Lineage
I’m going to be buying bar-codes fairly soon. It made me wonder if you could buy them in little bags, also marked with a bar-code which, when decoded simply said, ‘more of this’.
The bar-codes I’m after are International Standard Book Numbers, or ISBNs… They enable any book retailer to order copies of your book.
Or, to put it another way, many stores will not stock your book without one (there are some fantastic stores that will).
And they’re not that cheap either. Technically they cost about £10 each, but the minimum order is for ten numbers – £100.
The standard ISBN is now thirteen digits long… that’s about 77p per digit.
I think it is set up like that to discourage the small press to some extent… a token prohibitive cost to stop any old oik hand-stitching several volumes and calling it a book. But I fear it has had the opposite effect.
Having thought about it, I’m going to have to publish ten books over the course of my life (ISBNs are almost non-transferable). I hadn’t really planned on one, and now I’m considering nine more, if only to use up my quota in protest.
Book number six will be entirely devoted to bar-codes… I’m going to start collecting them, scan them all and make one huge book out of them. On the front will be a bar-code for a title, which, when decoded will read, ‘more of this’.
HAHAHA. “more of this” thats way too funny.
I was looking at that myself. I find things like ISBN #s and SATs to be amazing. These companies have managed to take a lock on a product and create something so pervasive people assume its more or less the law that you have to have it.
Here’s hoping you’re so wildly successful that someday you publish more than 10 books. Or, you know, someone pays lots of money to you to publish for ya.
I meant to mention these guys:
http://londonundergroundcomics.com/?p=80
they run a nobarcodes event for small press comics.
There is still a snobbery when it comes to publishing, less so with POD and current developments including the internet, but still it is a bit of an exclusive club where who you know is more important than anything else.
When I used to work in publishing, a certain printer would give me a particular rate (for a certain volume of books)… now they know what I do in my own time, that rate has nearly doubled. I’m sure they’re just trying to keep control of their market, but still it seems like an elitist set up.
I work in a stockroom, and deal with UPCs and DPCIs all the time. Whereas a UPC is usually the number that’s under a bar code, a DPCI is the number that comes up on my ultra-cool laser scanner computer gun when I scan a bar code, and it’s a less specific number than a UPC (two products can sometimes have the same DPCI but different UPCs.)
One example of how much too much time I have spent in the stockroom is the fact that I have figured out that a DPCI has the same number of digits as a Social Security number. And that my Social Security number comes up “not on file” when I type it into the ultra-cool laser scanner computer gun.
I did not know that.
How cool would that have been if it had actually come up with a product?
I wonder what it would have been?
Nearly as cool as playing with laser all day.
Laser suck.
They don’t cut things in half.
They don’t miracously blind ppl.
They don’t make swooshing zinging sounds.
They do make my job a little easier and alot more accurate, no more do I lose 1000′t tons of coal due to mis-measurements.
Which takes the fun out of weekly production meetings.
Boss: “Where is that 20,000tn of coal?”
Me: “Have we looked under the staff desks or in the stationery cupboard?”
That is no more:(
And LASER skirmish is ghleym (yes, it does deserve the lamest spelling of lame possible).
You’re just trying to cover up the fact that you have a secret laser-guarded underground lair…
‘they’re harmless measuring instruments, officer’.
Zap.
And smoking, policeman-like boots.
um, no, not even close.
*mental note*:
Take pics of lair off of myspace profile.
Add Adam to “Watch”List.
Your sixth book will become one of those famous avant garde books that everyone has on their coffee table to appear “with the times” but no one has actually read or understands.
I would totally buy a copy, and talk about it at almost every opportunity.
I’ll put you down for one… should be ready by 2012…
I wouldn’t talk about it.
Then when ppl see it on my coffee table, they know I am so cool, that I don’t need to talk about it.
When they ask about it, I will answer in my elite voice, with a touch of an english upperclass accent, that I knew about it while it was in the initial concept stage.
And then move on immediately.
When they eventually get the nerve to touch it and open it, only to see that MY copy is signed, my status as a local god will be achieved.
I’m investing alot in you with this Adam. Alot of my hopes and dreams.
Here in Canada, all my mother had to do was send two pre-ISBN copies of her book to the National Library of Canada in order to get an ISBN. no charge.
Again, I did not know that… and that’s a pretty handy thing to know… Thanks.
In fact I’ve contacted a few people that it might help… you may have just been responsible for a dirge of new comics. top stuff.
The barcode book sounds pretty amazing to me.
And of course, as a reader of this here webcomic, I’d be one of the priveleged few who knew the story (oh sorry, it’s conceptual, I meant “deeper meaning”) behind it.
I’d probably brag for the rest of my life.
PS. The recent comics have been so good I’m holding off ordering the book just to make sure I’m not one day away from a magnificent stip that I simply must have.
I’m not sure if it’s strong enough to call it a concept… perhaps a whim, or maybe a fancy…
… I might get eveyone involved in it too… send me your barcode scans… but not yet, I have way too much to do with book number 1.
And thanks… I didn’t expect to be in a situation where if I draw bad strips I’ll get another order.
Seriously, there’s no rush, I’ll try to draw some even better strips this week.
Why not just use nine ISBNs on nine one-off, special edition books, registered as THE FLOWFIELD UNITY: (person who ordered) EDITION, with the tenth just being THE FLOWFIELD UNITY and used on every subsequent edition?
Better yet: attach them to non-book products. Make the world’s first ISBN-ed T-Shirt.
/b
Apparently, attaching ISBNs to a non-book product is similar to crossing the beams in Ghostbusters…
I do like the idea of individual entries thought, and indeed I might do just that with one of them. However, there is a small problem that two copies would need to be made since one has to be sent to the British Library for archiving and preservation.
They say archiving, but I’m suspicious where the UK gets its hamster bedding from…
You could try stapling a few T-Shirts together in book form?
/b
airports have codes: sfo, lax, lhr, pek.
bars should have codes too, so I don’t
have to order sex on the beach out loud.
+This comment was mysteriously delayed… it’s been sitting thinking on my desk for more than a full day+
“Book number six will be entirely devoted to bar-codes… I’m going to start collecting them, scan them all and make one huge book out of them. On the front will be a bar-code for a title, which, when decoded will read, ‘more of this’.”
BRILLIANT. Sign me up for one of those too! I’ll gladly send in scans. Heck, you can have people send scans to me, and I’ll start compiling them, I like that idea so much. And the funny thing is, I’m not exactly sure why.
Will do…
It seems to be one of those things I said on a whim that has suddenly become quite real.
I think the black and white aethetic fits in pretty well with my existing work…
So yes, I will definitely make a book consisting entirely of barcodes (I might try and do something artistic with them… not sure what yet…). Collect any pretty barcodes you see.
Actually, I keep saying ‘I’… how about I say ‘we’… would anyone else (I’ve just press-ganged Roo) be interested in doing this as a group endevour, any collaborators?
Woot! Collaborative art!
Oh, just saw this today:
http://mdn.mainichi.jp/national/news/20080510p2a00m0na021000c.html
barcoding the dead.
Oh man — only the Japanese!