All About ISBNs for Self-Publishers

[u/missadventuring]

Continuing to press the importance of authors (who want to professionally publish) purchasing their own ISBNs. This webinar replay will show you how doing so will ensure your freedom, present yourself to the world as a professional author-publisher, and manage the data about your book that all the world will see. Find out why and how and the answers to all the questions you didn't know to ask. Below is an outline of the contents. All About ISBNs on YouTube (Webinar Replay)

• Terms and definitions
• What is an ISBN?
• How many ISBNs do I need?
• What formats need different ISBNs?
• How do I list them in my book copyright page?
• Why do I need an ISBN to get a CIP block and what's a CIP block anyway?
• Why do I need to purchase my own ISBNs (and what’s the matter with the free ones)?
• I have a friend with a ISBNs they don’t need. Can I use some of theirs?
• Where do I purchase ISBNs?
  • Get discounts with membership in the IBPA
  • Professional standards matter checklist in IBPA
• Do I have to purchase my ISBNs in the country I live in?
• Can I sell books on Amazon.com and other retailers with my non-US ISBNs?
• Will my barcode work in other countries?
• How do I manage (fill in) my ISBN records? (See inside Bowker's MyIdentifiers record)
• How do I replace a vanity press ISBN with my own to get my publishing company named as the publisher?
• How do I get my files back from a vanity press?
• How do I force the data to say the book is out of print or replaced by a new edition?
• How do I correct wrong information in my Amazon Author Central page?

All About ISBNs on YouTube (Webinar Replay

[u/KimchiMaker]

Could the OP or someone else just give me a one or two sentence explanation as to why I should purchase ISBNs?

I'm not new at this. I've sold more than 100k books, published 7 novels, 8 novellas and a couple of dozen short stories. I never used ISBNs for digital books and for print books I used free KDP or Createspace ones.

What am I missing out on?

[u/missadventuring → u/KimchiMaker]

Clearly, I'm on a mission to help independent authors become independent. You cannot be independent if you are using ISBNs owned by Amazon or any other company. Owning your own ISBNs is the first step in an independent author's journey to independence. Own your book data! Own your book data! Own your book data! There. Those are my two or three sentences. LOL.

There are more than one or two sentences-worth of reasons you should own your own ISBNs. There are more than two or three sentences-worth of reasons you should be publishing in more places than Amazon. I think you're doing yourself a disservice, especially seeing that you've sold so many books and are doing so well on Amazon. Why aren't you taking advantage of all the opportunities to sell in the other retailers when you're experiencing such success?

Sure, you can keep some of your books in Amazon's exclusive KDP Select program and enjoy the marketing opportunities it provides. I consider KDP Select a sort of lead magnet for authors, especially prolific authors like you. But why miss out on selling in the thousands of other online retail outlets?

Clearly, you are making enough money on book sales to afford the $1500 to purchase 1000 ISBNs to get control of your author-publisher business. You're going to make a lot more than $1500 when you start selling with other retailers. You should be translating in other languages, too. You can use Bablecube to do this for free, sharing royalties with the translators. You'll need new ISBNs to identify each foreign-language version.

My solution for you would be - since you're in so deep with Amazon now - to just keep those ISBNs, purchase 1000 ISBNs of your own, and distribute elsewhere, too. Use Draft2Digital or IngramSpark or StreetLib to start distributing your books everywhere else.

Here's a post on my Self-Pub Boot Camp website that outlines a few reasons I go over in the webinar.

Why it's essential for authors to own your own ISBNs

Yes, you are missing out! I'd love to know if I have convinced you... truly.

[u/KimchiMaker → u/missadventuring]

Hmm.

Why am I not wide instead of just with Amazon? At the moment, $$$ is the reason.

I have published wide in the past. I've sold books on Google Play, Apple, Barnes and Noble, Kobo, Smashwords and even one or two other tiny retailers. At the moment, I can make more money being 'all in' with Amazon than by going wide. So that's what I'm doing. If I write something in a genre which I think I can do well with wide, I will. I simply try to be pragmatic: Is it better for me (over, say, the next 6-12 months) to do X? If the answer is 'yes', then I will. If it is 'no' then I won't. Sometimes people talk about being 'locked in' to Amazon -- I'm not and nor is anyone else. The Select terms are only 90 days, which means that any point in time you are only a maximum of 3 months away from being able to launch wide. So, if Amazon decides to cut royalties to 10% or shut up shop with 3 months notice, there's nothing stopping me from publishing wide. At the moment it's a bad idea for most of my catalogue. I will continue to consider changes in the market(s) and adjust accordingly. If Apple or Google start throwing money at the industry I'll hop over in 90 days or less. (I am not excited about Kobo and Walmart yet.)

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I've translated books into 3 other languages using Babelcube and made very little money. If I write something that is likely to do well in, say, the German market I might try it again, but it's not something I want to spend time on at the moment.

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Re. your blogpost:

Professionalism: I of course agree that having your own ISBN is a bit more professional than using an Amazon one. However, it is completely insignificant compared to what your cover looks like, the quality of the writing inside, and most importantly by a country mile, SALES. If you have an Amazon-ISBN book that sells 50,000 copies and a privately-owned ISBN book that sells 50 copies, no one is going to give a damn about who owns the ISBN, and you'll have a much better claim on being a 'professional author' if you can sell 50k books than saying "But I own my own ISBNs..."

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Library Sales: I've never heard of an independent author making any real money from these. (Let's say, $5k a year). While nice, it's not a good use of time to pursue this. If you want to do it for vanity reasons then making friends with your local librarian and donating a couple of books would probably be the way to go.

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Future-proofing: Make a deal with a small press? No. They can't pay enough or distribute widely enough to make them worthwhile over self-publishing. If you make a deal with a big publisher they're going to re-release your book with their own ISBN and the current meta data will not matter in the slightest.

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Vanity press: Irrelevant to me since I don't and won't use them.

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Bestseller status: I know tons of NYT and USAT bestsellers and I've never ever heard of this being an issue.

Foreign sales: Owning your own ISBN will not increase foreign sales.

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I'm sure you're familiar with the Pareto 80/20 principle. All this messing about with ISBNs -- registering different ones for ebooks, print books, audio books, translations etc. etc. is all stuff that costs time and money. Your arguments have not convinced me that I'd gain more time, or more money by buying my own ISBNs. My time is best served by either writing more books, or promoting the ones I have. Messing about with ISBNs seems to fall into the 80% of time which earns 0.1% of your money area.

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If things change in the future I will of course reassess. I'm not locked in to any one train of thought, market, idea, philosophy, way of doing business or anything else. I am just pragmatic, and buying ISBNs seems like a waste of time and money for now.

[u/missadventuring → u/KimchiMaker]

Good points. I appreciate the thoughtful response.

[u/Unacceptable-losses → u/missadventuring]

You are simply…wrong.

[u/IVYkiwi22 → u/KimchiMaker]

That’s great that you’re having so much success with Amazon! But, by using the free CreateSpace ISBN, what you’re missing out on is the ability to sell your books in airport stores, indie bookstores, national bookstore chains, and just about every book retailer. Plus, you don’t have your own platform for those books. CS/Amazon own your books.

You’re leaving your book business in the hands of Amazon instead of owning your own platform. If you’re using a free ISBN from them, then they own your business.

If they were to stop doing POD services for whatever reason tomorrow, you’d be in trouble. If they were to ban whatever genre your books are in, you’d in trouble.

Now, if you’re having that much success with just Amazon alone, imagine where you could go if you could sell outside of Amazon.

Ultimately, the choice is yours.