Myths and Magic of ISBNs
If you dream of having your books fly off the shelves at every mom-and-pop bookstore, or to be found in any library, you need to understand the mysterious world of ISBNs.
An ISBN is an International Standard Book Number, that identifies an individual literary work. Originally ten digits, the identifiers are thirteen digits since 2007. Encoded within is the country of the publisher, the title of the work, and a “check” digit that validates the code as being authentic.
Every format of your book will have a different ISBN.
You’ll likely have at least two formats of your book: ebook and paperback. Later, you may add an audiobook, a large-print edition, or even a special hardback edition with sprayed edges and a foiled cover.
Great, Jordyn. But Amazon gives me a free code. Why can’t I use that?
Short answer: You can, but you probably shouldn’t.
The key piece of data contained in the ISBN that you care about as a self-published author is the publisher. When you use a free Amazon or Barnes & Noble code, it’s not an ISBN. It’s an internal product tracking number that includes the format, title, etc. that the distributor (Amazon, BN) tracks in their internal systems.
So what?
Short answer: It doesn’t work for bookstores and libraries.
Let’s go back to your dream of bookstores or libraries displaying your brilliant printed works. To realize that dream, you’ll need your own codes because other bookstores—who are barely surviving in spite of the big online stores—don’t particularly want to order books from their competition. In fact, they aren’t using that resource to select books. They’re using the catalog Bowker provides, Books in Print ®(online as Bookwire), with all the books registered through their service. And they’re using the ISBN to track what books readers have requested and their own inventory. Also, ISBNs are, by definition, international.
So a bookstore in Italy, that wants to stock your Tuscan romance for their tourist traffic, can order the book by ISBN.
Perhaps you’re convinced you need an ISBN, but now you’re wondering if you have to buy them from Bowker.
Short answer: If you live in the U.S., yes.
Why?
If you purchase your number from anyone other than Bowker, THEY are the publisher of record for YOUR book. That’s contrary to the entire point of being self-published.
When you have ownership of the ISBN, you control the metadata associated with that number including: the cover, book description, author, contributors, etc. And you control the option to delist that book when you release a second edition (and assign a new ISBN).
Bowker will sell you single ISBNs, blocks of 10, or 100 or more. The cost per unit goes down significantly the more you buy. I recommend you buy the biggest block you can afford, preferably a pack of 100 if you plan to publish more than five books in ebook and paperback formats. Remember, each format gets its own number.
Next step—assign your ISBN in the My Identifiers part of the Bowker website.
The print option is fairly direct: Name of the book and blurb, author name and bio, genre and a few more tidbits, like the cover. Always add the cover as it shows in the catalog the bookstores and libraries are browsing.
The ebook can get a bit tricky because there are several options to select from.
Medium is obvious: ebook. Format is usually electronic book text because the reader downloads the text to their device. The ebook File Type is where you could run into some complications. Before Amazon went to epub only, they used the mobi format. So for any ebook you published, you likely had two formats. This meant you needed two ISBNs for every book before you got to paperback. Now that Amazon has moved to epub only, I recommend one ISBN specifying the epub format.
I use Vellum to generate my ebooks. You could DIY it, and possibly end up with more unique formats such as .pdf or even .docx. But if you’re using a formatting software (Atticus, Vellum) there’s no need to generate other formats to distribute to Amazon, Apple, BN, Draft2Digital, Google Play, or Kobo. They all take epub. Use one number for that format and save the other 99 ISBNs for something else.
The last tip I’ll share here is about publishing your paperbacks.
Even if your ebooks are exclusive with Amazon in their Kindle Unlimited program, your paperbacks can still be published and available wide through multiple distributers. But again, you’re a thrifty author, so you only want to use one ISBN. There is a way to make this magic happen.
First, publish your paperback on Amazon with your ISBN for your paperback format but don’t select Expanded Distribution.
Next, publish to Ingram Spark. They use expanded distribution by default with no method to opt out. And yes, you can use the same ISBN.
Finally, if you want to also have your paperback published with Barnes & Noble, publish your paperback using their free identifier.
Wait? What? Jordyn, you just spent 900 words telling me not to do this.
Ingram Spark has that can’t-be-turned-off distribution, right? So Barnes & Noble has access to your paperback through them. Therefore, you can’t use the same number as the product identifier to publish on their platform. But they seem to favor paperback books that are published directly to them. Translation: More BN customers will see your paperback if it’s direct. Bookstores and libraries can already find your book through Bowker and Ingram, so they aren’t looking on BN to get your book, only readers. It’s safe, in this case, to use the vendor identifier to list your paperback on their internal system.
Huge thanks to Erin Wright of Wide for the Win for breaking down paperback distribution toddler-style. If you’re an author and not a member of that Facebook group, please remedy that as soon as possible, or join the group on Circle.
♠️
References:
https://www.bowker.com/isbn-us
https://www.isbn.org/faqs_formats_reprints_editions
https://bookwire.bowker.com/Home
https://www.facebook.com/erin.wright.author/videos/1225986507870395/?idorvanity=556186621558858