Beware: Amazon dupicates (of TSR books) could cost you money

Big_Mac_TMMM

I hope this is the correct place to post a shopping warning. I've been up and down the forums and can't see anywhere more logical.

Do you want to pay £27.99 + postage for the, so called, "best deal" or do you want to pay £0.04 + postage for the real best deal?

Amazon duplication by David Shepheard, on Flickr

I recently was buying six books on Amazon and accidentally discovered that they have got multiple listings of some out of print books. After rechecking them all, I found some alternatives that were cheaper (and some alternatives that were more expensive) and went with the best deal. From what I recall, my savings were about £10 for 6 books.

Sometimes things were listed twice and I even saw something listed three times! I have no idea how many books are affected by this problem.

Looking at my viewing history a couple of days back I saw that the two prices of one of the books I had bought had become radically different (since I bought my copy). I've put a screenshot above. This is a more extreme example than any of the ones I saw when I was actually buying the books, but it does go to show just how this flaw could loose you cash (or make you give up and miss out on a good deal on another page).

Obviously if you see something for 1p + postage you are going to like that deal, but what if that book is in poor condition and the "next best" book is £10.00 + postage. You might think you have to "settle" for the bad book or wait for a better book to come along. But with the way that Amazon is having duplicates, there might actually be a brand new version of the book for £1.00 + postage on a totally different page. That might be important if you are looking for something as a gift (and need it to be in good condition).

I've had a look at the non UK Amazon websites and they seem to have the same problem.

And I was using MegaShopBot to help me look for the best deals at the time I stumbled onto this. The book listings look like different things to the individual bots, so they can't "automatically" find the problem.

I think it might be because Amazon are letting book sellers feed in information for out of print books and that some people are making data entry errors and creating duplicates. As you can see both the books above actually have different names. A computer isn't going to be able to spot that they are really exactly the same thing.

If you want to avoid getting a bad deal from Amazon, you are going to need to check for duplicates manually.

EDIT: Thanks to some research by antrobus (as well as myself) this weirdness has been tracked down to the publisher TSR, importing US books into the UK and adding a sticky label with another (UK TSR) ISBN on it.

International commerce now means the unstickered (US) version is on sale in the UK, while the stickered (UK) version is on sale in the USA.

So anyone looking for second hand TSR books should check for the (identical apart from a sticker) duplicates to see which of the two offers the best deal.

DCFC79

Its hardly hidden though is it, its just a case of looking before you buy.

antrobus

Beware: Amazon dupicates could cost you money

They're not duplicates, they have different ISBNs. It's two different editions of the same book. (Guessing I'd say that one is probably the trade paperback, the other the normal paperback.)

But, I hear you say, the books are identical even though they have different ISBNs. But Amazon don't know that do they? It's not as if they had the time to read every copy of every book in existence. No one does, which is why "non UK Amazon websites ... seem to have the 'same problem'".

Publisher have various reasons for releasing the same text in different editions. Each is allocated it's own ISBN and therefore as far as any bookshop is concerned is a different product. It's up to the buyer to make a decision as to which edition they would prefer, and/or carry out any research as to what differences exist between the editions. It's not really that difficult. As in go to Amazon, select advanced search, type in author's name and book title, and all will be revealed.

Big_Mac_TMMM

antrobus wrote: »

Beware: Amazon dupicates could cost you money

They're not duplicates, they have different ISBNs. It's two different editions of the same book. (Guessing I'd say that one is probably the trade paperback, the other the normal paperback.)

Nope. They are duplicates.

I know that some books get reprinted in different formats or by different publishers in different countries. And each printing gets its own ISBN. But these Dragon Strike books started out as paperbacks and the line was cancelled, just as the next series of books was due to be printed. So in this case I am 100 percent sure that it is the same book (and that all the books in existence are from the first and only printing).

antrobus wrote: »

But, I hear you say, the books are identical even though they have different ISBNs. But Amazon don't know that do they? It's not as if they had the time to read every copy of every book in existence. No one does, which is why "non UK Amazon websites ... seem to have the 'same problem'".

Amazon allow customers to correct information on books. (I have actually corrected the information on quite a few roleplaying books.)

But so far I've not seen an option to alert them that two "different" books are really the same book. If they had an option for this, I'd be getting these books merged into a single entry.

They can't look at every book - I agree - but they can recognise the problem and create a way for customers to report the duplicates.

antrobus wrote: »

Publisher have various reasons for releasing the same text in different editions. Each is allocated it's own ISBN and therefore as far as any bookshop is concerned is a different product. It's up to the buyer to make a decision as to which edition they would prefer, and/or carry out any research as to what differences exist between the editions. It's not really that difficult. As in go to Amazon, select advanced search, type in author's name and book title, and all will be revealed.

I've done some more research. The ISBNs listed on Amazon are:

1560768967 and 0099414112.

1-56076-896-7 is the ISBN on the copy I have next to me.

1-56076 is the code for TSR, Inc. Looking further into this, TSR UK have imported the US books and stuck labels over this ISBN. The TSR UK ISBNs start with 0-099. (If you peel the label off a UK book, the US ISBN - and the US price - is underneath.)

It looks like my mystery is solved. But this is still going to cause a problem for anyone buying second hand TSR books.

antrobus

Big_Mac_TMMM wrote: »

Nope. They are duplicates.

Well I checked on Amazon and the 'Paperback - 21 Apr 1994' edition was listed as follows;

• ISBN-10: 0099414112
• ISBN-13: 978-0099414117

whilst the 'Paperback - 1993' edition was listed as;

• ISBN-10: 1560768967
• ISBN-13: 978-1560768968

and them numbers looked different to me.

You've since done a bit of research and established that one is a US edition and one is the UK edition. So whilst the two editions might be very, very similar one may well have colors in it whilst the other may have colours. If you see what I mean.

Big_Mac_TMMM

antrobus wrote: »

Well I checked on Amazon and the 'Paperback - 21 Apr 1994' edition was listed as follows;

• ISBN-10: 0099414112
• ISBN-13: 978-0099414117

whilst the 'Paperback - 1993' edition was listed as;

• ISBN-10: 1560768967
• ISBN-13: 978-1560768968

and them numbers looked different to me.

You've since done a bit of research and established that one is a US edition and one is the UK edition. So whilst the two editions might be very, very similar one may well have colors in it whilst the other may have colours. If you see what I mean.

Thanks antrobus,

My research revealed that the UK edition was literally the US version with a sticky label stuck over the ISBN bar code and RRP on the back cover. There is no other difference.

(I've pulled out some other TSR books out of my collection and confirmed this.)

I know that TSR used to publish books with both US and UK prices on them, but then switched to doing this. But I've dug out a book with the prices on the cover (from back in 1991) that still has a UK ISBN stuck on top of the US ISBN.

So it is one edition of one book given an extra ISBN because of a sticky label.

I don't think I've seen this done by any other publishers, but I wouldn't want to pay or £27.95 extra for a sticky label or loose £27.95 for choosing something that didn't have the sticky label.

I've edited my first post and the title to change the warning.