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So you’re publishing a book. The release date is near, and you’re putting the final touches on its metadata—the information about the book and product.

Back cover copy has been written, a price chosen, but you’ve got one thing on your list you haven’t quite tackled yet: the ISBN.

To people who are new to the publishing world, ISBNs are a magical number, somehow identifying both what the book is and who owns it. Well, in real life, the ISBN only tells you one of those things, so let’s dive in and talk a little about what exactly an ISBN is, and how to get it.

What is an ISBN?

ISBN stands for “International Standard Book Number.” Invented in the UK after its biggest bookstore realized they needed to put their inventory on the computer, an ISBN is basically a book’s social security number. It is not a bar code.

An ISBN is a string of 13 numbers. They are unique to each book, and cannot be reused.

What does the number tell you?

An ISBN is the number that links to a book’s information. It includes:

• The publisher
• What country it came from
• What book it is (including title and edition)

Who sells ISBNs, and how can I buy one?

Each territory has its own agency that assigns ISBNs. In the United States, it’s the U.S. ISBN Agency. Publishing people normally call it Bowker.

You should not buy an ISBN from anyone other than Bowker, because each iSBN contains the publisher information. If your buy it from a secondhand source, the publisher won’t line up with the rest of the metadata, and will make it difficult for your book to be available in bookstores and online.

Bowker sells ISBNs in groups of

• 1
• 10
• 100
• 1,000
• 10,000
• 100,000

They cost $125/ISBN if bought individually, and lower in price if bought in bulk.

What needs an ISBN?

Books and book-like things (including audiobooks, ebooks, and printed books.)

You need a new ISBN for every format of book. So if you were to publish a book in first hardcover, then softcover, then an ebook, audiobook, and then an annotated edition, you would need a total of 5 ISBNs for the same title.

Note: Bowker suggests having a different ISBN for each type of ebook file (.epub and .mobi), but we don’t recommend that as it’s not necessary. It IS necessary, however, to have a different ISBN for hardback and paperback.

If your book isn’t going into distribution, and you are handselling it only, you don’t need an ISBN.

Where does your display the ISBN?

Your ISBN will be on the copyright page (for all versions of the book), and on the back cover for a printed version. You can buy barcodes to assign to your ISBN number from Bowker as well, and if you bundle them with your ISBN, you’ll save some money. Just make sure you know how much you’re going to charge for your book before you generate the barcode!

So that’s ISBN 101.

Is there anything you’d like to know about that we didn’t cover?

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