I just did and it really frosts my 'nads when that happens. This time it was a Koontz book called Whispers. No before you ask, I did not check the copyright date on the indide. I usually do, but I had a good excuse this time (On my way home from the ER where I was seen as a patient and a little woozy from having been slugged with phenergan to combat my vomiting).
Shouldn’t there be a warning on the cover stating that the novel had been previously published? I can’t see them doing this with a Stephen King novel, can y’all?
Thanks
Quasi
I had that same response the last time I read a Michael Crichton book.
They’ll do that to anybody’s novel, I think. I was at the airport a while back and suddenly realized I was about to get onto an airplane for 6 hours with nothing to read but the airline’s magazines, or be forced to watch “Stop Or My Mother Will Shoot”. I ducked into an airport ‘newsstand’ to grab something quick, saw the name of an author I liked (Arthur C. Clarke, IIRC) with a cover I hadn’t seen before, and snatched it up. I got about 10 pages into it when realization dawned. Fortunately it was good enough to read again.
There only has to be a warning if the title is changed. This led to the lovely title on a Johnny Hart B.C. comics collection:
“Life is a $1.99 Paperback, formerly 'Life is a $1.25 Paperback,” formerly ‘Life is a 95 Cent Paperbak,’ fomerly ‘Life is a 75 Cent Paperback.’"
As far as your question is concerned, why is it the publisher’s fault if you can’t keep straight what you’ve read?
I don’t know of any case where a book that was rereleased with the same author and title and any warning was deemed needed. The assumption is that the reader is smart enough to remember.
Larry Niven’s been doing this, taking short stories previously published in various anthologies and recombining them into a NEW anthology; his first Man-Kzin War book was mostly old stuff, and his latest (I think–I’m not following him too closely any more because of this) was the Long Arm of Gil Hamilton.
Marion Zimmer Bradley once completely rewrote one of her Darkover novels and published it under a different name. It was a better book, so I didn’t mind so much.
The only safe way is to check the copyright page. If the book has been published under another title, or if it’s a collection of perviously-published short stories, they will be listed there, with the original titles and where they were published, be it in an anthology or a magazine or what have you.
So, Quasi, you’re mad because they just rereleased the paper back with a different cover, but the same title? Caveat emptor, in that case. Browse a used book store, and you’ll find many editions of the same books with different cover art. There’s no reason why the book should be married to the original paperback cover design for all time.
You are both absolutely correct. It was my fault for not checking the copyright page, as I believe I admitted. I suppose also, that the publisher didn’t need to let me know that Whispers was a reissue. I have a voracious appetite for books and read many of them a year, so caveat emptor is an appropriate phrase in this instance. Guess what really upset me, is that I forgot I read the thing and let the new cover seduce me into buying it again. Neither of which is the publisher’s fault, and I apologize for wasting y’all’s time and bandwidth. Guess I’ll go back to bed and re-read the book. 
Quasi
In the Seventies they reprinted many of Agatha Christie’s mysteries, but with new names; e.g. Ten Little Indians became *And Then There Were None[/], etc.
The Agatha Christie thing is frustrating. She’s one of my favorite authors, so I want to find all of her stories and books. The books are easy enough, because the publishers often put the original name in small letters under the new name.
The short stories are harder to find all of though, especially because of the way the publisher combines the stories in a different way and releases it as a new anthology. I bought a book about her that has a list at the back of all of her stories, and that made it easier to find them, for a while. Buying an anthology that contains 10 stories I’ve already read to get two new ones is a pain in the neck, but worth it for one of her stories. Now that “re-discovered” stories and re-written plays are being published, such as Black Coffee and The Harlequin Tea Set, the list isn’t so useful anymore. <sigh>
The funny thing though, is when a re-combined anthology contains several stories in which she re-used plots from her full-length books.
English mystery novels are always irritating, as the U.S. publisher often decides to change the title for marketing reasons. Innes’s academic mystery MURDER AT THE PRESIDENT’S LODGING became SEVEN SUSPECTS in the U.S., as Americans don’t immediately think about university presidents when they hear the word “president.”
Sometimes it’s even worse.
Christie’s novel first appeared in the U.S. as AND THEN THERE WERE NONE, latching on to the rear of the nursery rhyme instead of the front. The original British title was TEN LITTLE NIGGERS, which even in 1940 was a no-go in the States. The British title eventually changed to TEN LITTLE INDIANS by the third or fourth printing. But when Rene Claire decided to film it (in England) he used the American title. And when it was remade (in America) in 1963, it was called TEN LITTLE INDIANS.