Goodreads Librarians Group discussion

I was adding some books to my bookshelves when one of the ISBNs I entered gave me the completely wrong book.

The book is Nora Roberts "The Law Is A Lady" - first printing. It's one of her oldest books when she was writing category romance.

Anyway, the ISBN (0-671-53675-3) gives me this:
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/32...

which is different in every way.

If you search Google for that ISBN, you get results for both. I know the ISBN for the Roberts book is correct because I have the actual book right in front of me.

In the end, it's not a huge deal, I can pick another edition of the book to add - there's an edition that's nearly the same as the one I wanted to add, just different ISBN. I just thought it was rather weird to have such a ISBN conflict come up and worth mentioning.

How bizarre! I'd blame this one on Amazon, except WorldCat and (almost) every other book cataloging website agrees with them!

I'm not sure what to suggest.

Looks like some publisher screwed up and reused an ISBN. They're not even the same publisher.

I thought maybe the Nora Roberts book had an ISBN mistake, but I checked it in the Nora Roberts Companion book, and it lists the same ISBN.

Interesting thing I just discovered...I was curious so I went through the NR Companion book I have and picked another of her early books, same year, same publisher (Silhouette Special Edition) and plugged in that ISBN (0671536990 - Opposites Attract) on Goodreads...

and get the wrong book. Plug it into Google, and I get results for both books.

I just tried a bunch of other ISBNs from other old NR books, and got a bunch with the same problem. They all seem to be from the 1983-84 time period, published by Silhouette.

So yeah, I dunno. Somehow it looks like a batch of ISBNs have been reused by a completely different publisher for completely different authors.

Another possibility is that Silhouette messed up and printed the wrong ISBNs on several books.

Either way, very weird.

That's possible. Though I did notice that 0-671 looks like the ISBN batch Silhouette was using in the early 80s. Not all the ones starting with that came up wrong.

But you're right, either way, very weird. It's a good thing that the book I mentioned is my only NR Silhouette book that's from the first printing or I'd be more annoyed.

You can always add the book with nothing in the ISBN field, and the ISBN (and possibly a brief explanation) in the description field.

Rivka,

Call me curious but I went and emailed Harlequin/Silhouette last night about this ISBN thing. I really didn't expect a reply, but they sent me one. Which didn't give me an answer as to why some ISBNs appear to have been used, but did give me a clue.

Harlequin purchased Silhouette books from Simon & Schuster in 1984 - which is the time period those duplicate ISBNs originated.

The original duplicate I found, Jeannette Baker "Catriona" was published by Pocket Books, a division of S&S.

So my guess? Either someone at S&S goofed up and used the wrong batch of ISBNs, or decided to reuse because the original books were long out of publication (which I've heard is rare but can happen).

This was the reply I got:
Thank you for your inquiry. All publishers must use an ISBN which contains their unique identifier (Harlequin's is 0-373) when they release a book. We purchased the Silhouette line of books from Simon & Schuster (identifier 0-671) in 1984. Any book that we reissue must have a new ISBN that contains our identifier. We strictly adhere to this policy, and any book that Harlequin publishes will have the identifier code of 0-373 within the ISBN. We believe this is what you are seeing.

Nice that they answered (even if it doesn't really answer the question).

Of course, since this was 1984, when a lot of this stuff was not yet really computerized, there are all kinds of things that could have happened -- duplicate ISBN lists, transposed digits, etc.

Still better than the pre-ISBN system! ;)

I have a large library of Silhouette books and I noticed the 0671 ISBN problem over on the fictiondb.com site.

It seems that Simon & Schuster may have sold the Silhouette catalog to Harlequin, but then they turned around and reused the ISBNs, mostly in the early 90s for a series of Star Trek books. UGH!

I think the blame for the SNAFU belongs to Simon & Schuster. Once an ISBN has been used, it should never be re-assigned to another title.

Colleen

Colleen: That was my conclusion on it too. S&S decided to reuse the ISBNs. I came across 4 I think solely in Nora Roberts's old books. So who knows how many in total have this problem. Very annoying.

ISIS: Who knows? I know.

All 358 Silhouette Romance titles published prior to May 1985 + a Joan Hohl book published in May 1985

All 180 Silhouette Desire titles published prior to Jan 1985

All 24 Silhouette Inspirations titles published prior to Jan 1985

All 80 Silhouette Intimate Moments titles published prior to Feb 1985 AND

All 204 Silhouette Special Editions titles published prior to Dec 1984

potentially have this problem.

On the fictiondb.com website, there's an ad-block link directly to the book's listing on Amazon. It's real easy to see when the Amazon ad doesn't match up with the book description title/cover image.

The good news is that I've yet to research any that do not have a subsequently assigned '0373' (Harlequin) number. But it requires a title/author search on Amazon to find it and, of course, it won't match the ISBN actually printed on the book.

Colleen

COLLEEN - I got a 2nd email back from Harlequin (after I replied to their first one).

This is what they said:

Thank you for your inquiry.

When THE LAW IS A LADY was first published in 1984, Silhouette Books was owned by Simon & Schuster, which does use a 0671 prefix. However, the various Harlequin imprints generally use 0373 or 0778 in their ten-digit format.
And it is true that the numbers are not supposed to reissued. However, that sole usage is one of the reasons that the new 13 digit numbers have been assigned. Publishers were running out of individual numbers, since the various formats, price points, covers, digital issues and so on each needed a separate number.

Since the Baker title was published by Pocket Books--a division of S&S--I can guess that they felt they were running low on numbers and decided to re-use that number. That is not something they would consult with Harlequin about, since they "control" their own section of ISBNs.

When Harlequin absorbed the Silhouette imprint titles, we did adjust their ISBNs to the Harlequin 0373, so we don't have the 0671 in our databases. I can guess that S&S may have deleted those ISBNs from their own records, and perhaps that is why they assumed they were free.

In the end we can't explain what happened with these titles--it's actually Pocket Books who have been reusing their own ISBNs and not Harlequin. With the early Nora Roberts titles out of print, and newer versions with a different ISBN, it wouldn't come up in most databases. However, sometimes accidents will occur.

If you have any further questions or comments, please contact us.

So basically it sounds like they had no idea this had gone on.

Not surprising, since the numbers were out of their control. Their point about the ISBN-13s is a good one.

Those librarians who've been exploring the Silhouette ISBN issue might take note that Silhouette is also an "author" of 65 books in the GR DB.

A lot of these are not valid books but are instead prepaks and such, but it looks like there are some real books in there. No idea about the legitimacy of Silhouette as an author in most cases.

30 prepacks gone. Working on the real books now.

Michael - I've come across some of them and fixed them as I add data from my books from Goodreads.

Amazon's info on older Harlequin and Silhouette books is pretty shotty. I've come across ones with only a first or last name as author, ones with "Silhouette" as title, completely wrong titles & authors, etc. It's only been in the last year or 2 for new releases that they've started to get much more accurate data on these types of books.

No idea though if there could be a "Silhouette" author. Never heard of one, but I guess anything's possible.

Off the top of my head, the only case where I could see Silhouette potentially being considered a valid author would be if there were short story collections without a specified editor, i.e., essentially just edited by unspecified the Silhouette staff. Of course, one never knows. I posted it here (rather than under the Authors that need Work thread) since there had already been an active discussion of Silhouette books and I thought those involved might be particularly interested in cleaning it up (I probably would have just fixed them myself if I had stumbled across it earlier in the evening).

They're certainly welcome to help! ;)