Protect Your Rights With Your Own ISBNs

Tips for the self-publisher

Once your book is completed and ready for distribution you will need to add an ISBN number to it if you plan on selling it. There are several ways to acquire ISBNs and some countries do not even require them. But if you want to reach a global audience, you should consider your ISBN needs carefully.

The International Standard Book Number (ISBN) is a commercial book identifier that uniquely identifies your book. An ISBN is assigned to each edition and variation of a book. For example, an e-book, a paperback, and a hardcover edition of the same book will each have a different ISBN. Therefore, if you are selling both a paperback and an e-book version of your work, you will need at least two ISBN numbers. Book aggregators often require a separate ISBN for each sales channel, so it is a good idea to have additional ISBN numbers available for this situation.

Are free ISBNs ok?

You can get free ISBN numbers, but be aware that those numbers will be owned by the company that provides them (i.e., Amazon) and you cannot transfer them. However, if you buy your own book identifiers, you can transfer those to wherever you want. You worked too hard on your book to give the rights away, so buy your own ISBN numbers.

For example, if you wanted to print your book in the US ‘for distribution to the Americas), Italy (for distribution to Europe), and the Philippines (to sell your book in Asia), you could do that with a single ISBN. This could increase your profit margin if you had an international audience by reducing your printing and shipping costs. Likewise, owning your ISBN could help you meet distributor needs as you extend your digital market.

Where do I get ISBNs?

For the US and Australia, you can buy ISBNs from Bowker.com. Here is a link to their website and additional information about ISBNs. (https://www.myidentifiers.com/identify-protect-your-book/isbn/buy-isbn)

In some countries, like Japan and India, ISBNs can be obtained for free, but based on what I’ve heard, you can only get them one at a time. This is not convenient if you plan on providing books in multiple formats.

How many ISBNs do I need?

At Bowkers, you can buy one, ten, 100, or 1,000 ISBNs at a time. While there is a huge discount for buying large quantities it is not really worth it unless you are going to use all those numbers. For my book, Win the Day, I’ve bought ten identifiers and used five of them for the first publishing. I used two for paperbacks (different sales channels) and three for ebooks (different formats). The additional numbers can be used for other books, I used one for my book’s supplemental workbook, as they are not linked to a specific title until you assign them.

I got my ISBNs, what do I do next?

Once you are ready to start distributing your book, you will need to go into your account and register each version’s information. This includes the Book’s title, author, description, publish date, language and additional contributors. I listed my editor and designer to help promote them. Then you will add the book format and pricing information. You can also duplicate a record to another ISBN number so that all your listings are consistent.

While buying ISBN numbers may be something you did not anticipate when starting on your book project, this hidden cost is well worth the investment to protect your intellectual property and distribution rights.