Publishing industry faces "Y2K" over new ISBN numbers

The publishing industry has been warned it is facing its own "Y2K" when it switches over to a new ISBN numbering system from 1 January, 2007.

As a result of electronic publishing and other changes in the publishing industry, the numbering capacity of the current 10-digit ISBN system is being consumed at a much faster rate than was originally anticipated when it was designed for printed books in the late 1960s.

To avoid the book numbering system running out of capacity a new worldwide standard for a 13-digit ISBN has been approved by the International Standards Organisation (ISO) and is due to be published early next year.

The new 13-digit ISBN, which has capacity for just under one billion numbers, will affect all aspects of the publishing supply chain right through to libraries and high-street book stores and the International ISBN Agency has warned firms to review all their IT systems well ahead of the 2007 deadline.

In a guidance document it states: "Everyone who records, stores or exchanges ISBN data in an automated system is going to have to ensure that those systems can accommodate the 13-digit ISBN format."

Publishers, distributors, retailers and libraries will need to update various automated ordering systems, inventory control systems, point-of-sale systems, and library databases.

The ISBN Agency warns: "Technical systems must be ready to use the 13-digit ISBN by 1 January, 2007, to ensure that communications with trading partners continue without interruption."

Martin Cowell, business programme manager at Oxford University Press (OUP), likened it to the "publishing industry's own Y2K" and said it is a "significant" project for the organisation that is already well underway.

"In OUP it is forming the reimplementation of an SAP system. It will take 630 man-days of work to change the SAP system and another 200 man-days of work for other ancillary systems," he said.

But he said retail booksellers will have a bigger job updating electronic point of sale, ordering and inventory systems.

A spokeswoman for Amazon.co.uk declined to go into the specific details of the company's own ISBN conversion project but said: "We are working with publishers, wholesalers and trade groups to ensure that the entire supply chain is prepared for the transition."