Like everyone else in the book industry, we’ve been working to transition our systems to ISBN-13. Given the level of panic we’ve been encountering from vendors struggling with ISBN-13 compliance, it seems like for some, this could be their own in-house version of the Y2K problem.
The sky may not be falling just yet.
While January 1 is the date when we’ve been told to expect seeing natively 13-digit ISBNs in the wild, the November 17 issue of the Book Industry Study Group Bulletin offers some hope:
“Brian Green, who manages the International ISBN Agency, was keen to emphasize to delegates how difficult it is at this stage to be precise, but he said that late 2007 or early 2008 was a reasonable estimate of when we might see the first 979s.”
While this is no reason to slow down ISBN-13 compliance work, it suggests that systems won’t melt down when people try to order the first newly published book in 2007.
As it stands, the core of BookFinder.com is ISBN-13 compliant, but not all the interfaces by which we search and exchange data with our bookseller partners are ready.
Posted by Anirvan
