BOOK PROMOTION

National Book Trust

ISBN

INTERNATIONAL STANDARD BOOK NUMBER (ISBN)

PUBLISHER ADMINISTRATION

Publishers are responsible for assigning title identifiers to the individual items they publish and for ensuring the application of pertinent regulations.

Upon request they may receive a publisher identifier from a group agency and a printout of the ISBNs that are available to them in combination with the allocated publisher identifier.

A publisher will be assigned a publisher identifier by a national group agency which will determine the range of title identifiers available to the publisher. The number of title identifiers will depend on the length of the publisher prefix assigned. The publisher should ensure that the group agency has as much information as possible about all available backlists and should advise the group agency of all present and future publications in order to enable the assignment of a suitably sized publisher identifier.

Publishers are encouraged to contact book listing and bibliographical agencies for publication of their titles and ISBNs assigned to those titles.

Further information and detailed instructions are available from the ISBN group agencies and from the International ISBN Agency.

PRACTICAL USES OF ISBN

The ISBN is used in all branches of the book sector.

ISBN in publishing houses is used for:

• identifying firm publication projects from the manuscript to the printer
• title identification in publishers' catalogues and advertisements
• listing in printed directories, electronic directories and in Internet-sites
• stock control
• copyright management
• management of royalties
• processing of orders
• accounting and billing
• monitoring sales data
• producing statistics
• handling of returns

ISBN in Books in Print services, distribution centres, and wholesalers is used for:

• building bibliographic databases for the book trade like Books in Print
• building databases of titles in stock
• ordering services based on electronic communication systems like EDI (electronic data interchange) or via the Internet
• stock control
• monitoring internal logistic processes
• accounting and billing
• producing sales data
• returns administration
• producing subject lists and catalogues

ISBN in centralized service organisations for libraries (producing ready-to-borrow copies) is used for:

• ordering at the publishers or wholesalers
• processing orders from libraries
• stock control
• monitoring internal logistic processes
• accounting and billing
• administration of rebinding processes

ISBN in bookshops is used for:

• bibliographic searches
• tracing addresses
• ordering  and   re-ordering  processes based    on   electronic communication systems like EDI (electronic data interchange) or via the Internet
• stock administration
• accounting and billing the end consumer
• electronic point-of-sale system (EPOS)

ISBN in libraries is used for:

• ordering
• copy-cataloguing
• lending statistics
• national lending right
• interlending