By Liz Bury
LONDON: The subject of how book digitization is affecting the future of the ISBN may not be as sexy as say pricing or sequencing issues, but it is just as important. Right now, publishers around the globe are taking different approaches to assigning ISBNs to e-books, that is if they are assigning them at all. The situation is like it was back in the 1960s, in the pre-ISBN days of printed books: a bit of a mess.
On March 3, a group of publishers focused their minds on the challenge at a meeting in London organized by the UK Publisher’s Association and tried to answer the following question: Should publishers assign a different ISBN to each e-book format, or will a single ISBN suffice?
HarperCollins UK gives one ISBN to its e-books in epub format, which is the only format it sells. Says Graham Bell, head of publishing systems at HCUK: “We sell an epub to Amazon, and they sell it on to the consumer in a lightly modified version. Because Amazon sells the Kindle version exclusively, there’s no need for a different ISBN. We know that an Amazon sale is a Kindle sale.” The same will be true of iBooks sold by Apple.
But if different retailers were to sell the same modified epub version, or other formats, separate ISBNs would be desirable. “In that case, if you didn’t have an ISBN per format, you’d lose the ability to analyze sales by format. In an immature market, the last thing we want is to reduce the granularity of sales reporting,” says Bell.
With epub being the only commercially significant format at present, most publishers rely on a single ISBN. In the US, Random House uses a single ISBN for e-books, although Hachette assigns different ISBNs for different e-book formats.
At the London event, Brian Green, director of the International ISBN Agency, shared the results of a straw poll of 228 book professionals worldwide. Green found that booksellers and wholesalers favor a different ISBN for each format, while most publishers prefer a single identifier.
In some cases, conversion houses, wholesalers or retailers assign their own identifier for internal use; these have been known to inadvertently leak into the open market with confusing results. To help solve this, the International ISBN Agency and standards body EDItEUR hope to develop a web service whereby supply chain partners can easily request and receive format-level ISBNs from publishers.
The fear is that by hanging back and allowing others to assign identifiers, publishers could lose control over the supply chain. A “release identifier” is another possible solution. It would mimic the music industry’s Global Release Identifier (GRid), which identifies the master recording, which can then be sold in different ways. The generic e-book supplied by the publisher could be seen as equivalent to the master recording.
However, Bell points out that since international retailers and distributors do not support local pricing, the need for separate ISBNs by region may force the issue. “We could end up with an ISBN that’s market specific. A straight currency conversion doesn’t work; books are much cheaper in the US, and are relatively more expensive in the UK and Australia. It’s a very live issue in Australia,” he says.
The unpredictability of the e-book market means that publishers could be left watching others set precedents for them, if they dither. Green says: “We need to act fast to agree on standards.”
Since you’ve read this far without eyes glazing over, you may consider further reading. Try the position paper on e-books and ISBNs from the International ISBN Agency. If you can stay awake long enough, that is.
DISCUSS: Do we need separate ISBNs per e-book per format per region?
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Do We Need Separate ISBNs per E-book per Format per Region?
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Mark Pearce
4 months ago
We specialise in distributing and publishing eBooks.
There are several formats for eBooks including the iPhone app, Kindle, Mobipocket,LRF, EPUB, PDF; which are the main ones.
The market for these books is still too small to differentiate between the various formats but is growing at an alarming rate. (we have seen a 300% increase in our sales since October 2009)Whilst it would be great to have a breakdown of the sales in different formats and to see which one is becoming most dominant, this would be like having a league table of booksellers but the numbers would, at the moment, be insignificant in comparison with printed books. This could also lead to publishers not supporting some formats which at this stage in eBook development would be detrimental.
We need to let the game play on without differentiating between formats for a little while longer and to this end we shall continue to asign one ISBN to our all our eBooks.
We know after all which formats are already the dominant ones from our own sales.
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Erik
4 months ago
The need for unique isbns on eBooks is something I completely agree with. The reason for this is simple, in the Education market for example, libraries want the eBook of a title, however, if they try an isbn search many times they find the eBook, the paperback and the hardcover and the title also needs to be called out as an eBook so they know it is. You can’t just search an isbn not very efficient like intended. The same is said for paperback books that are rebound into hardcover books, many vendors assign their own unique isbn thus you could have the paperback isbn on a title and confuse students in discovery of the title because it just has the book listed in a catalog and if you have both paperback and the rebound, unless you change some tags in the marc, it wouldn’t tell which it is.
Unique isbns also help when trying to do things such as run reports on new eBooks coming out, but if you cannot distinguish what a new eBook is because it shares the isbn or because their is no standardization for pubs, they all do something different and make it harder to notify librarians what is new and coming out, it’s a very manual process that nobody talks about.
Overall unique isbns will help with true and accurate reporting, how a title is doing, but then we throw in DOI for chapter level and illustrations it opens up a whole new world of working with content, which is what an eBook is when you break it down, content. We need a better way to work with it and a more efficient way for publishers to utilize it. Consumers are much more aware of isbns and how to use them, much more then when i was in retail and most had no clue what it was or did. This is a great topic for places like NISO, Bowker and others to help set some parameters.
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Elizabeth Burton
4 months ago
First, we need to differentiate between having a unique ebook identifier, which is simply common sense, and the concept being pushed by the ISBN organization that every FORMAT of an ebook should be assigned an individual ISBN.
Major publishers who limit their formats and can afford to purchase huge blocks of ISBNs will have no problem doing the latter, should they so choose. For small presses who choose not to limit the number of formats made available to readers, the cost of unique identifiers for every format offered would be prohibitive.
At present, we sell ebooks through third parties almost exclusively. In the case of one vendor, we submit a file that is then formatted into all major formats–about 12. These are then sold bundled, and the purchaser selects which format is desired. There’s no need for individual ISBNs.
Sales are tracked by vendor and title, not ISBN. Its understandable a huge organization would likely operate more efficiently using ISBNs, but again, there are six of those and some 80,000 of the rest of us in the US alone.
One of the arguments given for unique ID/format is that libraries need to know what formats they can offer patrons, and their systems being based on ISBNs, they need the unique identifiers for the sake of efficiency. Again, there’s some justification, in that case, for one ISBN/format. However, the argument could also be made that as long as the books came bundled in all formats, it would be a given the inquiring patron would be accommodated.
Long story short, there are two different business models in publishing, and have been for more than a decade, yet the rules are being applied as if everyone operated in the same way. That way being the traditional model engaged in by huge corporations with lots of funds and complicated operational logistics. Some accommodation has been made for small presses by a welcome cut in ISBN prices in the US, but frankly, having to keep track of half a dozen ISBNs in place of the single one I use now for “electronic book” would be a nightmare.
Theresa M. Moore
4 months ago
I do not assign ISBN numbers to my ebooks. Period. I assign unique catalog numbers to each format of an ebook, and keep the information internal-specific. The numbers are still too expensive and are only “required” because the agency says they are. However, the Library of Congress has said that no ISBNs are a legal requirement to publish any kind of book. Therefore I will continue to issue my ebooks in the manner I find most efficient, and ignore the ISBN issue entirely. In fact, there are thousands of book published by print on demand each year which have no numbers at all, and the vendor only keeps track of them by author, title, and edition published. I am surprised that this is becoming a nightmare when the solution is simple: require all booksellers to stop using ISBNs as their inventory number and return to the pre-monopoly days of allowing catalog numbers to define the listings. That would indeed solve many of the problems publishers are facing nowadays.
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