What books should or shouldn't be merged?

[Aussiescribbler]

Hi,

I'm new to being a librarian and I'm just looking at how to update the information on my own books.

Maybe I've made it hard for myself, but when I took over publishing my own ebooks I released a book with the same title as a previously available one but with significantly different contents - 2 bonus stories. The new edition also has a somewhat different cover - different title font. I'm thinking that these two editions need to be listed separately. This will apply to an even greater extent with two of my future re-releases - same title, drastically different contents.

I also have another title which was previously published. In this case the content is the same, all that is different is the ISBN, cover design and publisher credit. Presumably, in this case, the records should be merged, but is it possible for both cover designs to be stored with the record?

Cheers,

David

[Lobstergirl]

In the second case, you can create an alternate cover edition (see the Librarians' Manual for instructions) and combine (not merge) the two editions.

In the first case, you can have the editions listed separately and add a librarian's note requesting that the editions are different and should not be combined. You might also want to edit the book description to indicate that one book contains the same content as another book, plus two stories, or whatever it is.

[Violetta]

Yep, if there is any difference in content, the books are treated as separate. This way books such as The Complete Tales & Poems of Edgar Allan Poe don't end up combined with Essential Tales and Poems.

Usually a simple Librarian's Note is enough to make sure that the different books are kept separate :)

[Cait]

Actually, there's no need for an alternate cover edition if the ISBNs are different; they can just be different editions with different covers in the usual way. (Many books have lots of editions with the same content, each with a unique ISBN.)

[Experiment BL626]

Aussiescribbler wrote: "Hi,

I'm new to being a librarian and I'm just looking at how to update the information on my own books.

Maybe I've made it hard for myself, but when I took over publishing my own ebooks I rel..."

Are the 2 bonus stories really that different and long enough to rival the main story to make the overall book a different book?

Here's an example: Other People's Heroes. The first edition of that book has one main story. The second edition has a revised/better-edited main story, and is accompanied by two short stories set in the same world. Both of these books are editions and combined.

How "drastically different" are your books?

#

As for the second case...

Lobstergirl wrote: "In the second case, you can create an alternate cover edition (see the Librarians' Manual for instructions) and combine (not merge) the two editions."

Agrees.

[Aussiescribbler]

Well, what I've done, for now, is to add the newer editions and combine them. This is clearly the right thing with the one which is identical in contents.

I'm not sure if this was the right thing to do with the other one - "Transylvanian Roulette". The original contained only the title story, which is about 8 pages long. The second edition contains two extra stories, putting the total length at 15 pages.

Then I have two more compilations of short stories - much longer collections - which I'm planning to publish in the new year using titles I've used for previous out-of-print compilations - but each will be missing 3 or 4 stories which were in the original volumes and have about 10 or more stories added. So they will be very different.

Before I started doing my own publishing, I had a total of 4 ebooks available. The combined sales for all of them was 72 copies. So, apart from one title which was briefly free, there aren't many copies of those old editions floating around. And, in starting again from scratch, it seemed to make sense to make use of the opportunity to group stories in collections according to theme in some cases and also fill out my story collections with my more recent writing. I never thought of this being a bibliographical nightmare - and I work in a library in "real life". :o)