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A cartoonish drawing of the upper part of a frowning policeman's face. The badge on his helmet has the letters ISBN

How to avoid the ISBN police

Written by

Masha du Toit

in

,

ISBNs for the self-published writer

Does every book you publish need an ISBN? Let’s put the answer right here, in the first paragraph. If you plan to sell the book in brick-and-mortar bookshops and have it available in libraries, then yes, it must have an ISBN. If not, it’s a “nice to have” and not essential. That’s it! That’s the whole story.

But what about the legal implications? Does using a free ISBN from a platform like IngramSpark have an impact on your copyright, or can you get into trouble with the International SBN Agency if you don’t follow its guidelines?

The world of self-publishing is full of rumours and misinformation. What makes a reader decide to buy a book? How do the Amazon algorithms work, exactly? In our attempts to make sense of these mysteries, we can become paranoid and irrational. So, let’s look at some facts about ISBNs.

What is an ISBN?

ISBN stands for International Standard Book Number. It’s a unique identifier for a particular book. After all, a book’s title is not much use as an identifier. There might be several books with the same title. Even the title and author-name combination is no good, as it’s possible that several writers with the same name could publish books with the same title. Then there is the question of different editions of the same book. How do you specify all those details without a long, unwieldy description?

The solution is to give each book a unique number. The ISBN is a number that uniquely identifies a particular edition of a book from a specific publisher.

For example, a bookshop might want to order a paperback edition of The Hobbit, the one that has a foreword written by author JRR Tolkien’s son Christopher Tolkien. That edition has a unique ISBN that ensures the bookshop won’t accidentally order the hardcover version with a different foreword.

The International ISBN Agency has a database that lists all ISBNs along with the details of the books. If you know a book’s ISBN, you can find out everything else about that book, including the publication date, language and publisher. The ISBN can then be used to order that book.

But what about ebooks?

If a book is available in print as well as an e-book, those two formats cannot be assigned the same ISBN. After all, a person ordering it will most likely want to specify which version they want.

But an e-book could be an EPUB or a MOBI, or even a PDF. In theory, those formats should each have different ISBNs because the person ordering the book may need to differentiate which format they require. If an ISBN is assigned to a particular format, then different versions of that format, such as an ePub on Smashwords or an ePub on B&N, should have different ISBNs.

If that paragraph elevated your blood pressure and made you feel a little shaky, you are not alone. Don’t worry; things are not as bad as they seem. Let’s back up a little. Remember the purpose of an ISBN? It is a number that uniquely identifies a particular edition of a book from a specific publisher.

Consider what happens if you sell your e-book through Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing. KDP only sells e-books in the mobi format. If there is only a single version of a format available at a particular reseller there is no need to have a unique identifier for that format.

Anyone who orders an e-book from Amazon knows what format they are getting, because Amazon only sells one format. What is more, Amazon has its own unique numbering system called the ASIN (Amazon Standard Identification Number). When you publish a book through Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing your book is automatically given an ASIN. While you can assign your Amazon Kindle Direct book an ISBN, it’s not compulsory.

You can see a book’s ASIN if you look at the URL for that book’s page on Amazon. For example, on the Amazon page for the e-book version of The Martian you can see the following number in that web page’s address: B00EMXBDMA. That is the ASIN for that e-book.

a screenshot of the Amazon.com page for the book "The Martian" displaying the ISBN in the page's URL.

Just because your book is available on different platforms- does not mean that each version must have a different ISBN. It simply means that:

  1. If a book already has an ISBN
  2. And you want to strictly follow the rules of the system
  3. You should get a unique ISBN for each edition

In other words, if you decided not to get an ISBN, then you don’t need to worry about this at all.

The ISBN agency will not send you a nasty letter. You will not get into legal trouble if you don’t follow its guidelines, as there is no law about how you should use ISBNs, only guidelines that make the system work as it’s intended. You won’t get in trouble with the ISBN police, because they don’t exist!

Free ISBNs, copyright and intellectual property

One of the many myths about ISBNs is that you should not use free ISBNs provided by book distributors such as Smashwords or IngramSpark, as that means giving up your rights or diluting your intellectual property. The myth warns that you might not be able to republish the book elsewhere, or that you might lose your copyright.

This is not true.

A book’s ISBN number is associated with a description of that book. If a book has an ISBN number, you can look it up to see what the date of publication, language, edition number and publisher are.

  • If you get your own ISBN number, you will be listed as the publisher
  • If you use the free IngramSpark or Smashwords ISBN, then IngramSpark or Smashwords will be listed as the publisher

Does that sound scary? It isn’t, really. The ISBN listing the publisher of a book does not confer rights. Rights are specified by the terms of service you agreed to, or any contract you might have signed. The terms of service might change, the contract may be re-negotiated, but that has nothing to do with who is listed as the publisher on the ISBN database. Having, or not having, an ISBN will not make any difference to the copyright holder’s claim on copyright. Copyright is determined by a different, completely separate system.

There are other things to consider when using free ISBNs, but keeping control of your book rights and copyrights is not one of them.

The stigma of self-publishing

Self-published writers are often concerned about being (or seeming!) professional. Our books must look as good, or better, than books from the big publishing houses. Some of us even want to hide the fact that our books are self-published. And not without reason. Some independent bookstores might balk at listing your book if it has a retail platform listed in the ISBN information.

For this -reason, some writers avoid the free ISBNs provided by IngramSpark or Smashwords. If a person looks up the ISBN and sees IngramSpark or Smashwords listed as the publisher, that might seem unprofessional and obviously self-published.

This is a personal decision and there really is no right or wrong. Weigh up the costs involved in getting an ISBN against that possibility. How often have you, as a reader, looked up a book’s ISBN to see who the publisher is? Try doing it yourself. Do you know where to go to look up an ISBN? 

If you do decide to get ISBNs for your books, do your research. In many countries, you can get ISBNs for free. See the links below for more specific information for your country.

Whether or not you get an ISBN is a personal decision. Make sure it is an informed one!

Some useful links:

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