Comments on: What’s Owning Your Own ISBN Good For? Absolutely Nothing.

By: Newt Barrett

Newt Barrett — Sat, 14 Jun 2008 21:34:19 +0000

Folks,
It seems to me that in a POD world, serious authors should be publishers who control ISBN’s and everything else.
-author/publishers don’t need to handle their own fulfillment or anything else but writing; in a world of virtual teams, they can farm out everything.
-Moreover, a POD book with Lightning Source need never be out of print.
-even if an ISBN is ‘decommissioned,’ the author/publisher can simply issue a new edition with a new ISBN from the Bowker block of 10.
-if you own a block of ISBN’s you can accomodate new editions, eBooks, Kindle editions, CDs, etc.
-I’m not sure why the original writer went to such lengths to talk authors out of controlling their ISBN’s.
Newt

By: David Arp

David Arp — Mon, 19 May 2008 22:45:17 +0000

John,

Regardless of all the nonsense you find on expert sites, the ISBN identification of books is based on a system to uniquely identify books. If you look at the original ISO document which defines the ISBN system, the purpose was never to be used for Publisher identification, but rather title identification. The ISBN is a unique 13-digit key which is used for discoverability and supply chain ID.

By: John Culleton

John Culleton — Mon, 12 May 2008 14:22:44 +0000

I respectfully disagree in part. It is sometimes useful for marketing purposes to have your own ISBN block. If you have your own ISBN numbers and imprint (permissible when using Booklocker) then you become the publisher. The book is now considered to be self-published. The important prepublication reviews will automatically reject a book with an ISBN/imprint from a subsidy publisher. A few self-published books however are reviewed every issue of Library Journal. Prepub reviews are admittedly a long shot, but for the small cost involved may be worth the effort.

If your book is a success with the subsidy publisher, and you wish to reprint it with an offset printing company, then that is a simple matter, at least with Booklocker. But if you have to get a new ISBN at that point
then the same book will have two different identities, which will cause confusion on Amazon etc.

Note that I recommend consideration of an ISBN block purchased from Bowker and registered in the self publisher’s name, not a “single” ISBN. A “single” ISBN, whether purchased from a subsidy house or direct from Bowker, has its own disadvantage. It does not assign you a specific publisher ID code and is from a “generic” block of ISBNs, easily identifiable as such. So I agree that buying a single is a waste of time and money.

John Culleton

By: dick

dick — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 23:24:55 +0000

Question: There’s a rumor around that most critics won’t read or review books with a POD ISBN. One, is there any truth to this, and two, is there a downside to using you ISBN?
I’m simply asking because I don’t know.

By: maggy simony

maggy simony — Sat, 08 Sep 2007 12:40:04 +0000

I sent an email when you were posting info on these bibliographic technical aspects of publishing, but you didn’t mention ISBN ownership topic. Now I see why! Was all here in the FAQs.

The only thing I don’t understand is what happens when if the book is picked up by a print publisher? Does it then move out of Booklocker’s ISBN and into that of new publisher?

My situation is a bit different: I wasn’t even thinking about using a POD who claims to sell a single ISBN #–I already own an ISBN since the 80s when I self-published four books the old-fashioned way under Freelance Publications. So my concern was whether to use one of the leftovers or not. I can see now that wouldn’t work since ISBN indicates book source, and I certainly don’t want to get into filling that role again!!! Your long explanation of the role of the ISBN is very illuminating.

maggy simony
cape canaveral FL
msimony@cfl.rr.com