Merging books with incorrect info without losing reviews

[Jon]

I found two entries for the identical book (same edition)--but one ISBN was wrong. I decided to delete the version with no reviews that I could see . . . and was told it would be merged with any other editions of that book.

But two problems concern me:
1) Once it deleted the book, it reported that it had deleted 2 reviews. Is there any way to get these back?

2) Under the author's page both books are still listed. Clicking on the deleted one gives the error message: "Oops, we couldn't find this book."

I'm concerned because someone had that book on her to-read list, and I wonder if it disappeared off her list.

Just trying to be a responsible librarian . . . :-)

Thanks!
Jon

[Jessica]

If you combine the 2 editions of the books first and then delete the incorrect one. The reviews from the deleted book will be moved to the other edition that it was combined with.

[Otis]

Jessica's right - we only merge into other editions, so that book must not have had any other editions.

[Jon]

I found out what happened . . . the publisher put the 10-digit ISBN on the book, but had the ISBN-13 on their website. So 1 book, two ISBNs. I noticed your other comment, Otis,

"ISBN-13's are now available from Amazon, and we are planning to add them soon as a new field in the book data."

That will solve the problem I had. In the meantime, I wonder if it would be good to add a comment to the Librarians file about merging--combine them as editions FIRST, then delete one, so that the reviews and whatnot don't get deleted.

[Lisa]

Jon and All, Except that it looks as though the reviews are still attached to specific editions, even when editions are combined. Why would anyone want/need to delete any edition of a book since those books can be combined with the other editions of that same book?

[rivka, Former Librarian Moderator]

Because some "editions" are really the exact same book, often added by someone manually.

[Lisa]

Ah...my brain cells arrvied late...got it, finally; thanks Rivka. Yes, would guess if could combine 2 identical editions the reviews would merge - has there been official response anywhere about that?

Oh, and coming from an obviously ignorant place: How can some of you - in profiles & messages - use bold text at this site?! Very cool, especially because everyone uses it sparingly/effectively.

[rivka, Former Librarian Moderator]

In my case, I'm using a Firefox extension. ;) But you can do it by hand too. < b > and < / b > (minus the spaces) before and after what you'd like to bold. Replace the b's with i's, and get italics.

Underline, strike, and linking don't have functionality.

[Lisa]

Thanks Rivka! Really appreciate your help. The people on this site are so great: providing me with a basic education and, of course, book ideas too!

[Bree]

Rivka, to link you go [ link: whatever-the-url-is ]

To tell it to do a search for a book you type [ book: whatever-the-name-is ] and for author [ author: whatever-their-name-is ]

Except without ANY spaces. :)

[rivka, Former Librarian Moderator]

You don't actually need the brackets for outside links. http://www.google.com/calendar/ works just fine.

What I meant (and I wasn't clear, sorry), was the ability to have re-named links, like this Calendar

[Otis]

Rivka is right, we unofficially launched support for linking, and didn't tell anyone. It won't work if you try to add any attributes to the link, however.

Here is the tip on how to merge to books: http://www.goodreads.com/help/librari...

[Tina]

Hi All, I know I'm really late to this thread but I have this problem too.

My big question is this:

How do you get a book labeled as an edition?

Right now there are two book listings for the exact same book, but the one added manually (by the author) has the wrong ISBN number. I thought maybe the ISBN is what notified Goodreads of editions, but when I tried to change the ISBN number it gave me an error saying there was already a book with that ISBN.

Here are the book listings:

Creatures of the Night: Absolute XPress Flash Fiction Challenge #2

Creatures of the Night: Absolute XPress Flash Fiction Challenge #2

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[rivka, Former Librarian Moderator]

I took care of it for this book, but for future reference:

1) Combine the two books on the primary author's combine page.
2) Delete the incorrect edition. Its reviews/shelvings will transfer over to the other edition (and you'll get a message saying this has happened).
3) If you cannot do #2, because it has been shelved by too many people, post in the "please delete this book" thread and a superlibrarian will delete it for you. Also post there if you are unsure whether a book should be deleted.

[Tina]

Thank you sooooo much. For some reason I didn't understand that you had to do it under the primary authors page (the merge button appeared on my page so I just assumed I could do it there).

Thanks again.

[rivka, Former Librarian Moderator]

You actually can do it from the book's page; the system will just go to the primary author's combine page.