"Compilers, XML, Ebooks and the Evolution of Proprietary Formatting Brands"
I have a question/comment(s) that I would like to see if this distinguished panel of authorities can make heads or tails on this fine morning bristling with enthusiasm? I heard it through the grapevine that Bowker and some other publishers are entertaining and or pushing for the widespread use of multiple ISBN’s for each and every separate style of ebook formatted by you for every title you license though them. Presently, they (Bowker) is the only game in town! This means that they own the market in ISBN stamping. What do you guys think about this relatively new phenomenon? Let me expound further for a moment? Supposing you are a publisher/author and wish to sell your ebook through Mobi, Amazon, B&N, Diesel, Kobo, Apple and wherever else? But as we know each and every one of these outlets have different formatting styles for your book such as: LRS-LRF-BBeB-Xylog XML formatting (Sony), LIT (MSN Reader), EPUB (Smashwords), etc., etc,., ad infinitum. This would mean that what some publishers are already doing and what some other publishers are agreeing to do in the future and what Bowker the ISBN producer is also wanting to make authors and publishers have to do -across the board- is to pay for and provide an individual ISBN number for each and every different formatted ebook (with the same title). Supposing we decided to create an ebook about our discussions to sell it through Barnes and Noble and other retailers? We would have to pay to install different ISBN’s for each and every ebook (formatted differently) for each and every retailer that sells the different (SEPARATE COMPILER FORMATTED) proprietary brands. Our Sony formatted ebook would have to contain a separate ISBN. Our Mobi formatted ebook would have to have a separate ISBN number assigned to it. Our Kindle (Amazon) formatted ebook would have to have a different ISBN assigned to it and so on –because- many of these retailers utilize a different unique way of converting our word file into their complex compiler software processing systems. My argument against this is why? Why pay every time you have your book placed with a different retailer just because the formatting for the book is different? If the title and the story is the same in each and every book you tell me what has changed to force me to pay for an additional ISBN? This is a huge question! Not only of financial concern to author publishers but because it doesn’t make any sense to have to obligate anyone to have to do such a ridiculous thing. In fact it’s pathetic and absurd form them to make us have to shell out more money just for the right to get on their shelves? It doesn’t make sense. Other than they want their own specific branding on our material and Bowker wants to go along with it because it makes them more money. Imagine how much they can make on the millions of ebooks out there in a ten year span? Five separate retailers, one book, five separate ISBN’s. Multiply that by the number of book titles one puts out per year? One author with five separate books, selling in five separate retail outlets mentioned above, would have to pay for twenty-five separate ISBN’s. Instead of just having one ISBN for each separate title? Get the picture? In my mind it’s all about the title and not about the formatting. Finally, let’s go back to the traditional publishers for a moment? It’s a no-brainer that not all printers utilize the same type of machinery or software to produce our printed books. What’s to stop them (Bowker and others) from making you pay just because you printed your book on a different printer utilizing a different brand of proprietary software? Is it the software to convert to or the software utilized to print to and when is it going to stop? It just keeps getting more and more absurd! Time to expound! Created by John R Hernandez, Jr. This article can be found on all my other sites; newdawnmedia.wordpress.com, etc.(c)
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