I was about to post an overlong response in a comment thread on Joel Friedlander's The Book Designer blog, but on reflection, realized what I was about to post wasn't a response, it was a blog entry in its own right. The article associated with the comment thread is about Library of Congress registration information, and the subject of ISBN ownership came up in the discussion going on beneath the article, in the comments. And here's what I have to say about ISBN ownership:
In the case of an individual author who only self-publishes his own manuscripts (as opposed to someone running an imprint, publishing works by other authors) what does it matter, really, who's the registered owner of the ISBN on a book? There's no legal or regulatory tie between ISBN ownership/registration and copyright or intellectual property rights. ISBN registration only designates ownership of the ISBN, not ownership of the content of the book to which the ISBN has been assigned.
I've used Createspace's free ISBNs on all of my self-published books to date, and while this technically makes Createspace the 'publisher of record' in the ISBN records, I still retain all rights to the published material and I still own the copyrights. CS's terms of use state this explicitly, and CS is also very adamant that their company not be listed as Publisher on their clients' books' copyright pages.
ISBN ownership can help to establish the legitimacy of a publisher's claim to profits from a given book in a legal challenge situation, but given that CS has made it abundantly clear it never wants to be named as the publisher of record for any of the books it prints and distributes, the likelihood of CS trying to usurp my royalties seems pretty remote. Also, since copyright is the most meaningful measure of intellectual property ownership in the case of a book, and I own the copyrights on my books, the fact that CS is the registered owner of my books' ISBNs wouldn't allow CS to claim my intellectual property rights, either. One caveat: the financial and legal waters would be a bit murkier if I were running an imprint and publishing other authors' works as well as my own, and in that case I would absolutely want to purchase and register all the ISBNs in the name of my imprint.
While not being the registered ISBN owner prevents me from listing the books with wholesale catalogs myself, since Createspace now offers to create wholesale catalog listings as part of their service, it's a non-issue for me. My CS books are available on Amazon, Amazon UK, through Barnes and Noble, and through every other bookseller and retailer that stocks its inventory via the Ingram or Baker & Taylor catalogs, and that's most of them.
Borders is a special case, in that its online and in-store inventory is stocked from an internally-maintained catalog; the only way any publisher, indie or mainstream, gets her books listed with Borders is to get one of Borders' buyers to add them to Borders' internal catalog. Since my CS books are listed in the Ingram and Baker & Taylor catalogs, from which Borders draws entries for its internal catalog, I could approach a Borders buyer and inquire about getting my CS books added to Borders' catalog if I wanted to, but I haven't bothered.
True, my books aren't available through European wholesale book catalogs (since only the registered ISBN owner can list books with those catalogs), but since I'm not promoting my books in foreign markets nor releasing them in foreign language editions, I don't think I'm missing out on many sales there. Amazon UK is the #1 bookseller for English-language books in Europe, and my CS books are already listed on that site.
While not being the registered ISBN owner also prevents me from registering my books with the Library of Congress, I don't really care about that and I don't think anyone else does either---with respect to my books, anyway. It would matter if I were trying to get my self-pub books stocked by public and institutional libraries, but let's face it: self-pub books, novels especially, aren't likely to be stocked by those libraries anyway.
If I self-publish anything new in the future I'll most likely purchase my own ISBN/barcode blocks for the new projects, but only because "premium" or "expanded" distribution options offered by print and digital publishing service providers increasingly require that the author/imprint be the registered owner of the ISBN. Since this is already a requirement for Smashwords' premium ebook catalog, I expect it's going to become commonplace for ebooks to have ISBNs just like print books and hard media audiobooks.
Even so, I still see the whole thing as little more than an administrative hoop through which I'll soon be forced to jump and an extra expense I'll be forced to shoulder to make retailers' lives easier. Cost of doing business, and all that. I'm still not likely to list my self-published books with European wholesale catalogs, nor Borders' internal catalog, and I definitely won't bother registering them with the Library of Congress.
I have always maintained, and still maintain, that ISBNs are merely tracking numbers used by retailers, libraries and government agencies to organize, and retain control over, their inventory of books---nothing more, and nothing less. Some people (and I'm not talking about Joel Friedlander or anyone who's commented on his article) treat ISBN purchase and ownership like some kind of mark of legitimacy, and others even go so far as to tell self-publishers that if your book's ISBN isn't registered in your name, that fact alone makes your book a "vanity" project and you an amateur who doesn't deserve to wear the name "author".
Horsefeathers. There may be compelling business reasons for this or that indie author to purchase and register his own ISBNs, and there are definitely compelling business reasons for imprints to do so. But that's all they are: business reasons.
Showing posts with label ISBNs. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ISBNs. Show all posts
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
Friday, July 25, 2008
What's the Deal With ISBNs And Bookstores?
Bottom Line It For Me, Baby Version (200 Words Or Less):
I've been fielding a lot of email questions about the nuts-and-bolts aspects of self-publishing lately. Rather than answering the same questions over and over again in private messages which don't benefit the self-publishing community at large, I've decided to blog a series based on content from my how-to reference book on self-publishing, The IndieAuthor Guide. I can't just copy and paste everything from the manuscript, because the thing is 300pp long and heavily illustrated besides. But I will present topics from the book to the extent of detail possible in a blog post. Note that I'm not covering editing, designing your own book cover, creating your brand or publishing to the Kindle here, since those topics are already presented on my website in the form of free pdf guides.
I’ll include links to previous posts in the series here in the Bottom Line It section. So far, I've posted topics on Publishing Options and Rights, Royalties and Advances. Today's post is about ISBNs and brick-and-mortar bookstores.
Go On An Run Yo Mouth, I Ain’t Got Nuthin’ But Time Version (Can’t Promise It Won’t Go On Forever):
What’s the Deal With ISBNs?
Any commercially-sold, physical book must have a unique International Standard Book Number, or ISBN, assigned, and each different edition of a given book (i.e., hardcover, paperback, audiobook) must have its own ISBN. EBooks, which are essentially digital files, don’t require ISBNs. The ISBN is a unique identifier assigned to all commercially-sold books being sold in any physical format, consisting of a 10- to 13-digit number and associated barcode. Bowker is the only agency allowed to distribute ISBNs in the U.S. Bowker sells ISBNs to publishers and authors in blocks of ten at the minimum. It’s not unusual for self-published authors to purchase their own ISBN blocks, though unless you’re very prolific or issue your books in multiple editions, you may not ever use up a whole block of ten.
Some publishers require authors to obtain their own ISBNs at their own expense, some will provide ISBNs to authors for a separate fee, and still others include ISBN assignment as part of their standard publishing package. If you buy your own block of ISBNs, each ISBN in the block can only be used once, and only for a specific edition of your book. For example, let’s say you use the first ISBN in your block for a paperback edition of Novel A, the second for a hardcover edition of Novel A, and the third for an audiobook edition of Novel A. A couple of years later, when you’re ready to publish Novel B, you must assign ISBNs to all its editions beginning with the fourth ISBN in your block. Once assigned, an ISBN can never be re-used, not even if the book to which it was assigned goes out of print. In Europe, books are tracked with a European Article Number, or EAN. Some publishers can assign an EAN to your book, but check with your publisher to be sure that service is available if you intend to sell your book in Europe, or through online vendors that accept international orders.
This is all I have to say about ISBNs in The IndieAuthor Guide, but a much more thorough treatment of the topic can be found in a series written by Walt Shiel in his View From the Publishing Trenches blog. The first entry in the series can be found here, and from there you can follow links to the second and third installments. Note that Mr. Shiel and many others in the publishing industry warn authors against accepting the free ISBNs offered by publishers like CreateSpace and BookSurge, for reasons best summed up by this quote from Mr. Shiel:
Suppose you publish your book through Amazon’s CreateSpace or BookSurge service and allow them to assign it an ISBN. Two years later, you decide you prefer to print your book with another printer or even a different subsidy publisher. Your book MUST be assigned a new ISBN, since the original one was owned by the original publisher (CreateSpace or BookSurge). And that original ISBN can never be reassigned to a different book, even if the publisher declares their edition of your book as out-of-print. From that point forward, your book will have two ISBNs associate with it. If a bookseller or library tries to order it, they will have to guess which one is the current one. You will have to rely on some (possibly clueless) clerk to make that guess. They may just pick the first one they stumble on. If that one turns up as OP (out-of-print) or otherwise unavailable, that’s what they’ll tell the customer.
As you'll see in the upcoming discussion about book stores, I believe this is a non-issue for the vast majority of self-published authors because very few, if any, libraries or brick-and-mortar bookstores are likely to be looking for your book in the first place. Mr. Shiel goes on to say:
And those two version of your book will continue to show up on Amazon with different publishers, possibly different prices, etc. An Amazon search on your title may not turn up the current version near the top of the results (or, possibly, at all).
Also a non-issue in my opinion, because the older version of your book will list as either out of print or only available from resellers, and most of your buyers won't find your book while casually browsing the Amazon site anyway. Most will find it via a direct link from your website or online posting, from the 'customers who ordered this book also ordered' section of an Amazon or B&N product page, or other promotion that leads them directly to your product page. Moreover, there's not really any reason I can think of why you would elect to switch publishers on a POD book that's already published and on sale, with you just kicking back and collecting royalties. You already did all your comparison shopping before you chose your POD publisher, already went through the publishing process, and in the case of a revised edition, a new ISBN must be assigned anyway. Even if a new POD outfit opens up tomorrow and offers better terms, they'd have to be a whole lot better to make it worth your while to re-publish the same book in the same edition all over again.
What About Book Stores?
You may be wondering how you can sell significant quantities of your books when it’s very difficult to get brick-and-mortar stores to stock them. The answer is, you don’t necessarily need brick and mortar bookstores to stock them. I covered many of the reasons why in this previous post, Big Chain Bookstore Death Watch. While some very outgoing and industrious authors can significantly increase their sales and visibility by cultivating relationships with brick-and-mortar stores and doing in-store events and readings, getting a brick-and-mortar store to stock your book does not automatically guarantee any increase in sales. Getting your book stocked can seem a daunting task in and of itself, but accomplishing that task will do you little good if you aren’t also prepared to focus considerable time and effort on raising public awareness of your book in the communities where it’s being carried by one or more brick-and-mortar stores.
At the minimum you should be prepared to lobby hard for in-store reading and signing events, but don’t stop there. You will also want to publicize the events in any way you can, contact local newspapers to try and get a timely interview or book review in advance of the events, and get in touch with local book clubs and writers groups to drum up interest as well. I go into much more detail on promotional activities in The IndieAuthor Guide, and will be providing much of that information later on in this series, but in my opinion a brick-and-mortar store campaign isn’t the best strategy for a POD book that’s already being sold through a major online outlet (i.e., Amazon, B&N online store) anyway. There’s the time and effort to consider, but an even bigger issue is up-front expense.
You must provide copies of your books to brick-and-mortar stores willing to stock them, and must also have substantial quantities on hand to sell at in-store events. Assuming your cost for author copies of a book retailing at $14 is just $6, if you have a very successful event and sell a copy of your book to all 50 attendees, your gross earnings are $700. Sounds good for a couple of hours’ work, but you haven’t accounted for expenses yet. Begin by subtracting the $300 plus maybe another $25 in shipping costs you paid up front to buy the 50 books and have them shipped to you. Next comes the bookseller’s ‘cut’, for which 40% of the book’s list price is standard, so subtract an additional $280 for this. Now take into account the cost of travel to and from the store (gas, at the minimum), expenses for any printed materials you provide (business cards, post cards, bookmarks, etc.), and expenses for any drinks or snacks along the way. Let’s say you manage to keep all those costs down to just $50. Your net profit for the evening is only $45, or 90 cents per book sold. And that’s the result of a completely successful event; imagine how much more disappointing the figures are if you sell fewer books.
Now look at the numbers for copies of your books stocked on a brick-and-mortar store shelf. No brick-and-mortar bookseller is likely to stock more than two or three copies of your book at a time. Let’s assume three copies are stocked and all three sell. Even if we disregard shipping, gas and other minor expenses related to getting the books into the store and getting your royalty payment from the store, your profit is only $7.20. It’s an awful lot of hassle and up-front expense for less than ten dollars at the back end.
While it’s true that in most cases, Amazon or any other online bookseller will take the same 40% as a brick-and-mortar store, the advantage of working with an online seller is that you don’t usually have to order, pay for, or deliver any books up front. Most online sellers can list your book on their sites, and when a customer orders your book, send an electronic order to the publisher. The book is printed and sent directly to the customer with no involvement from you whatsoever. The online seller gets its 40%, thereby reducing the amount of royalty paid to you, but you haven’t incurred any expense or hassle in the process. Once your POD book goes on sale, all you're doing is promoting it and collecting royalty payments. Bear in mind, I’m only talking about individual authors selling their own books here. The situation is very different for people who own and operate their own online bookstores, whether completely independently or as a ‘partner’ or ‘affiliate’ of a major online retailer. The fee structures for that type of arrangement are variable, and outside the scope of this discussion.
Coming up next time: ---REVISED--- How To Choose A Publisher
I've been fielding a lot of email questions about the nuts-and-bolts aspects of self-publishing lately. Rather than answering the same questions over and over again in private messages which don't benefit the self-publishing community at large, I've decided to blog a series based on content from my how-to reference book on self-publishing, The IndieAuthor Guide. I can't just copy and paste everything from the manuscript, because the thing is 300pp long and heavily illustrated besides. But I will present topics from the book to the extent of detail possible in a blog post. Note that I'm not covering editing, designing your own book cover, creating your brand or publishing to the Kindle here, since those topics are already presented on my website in the form of free pdf guides.
I’ll include links to previous posts in the series here in the Bottom Line It section. So far, I've posted topics on Publishing Options and Rights, Royalties and Advances. Today's post is about ISBNs and brick-and-mortar bookstores.
Go On An Run Yo Mouth, I Ain’t Got Nuthin’ But Time Version (Can’t Promise It Won’t Go On Forever):
What’s the Deal With ISBNs?
Any commercially-sold, physical book must have a unique International Standard Book Number, or ISBN, assigned, and each different edition of a given book (i.e., hardcover, paperback, audiobook) must have its own ISBN. EBooks, which are essentially digital files, don’t require ISBNs. The ISBN is a unique identifier assigned to all commercially-sold books being sold in any physical format, consisting of a 10- to 13-digit number and associated barcode. Bowker is the only agency allowed to distribute ISBNs in the U.S. Bowker sells ISBNs to publishers and authors in blocks of ten at the minimum. It’s not unusual for self-published authors to purchase their own ISBN blocks, though unless you’re very prolific or issue your books in multiple editions, you may not ever use up a whole block of ten.
Some publishers require authors to obtain their own ISBNs at their own expense, some will provide ISBNs to authors for a separate fee, and still others include ISBN assignment as part of their standard publishing package. If you buy your own block of ISBNs, each ISBN in the block can only be used once, and only for a specific edition of your book. For example, let’s say you use the first ISBN in your block for a paperback edition of Novel A, the second for a hardcover edition of Novel A, and the third for an audiobook edition of Novel A. A couple of years later, when you’re ready to publish Novel B, you must assign ISBNs to all its editions beginning with the fourth ISBN in your block. Once assigned, an ISBN can never be re-used, not even if the book to which it was assigned goes out of print. In Europe, books are tracked with a European Article Number, or EAN. Some publishers can assign an EAN to your book, but check with your publisher to be sure that service is available if you intend to sell your book in Europe, or through online vendors that accept international orders.
This is all I have to say about ISBNs in The IndieAuthor Guide, but a much more thorough treatment of the topic can be found in a series written by Walt Shiel in his View From the Publishing Trenches blog. The first entry in the series can be found here, and from there you can follow links to the second and third installments. Note that Mr. Shiel and many others in the publishing industry warn authors against accepting the free ISBNs offered by publishers like CreateSpace and BookSurge, for reasons best summed up by this quote from Mr. Shiel:
Suppose you publish your book through Amazon’s CreateSpace or BookSurge service and allow them to assign it an ISBN. Two years later, you decide you prefer to print your book with another printer or even a different subsidy publisher. Your book MUST be assigned a new ISBN, since the original one was owned by the original publisher (CreateSpace or BookSurge). And that original ISBN can never be reassigned to a different book, even if the publisher declares their edition of your book as out-of-print. From that point forward, your book will have two ISBNs associate with it. If a bookseller or library tries to order it, they will have to guess which one is the current one. You will have to rely on some (possibly clueless) clerk to make that guess. They may just pick the first one they stumble on. If that one turns up as OP (out-of-print) or otherwise unavailable, that’s what they’ll tell the customer.
As you'll see in the upcoming discussion about book stores, I believe this is a non-issue for the vast majority of self-published authors because very few, if any, libraries or brick-and-mortar bookstores are likely to be looking for your book in the first place. Mr. Shiel goes on to say:
And those two version of your book will continue to show up on Amazon with different publishers, possibly different prices, etc. An Amazon search on your title may not turn up the current version near the top of the results (or, possibly, at all).
Also a non-issue in my opinion, because the older version of your book will list as either out of print or only available from resellers, and most of your buyers won't find your book while casually browsing the Amazon site anyway. Most will find it via a direct link from your website or online posting, from the 'customers who ordered this book also ordered' section of an Amazon or B&N product page, or other promotion that leads them directly to your product page. Moreover, there's not really any reason I can think of why you would elect to switch publishers on a POD book that's already published and on sale, with you just kicking back and collecting royalties. You already did all your comparison shopping before you chose your POD publisher, already went through the publishing process, and in the case of a revised edition, a new ISBN must be assigned anyway. Even if a new POD outfit opens up tomorrow and offers better terms, they'd have to be a whole lot better to make it worth your while to re-publish the same book in the same edition all over again.
What About Book Stores?
You may be wondering how you can sell significant quantities of your books when it’s very difficult to get brick-and-mortar stores to stock them. The answer is, you don’t necessarily need brick and mortar bookstores to stock them. I covered many of the reasons why in this previous post, Big Chain Bookstore Death Watch. While some very outgoing and industrious authors can significantly increase their sales and visibility by cultivating relationships with brick-and-mortar stores and doing in-store events and readings, getting a brick-and-mortar store to stock your book does not automatically guarantee any increase in sales. Getting your book stocked can seem a daunting task in and of itself, but accomplishing that task will do you little good if you aren’t also prepared to focus considerable time and effort on raising public awareness of your book in the communities where it’s being carried by one or more brick-and-mortar stores.
At the minimum you should be prepared to lobby hard for in-store reading and signing events, but don’t stop there. You will also want to publicize the events in any way you can, contact local newspapers to try and get a timely interview or book review in advance of the events, and get in touch with local book clubs and writers groups to drum up interest as well. I go into much more detail on promotional activities in The IndieAuthor Guide, and will be providing much of that information later on in this series, but in my opinion a brick-and-mortar store campaign isn’t the best strategy for a POD book that’s already being sold through a major online outlet (i.e., Amazon, B&N online store) anyway. There’s the time and effort to consider, but an even bigger issue is up-front expense.
You must provide copies of your books to brick-and-mortar stores willing to stock them, and must also have substantial quantities on hand to sell at in-store events. Assuming your cost for author copies of a book retailing at $14 is just $6, if you have a very successful event and sell a copy of your book to all 50 attendees, your gross earnings are $700. Sounds good for a couple of hours’ work, but you haven’t accounted for expenses yet. Begin by subtracting the $300 plus maybe another $25 in shipping costs you paid up front to buy the 50 books and have them shipped to you. Next comes the bookseller’s ‘cut’, for which 40% of the book’s list price is standard, so subtract an additional $280 for this. Now take into account the cost of travel to and from the store (gas, at the minimum), expenses for any printed materials you provide (business cards, post cards, bookmarks, etc.), and expenses for any drinks or snacks along the way. Let’s say you manage to keep all those costs down to just $50. Your net profit for the evening is only $45, or 90 cents per book sold. And that’s the result of a completely successful event; imagine how much more disappointing the figures are if you sell fewer books.
Now look at the numbers for copies of your books stocked on a brick-and-mortar store shelf. No brick-and-mortar bookseller is likely to stock more than two or three copies of your book at a time. Let’s assume three copies are stocked and all three sell. Even if we disregard shipping, gas and other minor expenses related to getting the books into the store and getting your royalty payment from the store, your profit is only $7.20. It’s an awful lot of hassle and up-front expense for less than ten dollars at the back end.
While it’s true that in most cases, Amazon or any other online bookseller will take the same 40% as a brick-and-mortar store, the advantage of working with an online seller is that you don’t usually have to order, pay for, or deliver any books up front. Most online sellers can list your book on their sites, and when a customer orders your book, send an electronic order to the publisher. The book is printed and sent directly to the customer with no involvement from you whatsoever. The online seller gets its 40%, thereby reducing the amount of royalty paid to you, but you haven’t incurred any expense or hassle in the process. Once your POD book goes on sale, all you're doing is promoting it and collecting royalty payments. Bear in mind, I’m only talking about individual authors selling their own books here. The situation is very different for people who own and operate their own online bookstores, whether completely independently or as a ‘partner’ or ‘affiliate’ of a major online retailer. The fee structures for that type of arrangement are variable, and outside the scope of this discussion.
Coming up next time: ---REVISED--- How To Choose A Publisher
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