Currently reading - Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Sea of Monsters by Rick Riordan
Out of the distribution channels, I narrowed my choices down to Amazon and Barnes & Noble for their respective customer reach and Smashwords so I can do coupons for my loyal blog readers. (To know what you're getting in to, go read the the first chapter of Zombie Love.)
Now, I can distribute an e-book through Amazon and Smashwords without an ISBN, but not through Barnes & Noble or anyone else I've discovered so far. And Barnes & Noble is one of my prime choices, so I need an ISBN. (I've been seriously studying CreateSpace, Amazon's paper independent publishing arm. It looks to be much cheaper than Lulu, but CreateSpace also requires an ISBN.)
"What's an ISBN?" you ask.
ISBN stands for International Standard Book Number, a unique identifier for every book, paper or digital, that goes through normal retail and library chains. If you go through a regular publisher like Ellora's Cave or St. Martin's Press, the folks at the publishing company handle the ISBN for you. If you indie publish and you want to distribute through certain channels, you'll need to buy your own.
In the U.S., an ISBN can only be purchased through Bowker. However, Canadians can get them free from the Canadian government. (You lucky dogs!)
A single ISBN costs $125, but a block of 10 starts at $250 up to $1000 for a block of 1000. If you're going to publish more than one book, or multiple versions of one book, it's much cheaper to buy blocks. Also, different e-book formats are supposed to have their own individual ISBNs.
As I said, certain channels will accept your e-book without an ISBN, but if you're looking long-term distribution into most retail outlets and libraries, an ISBN assigned to your book will be in your best interest.
Once you've bought a block and assigned the number to your book, you'll need to register the ISBN with Books-In-Print. Morris Rosenthal has an excellent blog on self-publishing, and I suggest you read his post on dealing with Bowker.
It sounds complicated, but it's not hard. Isn't administrative stuff fun?
Also, different e-book formats are supposed to have their own individual ISBNs.
ReplyDeleteWhat do you mean by format here? My first thought is PDF vs. ePUB vs. MOBI vs. whatever else, but I know that's not how the publishers do it. Help? :)
Angie
You are NOT supposed to use the same ISBN for MOBI as you do for ePUB, or PDF, et. al.
ReplyDeleteDo some publishers do it? Yes. Are they supposed to? No. Since many e-publishers only sell digital version from their own websites, not through third-party retailers, it's pretty much a non-issue.
Using Bush's Decision Points as an example, check out Amazon.com and BarnesandNoble.com. Amazon does use the same ISBN for the Kindle version as the hardcover version, but they also make a point of stating the ISBN is from source pages and attach an ASIN (which stands for Amazon Standard Identification Number). The ASIN is an internal number used only by Amazon because they're assuming their MOBI e-books won't be read on anything but a Kindle. They also assume the MOBI version won't be available for sale anywhere else, even though Smashwords does sell MOBI versions of e-books.
Again, that goes back to Amazon and Smashwords not requiring ISBNs.
However, Barnes and Noble show a separate ISBN for the ePUB version than either the hardback, the paperback, or the audio book. But again, Barnes and Noble only sell the ePUB version, as does Apple iBooks. There's an assumption that they will both be selling the ePUB version as retailers, which is why they both require ISBNs.
Since I'm acting as my own publisher, I'd prefer to play it safe and have different ISBNs for different digital version since I'm going through different retail outlets. It's old attorney habits rearing their heads--an ounce of prevention, yada, yada, yada. . .