Multiple Editions

One book can have more than one recording: an unabridged single-narrator reading, a full-cast dramatization, a different narrator’s performance. Narratorr lets you keep more than one of them in your library at the same time — while still recognizing when a recording you already own turns up again (even under a different Audible ASIN) so it isn’t imported twice or written over.

Two rules govern everything on this page:

• Never silently overwrite — a different recording is never written on top of one you already have.
• Never silently skip — a recording narratorr can’t confidently classify is held for you to decide, not dropped.

Same recording, or a different one?

When a book arrives (via download, manual import, or an import list) and you already own that title, narratorr decides whether it’s the same recording you have or a different one:

Signal	How it’s used
ASIN	An exact ASIN match (case-insensitive) is the same recording. A different ASIN does not automatically mean a different recording — the same reading is often sold under several ASINs, so narratorr falls through to the narrator and duration signals.
Narrators	The primary discriminator. A Full Cast and a Jim Dale reading are different recordings; the same narrator set points at the same recording.
Duration	A corroborator only. Two copies of the same reading run about the same length; a difference beyond ~15% downgrades an otherwise-equal match to review (the abridged-vs-unabridged case).
Production type	Full cast, dramatized, and the like. When duration can’t corroborate, a conflicting production form is held for review rather than merged.

The outcome is one of three:

• Same recording — recognized as already owned. Re-importing the exact files you have is a no-op; re-downloading the same recording replaces the existing audio in place, with no duplicate folder.
• Different recording — kept as a new edition alongside what you own (below).
• Review — narratorr isn’t sure, so it holds the book for you to decide rather than guessing.

Keeping both editions

When a different recording of a book you own is imported, narratorr writes it into its own folder instead of colliding with the existing one, appending an edition label to the book folder so the two live side by side:

Brandon Sanderson/The Stormlight Archive/01 - The Way of Kings
Brandon Sanderson/The Stormlight Archive/01 - The Way of Kings (Full Cast)

The label is derived from stable metadata — the recording’s primary narrator name, or its production form (Full Cast, Dramatized, GraphicAudio, Abridged, Unabridged) when there’s no distinguishing narrator. It’s deterministic: re-scanning the same recording produces the same folder, never a (2) counter.

Automatic vs. explicit

This is the important part: you don’t have to change your naming template for keep-both to work. When a second edition needs its own folder, narratorr automatically appends (<edition>) to the book folder — even if your folder template contains no edition token.

If you’d rather control where the label appears, add the {edition} token to your folder format. When the token is present, narratorr renders the label in that position and suppresses the automatic suffix, so it never appears twice. The token renders nothing for a book that has only one recording, so it’s safe to add across your whole library:

{author}/{series}/{seriesPosition:00? - }{title} ({edition})

See Folder Format Tokens for the token and its exact behavior.

Held for review

Some collisions can’t be classified confidently — narratorr can’t tell whether an incoming recording matches one you own, there’s no stable label to disambiguate it, or two library rows already claim the same folder. In every such case narratorr holds the recording for review rather than overwriting or skipping it:

• Manual & Library Import — held books surface in a review panel after the import runs, where you can re-confirm them (or force the import) once you’ve decided. You aren’t navigated away; the held items stay in front of you.
• Import lists — a held item is recorded as a recording_review_skipped event on the Activity page and counted in the run summary, so a held-for-review book is observable rather than silent.
• Forced import — forcing bypasses the bibliographic duplicate check, but never the on-disk never-overwrite rule. A forced import that would still collide is refused with a distinct reason instead of overwriting.

Production type

Each book records a production type — unabridged, abridged, full_cast, dramatized, graphic_audio, or unknown — derived from provider metadata at import. It feeds the same/different-recording decision (the review veto above) and supplies the fallback edition label when a recording has no distinguishing narrator.