ISBN stands for international standard book number. It usually starts with 978- or 979- followed by 10 other digits. ISBNs are assigned to books on an individual basis and cannot be reused once they are assigned, which protects your book from forms of copyright violation. Every single ISBN is unique and one is required for each version of your work that you’d like to sell (meaning if you have an ebook version and a print version of the same title, each will need their own individual ISBNs), which is why this piece of information is so important to your specific book metadata.
Unfortunately, if a title doesn’t have an ISBN and is not registered in an ISBN database, there’s no way for your many friends in the book business to know about it, including: retailers (physical and online), distributors, wholesalers, and libraries. These are the key players who receive ISBN data and the prime people you want to receive it. No ISBN means fewer opportunities for your book to be discovered and purchased.
Your ISBN helps retailers, libraries, and beyond catalog important information about your work. Every author wants readers to know different things about his or her work, but the information may overlap. For example, let’s say you have written a children’s book about a pigeon who wants to go to school. You might use keywords in your summary such as “pigeon,” “school,” “learn,” and “bus.” The problem is, the author of a similar well-known book such as Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus, may have similar information on file in retailers’ often vast catalogs. Your ISBN number separates your particular information from that of other authors and makes it easier to locate quickly.
Self-publishing authors often ask why they should buy their own ISBNs when some self-publishing services offer them for “free”. The simplest answer is control. Owning your ISBN means controlling the book metadata that goes with it. Whoever buys your ISBN controls the metadata accompanying it—so it should be you. No one knows what your book is about better than you. Don’t you want to be the one to describe it? If others assign and own the ISBN to a title, the author gives up that control and must rely on what someone else says about his or her book.
As discussed throughout this course, book metadata is how a book is introduced to the world, it is how a book is found, and it is perhaps its most important marketing tool, always working in the background. Controlling it is essential, and control comes with owning your ISBNs and managing your metadata yourself.
Once you’ve bought your ISBNs and your book is ready to publish, simply log in to your account from whichever service you purchased your ISBN, click the ISBN number, and fill out the data in the full title detail form.
You have the opportunity to insert lots of data in your full title detail form—title, author, description, number of pages, size, language, copyright year, date of publication, contributors, category, title status (out-of-print, active, etc.), price, currency, book cover, and interior (to index keywords). This metadata is one of the keys to book discoverability. Once you enter the information into one, you can clone it and modify it for the other formats. (So make sure you get it right on that first one, to prevent having to edit each of the ISBN records.)
Whether a book is in electronic or print format really makes no difference. If you want to self-publish and maximize your opportunities, assign your own ISBNs and provide good metadata to go along with them. This way, your book is more discoverable to its potential readers.
This chapter was compiled from the following posts on the IngramSpark blog:
“How to Optimize Your ISBN for Book Discoverability” by IngramSpark Staff
“The Importance of Owning Your Own ISBN When Self-Publishing” by IngramSpark Staff
“The Value of ISBNs and Book Metadata” by IngramSpark Staff
