Buy Your Own ISBN or Not?

About this video

Dale explains what an ISBN — an international standard book number, like a book’s fingerprint — does, where it appears (the copyright page and the barcode), and how its digits encode book type, language region, publisher and title/format. It is inessential for direct sales, such as print books at a farmers market or ebooks and digital audiobooks sold through your own site, but online retail distribution requires one for print: hardcover and paperback each need a separate ISBN, while KDP ebooks get an ASIN and do not require one. Platforms including KDP, Draft2Digital, Lulu and IngramSpark offer free ISBNs, but the platform owns the number and is the publisher of record, so you cannot take it elsewhere and some brick-and-mortar stores are less likely to stock an Amazon-owned ISBN. Using a different free ISBN per platform is possible, but do not publish the same book twice to the same platform, and watch overlapping distribution — IngramSpark and Draft2Digital both use Ingram, so you cannot use both for the same print book. Buy your own from your region’s exclusive agency: Dale warns ISBNs are non-transferable, recounts paying $50 to a third party whose name then had to appear on his imprint, and says the US price is $125 for one ISBN with bulk discounts — he bought the largest bulk package himself, while Canada gives ISBNs to its authors free. Owning ISBNs brings metadata flexibility and easier corrections at the cost of money and registration time for every format; Dale concludes an ISBN will not make or break a book, and successful authors have managed on free ones.

Key takeaways

• An ISBN is not needed for direct sales of print books, or for ebooks and digital audiobooks sold through your own website, but print editions sold through online retailers do need one.
• A free platform ISBN makes the platform, not you, the publisher of record — a KDP book shows as independently published — and that ISBN cannot be taken to another platform.
• Hardcover and paperback editions need different ISBNs, and a significantly overhauled new edition is worth considering for a new ISBN.
• Buy ISBNs only from your own region’s exclusive agency; Dale says he once paid $50 to a third party and had to list that company on the imprint, making the purchase pointless.
• Dale says the US agency charges $125 for a single ISBN with bulk discounts, he bought the largest bulk package himself, and authors who cannot afford ISBNs can start with free ones and invest later.

Episode details: published June 8, 2024 · 14:12 long. Summary written by Self Growth Videos from the episode itself. Business results and any income figures mentioned are Dale L. Roberts’s own claims, shared for education — they are not typical or guaranteed.

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