Do I Need to Buy an ISBN? A Barcode?

ISBNs and barcodes aren’t exactly the most exciting parts of creating a book. Yet, they are very important pieces. An ISBN, short for international standard book number, is a thirteen digit numerical code that identifies an exact book and the format it is in. If you’d like to know what all the numbers in an ISBN represent, you can click here to visit the International ISBN Agency. Two university students invented the barcode in 1948 and based it off Morse code. Today barcodes are on everything from diapers to bacon, and yes, books. Many questions arise from this topic: Where can I buy them? Do I even need to? When do I need to use them? And so on. Let’s get started with the question I hear a lot as a mom: “Do I have to?”

Do I Need to Buy an ISBN?

You’re likely to hear from other writers that KDP and now IngramSpark will provide an ISBN for you. Yes, this is true. For folks who are working with a tight budget, this helps make publishing a book more attainable. However, using one of the provided ISBNs isn’t in your best interest in the long term. When Amazon provides one for you, it is their ISBN, their property. If something were to happen in the future and Amazon decided to shut down its publishing division, they would still own the ISBN to your book. Then you’d have to deal with the headache of getting a new ISBN. I personally always buy my own so that I know the ISBNs are my property and I can sell my book anywhere I want with no issues.

Where Can I Buy ISBNs?

There is one company in the US that owns all ISBNs, Bowker. They sell ISBNs, or “identifiers,” in blocks. Here is the pricing structure: 1 ISBN = $125, 10 ISBNs = $295, and 100 ISBNs = $575. The blocks get bigger for publishers who need more. There are some things to consider before deciding how many to purchase. First, you will need one ISBN for each format of your book. That means one for paperback, one for hardback, one for ebook, one for audiobook, and so on. I usually need at least three ISBNs for one book to cover all the formats. Another thing to remember is that your identifiers never expire. So you don’t have to worry about using them all at once. Also, they are nontransferable. So you can’t share a block with friends or resell them later on. Keeping all this in mind can help you make the best decision.

(Want to get really annoyed? Learn about how ISBNs are FREE in Canada.)

Do I Need to Buy a Barcode?

You may also hear from author friends that KDP and IngramSpark provide barcodes. Yup, they sure do. Bowker also sells barcodes. So, what should you do, use the freebie or buy a barcode? Good news this time. Barcodes aren’t owned property and lots of sites can generate them…for free! You can either let KDP or IngramSpark place one for you, or you can use a website like this one to create and place your own. The one drawback of using the free one from KDP is that it doesn’t allow you to input price information, which doesn’t look as professional. See the example below where the $13.99 price is integrated into the barcode. (The 5 stands for the country, USA.) KDP will have “90000” there instead.

So it’s possible to get a free ISBN and barcode from KDP or IngramSpark. You’ll have to think about your budget and your long term plans to decide what is best for you. Purchasing ISBNs guarantee they will always be yours and you can use them as needed. Barcodes can be obtained for free and look professional by using other sites and placing it on the cover yourself. Hopefully now your questions have been answered, especially that age-old classic, “Do I have to?”

If you’ve been reading this article and wondering about KDP vs. IngramSpark, you can click here to get a full comparison of the two publishing services.