ISBN

Education Resources from WritersServices.com

International Standard Book Numbers

An ISBN is a product number, used by publishers, booksellers and libraries for ordering, listing and stock control. The ISBN provides the key to access a book in almost all bibliographic databases. It is therefore an important marketing tool.

If you wish to sell your book through major bookselling chains or Internet booksellers, they will require it to have an ISBN to assist their internal processing and ordering systems. You will therefore need to make sure that it has an ISBN; fortunately this is part of the service that WritersPrintShop provides.

You don't need an ISBN if you are going for Private Publishing and your book will not be put on sale.

The 10 digits are always divided into 4 parts of varying length which can be separated by spaces or hyphens. One book can have several ISBNs if it is published in different languages, by different publishers, or in different formats. So the paperback and hardback version of the same book will have different ISBNs, as they are different editions.

Group Identifier	Identifies a nationality or language group of publishers.
Publisher Prefix	Identifies a specific publisher or imprint
Title Number	Identifies the edition or format (paperbacks and hardbacks have separate numbers).
Check Digit	The final digit uses mathematical magic to check that the number has probably been copied or scanned correctly. (For mathematicians -The system uses modulus 11 so the calculated check digit can sometimes be 10, which requires 2 digits, and so is represented by the letter X - Roman numeral for 10 - geddit!)

The ISBN should appear on the reverse of the title page and on the outside back cover of the book. If the book has a dust jacket, the ISBN should also appear on the back of it. For an audio tape or CD the ISBN should appear on the packaging and/or inlay card. If the publication is folded or rolled, such as a map, the number should be visible when folded. The ISBN normally appears in numeric and bar code format for point-of-sale scanners.

You cannot request an ISBN for e-books, calendars and diaries, entertainment videos or CDs, computer games or software plus their manuals. You can't normally have an ISBN for a course book or a title designed for limited distribution.

Don't confuse your ISBN with your ISSN or International Standard Serial Number. This is the number for newspapers and magazines which is administered by the British Library.

The Standard Book Numbering Agency Ltd is the ISBN Agency for the UK and Republic of Ireland.

New ISBN on the way?

If all of the national agencies agree, from 2007 a 13 digit ISBN will replace the existing 10 digit version.

The proposal is to prefix codes with 978 (and 979 when capacity is exhausted).

The observant will have noticed that book bar-codes already incorporate the prefix, 978, which is an EAN (European Article Numbering) code.

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