Re: Erroneous Copyright Dates on Books

Unlikely. A publisher gets a block of ISBNs from Bowker, then as books are scheduled one sends in forms to list the book in Books in Print and at the same time assign one of the ISBNs from the block, preferably about six months before scheduled publication.

But that's utterly unrelated to what copyright date is printed in the book. Publishing is pretty chaotic, and I can understand a book scheduled for January actually coming back from the printer in December, but it's hard to think of a legitimate reason for a date two years in the future.

Someone else suggested that it was to extend the term copyright coverage, but considering that the term is already at least 75 years, that seems unlikely, too.

Maybe it was just a mistake to print 1995 as the book's copyright date.

John R Levine
<johnl[_at_]iecc.com> Received on Thu Jan 06 1994 - 23:38:42 GMT