What are the numbers that appear in most books on the back side of the title page near the bottom.?

Question

Most books have a group of numbers that are printed on most books on the back side of the title page on the bottom of the page. These are not ISBN numbers. My 88 year old mom wants to know what they mean. Can you help?

Answer 1

Hi,
I am in the UK and I have just looked at three books, all have the ISBN number but nothing else.

Perhaps it is something relevant to your location.

Hi,
I have had a word with my wife and she has told me that the numbers refer to the text and text sizes used through the book.
How they actually read she does not know but for example you would hav a number for the standard text size and type, a number for the capitals used at the beginning of each paragraph, for italics that are used etc.

The more variances in the text the more numers that are used.

Answer 2

if the number sequence goes something like this:
" 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 " it is likely the printing number, with the lowest number present being the printing (third printing, in this case).

Other possibilities might refer to a date and sequence number of titles by the same publishing house, as in:
" 20070006345 "
This would likely appear immediately below the Library of Congress cataloging data.

Does this help?

Answer 3

These are the ISBN (International Standard Book Numbers) numbers for the library of Congress that catalogs all books published as they are aware of.

The US Library of Congress is the depository/registry for all publications worldwide...... maybe excluding N. Korea and some others. There are Millions upon Millions upon..... of books stored there.

Answer 4

they usually refer to the printing and where it was printed and by what publisher...for collectors and such.