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By David Rothman

Update: 5:04 p.m.: Bowker’s Andy Weissberg has just responded. Appreciated, Andy! I want to hear all sides of the debate. – D.R.

image Should e-books have unique ISBNs for each electronic format—be it PDF, Mobipocket, TXT, HTML, you name it? That’s the recommendation of a Book Industry Study Group report (PDF alert)

This thorny issue has been the topic of past posts in the TeleBlog and elsewhere. Alas, the debate isn’t so academic. ISBN bloat could steal money away from small e-publishers, editors and writers. Granted, just the publishers pay directly. But given the stringent limits of small-press budgets, the others will suffer from the bloat.

Yes, I, too, worry over problems such as retailers’ in-house identifiers adding to confusion. I love the idea of trustworthy identification standards. Down with “rogue” identifiers! I just don’t want publishers of any size to pay more for ISBNs than they have to, in order to pre-empt the rogues.

eBabel-related, natch

The ISBN problem is merely one more outgrowth of the eBabel one. And remember, it isn’t just an issue of the multiplicity of format alone. What about unique identifiers for new editions or perhaps customized ones? Format-unique ISBNs will literally multiply the existing complexities and costs.

Meanwhile I’m not impressed by the argument, from Bowker’s Andy Weissberg, that $400 for ISBNs is an acceptable burden for small-press titles. Better that the cost normally be $80-$100 at the most and that the savings go the publishers and their authors and editors. ISBN bloat will literally take money away from those who should be able to put out e-books on a shoestring. Publishers and those paid by them are the ones who create the core value here, not ISBN-related companies, regardless of the useful services that Bowker and the likes offer. And who knows? Maybe some of those shoestring books can grow into best-sellers in P as well as E.

Anti-ISBN bloat sentiment from university press digital projects manger

In correspondence with me, Claire Lewis Evans, who deals with digital projects at the University of Alabama Press, has weighed in.

As she sees it, publishers should not be under pressure to offer an ISBN for each electronic format—the recommendation of the study group report. She notes that Bowker and Nielsen, “who traffic in ISBN,” paid for the report.

ePub as a solution

I can’t read minds, and I’ll welcome comment from the defenders of the following: “The practice of using a single ISBN for all digital manifestations of the same work is strongly discouraged.” I’ll e-mail BISG’s Michael Healy to see if he can’t line up a response from Michael Holdsworth, the author. Does the latter really agree with Andy Weissberg and consider $400 an appropriate burden for a small press?  Or even $275? In my ideal world a small publisher doing an e-book and a trade paperback would have to buy just two ISBNs: one per medium. No need for fancy packages.

For now, I would agree with two small publishers, Elizabeth Burton and Rob Preece, that a single ISBN for an e-book is hardly a disaster for small publishers. Here’s to more money for creators and less for bookocracy! And speaking of precision, the more focus on format, the harder it becomes to deal with other metadata. Some ISDN mavens note that large publishers may have different, more elaborate needs, but reduction of format complexities can help the big guys as well.

My own hope is that eventually ePub will be the standard, without proprietary DRM to muck it up, so that budget-strapped publishers don’t have to pay for a zillion ISBNs, while book buyers at the same time can precisely and reliably identify the purchase they really have in mind (Michael Cairns is certainly right about the desirability of preempting rogue ISBNs!).

Claire is concerned about the XML-related challenges of putting out books in ePub, and she’s right, but progress is being made, as shown by the ePub capabilities of InDesign software. My forthcoming novel, The Solomon Scandals, will appear from a small literary press. And guess what. It’ll be in ePub. What’s more, other possible ePub tools exist, such as one from BookGlutton, and I know some others are on the way.

Liz Daley on the unique identifier issue

Let me end with thoughts from TeleBlog contributor Liza Daly of Threepress.org, who herself has been working with ePub apps and has a special interest in open source tools for academic publishers. Here’s her reply after I forwarded Claire’s note:

“Helping academic publishers introduce ePub into their workflow is definitely something I’m interested in (especially since ePub is synonymous with getting content into XHTML, which opens up the whole web as a distribution channel).

“I don’t know much about the business side of ISBNs but from the ePub perspective, each ePub book is required by the spec to have a unique identifier. However, there is no authority for enforcing this, and the spec states that “specific uses of URLs or ISBNs are not yet addressed”.

“It’s an open question what should go into this unique identifier field—some publishers are using ISBN-13 [link added], but I’m in discussion with one about how to handle multiple revisions of the same ebook (should they get a new identifier or not? And if so, what?) And of course for public domain or content that was never published, ISBN doesn’t apply.

“But the format, at any rate, does not require an ISBN at all; publishers can (and certainly will) generate their own IDs when ISBN doesn’t apply, or isn’t economically feasible (e.g. for content designed to be freely distributed).”

Question: I’d love to have a breakdown of how much of that $400 or $275 goes to various people, and for what services. Maybe there’s a hellva value here. I’d just love to know the stats, and see how what automation-related efficiencies might lower the costs.

 
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