Merge Required: The Passenger by Cormac McCarthy

[Drace]

The first edition hardcover of The Passenger by Cormac McCarthy has a duplicate edition, and they need to be merged. Posting in the superlibrarian folder because the duplicate has over 20,000 shelves. Links below:

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6...
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6...

Thank you for your help.

[David]

Note Done. The covers are not identical and one of them is very clearly marked as an ACE to the other.

[Drace]

David wrote: "Note Done. The covers are not identical and one of them is very clearly marked as an ACE to the other."

Neither edition I linked is labeled as an ACE anywhere on their page.

Additionally, the idea that one could be an ACE of the other simply doesn't make sense upon surface-level examination. Why would a company release one of the biggest, most talked-about books of the year in October, then release an almost identical edition less than one week after the first edition? Wouldn't it make more sense that one of the pages might be a duplicate that's incorrectly using cover art that was slightly edited before the final release, as very often happens with book covers?

[David]

I apologize for any confusion. ACE marking is done on a librarian note so you cannot see it. However, rest assured that such a note exists.

Regarding the image validity, the original cover image was uploaded by rivka, the former community manager, making it undoubtedly authentic. The ACE cover matches the current one on Amazon, reinforcing its validity. While we can speculate about the publisher's motives for changing the cover, it remains true that Goodreads requires separate editions for different covers.

[Drace]

Is it Goodreads policy to create separate editions for cover art that was never used at all? Because the art in the first linked book in the OP was only used pre-release, and the actual physical book only has the art used in the second link. There are no valid source websites that use the cover art in the first link (I checked the publisher's website, Amazon, and Abebooks and none of them use it), and I could travel to every library and bookstore in any given city, county, or state and only find the second link's cover art on their copies of The Passenger. I understand needing ACEs for updated cover art versions that get actually published and sold, but ACEs for cover art that was never used and scrapped before publication doesn't make any sense.

[Drace]

Also, thank you for pointing out the ACE note left in the library notes section. I still strongly disagree that it should be there and believe it was left incorrectly, but I am able to see it via viewing the edit log for the book. Non-librarians can view those if they replace "show" with "edits" in the book's URL.

[David]

I'm sorry but those are the rules. There may be some wriggle room in case the cover is questionable, but as I said, the credentials of the uploader are the top in existence. As always, you can contact support who are above rules.

[Drace]

David wrote: "I'm sorry but those are the rules. There may be some wriggle room in case the cover is questionable, but as I said, the credentials of the uploader are the top in existence. As always, you can cont..."

It seems to me like those rules might need a re-write to exclude scrapped/unused covers, because the language currently used means that someone acting in bad faith could intentionally upload flagrantly wrong cover art and it would have to stay, or that every single book on the website needs to have an edition with the publisher's placeholder "cover not yet available" art because it was used on the publisher's website at some point.

Anyways, thanks for clarification. I'll just let the thread go dormant now.