Bewildering
BISAC
Publishers
Pressured to Use Coding System Despite its many Flaws
FROM PUBLISHING
TRENDS (FEBRUARY 2005)
Not too
long ago, an editor at a major househeard from a disgruntled
author. He was fretting over the fact that his Thanksgiving-themed
book was being categorized under the BISAC subject area
“Social Science/Customs & Traditions.”
He was concerned that the potential buyer for his spiritual
holiday title might not find it if it were shelved next
to, say, Sources of Chinese Traditions, Vol. 1. The
editor was in a quandary — while she certainly
agreed that the book belonged under “General Interest/Seasonal
Books/Thanksgiving,” she didn't know the parameters
for changing a BISAC code. After a series of emails
with the marketing and production departments, she learned
it is possible to change a BISAC code, but
the desired classification did not exist. They ended
up printing the in-house classification on the back
cover, and the editor went on her merry way —
except now she was fretting over BISAC subject
codes.
Have we already
lost you? Let us (try to) explain: The once-arcane and
still-misunderstood BISAC system is being squabbled
over in many large publishing houses, where editors
are being told to attach codes to their books —
even as they ask the seemingly obvious question, “Why?”
What many editors don’t know is that their houses
are getting pressured by large retailer and wholesaler
clients to use this mammoth — and some say, still
arcane — categorization system.
Convoluted,
maybe; but definitely critical. BISAC codes are to booksellers
as the Dewey Decimal System is to librarians. What began
as a simple way to assist the clerk shelving books has
become a complex system, replete with online search
functions and tracked by BookScan.
Barnes & Noble and Amazon
use BISAC codes in differing degrees to filter categories
for their online browsers. (Amazon and Borders declined
to comment for this story, but according to Baker
& Taylor, the wholesaler translates the
BISAC codes into genre codes for Amazon.) “It's
a core, basic and common descriptive language for categorizing
books,” says Book Industry Study Group
Executive Director Jeff Abraham. And,
in conjunction with the ONIX system, they allow the
computers of publishers, distributors and retailers
to describe a book in the same way worldwide —
finally, a method for facilitating global book sales.
More specifically,
it's a list of about 50 subject categories with a total
of about 3,000 (and growing) sub- and sub-subcategories
with related numbers, which is overseen by the BISG’s
BISAC (an acronym for Book Industry Standards and Communications)
Subject Codes Sub-committee. The codes start with three
letters, followed by six numbers. Example: a “Fiction/Romance/Gothic”
title shows up in databases as FIC027040. While booksellers
and distributors praise it because it helps them organize
books without knowing anything about them — in
advance of the publication date — editors are
left flummoxed when their books, which they know intimately,
don't seem to fit any of the BISAC subjects.
A Work
in Progress
Everyone agrees
on one thing: the BISAC subject code list is a work
in progress. Version 2.9, which will reconfigure some
primary categories, including Law and Computers, is
expected out in the next few months, and it's a distant
cousin to Version 1. Looking back at earlier versions,
you can't help but ponder the gap between the mere 14
Science listings and the 44 Religion listings. Even
the current Version 2.8 (available on the BISG website)
has over 100 Religion listings, but for some strange
reason the subcategories of Spirituality and New Age
fall under the heading Body, Mind & Spirit. And
just plain “Spiritual” falls under Self-Help.
You could lose your religion trying to decipher these.
The category of Graphic Novels saw the light of day
rather late — in Version 2.7 —after a group
of publishers pointed out that they didn't really fit
in Comics and Cartoons.
“It’s
bad data hygiene,” says DAP President
Sharon Gallagher, who with National
Accounts Director Jane Brown, rallied
for a revision of the Art category a few years ago.
At the time, the only subcategories were “Art/author”
and “Art/
illustrator.” DAP worked with BISG to develop
more comprehensive Art sub- and sub-subcategories, which
number over 70 now. So, at least there's now a spot
for Leonardo.
Though it revisits
the list twice a year, the sub-committee in charge has
yet to publish formal usage notes. Constance
Harbison, chair of the Subject Code Sub-committee
and senior director of books in print at Bowker,
said the approximately 35-member sub-committee intends
to develop “scope notes,” a separate up-to-the-minute
document that would be available online to help people
use BISAC codes, when it is finished revising the current
edition.
Nobody interviewed
for this story knew exactly when the subject codes were
created. But Wendell Lotz, Chair of
the BISAC General Committee and VP/Product Database
Development at Ingram, joined the sub-committee in 1996,
and Version 1 had been in place for a few years. Though
the coding was invented to “help the $7-an-hour
clerk in the store get the book to the right shelf,”
Lotz says it's only been in the last couple of years
that BISAC has been widely accepted. Of Ingram's top
25 publishers by sales volume, only about three don't
use BISAC at this time, Lotz says. “But, the publishers
still haven't figured out how to use them well.”
One of the main problems Lotz has observed is that editors
and publishers want to put the widest possible category
on a book to get the most exposure. But, BISAC's overseers
wish they would apply the narrowest category.
In the words
of one wholesaler, publishers are driving the system
amok. Steven Pace, Baker &
Taylor VP, Retail Sales, said some publishers
choose the category based on concurrent best-selling
areas. For example, a publisher might classify a title
as “Biography,” when “Self Help”
is more accurate, but less attractive. Helene
Green, director of data operations at Simon
and Schuster, admits “there are in-house
discrepancies” as to how BISAC subject codes are
handled, and she looks forward to the day the BISAC
Committee distributes written standards. “It can
happen six months ahead of publication, or it can happen
the day an ISBN is created,” she said. Sometimes
the editorial team assigns one when they first get the
manuscript, but marketing can override this when assigning
a final code to be sent to trade partners. And, according
to Lotz, Ingram sometimes changes codes before sending
them to retailers.
“BISAC
is really, really, really stupid,” exclaims Mary
Sunden, formerly VP of Penguin International
who worked on their systems issues. “It is the
only part of the ONIX system that people complain about
... because subject categorizing is subjective.”
She attributes its faults to the fact that it was designed
by “techies” who probably didn’t have
the best grasp of how books are made and marketed. “As
a result, people in publishing houses are forcing their
books into these categories,” she says. Granted,
the BISAC codes work well in some areas — such
as more academic fields and traditional trade —
but nonfiction books are becoming harder to pinpoint,
as illustrated with such books as Seabiscuit (Horses
or History?).
If each book
can have numerous BISAC codes, then why is there so
much concern for picking the right one? According to
Jim King, VP, general manager at BookScan,
only the primary subject code is recognized by Bookscan.
For this reason, he says, “We always encourage
publishers to pay attention to BISAC codes — and
it’s something that only a qualified person should
assign.”
In November
2002, Barnes & Noble implemented
its Efficient Data Receipt Program, which told publishers
to use the BISAC subject codes, or risk penalty. The
program requires its vendors to send 11 core data points
for a book 180 days before the publication date —
and the BISAC code is one of them. “The idea behind
the program is that if publishers packaged their books
in a way that required us to spend more time in the
warehouse, then we would ask for remuneration,”
explained Richard Stark, B&N director
of product data, adding that the retailer tried to ease
publishers into the new requirements (it has only resorted
to charge backs twice, and only for repeat offenders).
Over 100 of the retailer’s top vendors currently
are subjected to these requirements; the top 200 vendors
should be on board by the end of 2005; but B&N may
never place this demand on small publishers. Now, about
75% of the data receipts from the involved publishers
arrive complete. A missing BISAC code can add “upwards
of a minute to the [data entering] process,” says
Stark. “This isn’t so much, but if you multiply
it by tens of thousands each year, it’s significant.”
Somewhat ironically,
the biggest motivator for implementing BISAC, B&N,
uses the codes mostly as a guide to assign its own in-house
subject categories. It has two in-house categorization
systems: one for its website and one for in stores.
Back to the
Thanksgiving book dilemma. One of the sub-committee’s
current agenda items is to discuss the adoption of another
coding system, called “themes,” which would
augment the subject areas and aid in merchandizing.
They include specific ethnic orientations, holidays,
regions or topics (e.g. Black History Month). In the
meantime, when all else fails, don’t forget code
#NON000000, for those non-classifiables.
For more
basic information on BISAC subject codes, see www.bisg.org/publications/bisac_subj_faq.html.
©2005
Publishing Trends
