Over the last couple of weeks I’ve held sessions on Twitter called #ISBNhour, where I invite publishers to bring their issues with ISBNs to the ongoing conversation. After the last session, it dawned on me that many people are confusing “identifying” with “describing”.

Identifiers traditionally do just that - they name something. Usually they name it with a number. Your social security number, for example, is an identifier. It means you - in a certain context. A license plate is an identifier - it means your car. These numbers may have some internal significance - state of issue, year of birth, etc. - but most people don’t really think about that. They just use the numbers when they are called upon to identify themselves or their cars.

Other identifiers - phone numbers, for example - are similar. Yes, we have area codes that used to mean something hard and fast - 212 was Manhattan, 718 was Brooklyn - but increasingly even those numbers are losing meaning. I live in Brooklyn, and while my land line has a 718 area code, I know other homes’ land lines are now prefixed by 347. Which until recently was purely a cell phone prefix. My own cell phone prefix is 917 - which used to mean Manhattan. But my oldest daughter’s cell phone is prefixed with 917, and she lives in Brooklyn; my younger daughter’s cell phone is prefixed by 718, which used to be exclusively for land lines. And the reason we stop caring so much about area codes is because we have everybody on speed dial anyway. The area code - as an human-interpretable piece of data - has become irrelevant.

ISBNs have followed a similar path. I think the publisher prefix is unnecessarily confusing now that we have so many many publishers. And of course, there are now so many books on the market (around 500,000/year at last count), that publishers cannot be guaranteed to get the same prefix when they buy a new block of numbers. Increasingly, the ISBN is becoming what it should have been all along - a dumb number.

Attaching too much meaning to your prefix is, for a publisher, a misunderstanding of what the ISBN is supposed to do. The ISBN merely identifies your product - that identification is fairly meaningless without metadata to describe that product. Just as my phone numbers inherently mean very little without my first and last names - yes, you can dial those numbers, but unless you know who is supposed to pick up on the other end, those numbers and the dialing thereof just won’t mean a whole hell of a lot to you.

The ISBN identifies - the metadata describes. So your ONIX data (or whatever it is that you’re sending to Bowker, your distributor, libraries, what have you) is what will tell those recipients “this is a PDF”, “this is an EPUB file”, “this is a trade paperback”. We don’t need to append suffixes to ISBNs - that’s making an identifier do the work of metadata. The identifier is just a number that says “this product is not that product - it is itself.” Just as a license plate says, “This car is not that car” - and doesn’t describe what KIND of car you’ve got. Just as a phone number says, “This is a number you can dial - it is not another number.” Identifiers say, “This is itself”. Descriptors - metadata - say, “These are the properties of that thing you’ve just pointed at.”

When you buy ISBNs these days, you get the ability to upload descriptors - the metadata about your books - and create what Bowker calls “title cards”. These web pages are crawl-able - meaning that Google picks them up. ISBNs plus metadata are extremely powerful tools - combining them assures that search results unambiguously turn up the products they are supposed to turn up…and readers won’t get the wrong number.

When authors talk about marketing their books, usually what they’re talking about is PR. Getting on the radio, getting on local TV shows, doing readings at libraries and community centers, mailing out postcards and bookmarks.

And these things are great, but they’re not enough.

According to a recent study done by R. R. Bowker, people spend more time online than any other activity. Thirty percent of those they surveyed spent more than 20 hours a week online.

What does that mean for authors? It means they have to get out where the readers are. And readers are on the internet.

We know that the world of print media is collapsing. Newspapers are failing all over the place. Book review sections are shutting down. All the outlets where publishers used to advertise are suffering.

Except online. In fact, 34% of all books purchased in 2008 were bought online.

And, even more crucially, 12% of book consumers became aware of the books they wanted to buy either through an Internet ad or an online book review – as many consumers as became aware of books through word of mouth (which we all know is the most powerful form of marketing there is).

There are so many great sites out there for authors. Goodreads. LibraryThing. Shelfari. FiledbyAuthor. All of which draw hundreds of thousands - and in the case of Goodreads, millions - of users…all of whom are interested in something good to read! There’s Facebook, which has 200 million active users.

Digital marketing means making sure your books are available at all the online bookstores you can find. Not just Amazon, but Barnes & Noble. Or independent bookshops - and you can go to the American Bookseller’s Association to find out how to get your books listed on those websites. It means making sure your books are listed in library catalogs online - by following up with Bowker’s Books-in-Print database and ensuring your listing there.

It’s not enough to trust in your printer or publisher, unfortunately - these companies are overwhelmed and don’t have the resources to promote your title the way you can. But if you can increase your online presence beyond simply throwing up a website with a “buy” button - if you can throw your book in the way of all these readers who are online looking for interesting books - you’re doing a great job.

Oh lordy, will it never stop?

Social media - blogs, Twitter, Facebook, etc. - is a tool. Tools are neutral - they are designed to help, but they can also hurt. You can build with a hammer; you can also kill a person with a hammer. Similarly, you can build with Twitter, or you can use it to kill your career.

Case in point: Alice Hoffman. A reviewer for the Boston Globe gave Hoffman’s new book a negative review. Hoffman responded with a number of rants on Twitter, publishing the reviewer’s phone number and email address (presumably so those who agreed with Hoffman could amplify her rage).

Another case: Alain de Botton. In this instance, he came across the blog of a NYTBR reviewer who had panned his book. And left a screed in the comments section of the blog that culminated thusly:

“I will hate you till the day I die and wish you nothing but ill will in every career move you make. I will be watching with interest and schadenfreude.”

Don’t. Do. This.

It might feel good for about six seconds, but God knows it’s hard enough to get published these days even if you’re an absolute angel - why would you want to complicate your career by being a jerk on top of that? Reviewers are going to say bad things. Some of THEM are, in fact, jerks. But you never EVER counter with asshole-itude. EVER. Because it will backfire. It will magnify. It will find its way to Gawker or New York Magazine, both of which are devoured by publishing people, and you will have effectively ended the authorhood stage of your life and will have to find something else to do with your remaining years.

Preferably as far away from tools as possible.

The Self-Publishing Book Expo has put together four panels for its November 7th conference - with more to come!

• “Understanding Distribution” will feature Andy Weissberg of Bowker as moderator, with discussion by Janet McDonald of Ingram, Eric Kampman of Midpoint Trade, and Brent Sampson of Outskirts Press.
• “The Rise of Ebooks” will be presented by Mark Coker, founder of Smashwords.
• “Buzz Your Book” features M.J. Rose (major get!), Doug Clegg (hi, Doug!), and Karen Mender (co-founder of the Self-Publishing Book Expo).
• Brent Sampson gives an additional session called “Three Paths to Publishing”, where he presents three different publishing scenarios for authors not sure which direction to take.

The Expo’s website has also been updated with information about authors who are exhibiting. It’s a thrilling event and I plan to be there!

While I was at BEA, I met Drew Gerber of Pitchrate. And the minute he described his service, it made complete sense to me. Through Pitchrate, experts and authors can get in touch with journalists and PR folks who are looking specifically for certain stories or expertise.

These journalists or PR people send out requests every day for experts, and then you can respond with a pitch. It’s very simple - and the Pitchrate tools seem pretty easy to work with; highly email-based (although there seems to be a web app you can use as well). Journalists rate the experts they talk with, so if you’ve achieved a high rating, chances are other journalists will be in touch!

I think these services are very useful, particularly for nonfiction writers who are steeped in certain topics and have a specific message to get out. So check it out!

I just wanted to take a little time and talk about ISBNs. Last week I held a Twitter session for an hour - #isbnsebooks - where writers, publishers, and other Bookish Tweeps and I all looked at the many ebook formats out there and examined the necessity of having one ISBN per format.

Right now, there’s no other way to publish if you want to be distributed by a third party. If all you’re doing is selling ebooks from your own website, or exclusively with Amazon, then an ISBN is not strictly necessary. But the moment you start working with distributors, who then make the ebook available to a variety of websites, an ISBN is crucial. The supply chain does not operate without them - they are the basis upon which massive databases are built.

Can you use another identifier? Again, if you’re only selling on your own site, that’s fine. Nobody will know but you. But the moment your ebook (or any other book) leaves your house, it needs a number slapped on it that everyone can recognize and work with.

The main objection to ISBNs seems to be that of cost. In other countries (except the UK), ISBNs are subsidized by the state and so appear free to publishers and authors. Here in the US, the cost of creating and maintaining the ISBN database is passed along to the users of that database. It is a cooperative sort of arrangement - but there is not enough transparency around it. Nobody seems to know exactly how much it costs to maintain the data, or why ISBN pricing is the way it is. I’ve been advocating to Bowker, the US ISBN agency, to be explicit around costs and to become more transparent; I think they will be doing so in the next few months. If publishers and authors knew how much it cost to keep the ISBN database/registration going, then perhaps we could all understand things a little bit better.

Additionally, Bowker’s bulk pricing for ISBNs has struck many smaller presses as discriminatory. If Pearson or McGraw-Hill or HarperCollins or Random House buy ISBNs, they do so in massive bulk - thousands of them. And they get deep discounts as a result. But of course these guys publish thousands of books at a time. A smaller press, perhaps one who publishes 10 or 50 books a year, will never get the benefit of that sort of discount. Thus small presses - who are frequently operating on a shoestring - are penalized financially.

I haven’t found a good way around this yet, but I am chair of BISAC’s Identifiers Committee, and these are issues we’re exploring actively. When I have something to report, I will - meanwhile, stay tuned for the next #isbnsebooks session on Twitter, and follow me at @ljndawson.

Whatever they tell you, don’t get a booth.

I know what the arguments are: it’s the biggest book industry trade show in the US. It’s a way to get exposure and connect with larger publishers to try to get your book picked up and distributed by them. It’s a way to make connections in an industry you’re trying to break into.

All true - but you don’t have to buy a booth.

Trade show booths (particularly in New York, where BEA is going to be held through 2012) are riotously expensive. There’s the cost of the space itself. There’s the cost of a table, booth-dressing, collaterals to hand out. There’s wifi, which at Javits will run you $30/day as a regular user, and if you want it for displaying anything to people it costs far more. There’s the union labor, which sets your booth up and breaks it down (no, you cannot do this yourself - union rules). And there’s the cost of coming to New York and staying in a hotel, having copies of your book on hand to give away (you cannot sell books at BEA), and eating highly priced convention-center food (bleah).

Don’t do it.

There are more effective ways of marketing your book! Simply attending BEA, making appointments, and visiting with distributors and large publishers - these are great ways to get in the door, and much wiser than buying a booth. Attending conference sessions to learn more about the industry you’re entering - also valuable, and great for networking afterwards! Walking the floor and meeting people is much more effective than manning your booth over in the Siberia of “Writers Row” and praying people come by to see you. The best way to market anything is to be where your targets are - and your targets are in their own booths!

Don’t buy a booth. It’s not just a waste of money - it’s a waste of time and effort that could be better spent doing more effective marketing off the show floor.

There are loads of self-publishing services out there that promise a great deal of ease and speed in getting your book out there. And that’s fantastic, but many authors find that once they sign up, they’re on the hook for a lot more work than they had planned. This is because making a book is not an easy thing.

While mainstream publishing is failing authors in many ways, one way it’s succeeding is by printing the actual book. This is not simply as easy as sending an edited Word manuscript to a printer and magically getting a book back. There are lots of decisions and actual work that have to go into book production, and when an author is doing this herself…guess what? She’s the one who has to make these decisions and do this work.

I’m not advocating going the mainstream route - it’s right for some authors, and not right for others; many feel that the publishing model as we know it is irretrievably broken and self-publishing is a better deal. But when you choose to self-publish, there are things to think about that have nothing to do with writing the book. Here are some of them:

• What font are you going to use? (There are hundreds)
• What size book do you want? (There are dozens)
• What do you want your headers to look like? (This requires knowing what headers are)
• What do you want for a colophon? Do you want a colophon?
• What image will you be using for your cover? What size do you want that image to be? What font do you want for your cover, and where do you want the text? What color should the cover be? Should there be a design, in addition to the image? What should be on the back cover? Will you include an author photo?
• What images will you be using with the text of the book itself? Where do you want these images placed?
• What sorts of little designs do you want to use with each chapter? Do you want designs/wingdings to separate sections within a chapter, or just additional spacing?
• What paper do you want for the text of the book?
• What paper do you want for the cover? Do you want hardcover or paperback?
• What price will you be selling the book for?
• Will there be an ebook version?
• What price should that be?
• Where will you sell it?
• How do you upload those files?
• What if they don’t look right on a Kindle or iPhone or Sony Reader - how do you fix that?

And that’s just in making the book itself. There are other concerns, when it comes to marketing the thing.

• When should the marketing for your title begin? (3-6 months in advance of the book’s publication)
• Do you need an ISBN? (Yes.)
• What do e-commerce sites need to sell your book? (ISBN, Title, Author, Publishing Company, Price, Pub Date, Annotation, any advanced reviews, BISAC categories)
• How do you get book reviews? (Send digital copies of your book to book bloggers)
• How do you reach out to potential readers? (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn)

These things, again, have nothing to do with writing the book. But they have everything to do with selling it.

There’s a reason publishers exist - they (presumably) take care of all this stuff - in addition to editing your manuscript and making your book better. They have stayed in business this long by doing all of the above. But increasingly, they’re not doing it well enough to satisfy either authors or readers, and many authors have decided to take this on themselves. If this is your plan, just be ready. It’s not easy. But it could well be worth it.

Just wanted to turn folks on to this great site called Authors Advocate. It’s a blog for self-published authors, with many resources to help with promotion, services, and other issues. It’s put out by Dorrance, which is the oldest subsidy publishing company in the US. You’ll want to read it!

Live Long and Publish is the motto of the Self-Publishers Online Conference, founded by James Byrd, Susan Daffron (with whom I went to college!) and Donna Kozik. Happening NOW, it’s a great series of webinars about various aspects of self-publishing: the mechanics of doing it, marketing your title, and the all-important question…what next?

The next seminar is on Building Buzz, with Susan Beckwith. Registration is free, or $97 if you want the ability to access the webinars later. Hurry hurry!!!

More info about the conference can be found here.