The Last ISBN

David Green (Books) was issued with 10 ISBN numbers in 1990 on the occasion of the booklet Museum. 10 came free in those days but now 1 costs £91 and 10 cost £174. I won't be having any more, then, and I've got one left.

So one day I'll use it and after that I'll either have to find a publisher for further titles - which isn't ideal because they will want to at least break even - or go without being listed which is fine in as far as nobody will order it but it won't feel 'official'.

It's a bit of a pain in the neck being official, having to send copies to copyright libraries and remembering to delete the title as 'out of print' as soon as looks respectable but it feels better.

The last ISBN, then, must be decided on sooner or later. I can wait indefinitely for the irregular output of poems to very gradually make it a bigger book(let), do the big career retrospective Collected Poems and include those from the last five years or we can have those in a book of their own which looks like the best idea because it's in keeping with the 'series' such as it is.

This afternoon I put together fifteen poems representing those worth seeing print, I reckon, since The Perfect Book. I like it well enough. Three poems were candidates to give the collection its title - Rainyday Woman, Romanticism and Success - and its Romanticism that's winning so far because it fits with the cover and, I'd like to think, continues with the ironies of The Perfect Book and a cover that said The Last of the Great Dancers, David Green.

It's all set up and ready to go, then. I realize that proper publishing houses take months if not years to produce a title but I can do it in a week or not. I'll think about it and look at it a while longer, though, because like it says in Aldi once that last ISBN is gone, it's gone and after 34 years of David Green (Books) that will be that.