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The ISBN Ownership Question

December 6, 2010 By Mark 25 Comments

In preparing to publish my first print-on-demand book I’ve had to confront a number of issues. Along with formatting and pricing and cover design I’ve gone back and forth about the ISBN ownership question. In the end I’ve come to a conclusion about ISBN’s that surprises me a bit, but I think I’m right. And if I’m not right, I don’t think it will cost me anything.

If you don’t know much about ISBN’s, don’t feel bad. I didn’t know anything about them until a year ago, when I set out to learn what I could. It’s a measure of how naive I was that I thought ISBN’s were some sort of quasi-governmental tracking number. In fact, ISBN’s are a product sold by the monopolistic R.R. Bowker company (which doesn’t go out of its way to make clear that it is not, in fact, a quasi-governmental agency).

I don’t dispute the publishing industry’s need for something like an ISBN. Given that a single book can be published in different versions and editions, and in different languages and countries, there obviously needs to be some way to differentiate between all those variations. If you want the Romanian large-print edition of Moby Dick, you need some means of ordering that ensures you get the version you’re expecting. The ISBN system makes that possible.

I’m also not against the idea that a for-profit company services the ISBN market. I don’t like monopolies, and R.R. Bowker is clearly a monopoly. But every publisher, bookseller and book manufacturer relies on the ISBN numbering system, and until that changes — or somebody shoves the Sherman Anti-Trust Act down Bowker’s throat — there’s no point in fighting the beast. (Some of you are wondering how multiple companies could hand out ISBN’s without the whole system collapsing. It’s a fair question, answered in full by the various companies registering domain names all over the world.)  [ Read more ]

Filed Under: Fiction, Publishing Tagged With: bowker, cost, isbn, value

All Things ISBN

September 10, 2009 By Mark 4 Comments

[Since this post was originally published Bowker has changed their website, their marketing approach, and some of the business practices I objected to. Links which could not be updated have been removed and the text revised where necessary. — MB.]

I don’t know much about ISBN numbers (which is redundant, because the ‘N’ in ISBN stands for ‘number’), but I thought I knew their basic function, and I had some vague sense that I knew how they were doled out. Having hopped from link to link to here to here, however, I realized I was wrong about everything.

I don’t use ISBN’s* much at all, if ever. I’ve had a few friends request one from me regarding a book I mentioned, and I now know that’s the best way to make sure you end up with the same version of a book that someone else is talking about. It might not be the most recent version, but it will be the same, because ISBN’s are only given out once and never reissued.

But that little tidbit was only the first domino to fall in my head. I used to think that ISBN’s were given out in some way that was vaguely associated with the copyright process. Or maybe I thought it was in some way vaguely associated with getting a bar code. (Because it’s all so vague, I can’t remember.)  [ Read more ]

Filed Under: Publishing Tagged With: bowker, isbn