BISG Has Successful Year
by Jim Milliot -- Publishers Weekly, 9/12/2008 12:08:00 PM
Despite a challenging book market, the Book Industry Study Group is in the best financial shape in its history and its membership continues to grow. At Friday’s annual meeting, BISG executive director Michael Healy attributed the health of the organization to the recognition by industry members that in tough economic times the need to publish more efficiently--the BISG’s main mission--is more important than ever. To help with that mission, the organization is looking for a new associate director, which will bring the BISG staff to four.
Among the new initiatives planned for the 2008-2009 year is the development of a new set of industry statistics. BISG has developed a new methodology for measuring the industry and the BISG Trends report will be revamped when it is released next spring. In November, new technical specifications for the Digital Reading Online Protocol (DROP) are expected to be released. DROP’s goal is to create standards for searching online book content.
BISG meetings are full of acronyms and one that the organization hopes the industry will soon become more familiar with is ISTC--the International Standard Text Code. ISTC will identify a text work no matter what form the text appears in, be it a printed book or e-book. The code will be useful for a variety of tasks, including monitoring copyright and licensing as well as in sales analysis. Bowker, which is the U.S. Registration Agency, is looking for a partner to pilot a test of ISTC. Industry consultant Michael Shatzkin is also looking for industry participation in his latest endeavor with BISG, the StartwithXML Project, for which more info is available at www.startwithxml.com.
