The Global Register of Publishers helps librarians, book retailer etc verify a book publisher and its origin and also get contact information. The Global Register of Publishers database is not for seeking a book publisher to get a book published. In this post, I would like to explain how the ISBN works and what the role of The Global Register of Publishers in the ISBN system.
The Global Register of Publishers is a database of book publishers around the world. ISBN agencies around the world help the International ISBN agency update book publisher’s database and maintain a centralize records of what ISBN prefixes a book publisher owns. The Global Register of Publishers is used for verifying publishers’ identity, there is not much for the general audience. The importance of the Global Register of Publishers lies in streamlining the ISBN system and managing the ISBN database and keeping everything organized and ISBN unique with global availability.
How the Global Register of Publishers Works
The Global Register of Publishers is slow, it takes around 1 to 2 years for a book publisher name and its ISBN prefix to be added into the Global Register of Publishers database. Even this depends on the ISBN agency where book publishers have obtained ISBN from. For this reason, relaying on the Global Register of Publishers for publisher identify verification is not a good idea, and also it doesn’t help librarian with cataloguing books.
Furthermore, what information is included in GRP depends on the ISBN agency. Some ISBN agency collect a lot more information from book publishers, and they send more information to ISBN International Agency, however some ISBN agency don’t add much information. The GRP database is contributed by ISBN agencies from around the world, and all agencies have separate rules on obtaining ISBN and what data they include in the GRP database. Moreover, there is a privacy concern I would like to mention.
Privacy concern
Mainly, ISBN are issued to a Book publisher under a publishing name or imprint name. This imprint name could be anything that identifies a book publisher. Because of the rise in self-publishing, all most all ISBN agencies have started offering ISBN to author directly. In the case of self-publishing, an author can obtain an ISBN directly from an ISBN agency and use any name or their personal name as an imprint name.
Now, the problem lies in when an ISBN agency requires authors to use their legal name to obtain an ISBN. And, also, the author’s legal name becomes their imprint name. Not only that, some ISBN agency like ISBN agency RRRNA in India go further and have rules that prevent authors from using pen names to publish their books. That means self-publishing authors in India have to publish their book under their legal name and use legal name as their book imprint name.
Once the author’s legal name becomes imprint name, then their personal name, and contact information including their home address gets added into the GRP database. The GRP database is available freely on the ISBN International website. There are tons of personal details of authors in India that have obtained ISBN from ISBN agency in India. You can find author’s legal name, phone number, email address, and home address. All of this information is added to the GRP database without letting the authors know.
A quick Indian name search returned this result, see below:
Users have to create a free account at GRP website and then login to access complete publisher information.
I have also tried to contact ISBN Internation agency to get my own personal info removed, but I haven’t heard back from then for 3 months.
This is happening in India with self-publishing authors, I couldn’t verify if the same issue happening anywhere else. There are several issues with obtaining an ISBN in India as a self-publishing author. I have written a detailed piece here: Struggle of Obtaining ISBN in India: Red Tape Hurting Independent Authors
