Op/45

[Lobstergirl]

Anyone know what Op/45 stands for? I'm going to guess all of those should be nabbed, but I'd like to know what it means before I do it.

http://www.goodreads.com/book/combine...

[Lobstergirl]

Also Op/55. (That one turned out to be a regular book.)

[Vicky]

The handful of ones I looked at were out-of-print according to Amazon. OP could be Out-of-Print? Not sure what the 45 would designate though, maybe a last publication date?

I can't find anything on the ISBNs that's conclusive - but it seems odd that so many books from one author should be NABed when the titles don't have legitimate versions as well.

Not really sure where to suggest going from here though.

[Lobstergirl]

Hm. Well I won't nab them yet then until the mystery is solved.

[Lobstergirl]

Bump. Anyone?

[Peter]

I noticed that the ISBNs started with 5, and so are invalid for these books. The ISBN Group Identifier 5 is administered in the Russian Federation; ISBNs starting with 978-5- are supposed to be printed in the Russian language group. These books are listed as being in English.

Furthermore, I also noticed that they seem to all trace back to Amazon.

I would suggest trying to find editions, ignoring the ISBNs. I think that is an Amazon aberration.

HTH.
P.

[rivka, Former Moderator]

Peter wrote: "I also noticed that they seem to all trace back to Amazon."

And yet they imported from Ingram, which does not get its data from Amazon, but primarily from publishers.

[Peter]

The only books I can find that match the title Amends for Murder -Op/45 (without the "-op/45") have editions already in our database:

Amends for Murder (which needs combining with)
Amends for Murder
Amends for Murder
Amends for Murder

ETA:Using the tool at http://www.books-by-isbn.com/, I found a listing for this ISBN: http://www.books-by-isbn.com/5-551/55.... This is for the the ISBN in the Russian language group, but there is no link to a Russian language version. Strange.

[Lobstergirl]

The "555" ISBNs have been around forever. (There's a thread that talks about them, somewhere.) They may have been intended for Russian books, but every "555" I've seen has been English language, and the type of book you used to see on the remainder table at Borders; say, a hardback romance novel marked down to $5.99, or a coffee table book on chihuahuas.

Maybe Russian publishers sold them back to U.S. publishers at a discount and publishers like Random House Value used them on their crappiest books or something.

[Peter]

Lobstergirl wrote: "The "555" ISBNs have been around forever. (There's a thread that talks about them, somewhere.) They may have been intended for Russian books, but every "555" I've seen has been English language, ..."

You can find both Russian and English language books in the ISBN Group Identifier 5 lists at Books by ISBN - search books by ISBN. The direct link for these books is Russian Federation and ex-USSR

[Cait]

Lobstergirl wrote: "Anyone know what Op/45 stands for? I'm going to guess all of those should be nabbed, but I'd like to know what it means before I do it.

http://www.goodreads.com/book/combine..."

Huh. There are books on that list which have authors who are not at all Gene Walden. I suspect this is a whole bad batch of books that went wrong....

ETA: I reattributed all of the books with shelvings -- they were all 80s sf.

[vicki_girl]

Lobstergirl wrote: "The "555" ISBNs have been around forever. (There's a thread that talks about them, somewhere.) They may have been intended for Russian books, but every "555" I've seen has been English language, ..."

Here's one of the previous threads:

http://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/7...