Same ISBN, different cover?

[Ryan]

I could not find an edition of Bruno Bettelheim's The Uses of Enchantment The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales that matched mine, so I added my own edition. Though it has its own unique cover, it seems to share an ISBN with an already listed edition, though mine is a tenth printing.

I created a new edition listing sans ISBN, and now the listing is an island at The Uses of Enchantment The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales, not lumped together with other editions. What am I doing wrong? Or should I even be considering a tenth printing with a unique cover its own edition?

[Jessica]

A librarian just needs to combine them (doing that for you right now)

[Ryan]

Jessica, thank you, but I think this inadvertently created more problems. I was tinkering with my original isolated page, not knowing someone else was combining it at that very moment. Having saved those changes to what I thought was the isolated edition, I seem to have changed the book description and more for an edition (or editions?) I was not intending to alter.

Again, thanks for helping, but, as a librarian, I was hoping to learn how to create an alternate cover edition myself instead of having someone else do it for me.

[Jessica]

You did fine creating the new edition (I did not realize you had librarian status), and all I did was combine your edition with the other editions. It should not have changed any of the other editions. What do you think was altered?

[Ryan]

Erm ... sorry, this is confusing me so. The 1989 paperback edition now has my description for my 1986 hardback. I don't know what happened to the original paperback description, and my attempts to "undo" the change didn't seem to work. Am I just flailing around here and making things worse?

[Ryan]

Actually, my description now seems to apply to all editions.

[Jessica]

It looks like yours became the default description. I'm not sure how those really work, but I'm pretty sure it wouldn't have applied unless the other books didn't have descriptions. Another librarian may need to explain that.

[Ryan]

Ah, I think I've fixed it. I found the original default description and made that the default for all editions but my own. Hopefully, everything's back to normal, save a muddle of undo attempts on the librarian edits page.

My confusion stems from the fact that I entered the title and author correctly, but the information appeared as a standalone book, not grouped with other editions under the title or author's name. I thought combining editions sort of meant one edition swallowed another? Now I see that, apparently, combining editions can actually bring a standalone listing into the fold with other editions...

Jessica, thanks for your help, and sorry if I initially sounded accusatory! I'm really hoping to learn how to safely tinker with some of the finer points of alternate covers, etc.

[Jessica]

It's ok, it's definitely scary at first (if you actually care what happens to the book entries!).

[rivka, Former Moderator]

Ryan wrote: "Now I see that, apparently, combining editions can actually bring a standalone listing into the fold with other editions..."

It is, in fact, the ONLY way to do that. Any newly-added book, whether imported from Amazon/B&N or entered manually, will show up as a stand-alone until a librarian combines it with its fellows.

Welcome! :)