Quote:
Originally Posted by sufue
Yes, Open Road is definitely a really bad offender at issuing new "versions" that don't show up as previously purchased. Sometimes I even remember to mention this when talking about Open Road sales, but I forget and/or assume folks know this by now a lot too.
Most of the Open Road authors I like, I already have all the titles I want, so I don't really have to check. But when looking at the few authors I still want some titles from, I either have a list of the ones I need or I have my Kindle "Content and Devices" and Kobo "My Books" pages open so I can check for titles I've already purchased.
|
I don't know if this will be of any help or not, but I am almost certain that ISBN numbers
never change, whereas, as you remarked, ASIN numbers can and do.
My issue goes far beyond just Open Road titles--I have many ebooks, scattered over a large number of publishers, from a bunch of different vendors--from eBooks.com to Amazon.com to Westminster Theological Bookstore (back before they quit (apparently) selling ebooks)--and in all kinds of formats (many of them DRM Protected). And I don't remember well what I already have purchased.
I'm thinking of creating a table in Microsoft Word (A table is easier to create than a spreadsheet. Many times people think that they have to use a spreadsheet; from what I know, I
think, however, that a table would suffice unless you need the computer to do calculations within the document.). In one column, I'd put the ISBN numbers--one for ISBN-8 numbers (if available) numbers and another one for ISBN-13 numbers (if available), the title, the authors' names (last name first) in separate columns ("fields?"), and maybe another category or two. Oh, of course by publisher (Open Road or whoever).
With a click or two, I could sort the entries(?) in the categories by ISBN *'s, titles, the author's name, publisher, whatever, alphabetically or numerically, of whatever I desire. So, with a click and a glance, I would be able to know what I have and where it is. The only fly in the ointment, that I can see, is that it would take a lot of time to make entries for the books that I already have.
Maybe there are programs like Calibre that would make it easier than that to make entries for books that I already have, add new entries, etc. With either system, it would keep me from buying a book again, that I already have.
Thoughts by anyone? (Mods: If there are more than one or two posts, I'll start a new thread.)