Saturday, July 22, 2006
ISBN 13

Before the world as we know it publishers invented systems for numbering their titles for reasons of identification and book-keeping. I don't have access to the exact historical records but my understanding is that a bunch of British publishers got together and invented the 9-digit standard book number (SBN). One of the major publishers (Macmillan as it happens) stood out against it (doubtless on the grounds that they considered their internal system the best and that they wanted to be different). Everyone came into line when the powerful retailer, W H Smith, refused to stock any book without an SBN - game, set and match to the SBN.

Shortly afterwards the rest of the world joined in and the ISBN (with a language digit introduced) became ten digits and became ubiquitous. Surprisingly, book publishing had become a leader in identifier technology which set it up well for the computer age.

More recently retailers have been demanding a 13-digit ISBN so that many other products can have a similar identification structure - magazines, DVDs etc. It makes sense and the industry has been working away to implement ISBN-13 on January 1 2007.

This blog and many of its commentators have dealt with the inadequacies of book publishers - not enough risk-taking, too little investment, picking the wrong books, luddism, declining standards, ignoring the small retailer, copyright problems, etc, etc.

ISBN-13 may not get the juices running like literary argumentation but it is a brilliant example of publishers working together on a hugely difficult project (it affects every system in a publishing company - billing, royalties, production, editorial, sales, finance and more). It has taken large amounts of cash, millions of technical person-hours, imagination and insight.

If all goes well, what will it achieve? A total non-event. Next year books will be ordered and sold as normal. And it will be because publishers' IT departments have worked hard and well. The people involved don't get headlines in the trade press and definitely they don't have awards ceremonies. Nobody writes about them when they change jobs and they don't flounce. Thank God for them all.

#    |  Comments [2]  | 
7/22/2006 4:52:14 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
Only one complaint from me - I can remember all the 9 digit ISBN nmbers of all the books I have published in the 9 years Long Barn Books has been running.. but whether I will cope with 13 digits I am not sure. I suppose I had better try, as a bid to stave off Alzheimers which is supposedly best staved off by doing Sudoku - which I can`t. Otherwise you are right, Richard and books without ISBNs are now unimagineable at least from the publisher and bookseller point of view.
SUSAN HILL
7/26/2006 3:01:42 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
Richard

I do agree with you and you are right to give credit to those people who support and have supported the technical developments of book publishing. English creative people are generally intolerant of that kind of thing and, in supply chain management there are still and always have been some real heroes

I was recruited into that office of WH Smith you describe in the 1970's from which the edict went out that all publishers will use ISBN's and then barcodes otherwise Smith's wouldn't speak to them. It was, as I recall from the most junior position, very much in response to David Whitaker's ceaseless cry for improvement.

Incidentally those people on the fourth floor of the tower block at Greenbridge, with whom I have long lost touch, came from all sorts of backgrounds. I myself was chosen, not for any publishing ability or understanding of epos equipment but because of my experience building scenery for a theatre company. You never know.
Tim Coates