Just saying ‘ISBN’ creates an instant bond with any fellow book trade devotees in the vicinity. Whether you favour the spell out (i.s.B.n., generally with an element of slur) or the phonetic slide (IsBin), publishers, booksellers and librarians alike perk up their ears at the mention of this secret password, this shared standard, this format filer.
When does a helping hand, like the ISBN has been for the printed book, become a major pain in the behind?
The Google gauntlet has been thrown. Yesterday’s New York Times article offers more detail on Google’s BEA announcement of plans (Tom Turvey: “This time we mean it”) to sell e-books directly by the end of 2009.
Let’s stroll away from top-level cost/benefit analysis (book customers—good!, Amazon—bad!, e-readers/eRetailers—bad?, publishers—bad/good/goodbad?) for now and talk about what this shift means for the market as a whole.
Like identical twins, just because e-books and print books are born from the same material does not mean they behave or even look like carbon copies. Finding ways to bring out the different but equal potential in each will allow for well-adjusted creations who don’t need literary therapy at a later date.
From the IDPF 2009 Digital Book Summit, three major considerations came to light.
After an astute tip from one of our Twitter friends (thanks, @Keith_Shay), my last post on the likely soon-to-be-released Kindle didn’t really take everything into account. Yes, the new screen on the Kindle is well-suited for newspapers and it’s certainly the case that newspapers like the NY Times see it as a new frontier to re-capture hearts and minds (or at least eyeballs).
However, as many more astute than me have realized, Amazon’s press conference is being held at a university (Pace University)—so looks like textbooks are the big fish frying.
BookNet Canada is a non-profit organization that develops technology, standards, and education to serve the Canadian book industry. Founded in 2002 to address systemic challenges in the industry, BookNet Canada supports publishing companies, booksellers, wholesalers, distributors, sales agents, industry associations, literary agents, media, and libraries across the country.
