Ah! Good ol’ ISBNs. How much do we know about them…how much do we care? Everyone talks about them, but what do we really know of them? Why are they so important? Do we really need them? What do we do with them? And what do all those dashes mean? …Don’t worry, we’ll get to all of that right now.
First off, it’s an acronym for International Standard Book Number (so it isn’t right to talk about an ISBN number, just say ISBN). It has a few cousins, too, the main ones are the ISSN (for serialized publications such as magazines and newspapers) and the ISMN (for musical scores), but our focus is on books. The ISBN is used to identify books…or book-like items—including ebooks and audio books.
As an international standard, the ISBN has a lot of information, and the first part is what ‘country’ we’re in: 978 (and the new 979) is BookLand. (Yes, they really set up a separate country just for us.) The next part is called the Registration Group Element…but we just call it the Language group. (In 978, a 0 or 1 in this position indicates English, 2 French, 3 German, 4 Japan, 5 Russian, 7 Chinese, etc.) The next part is the Registrant Element…we say Publisher. Then follows the Publication Element. The last digit is a checksum just to keep the computers happy.
Hyphens:
The hyphens are important, too, and have certain places to go, but the problem is that two of the elements aren’t fixed in size: the publisher and publication. Together they have to occupy a total of 8 digits (in the main language groups), but it can be 2&6, 3&5, 4&4…down to 7&1. Obviously, the fewer digits used to identify the publisher, the more digits there are available for publications. In the 2 digit publishers, each one can have a million publications…and in the 7 digit publishers, although there is room for ten million publishers, each one can have only ten publications.
Yes, ten publications is the smallest you can go, but why so many? What if you only have one book to share with the world? You’ll still need a few ISBNs: one for the paperback, one for the hardback, one for Kindle ebook, Nook ebook, and don’t forget your audio book. It needs a separate one, too. The ISBN identifies each different type of media, because if the reader wants to have a book in hand, you don’t want a CD to arrive when your book is ordered!
What that means is that when you put your ISBN on the copyright page and the back cover (along with its barcode), you need to make certain the hyphens are in the right places. Forgetting them is either a sign of ignorance or an attempt to obscure the size of your publisher. These days, you have nothing to hide. If you’ve been picked up by one of the Big 5, let the world know by putting your hyphens in the right place…and if you’ve gone the self-publishing route, be proud of that fact and boast to the world by putting your hyphens in the right place—between each element!