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bombcar • yesterday at 11:58 PM • 2 replies • view on HN

I know that for a book I've published via Kindle Press (the real ones, not digital) that there are at least 3 official revisions, and many many minor ones that as far as I know are only differentiated by the minor typos fixed, and MAYBE one of the numbers buried in the front matter. The ISBN has remained the same.

Replies

jll29 • today at 1:56 AM

Converse problem: ISBN re-use:

"Officially, ISBNs should never be reused. However, problems can happen if:

- A publisher improperly reuses an ISBN

- A small or self-publisher mis-registers a book

- An ISBN agency error occurred

- A book was published before 2007 and conversion from ISBN-10 to ISBN-13 created confusion" [Source: ChatGPT]

In 2009, I had plans to use ISBNs to distinguish the books in my personal library. But after scanning some ISBN bar codes with a MacBook app, I discovered some codes were associated with different books (the app also pulled the cover art, so it was easy to spot). Never had the time to find out if the bar code scanning was defective (=did not use the check sum) or these were cases of assignment errors, which "shouldn't happen" but have already happened.

There is a certain type of ignorant developer who reused "unique IDs", I've even seen a database in production use where GUIDs were recycled (no joke).

➕ show 2 replies
mmooss • today at 3:12 AM

Minor corrections can be new impressions rather than new editions, I think. On the copyright page, the impression line is the one that looks like this:

   30 29 28 27 26    2 3 4 5
As I understand it: That would be the 2nd impression, printed 2026. It's designed so the publisher can remove the innermost character(s) for each new impression, which I imagine was practical for printing presses - the type is already set, just remove a couple characters. Therefore the next impression this year would have,

   30 29 28 27 26      3 4 5
The 4th impression, next year:

   30 29 28 27           4 5
etc.