Goodreads Librarians Group discussion

My copy of Mary Stewart's The Wicked Day is a book club edition. There is no ISBN that I can find anywhere in the book or on the dust jacket. Yet Goodreads contains an entry by amazon.ca that purports to be the book club edition with the same jacket photo as my copy, same publication year, same number of pages, same publisher, same format, but with the ISBN 5550595990. This book was published in English in the United States, so I thought the initial digit of the ISBN had to be a 0 or 1 indicating an English-language publication. So I have two questions: 1) Whence the ISBN in the first place, since it isn't on the book? and 2) If 5550595990 is the ISBN for this book, why doesn't it begin with 0 or 1?

There is no jacket photo shown on Amazon.ca, and the one at Amazon.com is quite different. You appear to be the one who uploaded the image to GR about a month ago. Labeled it the book club edition then too.

An ISBN beginning with a 5 ought to be Russian. My bet is that this started with an Amazon error, but who knows.

Now that's downright embarrassing...my memory is really going. It looks like it's my error, not Amazon's...it probably is Russian. I'll fix it back and then add the book club edition I have. Thanks, Rivka.

No, I think Amazon was a contributing factor. It does claim "BC 1st edition" -- which I would read as "book club." It also claims an American publisher. And it may be correct, somehow or other.

(And isn't the librarian edit log cool? ;) )

Yes it is cool...I should have checked it! I just deleted the edition with the "Russian" ISBN rather than try to restore it to it's original state. If past experience is any guide, it will get added back in by Amazon. And if it doesn't get added back in I don't think it will be a significant loss given the uncertainty of the entry.