3 Reasons to Own Your Own ISBN
Making Your Books Into Your Business
Making Your Books Into Your Business
What Is An ISBN?
The acronym “ISBN” stands for International Standard Book Number and is the identification number for your book. For each format of your book that you publish, print, digital, and audio, you will need a separate ISBN.
If you make significant changes to your book in the future, you will need to get another ISBN for each format. Many authors do that and publish the 2nd edition of their book, to update the copy for several different reasons.
Since 2017, ISBNs have been issued with 13 digits and includes information such as the publisher, the country, and the title. When you get an ISBN, you can also separately obtain a related bar code for your print edition.
You can publish your book without an ISBN, but then there will be no way to identify your book for either brick-and-mortar or online stores. If you plan to market your book only to friends and family, you can probably get away with not having an ISBN. But if you want to distribute and sell your book to others, an ISBN is absolutely necessary.
When you have an ISBN for your book, bookstores, retailers, and libraries can find and order your book for subsequent sales, if your book is cataloged with a book distributor.
With an ISBN assigned to your book title, you will be able to track the sales of your book nationally and internationally through your chosen distributor.
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Where Do You Get An ISBN?
One of the most important things to remember as you decide on your ISBN is that the ISBN is assigned to the publisher of your book. You can get free ISBNs through Amazon and other book printers, but that means that Amazon or someone else is designated as the publisher of your book, and maintains control over the distribution of your book.
This is why I always recommend to my indecent publishing clients that they invest in obtaining their own ISBNs that will be assigned to their chosen publisher, or better yet, to them as their own publisher.
Unless you get a free ISBN from Amazon or others, ISBNs cost money. This is where you, as an independent author, must decide if the benefits of having your own ISBN outweigh the costs.
There is only one official site for obtaining an ISBN in the United States and its territories: Bowker Identifier Services. Each ISBN costs $125.00, but if you plan to publish in more than one format, and/or more than one book, you can purchase ISBNs in bulk: 10 ISBNs for $295.00, which reduces the cost of each ISBN to $29.00. ISBNs never expire; you can assign one of your ISBNs to another format or another book at any time. Obtaining a corresponding bar code for your book’s ISBN incurs an additional charge, but I recommend it for your print books.
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The Top 3 Benefits of Owning Your Own ISBN
The Imprint An imprint in the traditional and self-publishing world is the publisher’s trademark or brand name for a single book or for a specific group of works. The assigned ISBN points to the imprint, that is, to the publisher. If you get a free ISBN, the imprint is the company (Amazon, for example) that is listed as the publisher. When you buy your own ISBN, you can assign it to your own publisher or to yourself as the self-publisher of your works.
The Control When you control the ISBN and publisher of your book(s), you control the distribution and sales. You also control the metadata and other information related to your book, which can be changed at any time. Technically, any orders for your book go to and through your publisher and/or your distributor, so when you own your own ISBN you further control the sales of your book(s).
The Distribution If you are an independent author, you can decide to publish only through Amazon, and that is OK. But if you wish to have the greatest possible opportunity for global distribution, you should register your book(s) in all formats with Ingram, the largest book distributor in the United States. The Ingram database is where retail stores, libraries, and even Amazon find your book(s).
As an independent author, you want your book to represent you, your writing business, and your brand. You want to have the greatest amount of control and the widest distribution opportunities possible for your book(s), now and in the future.
Investing in your own ISBN for each book and each format of each book is the best way to have the most control and sell the most books.
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