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ISBN
International Serial Book Number
This number is controlled through the RR Bowker Company. They publish "Books In Print." ISBN's are sold in blocks (10, 100, 1000, 10000, etc) to publishers. Publishers then assign these numbers to books and submit the book information back to RR Bowker, who then publishes it in "Books In Print." Any major book distributor or seller has a copy of "Books In Print" and can trace your title back to its manufacturing source so that they can get a copy of it anywhere in the world.
This is the industry standard and it is the single most important technical aspect to getting your book into print.
There are three parts to an ISBN:
This book's ISBN is: 1-932344-50-0
Publisher prefix: 1-932344
Sequential book number 00-99: 50
Bowker check-digit, 0-9+X: 0
This is a 10-digit ISBN.Bowker is moving to a 13-digit ISBN within the next three years. To convert the old 10-digit ISBN's to the new 13-digit ISBN's (for the USA), they will place another prefix of "978" to the existing ISBN. 9781-932344-50-0
The ISBN of a book tells how big a publisher it has. If the ISBN looks like x-xxxx-xxxx-x. That means the publisher bought a lot of 10,000 ISBN's. This is a large publisher. Most mid-range presses' ISBN's look like: x-xxxxxx-xx-x or x-xxxxx-xxx-x, where they bought the lot in a quantity of 100 or 1000.
To apply for an ISBN, contact: International Standard Book Numbering Agency: http://www.isbn.org, R.R. Bowker, 121 Chanlon Road, New Providence, NJ 07974 Phone: 877-310-7333
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