Question about ISBNs

I used to work in a bookstore and on occassion we would come across an isbn that was extremely old and had been reassigned. (at least thats what we believed had happened) I'm not certain that is the case, it could have been a typo on the data entriest's part, but when a book goes out of print I'd guess that the isbn is up for reassignment. I wiki'd it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISBNs and it doesn't really answer the question.

I found a few other links on the topic though.

http://www.isbn-us.com/isbnfaq.htm

http://signature-book.com/ISBNWhy.htm

http://thevintagebook.com/?p=24

Hope I'm not just blowing smoke.

lvcabbie said:

I have a question about the ISBN: International Book Standard Number. I know it's purchased by a "publisher" . . . So, what I cannot find out is - what happens to that number when the publisher removes the book from its publications list?. . . .

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Publisher, not "publisher."

Anyway, no, an ISBN cannot be reused, reassigned, or transferred. It cannot even be used on a new or different edition of the same book. An ISBN is specific to a particular edition of a particular book from a particular publisher, the publisher that owns the ISBN. See www.bowker.com for more information.

However (and on re-reading, this appears to have been your real question), the rights owner (author or publisher to whom author has assigned publishing rights) can publish a new edition (revised, edited, or not) with a newly assigned ISBN belonging to the publisher of the new edition.

--Ken

ISBN identifies the publisher and the EDITION of the book. If you get your rights back and want to publish it yourself or get another publisher for it, bla bla bla, the new edition absolutely SHOULD get a NEW ISBN.

FantasiaFrogDesigns said:

I used to work in a bookstore and on occassion we would come across an isbn that was extremely old and had been reassigned. (at least thats what we believed had happened) I'm not certain that is the case, it could have been a typo on the data entriest's part, but when a book goes out of print I'd guess that the isbn is up for reassignment.

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I'm sure it's NOT SUPPOSED TO BE reassigned. An ISBN is supposed to identify exactly ONE edition of a book. When a new edition is published it's supposed to have a new ISBN, even if it's from the same publisher (later printings with minor corrections such as typos don't count as a new edition). Especially if the new edition is from a different publisher it needs a new ISBN because part of the ISBN identifies the publisher.

I've heard of reassigning ISBN's - it's rareish, but when it does happen it generally causes confusion. The original reason for having an ISBN was so a dealer or library could order a book by the ISBN and know EXACTLY what they were going to get (not just title and publisher, but also format such as hardback, trade paper, MMPB, audio book, and now ebook).

I wiki'd it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISBNs and it doesn't really answer the question.

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Hmm, that's an abuse of the word wiki (and not the "verbing" of it - it's NOT an abbreviation for either Wikipedia, nor for the unrelated entity Wikileaks), but whatever...

ETA: The ISBN was recently changed from 10 digits to 13 digits to keep from having the problem of running out of unique numbers.