Open Circles Business Bootcamp

I learned a lot at the Open Circles Business Bootcamp which I visited twice. First of all I finaly discovered the importance of focus as I did too many things at a time mostly. Another thing that stuck me was the fun you can have in doing business. I never had that idea, because I thought you have to work hard to be succesfull (which I did in the past). Now I know working with pleasure is far more important than working hard. And even more successfull (in another business) than in the past. I am a great fan of Nisandeh and I will definitely attend more Business Bootcamps and other courses in the (near) future. Although I don’t need to do business to get a living I like to create new things and spread new ideas. My metatitles concept will be available soon to everyone having a book to sell and it’s free of charge as well. Also an offspring of this concept will be usable as soon as I will have an agreement with in international institution that has some problems with it. Next week we will solve these misunderstandings and then I can tell more about it. In the meantime I will send some of my contacts in the publishing business my personal link to the next Business Bootcamp. I am quite sure they can use it and probably they will appreciate it as well! As a matter of fact I don’t know when the next Business Bootcamp will be and if it will be continued anyway. Maybe someone can tell me this? 

Have a nice day,

Marten Nubé

metatitle.org

Register an ISBN/X for free and discover metatitles

If you ever published a book and registered an ISBN, you can now register an ISBN/X for free. ISBN/X is an alfanumeric extension of the ISBN system and can be used to relate things to your title. This can be the e-book of your original title, a chapter of your book, a movie about your title, a review and so on. ISBN/X is developed as part of metatitles. See http://metatitle.org/ for more on these issues.

ISBN/X is now available

From now on ISBN/X (read: ISBN eXtended) is available for claiming your extra alfanumeric ISBN code(s). See the website http://isbnx.org/ for more information.

Is there a future left for the ISBN system?

No one knows exactly how many books there are in this world and if you knew it one minute ago you can be sure there are a lot more by now. Theoretically there can be no more than 999.999.999 book titles within the ISBN* system and if you know that each manifestation (e.g. paperback, hardcover, ebook)  needs its own ISBN one could conclude that we are reaching the limits of the system soon. So something has to be done and there is not much time left. Two options are available, i.e. add some digits to the current 13 or stop using numbers only and make the ISBN alphanumeric.  A serious problem is that ISBN (as part of EAN**) is an international system and this makes decision making rather difficult. So let us decide to do the the job ourselves and declare ISBN alphanumeric from now on and call it ISBN/X (the X is for 'Extended'). To start the easy way we should only make the check digit alphanumeric as this does not affect the uniqueness of the number. A check digit is only important in automated systems anyway and most  titles are sold more and more directly by the author or by his or her publisher. So for them, being the most important players in the chain, this will be a unique opportunity to use and promote ISBN/X. As the alphabet has 26 characters a wide variety of  product coding comes available. One could use different letters for different ebook formats (e.g. Epub, PDF, Mobipocket etc.). Or one could even think of a new way of presenting titles, i.e. presenting all manifestations of a title in one "metatitle'. 

More about ISBN/X and metatitles on http://metatitle.org/EAN.html

*   International Standard Book Number, a unique article number for books consisting of 13 digits where the first three digits represent the article group ' books'  and the last digit is a check digit to make sure that errors in the number are detected.

** European Article Number 

Metatitles also suitable for music

Someone asked me "Can I also use metatitles for music?" and this made me think "Why not?". A piece of music once started with an idea, just like a novel. And then this original work of art can be played by the author or anyone else. Check Spotify and see how many instances their are of your favourite song or album. 

A new title is born today. We call it Metatitle.

Digitalis introduces a new concept for combining and enriching folio books, e-books and other manifestations of a title: Metatitle. See more at http://metatitle.org/About.html.