Author Topic: How to figure out ISBNs of the new paperback books?  (Read 3062 times)

Offline DJ Doena

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How to figure out ISBNs of the new paperback books?
« on: June 06, 2020, 08:28:41 AM »
Hi,

I've come to the Dresden Files about three years ago and have collected them all. Since I am from Europe I just ordered them from my country's Amazon page and except for two I got all in the same American paperback format. The other two were prints from the UK. And as I like a bit of order, I even went so far to tracking down the "correct" copies of those two books and I ended up with this:





What tickles the perfectionist in me is that Jim's books are always have two-word titles. Except "Changes" (which is a perfect title for this purpose). And as you can see on the back spine, the design is perfectly identical before "Changes" (two lines for author name and title). Then it - well - changes. But again after "Changes" all books use the same back-spine style (one line for author name and title).

The old ISBN (International Standard Book Number) system was a 10-digit number wheras the tenth digit was a checksum that could take 11 values (0-9 and the X). For barcodes the invented a new prefix 978 called "bookland" and then calculated the last digit according to the EAN barcode rules.

The 13-digit ISBNs for these books are (in order)

978-04514-5781-3
978-04514-5812-4
978-04514-5844-5
978-04514-5892-6
978-04514-5940-4
978-04514-5987-9
978-04514-6091-2
978-04514-6103-2
978-04514-6103-2
978-04514-6200-8
978-04514-6281-7
978-04514-6347-0
978-04514-6407-1
978-04514-1912-5
978-04514-7004-1

Sometimes when book series are published you can actually see the numbers before the checksum simply increase. But that usually only happens when a series is reprinted in one go.

But is there a way to find the ISBNs for the next Dresden novels that come in this specific format to further complete my collection?
« Last Edit: June 06, 2020, 09:34:25 AM by DJ Doena »

Offline g33k

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Re: How to figure out ISBNs of the new paperback books?
« Reply #1 on: June 07, 2020, 01:35:39 AM »
... always have two-word titles ...

Two words... with the same number of letters in each word!   :o


 ;D
 

Offline DJ Doena

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Re: How to figure out ISBNs of the new paperback books?
« Reply #2 on: June 07, 2020, 05:19:36 AM »
Two words... with the same number of letters in each word!   :o


 ;D

 :o

Offline g33k

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Re: How to figure out ISBNs of the new paperback books?
« Reply #3 on: June 07, 2020, 09:05:19 PM »
Welcome to the Paranet, BTW!
 :D

Offline DJ Doena

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Re: How to figure out ISBNs of the new paperback books?
« Reply #4 on: June 10, 2020, 08:18:42 AM »
Welcome to the Paranet, BTW!
 :D

Thanks :)

Offline DJ Doena

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Re: How to figure out ISBNs of the new paperback books?
« Reply #5 on: July 06, 2021, 02:58:53 PM »
FWIW here are the new ISBNs. They don't fit anymore (probably some internal company restructuring), but these are the numbers given on Random House's own page:

Peace Talks: 978-11019-9106-0 https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/309658/
Battle Ground: 978-05931-9931-2 https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/645503/

where they had before:

Skin Game 978-04514-7004-1: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/309657/