Can anyone give a simple explanation of the nature of the Bookpedia/Amazon link, what ASINs are, and why many of the Amazon ISBNs appear to be wrong?
What prompts this questioning is what happens when I try to enter certain books into Bookpedia by dragging a link from Amazon Japan. An example is here: http://www.amazon.co.jp/exec/obidos/ASIN/0064442152/.
Even though the book is showing clearly in my browser, Bookpedia doesn't simply import the data as it is, but seems to execute a new search based on the ASIN. It then says that it cannot find a book of that description.
This is pretty mystifying to me, but doesn't appear to be a simple case of a Bookpedia bug. Searching for the book on Powell's reveals different ISBNs than are given on Amazon Japan, and entering those ISBNs finds the book on one or other of the Amazon sites. And it seems that the problem is common to pretty much the whole I Can Read series.
Can anyone throw some light on this?
Thanks,
Rick
don't understand ISBN/ASIN/Amazon linkup
Hi Rick,
Download Bookpedia again and the example you pointed to will work. I had over estimated the minimum number that an ISBN would be, and hence the search was being done as a regular keyword. (Amazon doesn't match their own ASIN during regular keyword search, the query has to explicitly say ASIN.)
Download Bookpedia again and the example you pointed to will work. I had over estimated the minimum number that an ISBN would be, and hence the search was being done as a regular keyword. (Amazon doesn't match their own ASIN during regular keyword search, the query has to explicitly say ASIN.)
ASIN, ISBN10, and ISBN13
Great! Thanks.Conor wrote:Download Bookpedia again and the example you pointed to will work.
If anyone's feeling knowledgeable, I'm still interested in the beginner's guide to ASIN, ISBN10, and ISBN13!
ISBN are 10 digit code that represent language, category, manufacturer, and book numbers for that manufacturer in that order. The amount of digits that each represents is variable, except for the language that is the first digit. ASIN are just Amazon generated numbers that they tag their products with. It really doesn't have any kind of standard system, and can only be used with Amazon. Luckily in the book world of Amazon the ASIN is equal to the ISBN.
An ISBN is not what you will find encoded in barcode form. All ISBN are encoded as EAN-13. This is a European invention that takes the American UPC-A code, that is 12 digits long, and makes it a subset of EAN. So all UPC-A can be EAN codes with a leading 0. Back to the ISBN you will find that they all start with a leading 978, this is called Bookland. The EAN like the UPC is meant for all kind of products but the first two or three digits designate a country; because the ISBN is international they made a special country code for ISBNs.
There just started switching from the 10 digit ISBN that gets 978 added to the front for EAN to a regular EAN-13 called ISBN-13 because they are running out of space in certain categories of ISBN.
But don't trust me with this information, let me point you to wikipedia.
ISBN
ASIN
An ISBN is not what you will find encoded in barcode form. All ISBN are encoded as EAN-13. This is a European invention that takes the American UPC-A code, that is 12 digits long, and makes it a subset of EAN. So all UPC-A can be EAN codes with a leading 0. Back to the ISBN you will find that they all start with a leading 978, this is called Bookland. The EAN like the UPC is meant for all kind of products but the first two or three digits designate a country; because the ISBN is international they made a special country code for ISBNs.
There just started switching from the 10 digit ISBN that gets 978 added to the front for EAN to a regular EAN-13 called ISBN-13 because they are running out of space in certain categories of ISBN.
But don't trust me with this information, let me point you to wikipedia.
ISBN
ASIN
ISBN, ASIN
Thanks, Conor!
Now why didn't I think of that?But don't trust me with this information, let me point you to wikipedia.