Frantic Paddling
Yesterday morning was another one of those mornings where I looked at the clock and saw that it was 10.15; I’d been working for almost three hours, and I seemed to have nothing to show for it. I’m sure that you know the feeling…
It wasn’t strictly true that I had nothing to show for my three hours worth, but it was admin stuff, so not very sexy. 
Things like sending information off to Andy, the cover artist, so that he could generate a map for Dark Spires. and setting up a copyright page, among many other things.
Which led me to think how much information is needed for the application for an ISBN number. Here are just some of the things;
- A full list of contributors
- Copies of the title and copyright pages
- A confirmed selling price
- Classification (eg, SF / fantasy / fiction)
- Intended size in millimetres, and number of pages
- And last but not least, a short description of the book.
A lot of this information is dependant on other factors, like edits, etc, so only parts of it are currently available.
And the requirements are perfectly logical but it’s time consuming. Publishers such as Tor or Random House probably have lots of interns running around doing such work. Then again, they publish a lot more books than we do! But hopefully, all this will be worth it when you see the final product.
It’s going to be great when it’s done 🙂