User:SOTO/Forum Archive/Inclusion debates/@comment-1506468-20190827123101/@comment-30881616-20190912170545

Amorkuz wrote: I have run some of the ISBNs of books listed on Arcbeatle Press website on such a search engine https://isbnsearch.org/, but they were not listed as published by Arcbeatle Press.

Now, this sentence intrigues me, both for what it says, and what it does not—it does not say these books were not listed altogether, but just that they were not listed as “published by Arcbeatle Press.” Who they were listed as published by, we are not told.

Intrigued, I set out to replicate the investigative steps outlined in post #131, to see the results myself. And indeed, running some of the ISBNs of books listed on Arcbeatle Press’ website on https://isbnsearch.org/ does show them listed, as published by a “CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform.”

So what could be the meaning of this? I wondered when I saw that name, and investigated further.

As it turned out, CreateSpace (or more precisely, “On-Demand Publishing LLC, doing business as CreateSpace,” to quote its Bloomberg profile) was a company which provided on-demand printing services, “[allowing] publishers and authors to publish their work” (emphasis added). Now, according to the International ISBN Agency, "It is always the publisher of the book who should apply for the ISBN. For the purposes of ISBN, the publisher is the group, organisation, company or individual who is responsible for initiating the production of a publication. Normally, it is also the person or body who bears the cost and financial risk in making a product available." Furthermore, in the info section about “Assigning ISBNs to joint publications”, the International ISBN Agency further states that "In the case of a joint publication, both publishers are entitled to have an ISBN on the book. It should be made clear which number identifies which publisher. However, if only one publisher is to hold stock and distribute the publication, then it is recommended that the ISBN of the publisher who is responsible for distribution appears in bar-coded form on the back cover of the book." As a print-on-demand business, CreateSpace naturally would be “responsible for initiating the production,” in the sense of starting the printing process once a copy had been ordered), as well as distributing said copy once it had been produced, with the demand for the company’s service—and the profit the company might make from providing said service, through fees and suchlike—tied to the demand for the publication itself. There is nothing surprising, then, for CreateSpace to be considered “the publisher” for the purposes of ISBN.

That is not all, though. I was intrigued by post #131’s logic of using ISBNs to determine what does or does not count as “officially released” for the purpose of Rule 3, and looked further into the information provided by the International ISBN Agency. This is what I found: ISBNs are assigned to text-based monographic publications (i.e. one-off publications rather than journals, newspapers, or other types of serials).

Any book made publicly available, whether for sale or on a gratis basis, can be identified by ISBN.

[. . .]

With regard to the various media available, it is of no importance in what form the content is documented and distributed; however, each different product form (e.g. paperback, EPUB, .pdf) should be identified separately. "The ISBN is an identifier and does not convey any form of legal or copyright protection." "In principle, publications that are monographic (i.e. one-off publications not periodicals or serials etc), text-based (or predominantly text-based) and available to the public are considered eligible within the scope of the ISBN Standard." As everyone can see, the International ISBN Agency’s understanding on who counts as a publisher, or what counts as a publication, is very, very broad. And, well,. ..

I own a printer.

Per the International ISBN Agency’s terms, in theory I could print out just about anything tomorrow and have it be given an ISBN with just a few simple steps. I would not need to do any proofreading or quality control, or worry about copyrights, or even convince anyone to put money into my so-called book (given that the International ISBN Agency counts books made publically available “on a gratis basis”) like Arcbeatle Press and other traditional publishers have to do, but so long as mine was the hand that turned the printer on, “AthenodoraKitten” would count as a legitimate publisher for the purposes of ISBNs—and thus for the purposes of T:VALID, according to the logic of post #131.

In practice, of course, I am not going to do any of that—I am too much a believer in the ethics of environmentalism to ever waste paper in such a way—and in any case it is very unlikely that a DWU rightsholder would ever grant me a license (especially given that DWU rightsholders are almost by default professionals familiar with copyright and licensing, and would have some proper understanding of professional standards), so the chances of my hypothetical book actually passing our “four little rules” as currently defined is virtually nonexistent. Nevertheless, this broadening of the scope of Rule 3—this apparent broadening of the scope of T:VALID into something along the lines of Every story printed by anyone with a home printer should be considered valid provided the proper rights have been procured—is so uncharacteristic compared to the position the author of post #131 has otherwise been advocating for since the beginning of this discussion, that I would like to take a moment to ask: User:Amorkuz, can you please confirm that this is actually what you are arguing for?

In any case though, the methodology described in post #131 is flawed, anyway. To wit: "Rose_(novelisation)_-_ISBN_-_Kindle_edition.jpg" Here is a screenshot of my Kindle copy of Rose (novelisation). As everyone can see, there is an ISBN for this edition clearly listed. Nevertheless, there is no record of this edition on https://isbnsearch.org/, post #131’s nominated ISBN database of choice. So, then, which option here is more likely—that https://isbnsearch.org/ cannot be taken at face value as a completely comprehensive and authoritative source, or that BBC Books, an imprint of Ebury Publishing must have its legitimacy as a publishing entity and its rights to publish e-books brought into question? Do we need to start a community discussion on the validity of Rose (novelisation) as well?

Out of respect for TARDIS:No_personal_attacks and for the members of this Wiki, I will not insult everybody’s intelligence by spelling out the answer here: the evidence can speak for itself.

(For accuracy’s sake, I would like to note that the print edition of Rose (novelisation) indeed has its ISBN listed on https://isbnsearch.org/. However, the print edition has a different ISBN from the one assigned for the e-book edition—as recommended by the International ISBN Agency terms quoted above—and thus https://isbnsearch.org/ is still missing an entire set of ISBN on its database.

For accuracy’s sake, I would also like to note that the statement of “Each professionally printed book is supplied with a unique code called ISBN” in post #131 is factually incorrect—as explained by the International ISBN Agency here and elsewhere on their website, having an ISBN assigned for one’s book is merely beneficial, not universally mandatory. Furthermore, the main benefit of having an ISBN is to make it easier for bookstores and the like to maintain records of the book for distribution, and I can easily see a publisher which handles distribution itself having its own in-house cataloguing system.) ⁂ Amorkuz wrote: I was just going to say that for me this concludes the question of Rule 3, but, unfortunately, there is a discrepancy in the latest anthology: it provides two seemingly incompatible statements:
 * "All stories are publications of Arcbeatle Press."
 * "Publisher: James Wylder"

So which is it? I am a bit confused. Amorkuz wrote: I could not understand why, after being so forceful and clear that the stories were published by Arcbeatle Press, why would Mr. Wylder, in the middle of this discussion, state the publisher as "James Wylder" and not "Arcbeatle Press"? It seemed to have been counterproductive. As has already been explained in post #120 and post #124—apologies for everyone else if I am just being repetitive here, but post #131 above indicates that its author still experiences some confusion over the matter, and I would like everything to be as clear as possible—common usage does allow for the word “publisher” to refer to a publishing company, or an individual person with responsibility for the publication. Furthermore, Arcbeatle Press’ website explicitly states that “Arcbeatle Press is owned and operated by Editor and Publisher James Wylder” (emphasis added), clearly indicating that Arcbeatle Press understands “Publisher” to be a title/position within its organisational structure, and that this title/position is currently held by Mr Wylder.

For the sake of accuracy, I looked up this “latest anthology” that post #118 above spoke of, to see whether these allegedly “incompatible statements” did indeed occur as quoted, and what context they might have occurred in. For the records (because post #118 did not provide any in-line citation to facilitate access to, and review of, the document cited), here is the URL to the anthology in question: http://www.jameswylder.com/blog/a-little-surprise-a-new-collection-of-old-stories. Let anyone who doubts the veracity of my statements about its content have a look through it themselves, and see the truth of my words.

It is indeed the case that the lines "All stories are publications of Arcbeatle Press" and "Publisher: James Wylder" both occur on the front matter of the e-book edition of this anthology. The previous sentence does not, however, give the contexts—plural—within which these lines occur:
 * "All stories are publications of Arcbeatle Press": this line is part of a section describing the publication status of the stories in the anthology.
 * "Publisher: James Wylder": this line, however, is part of a credit section naming the specific persons involved in the production and publication of this particular anthology—in context, this line immediately precedes the credit for the Cover Artist and Illustration Artist, making it clear that it belongs to a section wherein individuals are addressed by their job titles.

These two sections are quite clearly separated from each other (both in the sense that all sections within the front matter of this publication are clearly distinguished from each other typographically, and that there is a fair amount of text between the two on the page), making it difficult for most readers to confuse the Job Titles section with the Publication Status section.

To use an analogy—if one looks at the screenshot of the copyright page of Rose (novelisation) above, one can see at various points both “BBC Books, an imprint of Ebury Publishing” and “Penguin Random House UK” named. This may seem like a contradiction over who the publisher of this volume is, if one misses some crucial context (in this case, the fact that Ebury Publishing is a part of the Penguin Random House group of companies). Once that context has been taken into account, however, what seemed contradictory before will reveal itself to be not contradictory after all.

Hope this has cleared any confusion.