[FM Discuss] [IAEP] ISBN Numbers Summary.

[David Farning]

On Thu, Mar 26, 2009 at 4:17 PM, C. Scott Ananian <cscott at cscott.net> wrote:
> On Thu, Mar 26, 2009 at 3:38 PM, David Farning <dfarning at sugarlabs.org> wrote:
>> I am still looking into that issue.
>>
>> An a related issue there is a question in the publish on demand
>> industry of how to define a 'new edition' which requires a new ISBN.
>
> If the content changes, it's a new edition and should have a new ISBN.
>
> Treat FM releases just like SL releases; if you release new manuals
> twice a year to Amazon, a block of ten will still last for a few
> years.

Can we treat bug fixes the same in both situations?  It is nice to get
back to communicating in terms I understand:)

Lulu allows the manual maintainer to push updates of a manual between
versions.  Can we consider any thing we call 'Essential Sugar .84' as
one ISBN regardless of bug fixes(small editorial changes)?

  Multiplying languages will eat up numbers -- but maybe you
> should publish a multilingual guide instead, or conserve ISBNs for
> languages which are going to sell > N copies of the manual (based on
> data from the previous "edition").

That makes sense.  Each language gets it's own ISBN.

For us laymen, the ISBN is the _only_ identifier necessary to order a book:)

> Don't pay $200 to Lulu for an ISBN, that's highway robbery!  As you
> found, you can buy blocks of 10 directly; that's the way to go.
> (FWIW, I've got a block of 10 myself, but then the manuals would be
> published by "Ahuas Emigre Press" -- better to get a block of 10 for
> sugarlabs.)

Ok thanks, I think I will order the ISBNs in the name of Floss Manuals.

For those of you on the FM list who don't know Scott, he was a
software developer at OLPC and owner of http://ahuasemigre.com/  :)

>  --scott
>
> --
>                         ( http://cscott.net/ )
>