CIP, LCCN, PCN, PCIP – what are they and does the indie author really need them? (Part IV)

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There is a great deal of misinformation and misunderstanding about what Cataloguing in Publication (CIP) entails, what is or is not conferred by a Library of Congress Control Number (LCCN), the nature of the Library of Congress’s Preassigned Control Number (PCN) Program, and the for-profit Publisher Cataloguing in Publication (PCIP) services offered by freelance cataloguers. Worse still is the myth that the author whose book does not contain CIP data or a coveted LCCN cannot sell their books to libraries. This is simply untrue: all that a CIP data block Read More …

Do you have an International Standard Name Identifier?

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A new identifier has been developed that is assigned not to creative works but to the creators, and claims it will solve the problem of name ambiguity. An author, then, would not merely name themselves as the copyright holder on their book’s copyright page, but would add this number as well, uniquely identifying themselves. This number would also be added to ebook metadata and to ISBN data, for example. The ISNI database thus far has been built mostly by harvesting data from ISBN agencies and from library databases. You can Read More …