Short YouTube tutorial by Julie Broad (Julie Rod) explaining what an ISBN is, how to obtain one for free in Canada via Library and Archives Canada (Collections Canada/GC.ca), and advising that each book format requires a separate ISBN. She also warns that releasing multiple formats at once can dilute sales/rankings and recommends aligning format-release strategy with publishing objectives.
Chapters
Hey there, it's Julie Rod and I've got a tip for you. If you're thinking of self publishing a book in Canada, there's a few things you're gonna want to know. Alright? So first of all, if you're thinking of selling it anywhere other than your website, you're going to want to get one of these bad boys an ISBN number. What is that? An international Sign Standard book number. Now good news, in Canada we get them for free. So there's the good news, okay? And to get one, go to Collections Canada, GC CA and search for ISBN number. And it's actually a pretty easy process. So that's one of the good news is when you're going to publish a book that getting an ISBN number is simple. What is not as simple is figuring out what specifically you need ISBN numbers for. Because if your book is in more than one format, soft cover, hardcover, ebook, audio version, every different format requires its own ISBN number. So you'll need to register multiple ISBN numbers for each format. That's issue number one, issue number two. Something to think about is when the sales are tracked, whether it be on Amazon or Bookmark Canada where they're tracking sales overall. If you care at all about having it rank, then you want to think carefully about how many formats you issue your book at first. Because every format you put it in is a different category. So it's really like having two, three, four different books. So while you may have 5,000 sales overall, if it's spread out over four or five formats, then it doesn't really amount to very much. So think about releasing it in one format first and making a splash with that. Now other people will argue that you lose momentum and you won't generate as much sales. So if you offer it in Kindle hardcover and an audio version out at the gates, then you may get more sales total because people will appreciate different formats. Everybody has their preferred format. However you will have diluted your sales. So it depends on what's important, which is why in a different video I'm talking about five tips and one of them is understanding your objective for publishing the book in the first place. Because that's going to help you figure out what to do with these things. Alright, hope that helps. If you have more questions, I'm happy to answer them as best I can. Just go ahead and post it below on this YouTube video. And of course, if you like it and you want more videos like it, give a me give me a thumbs up. It makes my day. See you next time.
