To be honest, I never thought this would be a topic for a posting, but as I’ve just spent 45 minutes writing an e-mail to someone about International Standard Book Numbers (ISBN) and various associated pieces of book data, why not put this information to more use than just one individual? I asked myself. So, after a bit of fiddling around to make things a bit more general and provide more visual aids, we have a post about one of the most arcane bits of publishing information you can possibly encounter.
Herewith: everything you never wanted to know about the ISBN, hadn’t asked for, and is being shoved into your face against your will anyway!
Let’s start with a few basics about how an ISBN is used.
The ISBN system was created in the early 1970s, and is now over-seen by an international, non-profit group which is wholly autonomous and not beholden to any government body or publisher. The 978– portion of any ISBN denotes the use of a 13-digit number for the book (as well as defining a particular international product variety), and around five years ago this finally changed to being the only way to form an ISBN instead of the previous, 10-digit format. For example, here’s the same ISBN in the two differing formats:
10-digit: 0-9811597-0-2
13-digit: 978-0-9811597-0-6
Why the change? Well, basically they were running out of numbers in Bookland (and that’s actually a proper term for the theoretical land where books come from as far as the international product code EAN is concerned). At some point soon 978– will run out of entries and we’ll start seeing ISBNs with 979– prefixes for books in the English language; it’s already in use for ones in French.
When the older, 10-digit ISBNs are converted to 13-digit ones, a slight mathematical formula is applied to them, which frequently changes nothing more than the final digit, other the addition of the “978” part at the beginning. Due to the first dozen numbers having to add-up or divide or be reduced in some magical fashion (I’ve no idea of the specifics there) and then compared against the final, 13th digit, occasionally the final digit becomes “X” to possibly represent “10” in a single digit placement. Again, I’m not sure of the specifics here, but that’s the gist of it as far as I understand.
Now, if you look at a publisher’s output in a series of titles, you’ll notice that there’s almost a numerical sequence there, albeit with gaps in between each book. For instance, here’s the ISBNs for Atomic Fez as they exist today, issued by the Canadian ISBN Service System (CISS):
978-0-9811597-0-6
978-0-9811597-1-3
978-0-9811597-2-0
978-0-9811597-3-7
978-0-9811597-4-4
978-0-9811597-5-1
978-0-9811597-6-8
978-0-9811597-7-5
978-0-9811597-8-2
978-0-9811597-9-9
Due to the last digit being used to check the calculation (and that last number is called the “check-sum digit”), it cannot simply roll up numerically, then have the one to its left ‘roll over’ each time the final number reaches “0” again, as you might expect. The “9811597” part of that series of numbers is the ISBN Prefix, and that – plus the “978−0″ part – are specifically assigned in order to identify the publisher and what their country is.
I’ve looked for this book and the ISBN 978-#-######-#-# has never been used for any book called “Gary McMahon’s Big Book of Big Boobs” / any book released in 20## / any book published in Liberia
Well, while the supposition above about the ISBN not being used for a book called that is correct, the logic is slightly flawed in the same way that saying “the King of Spain is a man; I am a man; I am the King of Spain” is understandably flawed, given a lack of specific information. The ISBN “978-#-######-#-#” could have been assigned to any book with any title, but only one book, and indeed only one specific edition of that specific title.
If, for the sake of argument, the very first number in the list was my hardback edition of Bleak House, and then I later released a paperback edition of that novel, it would be assigned another number in the list, an electronic edition would be assigned yet another number, a mass-market paperback edition would be assigned yet another number, and so on.
Further, there is no year assigned to that ISBN, per se, but other databases would use that ISBN to differentiate between different editions of the same title which came out in the same or differing years. Also, sometimes a list of editions for one particular title could cross to other publishers as publishing rights are bought and sold upon occasion. Penguin’s MMP of Bleak House would be required to have a completely different ISBN to the one I published, for instance; but it’s not the year / title / or country that requires it, it’s the new or different edition which causes the change.
For instance, have a look at the photo above. Here we have four books, each of which has its own ISBN. The two copies of Seventy-Seven Clocks by Christopher Fowler (on the left) have differing numbers because one was published in the UK by Transworld/Bantam and the other was published in the USA by Bantam/Random House, the page sizes are different, and the cover art is different. Meanwhile, to the right, there’s two different editions of Christopher Fowler’s first memoir, Paperboy, both with the same page size, both with the same artwork, both published by Transworld/Doubleday, but they’re in different bindings: one is paperback, and one is hardback. Basically, any of these differences would be enough to require a new ISBN, other than the cover art thing; but that typically happens with a new nation’s edition or page dimension, so it often shows up anyway.
Occasionally – and certainly in theory – the best way to gain the specifics about a particular book is to query the database of the National Library of the nation of the publisher, who is frequently but not necessarily the same one as the author. The publisher of any book is typically required to provide two copies of any publication to their nation’s library or archives, but I’m not sure about what the ramifications would be if this is not done. Ergo: it may be a rule with no teeth, which probably explains the lack of entry for some books at the British National Library / Library of Congress / Library and Archives Canada for them. What place a publisher sends copies to depends entirely on the nationality of that publishing house: Atomic Fez books are published in Canada because that’s where it is based, and therefore two copies of every book head to Ottawa.
How come when I look at the information on a bunch of retail web-sites about a book, they don’t match the information inside the book or on the publisher’s web-site?
The likeliest reason for an incorrect publishing year, author, title, or whatever is wrong on the web-sites of various shops and book dealers is due to the use of a common data base – either Nielson’s BookNet, or Books in Print, Bowker’s version of that – and that information’s veracity relies on the entry being entered by someone correctly when typing the information into a spreadsheet file or web-browser form. People are always the weakest link in any sort of data maintenance. If someone lists the Cover Artist as an ‘Illustrator’, then the database entry now looks like we’ve got a book with pictures inside it. If the collection of one author’s work has the volume’s Editor write a Foreword and they’re credited with it, then the Editor suddenly looks like a co-author, when that’s not the case at all.
The accuracy of the data on a database such as Bowker’s or Nielson’s hasn’t anything to do with the ISBN assigned to that book, it’s purely the responsibility of the publisher or their employees to ensure the information is accurate when they enter it. Updating can occasionally help, but only occasionally.
Another occasion an incorrect publishing year (or author, or title, or whatever) can be displayed somewhere is that the original publishing date is changed and no-one altered the on-line record with Nielsen / Bowker, or other data-bases further down the chain of use aren’t up-dated even though the Nielson / Bowker one has been altered. There’s an Atomic Fez book that’s still listed widely as being published last autumn when it was not actually published until this March, yet I’ve updated every entry available to me. Amazon is often said to be the single-worst in the world of the book databases: they pull information from (I believe) Nielsen and never seem to update the existing product entries once they are established with information in a given field.
Occasionally, the year of copyright for the author’s work listed on the Title Verso page of a book can also differ from the publication year due to production times being long-ish between final edits and publication/release. I’ve not seen them differ more than a year, but potentially it could be longer than that, even for a work’s first release.
So, there we are then! No matter how many different versions there are of any given book, not only can you check you’ve got the right title, or author; you can sort out who published it and when, what the number of pages are, what binding it has, and what language it’s in, just by using the ISBN! Isn’t the ISBN EXCITING…? YEAH!
Questions…?
Written with loving care and attention to details by noted British author Andriew Hœk from notes left on his doorstep one day by a mysterious and smelly individual (who shouted “PORCU–PIIIIINE” through the letter-box before running away giggling), Ponthe Oldenguine is the man you’ve been denied any information about. So secret was Mr. Oldenguine’s existence, you may not even be aware how badly you’ve wanted to know everything about him! But now, the story can be told and you can read it for yourself.
The Terror and the Tortoiseshell
The Beautiful Red
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