AN UNCERTAIN FUTURE

Entering new territory - as it appears the book industry is doing - inevitably results in some wrong turnings being taken. Even in the short time since we have had to take digital seriously there are things we realise should have been tackled differently. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't try to second-guess the future, especially in preparing the ground for what will clearly be a mixed-economy supply chain for some years to come.

One such example is our newest BIC group, rather grandly named the Metadata Futures Group, which has been set up under the chairmanship of Jon Windus of Nielsen to explore the way metadata is going to go on delivering value to the supply chain when the product described is nothing like as simple as just a printed book. Defining products when the products themselves are capable of undergoing continuous change, in their content but also in their technical properties - suitability for devices, delivery platforms, digital rights management, and so on - is a real challenge to existing mechanisms for handling metadata. It begs questions we would no doubt prefer not to ask, but it would be remiss of us not to ask them and see where those questions lead.

If any BIC members would like to be involved in this work, please let me know.

ISBNs FOR E-BOOKS

The International ISBN Agency's guidelines and FAQs for the assignment of ISBNs to e-books do not amount to any change in the advice that each version of an e-book should be assigned a separate ISBN; but they do give valuable advice on DRM and apps which has not been available before. They also support BIC's own guidelines in emphasising those situations where a unique ISBN may not be needed.

BIC has consistently supported the policy of the International ISBN Agency, not because we consider the ISBN standard to be sacrosanct, but because we see dangers in a less rigorous assignment of identifiers, confusion caused and opportunities missed.

The crucial point in Agency's document is the sentence which reads 'Publications need separate ISBNs if anyone in the supply chain needs to identify them separately'. Too many of the identification strategies we have seen adopted have failed to take into account the needs of trading partners and other intermediaries; and have jeopardised the golden rule which BIC has promoted for the last decade that publishers - and only publishers - must be responsible for their own metadata. The free-for-all which may follow from downstream assignment of identifiers could cause immeasurable damage to the industry in the future.

Publishers who assign ISBNs to .EPUB source files are making two dangerous assumptions: that repurposing those files for different platforms and devices will not cause confusion and conflict when resold as traded products; and that .EPUB marks the end of file format development for e-books. Good as it would be to think that the e-book market was reaching a level of format and device stability already, it would be rash to believe it.

Unique identification has other benefits than just ensuring that the consumer gets the product he or she expects. The trade desperately wants a reliable and authoritative e-book bestseller list. It probably wants bestseller lists and sales reports by channel too. Publishers who choose to ignore rigorous ISBN assignment to each of the traded products should think about the complexities of extrapolating bestseller lists from inadequate identifiers.

The ISBN is far from perfect as an e-book identifier and we don't underestimate how onerous adopting the ISBN Agency's policy document may be for some. But it's all we have, and complying with the standard now may come to be seen in the future as a very wise move indeed.