

Treasure Island
ISBN-10: 1559029838
ISBN-13: 978-0716632047

Anne of Green Gables
ISBN-10: 1559029838
ISBN-13: 978-1576463048

I would think there might be a way to take advantage of this?

[rivka, Former Moderator]

That implies that neither of the books really has the ISBN-10 in question.

This ISBN converter yields 0-7166-3204-7 for Treasure Island and 1-57646-304-4 for Anne of Green Gables.

The first is in GR's database as published by World Book; the second is not yet listed.

[This Is Not The Michael You're Looking For]

The book listed in GR under ISBN 1559029838 is Hans Brinker on the Silver Skates. The description of that book (courtesy of Amazon) is for Treasure Island. It has a 13 digit ISBN number which also appears to be for Treasure Island (according to Amazon, anyway).

Beyond cleaning up the obvious errors, what should the general policy about this be? Should we remove the clearly incorrect 10 digit number when we find it and use a converter on the 13 digit number when available to place the correct one?

We'll need to have some listing in GR with that 10 digit ISBN if for no other reason then to prevent it from being reloaded by Amazon. Would a dummy book with an explanation make sense? That would at least block its use by other books and if anyone tried to add it, they could find an explanation and come looking to the forum for help?

[rivka, Former Moderator]

Seems reasonable. Are we sure there is no actual book with that ISBN? Nothing in the LOC database, so maybe not.


Should we remove the clearly incorrect 10 digit number when we find it and use a converter on the 13 digit number when available to place the correct one?

That seems in keeping with fixing things to the best of our knowledge and ability, which is the general policy, neh?