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Its an absolute scam that you have to pay $125 for a number. I can understand some small fee for keeping a system to track them running but anything more than a

Its an absolute scam that you have to pay $125 for a number. I can understand some small fee for keeping a system to track them running but anything more than a few dollars for a block is an outrage.

nabla9 8y ago
It's almost like cryptocurrency. Keeping the number small makes is scare. If you put price on it, people don't waste them. ISBN issuance is country-specific, however. Different countries have different ways to issue them. Many give them free.
ocdtrekkie 8y ago
To be fair: We have more or less pretty much run out of them, so preventing their waste or misuse is worthwhile. (Much like with IPv4 addresses.) Yes, we've now grabbed 979 of the ISBN-13 space, in addition to the more or less full 978 space, but that merely doubles the ISBN space, since many of the other prefixes are used for other products in EAN. Sure, we can always devise new solutions when these numbers run out as well, but there's a lot of order system overhead to such things.
- baroffoos 8y ago
  Just add more digits to the number. Make it a uuid and put a qr code on the inside of the back cover for easy data entry.
  - ocdtrekkie 8y ago
    "Just adding more digits" ignores the whole point of the problem: That ISBNs live within (a subset of) the number space of EAN codes, which are used globally for all sorts of products: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Article_Number https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Article_Number And that software systems all over the planet are built to handle specific numbers in specific formats. "Just add more digits" requires a global shift to a new format, which will take many, many years to accomplish. The shift from ISBN-10 to ISBN-13 took years, and there are articles about "are you ready for ISBN-13?" out there. Like, this is a Y2K-type issue. Sure, another expansion is inevitable, but if, like the author, your goal is to sell books in a lot of places right now, you need a number in a fairly limited scope of available numbers that work with distribution systems people actively have. It'd be like if you told someone they didn't need an IPv4 address because IPv6 addresses were available. That's all fine and good unless you have customers on IPv4.
    - mavhc 8y ago
      IPv6 people realised that technology enables exponential growth and made their space 79 billion billion billion times larger, unlike barcodes which only went 1000 times larger. On the other hand people actually use 13 digit barcodes.
  - throwaway2016a 8y ago
    That's fine except the #1 reader of these codes are Point of Sales machines. Most of which can only read 2D barcodes and a specific subset of them at that. What you are describing would require almost every retail bookseller in the world who wants to sell these books to do a hardware upgrade. Not to mention distributors and everyone else along the supply chain. And libraries. And that's just the hardware. The software would need updating too as I guarantee you that most of it is written assuming ISBN format (length, checksum, character set, prefix, etc).

Its an absolute scam that you have to pay $125 for a number. I can understand some small fee for keeping a system to track them running but anything more than a few dollars for a block is an outrage.

nabla9 8y ago

It's almost like cryptocurrency. Keeping the number small makes is scare. If you put price on it, people don't waste them. ISBN issuance is country-specific, however. Different countries have different ways to issue them. Many give them free.

ocdtrekkie 8y ago

To be fair: We have more or less pretty much run out of them, so preventing their waste or misuse is worthwhile. (Much like with IPv4 addresses.) Yes, we've now grabbed 979 of the ISBN-13 space, in addition to the more or less full 978 space, but that merely doubles the ISBN space, since many of the other prefixes are used for other products in EAN. Sure, we can always devise new solutions when these numbers run out as well, but there's a lot of order system overhead to such things.

baroffoos 8y ago
Just add more digits to the number. Make it a uuid and put a qr code on the inside of the back cover for easy data entry.
- ocdtrekkie 8y ago
  "Just adding more digits" ignores the whole point of the problem: That ISBNs live within (a subset of) the number space of EAN codes, which are used globally for all sorts of products: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Article_Number https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Article_Number And that software systems all over the planet are built to handle specific numbers in specific formats. "Just add more digits" requires a global shift to a new format, which will take many, many years to accomplish. The shift from ISBN-10 to ISBN-13 took years, and there are articles about "are you ready for ISBN-13?" out there. Like, this is a Y2K-type issue. Sure, another expansion is inevitable, but if, like the author, your goal is to sell books in a lot of places right now, you need a number in a fairly limited scope of available numbers that work with distribution systems people actively have. It'd be like if you told someone they didn't need an IPv4 address because IPv6 addresses were available. That's all fine and good unless you have customers on IPv4.
  - mavhc 8y ago
    IPv6 people realised that technology enables exponential growth and made their space 79 billion billion billion times larger, unlike barcodes which only went 1000 times larger. On the other hand people actually use 13 digit barcodes.
- throwaway2016a 8y ago
  That's fine except the #1 reader of these codes are Point of Sales machines. Most of which can only read 2D barcodes and a specific subset of them at that. What you are describing would require almost every retail bookseller in the world who wants to sell these books to do a hardware upgrade. Not to mention distributors and everyone else along the supply chain. And libraries. And that's just the hardware. The software would need updating too as I guarantee you that most of it is written assuming ISBN format (length, checksum, character set, prefix, etc).