Conglomeration by Design: A Brief History of the Standard Book Number, 1965-1969
Schwartz, Elizabeth
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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/114517
Description
Title
Conglomeration by Design: A Brief History of the Standard Book Number, 1965-1969
Author(s)
Schwartz, Elizabeth
Keyword(s)
ISBN
book history
media history
infrastructure studies
critical dh
Geographic Coverage
United Kingdom
Swindon, UK
Abstract
The story of trade publishing’s conglomeration has been told at length, yet its technological mechanisms remain little understood. Conglomeration depended on the book trade becoming scalable and industry profitable. This was only possible once book distribution could be computerized. No technology was more critical to distribution’s automation than the Standard Book Number (SBN), the ISBN’s predecessor. In 1967, a British wholesaler, WH Smith, with the Publisher’s Association (PA) created the SBN to computerize its warehouse. Through analyzing Publisher’s Weekly coverage and the PA’s plan for the SBN, I uncovered the history of the SBN’s invention and implementation from 1965-1969. I argue that the standard book number was a critical conglomerating technology for two reasons: 1) it coordinated the activities of publishers, distributors, and retailers which made them scalable, and 2) it created a trade publishing technocracy. When scholars fail to historicize conglomeration’s technologies, we risk naturalizing it. This brief history of the SBN provides a window into the conglomerate era’s technological dynamics.
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