Administrative decisions
The administrative changes ebooks require will vary from company to company, but most often they involve ISBNs, and how sales are tracked and reported.
Identifiers (ISBNs, UUIDs, URLs)
Despite the introduction of ISBN-13 in 2007, it’s possible that the industry will run out of ISBNs if they’re used for the increasing number of ebooks being published. (Though we could keep adding book ISBN prefixes beyond 978–, starting with 977–.) For this reason and others, there is already discussion about new identifiers, including UUIDs (Universally Unique Identifiers, which are randomly generated strings of numbers and letters) and URLs (web addresses). … Read more
Reporting and tracking sales
If you’re using ISBNs, it’s simplest to report sales alongside print editions, as you might hardback and paperback editions of the same book. This may also require setting up new royalty accounts, depending on your royalty calculation systems. … Read more
Tracking production and marketing costs
How you track production and marketing costs depends on your in-house systems. The important thing is to make a decision early on whether you will track these costs against one or more ebook editions (PDF, epub, or other), or put all costs against the ‘parent’ title, which is usually the print edition. Once you’ve made a clear decision about this, it will be easier to monitor their profitability, and make decisions over time about where best to put your digital resources. … Read more