Same ISBN-10, different ISBN-13

[Dan]

The two paperback editions here: https://www.goodreads.com/work/editio...

Same ISBN-10, different ISBN-13. Same date of publication, different publishers given.

ISBN-10 0998750743 is available on amazon.com, the other on amazon.co.uk.

This is happening in some other cases too.

I suspect it is something to do with the publish-on-demand services used, and there will be very slight differences in the editions as a result. Yes they have the same ISBN-13 number. Does anyone know what is going on here?

[rivka, Librarian Moderator]

Dan wrote: "Same ISBN-10, different ISBN-13."

That is both impossible and not true. A given ISBN10 maps to exactly one ISBN13. And a given ISBN13 starting with 978 maps to exactly one ISBN10. (The newer ISBN13s starting with 979 do not have corresponding ISBN10s at all.)

In the work you linked, the two paperbacks have

0998750743 / 9780998750743
1541069471 / 9781541069473

[Emy]

To add onto Rivka's reply, the first few digits of an ISBN10 is usually assigned to a specific publishing house. The first digit is intended to indicate a rough linguistic grouping. 0 and 1 are the most common, and indicate English speaking countries, 2 is French, 3 is German, and so on.

[rivka, Librarian Moderator]

However, since blocks of unused ISBNs can be resold, sometimes those initial digits do not indicate what they theoretically should. In theory, ISBN10s starting with 5 are in Russian. However, large blocks of them were sold to a handful of ebook distributors, so there are many English-language ebooks whose ISBN10s start with 5.

[Emy]

True, and they're very disconcerting sometimes :)

[Emily]

This is all very fascinating, thanks for sharing

[Dan]

Yes, thank you. Sorry for the error!

I guess they are British sold and US editions published on the same day.