Goodreads Librarians Group discussion

Bringing this up because I think it's a pretty big oversight within Goodreads policy and how the site works.

Recently I tried to contact Goodreads support about moving ISBNs and ASIN from an older edition of a book to the newest Alternate Cover Edition, as per Goodreads policy that the newest ACE should have the ISBNs/ASIN. The support member told me that they are unable to remove the ASIN because of how Goodreads works, thanks to the "ASINs can no longer be moved" announcement last month. Given the previously-existing policy about how identifying numbers need to be moved to the newest ACE, this seems like a pretty big issue, since this rule change means that there are now two separate editions sharing the same identifying information, and unless there's a method that both Goodreads staff and I aren't aware of, it will be impossible to correct this.

If any librarians know of a way around this issue I'm definitely open to hearing it, but I also wanted to point out this problem to Jaclyn since it seems like Goodreads staff might not have anticipated this issue and may want to figure out how to deal with it.

Hi Drace! Can you please link me to your example so I can have a closer look?

Sure. For context, I'm trying to write up a thread for cleaning up both English and Spanish editions of the book Hurricane Season by Fernanda Melchor, and I've been emailing staff about ISBN issues that librarians can't fix before posting the completed thread in the librarian group.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2... - This is the most recent ACE of the international Spanish edition of the book, ISBN-13 9788439733904. I already got staff to move the ISBN-10 (8439733909) and ISBN-13 to this one.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3... - This is the previous edition of the ISBN 9788439733904. As you can see, the ASIN 8439733909 has not been moved to the newest edition.

When I e-mailed staff to try to correct this, the person who replied said "It appears the ASIN in question has been imported by Amazon therefor cannot be removed or moved to another edition." [sic] They also offered to move the ISBN-10 and -13 from the newer edition back to the old one, which is against policy for how ACEs are handled.

Thanks for this, I'll take a closer look and get back to you. 😊

Drace wrote: "https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2... - This is the most recent ACE of the international Spanish edition of the book, ISBN-13 9788439733904. I already got staff to move the ISBN-10 (8439733909) and ISBN-13 to this one.."

I'm wondering why you involved GR staff at all to correct the issue. Since the new cover edition was created without following GR ACE policy all you needed to do was request a new ACE of the edition holding the ASIN/ISBN which would move both the ASIN & ISBNs then request a merge of https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2... into the properly created ACE.

Orig cover w/ASIN & ISBN -> ACE tool -> New cover w/ASIN & ISBN

Incorrect ACE (manually added) -> merged into New Cover w/ASIN & ISBN

I figured just asking to move the ISBNs from one edition to the other would be easier than requesting a new edition and then requesting a merge. Fewer steps in the process and probably a quicker response time from staff. Didn't anticipate the ASIN issue.

Hi Drace. Thanks for sharing these. I'll notify the team of the difficulty in this case; unfortunately, it's unlikely that we'll change the current policy surrounding ACE editing.

For now, the best way forward is to create an ACE and then merge the incorrect edition into the ACE. Sorry, I know it's not the quickest method, but it will be the process for these cases.

Thanks for the help, Jaclyn. Hugely appreciated.

One last quick question for Jaclyn, Tal, and anyone else who may be watching this thread: does anyone know if it's possible during the ACE process to move ISBNs/ASINs from multiple editions onto the single new ACE?

Hi Drace. Unfortunately a book record can only hold one ASIN and one ISBN (well, one ISBN10 and one ISBN13 to be precise).

If you're asking about moving an ASIN from one edition to the ACE, and an ISBN from another edition to the same ACE, then I'd start by creating the ACE from the book page with the ASIN you'd like moved (which will move it). Employees still have the ability to move ISBNs and can help you there if needed and if it complies with policy.

Let me know if I'm misunderstanding the question though! 😊

Jaclyn wrote: "If you're asking about moving an ASIN from one edition to the ACE, and an ISBN from another edition to the same ACE, then I'd start by creating the ACE from the book page with the ASIN you'd like moved (which will move it). Employees still have the ability to move ISBNs and can help you there if needed and if it complies with policy."

Yeah, that's more or less what I was asking. Aside from Hurricane Season, I have a thread going to create new ACEs for Raymond Chandler's books, and there are some cases where identifying numbers are split between Edition A and Edition B and they both need to be moved to Edition C.

Alright then! Let me know if you have any other questions and I'll do my best to answer them.