About

A book is printed again and again, often with a new cover each time. This site puts those covers side by side, by language and year, so you can find the edition you would want on your shelf.

Almost all of them from Open Library, a few from Google Books, which also says which picture a publisher currently files under an ISBN. The two catalogues hold only part of what has been printed: you see the covers someone scanned and uploaded.

• Editions without a scan. Most records have no image. The line under a book’s title shows how many were checked.
• Editions without an ISBN. Most books printed before about 1970 have none, so shops cannot look them up. For those you get searches by title, publisher and year, and a reverse image search.
• The same cover twice. Near-identical scans are folded into one tile marked “+2”. When in doubt, both are shown.
• Very long records. The scan stops after 1,500 editions.

When you pick a cover, the buy links get a short note. It compares your cover with the image the publisher has filed for that ISBN. That image is the only thing checked; no shop is asked. The note says one of these:

• The publisher’s current image for this ISBN is this cover. A new copy should look like the cover you picked.
• The publisher’s current image for this ISBN is a different cover. A new copy probably looks different. The publisher’s image is shown, and searches for your cover move to the front.
• The publisher has an image for this ISBN, but it could not be compared with this cover. One of the two pictures could not be loaded, so the site shows the publisher’s image and lets you compare.
• No current publisher image is on record for this ISBN. Common for older printings. It says nothing about whether a shop has the book.
• Checking which cover the publisher has registered for this ISBN… The lookup is still running; it takes a second.
• The catalogue that holds publishers’ current images did not answer. Google Books did not answer. Trying again later usually works.

It describes the publisher’s image, not what a shop will send.

No link on this site earns money. There are no affiliate links, ads or paid placements.

The order of the shops follows the ISBN. Its first digits show where it was registered, 978-3 for the German-language area, for example. For a number from another country, marketplaces that sell copies from many countries come first.

Clicks on buy links are counted: shop, market, ISBN and time. Nothing about you is recorded. Details are in the privacy notice.