Books with two publishers and two ISBNs...

[Joanna]

I'm trying to get some Polish books (translated an original) in order, but there is this problem: sometimes a book has two publishers and two ISBNs - one form each publisher. I did not find anything about such cases in the recent posts, so I'm asking how to deal with such cases...

[rivka, Former Moderator]

On the same book? Or is this two editions of a book?

[Joanna]

It's the same book. Look at the back cover of one: http://covers.gildiainternetse.netdna... - over the barcode you can see two ISBNs labeled by two different publishers...

I'm thinking the right way to do it would be:
a) list both publishers separating the names with a semicolon
b) list the ISBN used as the barcode as the main one
c) list the other one in notes
But as I'm new to Goodreads I thought that asking first would be a good idea.

And it is not the most complicated case - I have a book (or rather two books) published by two publishers, with an identical covers, identical sets of two ISBNs (one per publisher) but translated by a different translators... Go figure. :-D

[rivka, Former Moderator]

Weird!

I think your suggested method of handling it sounds fine.

[Rui]

I also have a book like that. Murder with quality, by John Le Carré. My ISBN is different from the more common ISBN.

[rivka, Former Moderator]

Rui wrote: "My ISBN is different from the more common ISBN."

Do you mean it's a different edition, or that your book, like Joanna's, actually has two different ISBN-13s?

[Rui]

It is a different edition, but shouldn't all ISBN of the same book be the same?

[rivka, Former Moderator]

Publishers often publish many editions of a book, each with its own ISBN. That's why we have the combine feature, to allow us to group editions of a work together.