Everything You Need to Know About ISBN’s

by Aishah Macgill

You are about to self publish your first book. You keep on hearing the same word, well not so much a word, but an anagram. It’s the ubiquitous ISBN.

ISBN means International Standard Book Number. Almost every book on the planet requires one. The exceptions are:

1. eBook PDF’s sold direct to clients, the public or from a website as a downloadable eBook
2. Print books that are sold direct to clients or the public via your own website that you do not wish to distribute elsewhere

If you desire to have your book available as a POD, Print On Demand, or as an eBook sold via a third party, such as Amazon, Create Space, iBooks, Kobo, Barnes & Noble and so on, or distrubuted via bookstores, you need to have an ISBN.

Note that you will need a unique ISBN for every version of your book.

• Print book including Print On Demand (POD)
• Amazon kindle eBook (optional, you can use Amazon generated ASAIN)
• Smashwords eBook (optional. You can use a free Smashwords issued ISBN)
• iBook for Apple eBookstore

There are different avenues you can follow to obtain ISBN’s for your book.

• buy them yourself from Bowkers
• use the free ISBN’s or ASAIN offered by most self publishing platforms
• your self publishing service provider can normally supply ISBN’s too