Tuesday 28 Mar 2023: ISBNs starting 979

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Image by Clker-Free-Vector-Images from Pixabay

I ended up being lazy yesterday. I was still very tired after the clocks going forward and I couldn’t really get going. So I did a load of faff stuff, like the diary and the weekly scan and backup. I caught up on competition entries, and I caught up on blog post comments. 

The biggest job I did do yesterday was start to organise my books on a Trello card so that I go in and add them all to both ALCS and the legal deposit people. But, of course, it’s technololgy isn’t it? And, of course, I hit another snag.

All of the books I published since 2020 have ISBNs that start with 979 instead of 978. And the ALCS website doesn’t let us put those on ourselves yet. I tried and I tried last week, but because it was payout week, I didn’t nag them or push them. Yesterday, however, I did contact them again, and they said that the ISBN 979 thing is still a problem with them but if I send them the details in an email, they’ll get them put on for me.

While I was looking into it, I discovered that so long as I have an ISBN for those books that are only published as ebooks too, then I can add those too – or I could if we didn’t have the 979 issue.

So I started off by reorganising my Trello board for ‘my books’, moving everything waiting in the ‘legal deposit’ list back to the ‘alcs’ list, in publication order. Then I went through and checked which ones are the last ones ALCS accepted onto their system. And then I added the last of the 978 ISBNs and moved them from the ‘alcs’ list to the ‘legal deposit’ list.

That left me with everything else and I organised them into batches that correspond with the Draft2Digital screen, so I have PAGE 1, PAGE 2 and PAGE 3. There are too many for me to do in one go at the moment, so I’m assuming that will also be too many for ALCS to do. So I’m sending them a screen, or a page, at a time, starting with the oldest ones, or those published the longest ago.

It means I’ll only have two more sessions to do, and only then if they’ve all still got 979 ISBNs on them. If any 978s have sneaked through, then I can add those myself and just move them along the Trello board. And once ALCS is all up to date I can start on legal deposit, which currently only has one of my books listed.

By the time I’d sorted all of that out, and created and sent the first email, of three, to ALCS, the day was almost over. Well, I didn’t exactly start it from the top of the day, so it was always destined to be a short day.

Today needs to be better, when I should be doing more of that proofreading work.


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2 Responses

  1. Technology was touted as making work easier, but it does nothing but create more needless admin work.

    As I said yesterday, it took me two weeks to recover from “spring forward” so I hope it’s quicker for you. I’ve hit a wall today, too, because I worked through the weekend, but I’m just pushing through because Friday has lots of commitments, but all of which should be fun.

    • I get more tired and frustrated with so-called technology with each passing day. If it can’t do what it’s touted to do then get it fixed!
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