An ISBN of My Own

An ISBN of My Own: 978 06 1899 983 5

While searching the internet to see if I could easily bring up my blog yet (nope!) I stumbled on Clarion's draft of the catalog description for The Year We Were Famous. When I reached the fourth line I forgot for a moment to breathe. My book had been assigned it's very own personal unique one-of-kind ISBN number!

I suppose no one but another librarian-turned-writer would put an exclamation point after that last sentence. After all, it's just a 13-digit number, and like most of us, I already have too many numbers and codes to keep track of. But getting an ISBN was a milestone as momentous as the first handshake with my acquiring editor, Jennifer Wingertzahn, and signing the contract in New York. For a big publishing house like Houghton Mifflin Harcourt it was just paperwork. For me it meant officially crossing the line between fanatical reader and debut author.

An ISBN—or International Standard Book Number—is the number assigned to each book as it is prepared for publication—sort of like putting an ID tag on the wrist of the new baby in the hospital. You see it by the barcode on the back cover and it's the number book suppliers and bookshop owners use to keep track of what's where. It's the numbers libraries use when ordering books. The first three digits of my book's ISBN (978) mean that it comes from the publishing industry. The next two digits (06) mean that the book is in English. The next seven digits (1899 983) link the book to its publishing house, Clarion/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, and title. The last digit (5) is a check digit which helps identify transpositions or mis-keying by anyone entering the ISBN number in orders and inventories.

A new ship gets a bottle of champagne across the bow as it is named; a baby gets a christening party. My book's new ISBN number was assigned without celebration, except by me.