{"id":358,"date":"2013-04-01T03:37:48","date_gmt":"2013-04-01T03:37:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/lamont\/?p=358"},"modified":"2016-03-07T15:30:33","modified_gmt":"2016-03-07T15:30:33","slug":"bowkers-deceptive-isbn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/lamont\/2013\/04\/01\/bowkers-deceptive-isbn\/","title":{"rendered":"Bowker’s deceptive ISBN practices"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"About<\/a>Earlier this month on the In 30 Minutes corporate blog, I wrote a post about Bowker’s deceptive ISBN business targeting new authors<\/a>. Bowker is a monopoly that controls the assignment of ISBNs in the United States. ISBNs are numbers used by the book industry to track the publication and distribution of printed books.<\/p>\n

You might think that Bowker’s ISBN business is suffering because of the rise of ebooks, and the decline of print. Not so! Bowker states<\/a> that the number of ISBN registrations has actually exploded in recent years, and even recorded nearly 13,000 ebooks printed by “small presses” (e.g., independent authors and small publishers) in 2011.<\/p>\n

Hold on. Why do so many indie authors bother registering ISBNs with Bowker? Consider this: ISBNs are not necessary for ebooks — Amazon, iTunes, and other platforms that sell ebooks don’t require them. Further, Bowker rips off people buying small lots — as I described in the In 30 Minutes blog post, Bowker charges $125 for those buying a single ISBN! What do they get? A thirteen-digit number. They are so cheap to produce, that Canada gives away ISBNs to Canadian authors for free, and Bowker sells them for a dollar or less to publishers buying huge lots.<\/p>\n

Why buy a Bowker ISBN if you are a new author?<\/h2>\n

The reason why thousands of small authors are buying ISBNs is because many don’t know any better — and Bowker aggressively markets to inexperienced authors’ fears and concerns. The company tells new authors<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Buy an ISBN for each format of your book (ISBNs may be used for either print or digital versions of your books)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

At the same time, Laura Dawson, Bowker’s ISBN product manager, tells the publishing industry<\/a> this:<\/p>\n

If the author is selling direct from her own website, or solely through Amazon (which doesn\u2019t require ISBNs), then no ISBN is necessary.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Sound like a two-faced scam? I certainly think so. Read my complete take here: Bowker’s 12,500% markup for new authors<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Earlier this month on the In 30 Minutes corporate blog, I wrote a post about Bowker’s deceptive ISBN business targeting new authors. Bowker is a monopoly that controls the assignment of ISBNs in the United States. ISBNs are numbers used by the book industry to track the publication and distribution of printed books. You might […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3864,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[99,57022],"tags":[85134,85135],"class_list":["post-358","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business","category-e-books","tag-bowker","tag-isbn"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/lamont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/358","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/lamont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/lamont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/lamont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3864"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/lamont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=358"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/lamont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/358\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":719,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/lamont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/358\/revisions\/719"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/lamont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=358"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/lamont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=358"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/lamont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=358"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}