ISBN prices to be reduced
By Paul Biba
I picked up the below press release from LJNDawson. It isn’t on Bowker’s site yet.
In 2010, the U.S. ISBN Agency will change its pricing models for ISBNs to accomodate the digital identification needs of authors, publishers, libraries and the supply chain at large. Unit prices all ISBN prefixes will be discounted by as much as 50% from the currently established rate structure, with additional discounts applied to large volume purchases.
At Bowker, we recognize the emergent need for a more economical solution for the practical and responsible identification of digital content and products. ISBN price decreases, however, are one of many necessary paradigm shifts that are necessary for the supply chain to effectively identify and catalogue digital assets for discovery and trading purposes.
See also this article from Reuters sent to me by Ian Sullivan.
Most importantly, as new digital formats and capabilities proliferate and diversify, end-users (consumers) must be able to differentiate one digital product form from another during discovery and the digital point of purchase, particularly when differentiated usability, access rights and functionality are key considerations to be made during a purchasing decision.The ISBN standard has a proven track record as a supply chain identifier in the book industry, and the U.S. ISBN Agency is committed to maintaining this standard in the digital publishing supply chain. We encourage publishers and content owners to continue to leverage the ISBN for identifying digital products, and strongly discourage the use of alternative, non-standardized identifiers that will ultimately cause for confusion in trading and discovery.
More specific details regarding forthcoming ISBN pricing changes, as well as new value-added discoverability solutions that will be made available in conjunction with ISBN purchases, will be made available to the public before year end.
September 10th, 2009 at 7:49 pm
They are feeling the heat from ebook publishers balking at their high prices. They’re also probably trying to head off something that makes more sense, a completely new system for tracking ebooks. Something that doesn’t exist physically, doesn’t need a bar code. Transactions that are handled by computers can have much longer and more useful number strings.
I’ve described how such a system might work in other Teleread posts. There would be a series of number groups that’d indicate the country of origin, publisher, language, and the particular text. That’s what the publisher would buy from an agency.
There’d be an additional series of numbers that the publishers would assign for themselves to different editions of the ebook. Those would indicate the format, encryption, the text version (allowing easy revisions) and possibly the year of publication.
An ISBN for an ebook tells you almost nothing about it. With the right software, these ebook numbers would tell you everything you’d need to know about an purchase. No more uncertainty about the format or encryption. And no need to buy a new ISBN for each format or each revision in the text.
September 13th, 2009 at 12:01 am
A system that tied all different-format versions of the same content together would be a good idea. After all, it is the same thing. ISBNs just aren’t structured to achieve this.
September 13th, 2009 at 8:20 am
There is a school of thought – and frankly, I don’t claim I have any answer to the ISBN/ebook conundrum, probably because I follow it so closely – that says, “Let the identifier identify, and the database describe.” Many identifier experts feel that “dumb numbers” are far more useful – and the ISBN-13/EAN is supposed to be a dumb number (even though it’s traditionally not been, what with publisher prefixes and country codes). So Mike, there’s definitive policy opposition to an identifier that contains information about format, encryption, text versioning, year of publication, etc.
September 14th, 2009 at 12:35 pm
Thanks for telling me this Laura. Although I didn’t know about this school of thought, it does help me understand the reticence to adopt a change whose value seems so obvious to me.
I think we can all see how self-interest often drives schools of thought. A dumb number/smart database scheme benefits those who run the databases and charge as its gatekeepers. We have to go, checkbook in hand, to them for a new number every time something in the product changes, such as the formatting for an ebook or a new version with spelling typos fixed. And since we’re usually the ones maintaining their database for them, we also have to enter all the information again with each new tweak, however small. Only at the margins can we get around them. With my books I correct typos by creating a new “printing” with the same ISBN.
The real issue may be practical. With the existing agencies committed, perhaps foolishly, to maintaining the ‘dumb number’ status quo, there doesn’t seem to be anyone in a position to jump start this new scheme. I’d love to see some giant corporate entity like Amazon or Google get behind it, but both seem to be too badly bitten by the urge to dominate to do anything cooperative. They benefit, at least in the short term, from a confused market.
Perhaps the best hope would be a new startup driven by software designers with online database skills. The opportunity is certainly there, if they’re willing to work off small transactional charges and go for volume. They could even work both sides of the field, selling numbers inexpensively to ebook publishers and linking potential customers to ebook sources for a small slice of the revenue. On reason I’ve never gotten seriously into ebooks is that a coherent market has yet to develop. The print books I publish have a clearly marked space in the market. Someone who wants to find them can easily do so. Ebooks seem to disappear into a vast void. They are there, but even I’m not sure where to find them.
The key would be finding someone who is ‘market-driven’ enough to make both publishers and customers happy. The current Old Guard seems more interested in defending the status quo at all costs. Other than cutting prices to prices that are still twice what I paid for ISBNs in 2000, they’re failing to adapt to a changing market.