The true story behind isbn's

The ISBN of the Bible is Satan's telephone number. Go ahead! Try it!

This is not about submitting to major publishers.
This is about self-published authors who have purchased a lot of 10 or less of isbn's.
Anyone who has done this can simply call a library and ask if their book is listed in 'Books in Print"
The answer will be no.
Only titles that have an isbn coming form a lot of 100 or more will be found.

when i tried it some company named halliburton answered the phone

oh wait, never mind

I once was asked to review a series of papers on how to control "Free-surface evaporation" in ponds and tailings pools. One paper was really good in that the authors suggested the best way to control free surface evapo is by the application of a TLHL, which is a "Thin LAyer of Hydrologic Literature", since there was no shortage of same.

Maybe you need to submit your book to be listed.

That's because you used the ISBN from the NLT bible instead of the KJV. If you don't want to talk to the subsidiary try the KJV and leave a message on Cheney's answering machine.

There is some very subtle and wicked humor in circulation here . . .

I hate humour, I may find meself giving this thread a thumbs down.

Yeah, but you're a goof ball, and you can't even spell humor correctly . . .

easy for you to say.

Okay, I may be a little dim-witted, but I don't see why there's such a big deal being made about ISBNs. Probably everything that Bannerman says is true, but do book reviewers ever actually look at the ISBN to decide what to review, what to ignore? I doubt it. Why bother turning the page when all you have to do is look at the name of the publisher on the front page? Do you really think, Bannerman, that altering the ISBN on a self-published book to make it coincide with the code of some major publishing house would make one iota of difference? Again, I doubt it. ISBNs are just a handy filing device.

If you say the ISBN of this book backwards it says "Paul killed the eggman"

No idea what the gripe is here. Books In Print is a very specialist tool (and expensive), but claims to have the details of over 60,000 publishers. Even if they don't list those small publishers who have less than 10 works on offer - it is possible to still have your work included.

Here's a shitload of sites that will do the job for you: http://www.ecommerce-guide.com/solutions/advertising/article.php/3552221

I don't think they list the so-called "vanity presses", i.e. subsidy publishers. The author pays these gentlemen to print and publish the book, rather than them paying the author for the ms.

I can't see him purchasing ISBNs for such a venture. The press can organise that part of the deal. If you intend to self-publish, however, you will pay the press to do it's bit (ie printing and binding) and then take on the promotion and sales of the material. A vanity press product will typically be donated to a library or collection.

I think what our friend here is ticked off about is that after paying the fee for the ISBNs, they aren't automatically listed in BiP. Again, whether you are or are not listed is not a huge issue. You can get listings on any number of free sites and librarians will go there to find works that have been requested as purchases. Libraries have guidelines called 'collection development policies' that direct their purchases. Based on the nature of their clientele they will collect material to meet client's needs - they do not trawl through a 7 volume work of 3.5 million listed works randomly choosing purchases.

Actually, books in print in its faqs says it allows a publisher of a single book to register as "publisher" and record the book on its list.