International Standard Book Number

From Knights of the Dinner Table

The International Standard Book Number (ISBN) is a numeric commercial book identifier which is intended to be unique. Occasionally, publishers erroneously assign an ISBN to more than one title—the first edition of The Ultimate Alphabet and The Ultimate Alphabet Workbook have the same ISBN, 0-8050-0076-3. Conversely, books are published with several ISBNs: A German second-language edition of Emil and the Detectives has the ISBNs 87-23-90157-8 (Denmark), 0-8219-1069-8 (United States), 91-21-15628-X (Sweden), 0-85048-548-7 (United Kingdom) and 3-12-675495-3 (Germany). In some cases, books sold only as sets share ISBNs. For example, the Vance Integral Edition used only two ISBNs for 44 books. Publishers purchase ISBNs from an affiliate of the International ISBN Agency.[1]

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