ISBNs

[Paul Czege]

Hey,

Those of you who've bought ISBNs, can I ask where you purchased them, how many you bought, and how much you paid?

Right now I really only need one, for My Life with Master, but I recall reading somewhere that there is a minimum quantity you can buy, or that there's some issue if you buy just one that it would be sub-registered under the corporate identity of whoever you bought it from or something. Can anyone clue me in on this?

Thanks,

Paul

[jdagna]

You might check old threads, because I'm pretty sure this has been addressed before.

But, in short: ISBNs are purchased from RR Bowker in blocks of multiples of ten (10, 100, 1000, etc).  A block of 10 cost me about $200 a couple years ago and I wouldn't really recommend buying more than ten at a time unless you have clear plans for more in the near future.

If you use someone else's ISBN, then RR Bowker and their books in print listing will consider the ISBN's owner the publisher of the book.  But since you don't have to tell RR Bowker which books you use the ISBNs on, there's no real reason anyone needs to know if you use someone else's number.

[kwill]

bowker ISBN application page is at http://www.isbn.org/standards/home/isbn/us/application.asp

nb, this is for american publishers only; there are seperate agencies for each region - details can be found at http://www.isbn-international.org/

registering your ISBNs is incredibly useful for non-direct sales, if I end up getting the job I'm after (working at the SA branch of Nielsen Bookdata) I'll have more to contribute on that note

if signing up for a block at a time looks pricey, there may be an option for signing up for a single number; I know that in south africa small publishers share the prefix 0-620-* (and individual numbers are assigned on a case-by-case basis by the ISBN agency, in this case the national library)

if you go this route, you will have to make sure you submit your ISBN to the relevant people (eg, Nielsen Bookdata, I'm not sure how Bowker fit into the picture, are they an American counterpart, partners, competition?) - as I know they seem to get skipped over here if that doesn't happen

[Ron Edwards]

Thanks, David. I finally pulled out all my ISBN documentation, but those links provide most of that information.

I strongly recommend purchasing a block of the numbers.

Best,
Ron

[coolblade]

When you purchase a block of ISBN's do you have to have the book title and stuff ready or do ISBN's just point to companies or what, if they don't need to have all 10 isbns then how do they index them?

[Pramas]

When you purchase a block of ISBN's do you have to have the book title and stuff ready or do ISBN's just point to companies or what, if they don't need to have all 10 isbns then how do they index them?

All that happens when you buy them is that RR Bowker assigns a block of numbers to you, all of which begin with numeric prefix that IDs your company. Those numbers are now yours and you can assign titles to them at your own pace. When you are ready to do so, you can go to the bowkerlink.com website and enter the info about your book there. That gets it into Books in Print.

If you had to have all your title info ready, very few companies would buy blocks of 100, let alone 1,000. We bought them in 10s for the first couple of years but finally bit the bullet and paid for 100 when it became clear we'd need them.