ISBN Numbers To Have or Not to Have

[bcomet]

RE: ISBN Numbers To Have or Not to Have: What are the benefits/dangers/etc?

Following links and reading wildly (and widely) around this week's blog topics on self-publishing as it's evolving,
I came upon two very different recommendations:

1. Don't bother with an ISBN number up front, that they are $125. each and not needed for B & N or Amazon. To wait.
(But how long?)

2. BookBaby seems to indicate that you should get one at the get-go, and, if needed, they can supply it for $19.00 on top of their other costs. (But I'm not clear on what they actually offer for $99.?)

Anyone out there who can make sense of these above statements? Or ever work with ISBNs on self-pub projects? Or without them? Or with Bookbaby?

I would love to understand more.

Thanks.

[Doug Pardee]

Bear in mind that if your book has an ISBN, it will show up on the "sales tracking Radar" (Nielsen BookScan, etc.) where publishers and such can see how well your book is selling. This can be a good thing if you sell tons of copies, or a bad thing if you sell almost none.

If you're just going e-book, there is a lot of controversy about whether ISBNs are relevant or even applicable. An ISBN is basically a number that a bookstore can use to order a copy of a specific edition of a specific book. E-books don't need this. Even among the folks who think that ISBNs are important for e-books, there's a question about whether each format (Kindle, B&N, EPUB, Microsoft, etc.) needs its own ISBN. If you give each format different ISBNs, you'll end up with a bunch of smaller sales figures instead of one bigger one, and it'll have cost you more. Ditto for putting a new ISBN on your e-book when you make any changes to it.

Note that Amazon doesn't show the ISBN for e-books. On the other hand, Apple and Sony reportedly require ISBN for e-books stocked in their e-book stores. My personal inclination is "ISBN can wait until sales get good enough that tracking might be worthwhile."

If you do decide to get an ISBN, note that if you buy the ISBN yourself, you are the publisher of record. If you get the ISBN from someone else (BookBaby, or whatever), they are the publisher of record. You probably won't be able to use the BookBaby ISBN to distribute through a different channel. Check on this stuff; I don't claim any expertise.

Added: I believe that since Amazon doesn't track ISBNs for e-books, Kindle e-book sales don't appear in Nielsen BookScan. Nielsen is just starting to track e-books at all, so I could be all wet on this.

[bcomet]

Thanks Doug. That is helpful info.

[Margo]

Question for Doug...

So if you don't care whether your sales end up on BookScan, can you just skip the ISBN entirely? Could you also skip it for a POD version (since that won't be in bookstores)?

[Doug Pardee]

Margo, I'm not an expert on the subject, but from what I can tell, for an e-book you only need an ISBN if you're trying to work with a bookstore that requires an ISBN — Sony and Apple being the two that I know of. Amazon-published e-books don't have ISBNs, most B&N-published e-books don't have ISBNs.

For printed books that you want to sell in bookstores — as opposed to, say, out of the trunk of your car or through your uncle's flower shop — I'd be very inclined to assign an ISBN. Bookstores use the ISBN for ordering purposes.

Those are my inexpert opinions, worth every penny that you paid for them.

[Margo]

Those are my inexpert opinions, worth every penny that you paid for them.

Thanks, Doug. I feel like I got a good return on my investment. :)