An ISBN (International Standard Book Number) is your book’s unique identifier, essential for selling it in stores, libraries, and online. As a self-publisher, you have two main options: get one for free from a publishing platform or buy one yourself. This choice directly impacts your book’s control, distribution, and professional standing.
Option 1: The Paid (Self-Purchased) ISBN
This option involves going directly to the official ISBN agency for your country and buying ISBNs in your name. In the United States, this is ISBN Services.
How it works: You purchase one or more ISBNs from ISBN Services. You are then listed as the owner of those numbers and can assign them to your books as you see fit.
The Pros
- You Are the Publisher: When you buy your own ISBN, you can list your own name or your publishing imprint (e.g., “Main Street Press”) as the publisher of record. This gives your book a professional appearance and full legitimacy in the eyes of the entire book supply chain.
- Complete Control: You control your book’s metadata, the title, author, description, and publisher name, from one central account. If you need to make changes, you do it through your Bowker account, and it propagates everywhere.
- Total Portability: This is the key advantage. Your ISBN belongs to you, not a platform. You can use the same ISBN to publish your paperback on KDP, IngramSpark, a local printer, and any other service. This unifies your book’s identity, ensuring all sales, listings, and orders point to a single record.
- Wider Distribution: Owning your ISBN is essential for a “wide” distribution strategy. It allows you to use IngramSpark to get your book into the catalogs that bookstores and libraries order from, while simultaneously managing your Amazon presence through KDP, all with one product identity.
The Cons
- The Cost: This is the main hurdle. A single ISBN from Bowker costs $125. A block of 10 costs $295 ($29.50 each), and a block of 100 costs $575 ($5.75 each). Since each format of your book (paperback, hardcover, audiobook) needs its own unique ISBN, authors serious about publishing often buy a block of 10.
More Responsibility: You are responsible for managing your ISBNs and correctly inputting all the metadata for your title in your Bowker account. If you make a typo in the title, it’s on you to fix it..
Option 2: The “Free” ISBN
Major self-publishing platforms like Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP), IngramSpark, and Blurb offer a free ISBN as part of their service. This is the most common route for first-time authors.
How it works: When you upload your book (paperback or hardcover) to one of these platforms, you’ll be given the option to have them assign an ISBN to your title at no cost.
The Pros
- It’s Genuinely Free: This is the most obvious benefit. You save the immediate cost of purchasing an ISBN, which in the U.S. is $125 for one or $295 for a block of ten.
- Convenience: The process is seamless. You check a box, and the number is instantly assigned. There’s no need to go to another website, create an account, or manage your own number database.
- Good for Hobbies or Personal Projects: If your book is a personal memoir for family, a hobby project, or you only ever plan to sell it on one platform (like Amazon), a free ISBN is a perfectly logical and risk-free choice.
The Cons & Risks
- The Publisher Isn’t You: This is the most significant drawback. When you use a free ISBN, the publishing platform (Amazon, IngramSpark, etc.) is listed as the publisher of record in the book’s official metadata. If you use a KDP-assigned ISBN, your publisher will be listed as “Independently published.” This can be a red flag for bookstores, libraries, and reviewers, who may perceive the book as less professional.
- Platform Lock-In: A free ISBN is permanently locked to the platform that issued it. You cannot take your free KDP-assigned ISBN and use it to print your book at IngramSpark or any other printer. If you want to publish the same book on another platform, you would have to get another free ISBN from that new platform, resulting in two different versions of your book with two different ISBNs, which confuses the market.
- Limited Distribution: This “platform lock-in” directly limits your distribution. If you want to use IngramSpark for its wide distribution to bookstores and libraries but also use KDP for Amazon’s print-on-demand, you cannot use a single free ISBN for both. A paid, author-owned ISBN is the only way to have the exact same book edition available across all channels.
- Ineligibility for Some Services: Some platforms, like IngramSpark, may restrict certain distribution options if you use their free ISBN
The Verdict: Which Should You Choose?
- Choose a FREE ISBN if: You are on a strict budget, publishing as a hobby, or only ever plan to sell your book on a single platform like Amazon.
- Choose a PAID ISBN if: You are serious about your author career, want to be seen as the publisher, and want the flexibility to sell your book across all platforms and in physical bookstores.
