Anglosphere literature figures out a way to circle the bowl with a cost prohibitive sales scam.
ISBNs are in literature the demon in the damn details that needs to die.
Whether you’re a commercial or indie writer publishing either commercially or independent, the International Standard Book Number is a book’s social security number. Now back in the good old days before the internet it was put there for the lit industry to track and validate sales of books, of course by their standards. You know what this little fucking number is anytime you look at the bar code on the back of the book. It’s like a bad tattoo you can’t get off the book’s ass.
Now here’s the rub: in the majority of the world, ISBN’s are FREE.
That’s riht, they are free. If they ain’t free they affordable as hell. Of course in the capitalistically drawn nutsack called the United States, they are in the top three of thee most expensive thing about publishing in the world of print on demand.
And the entire paid system is a motherfucking scam in the Anglosphere (and Italy, who now charges).
If you are actually a literary publishing professional and not a hobbyist, every single book you ever release has to have an ISBN. Yeah, that’s right, don’t believe the bullshit that it’s optional, because you will fuck up the rights to your book if someone else gets it and assigns it to that book, but we’ll come back to that later. Right now you need to focus on the fact that every single title that possibly has a paperback, hardback, softback, ebook, and audiobook each need their own individual number, because no one title can just fucking share the same damn number on release.
If you got good counting skills, that’s potentially five ISBN’s per title!
I’m sure this wouldn’t be an issue for PenguinRandomSchuster in or out the Anglosphere, but it starts weighing in on the bottom line if you’re an independent, and that’s some bullshit. Remember now, 90% of the entire world has sense and gives them out to publishers and authors alike for free. All they have to do is send one (1) book to the national library and that’s that. Now if you are unlucky and in the Anglosphere it ain’t that simple because they taxing the hell out of us as “the cost of doing business”.
The United States, who is the biggest market for publishing, Australia, and the United Kingdom charge for ISBNs. Canada and New Zealand are the only two countries in the Anglosphere that do not charge, though Canada is extra as hell requiring you to have a Canadian business and it’s number to get one (which in the long run with their bureaucracy and fees costs far more than a flat fee and limits how many legitimate presses can form there, but that’s another discussion).
Italy also charges as well, but nowhere near as much as the Anglosphere.
The process for getting them, free or not, sucks ass. Commercial and Independents alike have to go through one agent that is “authorized” to give them to you, and in America and Australia is Bowker (the United Kingdom uses Nielsen). Can you say monopoly? Miles may vary in other countries as to who is responsible for doling them out since some countries that give them away have you go through their national library (after proving residence), but the point is, you have to go through one entity per country to get these damn things, and that may cost authors or publishers a pretty penny depending on how many they get at one time.
For those of us who have to pay you have to go online through one of Bowker’s official aggregate portals. From there you register for a free account, then get your kidney and liver on the table to see which one you’re selling to buy these fucking things. Here the price is the highest in THE WORLD. See below compared to Australia and UK.
If you’re a big time publisher with money to burn, what’s a couple thousand for your stockpile, right? But say you’re an indie imprint of a self-published author (ooh, dirty words there), you’re on a budget and being price gouged for not being Amazon and buying in bulk.
That’s the beginning of the scam right there.
Here’s the second rub: remember when I said previously you will fuck up the rights to your book if someone else gets an ISBN and assigns it to that book, but we’ll come back to that later? Check this out – whatever information you put down buying ISBNs is who gets the credit for the sale of books under said information. Think of all the POD distributers that offer you “free ISBNs” like Amazon. Why do you think that is? You use them and it says for your book publisher “Amazon Independent Publisher” or some janky ass bullshit like that. That means they are getting the credit. A company like Amazon can buy millions of these things damn near for a penny and just hoard them.
Any service “trying to help authors and publishers” by selling ISBNs as third part are going to get the listing publishing credit (and possibly make a claim of ownership of said work) while setting you up for failure. Yes, this has happen and can happen both with imprints taking the cheap route and self publishing (but its more common with self publishing if you go via Amazon) because you are giving away further proof that the work under said ISBN is yours. Amazon specifically is notorious for taking people’s books and then putting the burden of copyright on the claimant (which can be a big issue if you are outside the United States because they specifically ask for Library of Congress copyright documents which no one has outside of the United States copyright system and the rest of the world HAS NO COPYRIGHT GOVERNING BODY).
Even worse, companies like Amazon might not be paying at all.
Any of these companies that sets up shop in countries where they are free don’t have to pay. That would mean Amazon could order thousands of ISBNs and be able to hoard them for free, while doling them out to other countries all to backdoor claim ownership. Meanwhile the average person in America has to pay the equivalent of organ donation just to get ten. And for the record, Amazon has their own number called ASIN used just for their platform too, which is a scam trying to convince people they don’t need a ISBN. That’s an entirely different discussion.
What really sucks donkey balls roasted on chitterlings is that every country wants you to prove residence before you either get them for free OR you pay for them. Even if Americans wanted to pay for them and say get them from Australia because their cheaper, they can’t without a verified Aussie address. That’s bullshit.
People can argue until their tongues turned forked that paying for ISBNs covers the cost of issuing them, but that’s a scam too. This is the digital age. Nobody’s shuffling paperwork and needs a team of 1000 to keep track of purchasing and procurement. All this shit is automated, because the numbers come instantly soon as you buy them. The price doesn’t justify the service – it’s price gouging at its finest while attacking a cultural institution.
A serious overhaul needs to be done to ISBNs. It makes zero sense why 90% of the world gets them for free and 10% have to pay out the nose as if they are subsidizing the other 90%. This isn’t the cost of doing business. This is price gouging and genociding non-commercial literature sales.
