Val is a freelance writer and editor with 10+ years of experience. He's been writing about book data management, publishing, technology, and other subjects.
In this article you’ll find an overview of what was going on in the book industry in July – financial news, acquisitions, partnerships, how one person can be a prince and a king at the same time and more.
Everyone, who has worked in the book industry for a significant period of time, is aware of the counterfeit books problem. So when you source books not directly from a publisher, e.g., buy used books from the general public, organizations, or even Amazon, you need to check if the books you purchase are genuine.
It is important to distinguish between counterfeit books and international or Eastern Economy editions, which are produced legally. Counterfeit books are produced illegally and are often sold by third-party sellers on various marketplaces, including the biggest ones. Like all pirated copies of copyrighted works, they are against the law.
At ISBNdb.com our aim is to provide the largest ISBN database possible for publishers, booksellers, software developers, libraries, educational institutions, and all other organizations involved in the book industry. It’s a great pleasure for us to find out about new interesting ways of the ISBNdb book database usage by our customers. Today we’re happy to share the Booklinker team story, introduced by Austin Tuwiner, the Growth Manager at Booklinker.
ISBNs, or International Standard Book Numbers, play an integral role in book identification and handling. Publishers, booksellers, software developers, libraries, educational institutions, and all other organizations from the book industry rely on ISBNs in their everyday work. Nowadays ISBNs are used in more than 150 countries worldwide.
This article is a summary of the June book industry news. And yes, I have written about the potential acquisition of Simon & Schuster again.
In this article, you’ll find an overview of the major news that both took place in May and caught my eye.
The International Standard Book Number (ISBN) was introduced in 1970 to provide a unique identifier for books. At the time, ISBNs consisted of 10 digits. The basic structure of the ISBN has remained the same over the years, although some changes have been made to accommodate the growing number of books being published.
We are used to searching by ISBN as the easiest way to find book data. However, ISBN is a relatively new book identification method, widely adopted in the 1970s.
When Johannes Gutenberg produced the first printed book in the fifteenth century, he probably wasn’t too concerned about book identification – his printed books never carried even his name or publishing date. That wasn’t a big deal because the book industry was in its infancy, and few books were published back in the day.
Voracious readers know that every book has one thing in common. No matter what genre, length, publisher, or art that adorns its cover, every book has an ISBN. That is, provided it was printed after 1970.
You’ve likely noticed a barcode with a serial number on the back of the book you’re reading. It’s easy to think that this is just for the cashier at your local bookstore to swipe, but it’s so much more than that—it’s an ISBN!
Penguin Random House and Simon & Schuster were about to shrink the “Big Five” of publishing to the “Big Four”. However, the US Department of Justice had an objection to those plans. As is sometimes the way with government agencies, the objection turned into the merger being blocked.