#358: Publish with a Purpose: ISBNs and Barcodes

Welcome to Kingdom Writers, where we help equip and empower Christian writers of all genres to share your unique gifts with the world. We're your hosts, C.J. and Shelley Hitz.

This podcast is filled with spiritual encouragement as well as prayers to help you overcome the resistance you face as a writer. Your story matters.

Hey Kingdom Writers. Welcome back to this Publish With a Purpose episode. Today we're going to talk about ISBNS and barcodes. So this can be very confusing. You do need an ISBN for each different version of your book. Print books always need an ISBN. Ebooks it just depends which platform you're publishing on. If you're only publishing a Kindle ebook, you do not need an ISBN because Kindle will assign it to an asin. So the thing is, we do recommend that you Purchase your own ISBN from myidentifiers.com it just gives you more options. You can get a free ISBN from kdp.Amazon.com you can get a free ISBN from Ingram Spark if you're using either of those websites to upload your book. But we do recommend having your own ISBN because it just makes everything look more professional and you can have your own imprint, your own that just means your own name. And it's much simpler than it sounds. We have an entire lesson in Christian Book Academy in the self published module called the business of publishing and we go through all of this with you. But when it comes to an ISBN it if you do choose to purchase your ISBN we recommend myidentifiers.com and the thing is when you start checking out they will ask you do you want to add a barcode to your order. And right now an ISBN is around a hundred dollars and you can add the barcode for $25. But the thing is if you are uploading your book to kdp.Amazon.com you don't need a barcode. There will be a section when you upload your book cover and it will ask you if you already have the barcode on the book cover and if not they will create a barcode for you. So there is no need to pay an extra $25 for the barcode if you are going to be publishing on kdp.Amazon.com now if you're going with a different place place and you're uploading your book to somewhere else and you need a barcode. There are places to get free barcodes and I just created a quick Win video on this. You have access to this in Christian Book Academy if you're a member in the Quick Win module or you can get it in our book marketing shop and we'll include the links in the show notes. But there are ways to generate a book ISBN for free and we have done this for years. And so the main point I want to leave you with today is that if you're buying your ISBN from myidentifiers.com, you do not need to buy a barcode. You can save that money and reinvest it into your book launch or into something else. And we're all about saving you money around here. Many people who have joined Christian Book Academy have said that we have helped them save thousands of dollars to publish their books and they end up with quite a quality books and so we would love to have you join us. You can join us@christianbookacademy.com and I hope that this just cleared up a few questions that you might have on ISBNs and barcodes and I will talk to you in the next episode. Would you like more? If you are enjoying this podcast but want more, I have something exciting to share with you. We have released what's called a pro private podcast. So a private podcast you will not find by searching an apple, you have to know specifically how to subscribe to it. It's more private and exclusive and it just can be more relaxed behind the scenes. And my new private podcast is called Hits Blitz and it's wisdom for writers that you're going to learn from from my 18 plus years of experience in publishing and online marketing so that you can move forward in God's call to write. I am best known for injecting energy and enthusiasm into everything I do and inspiring those around me to take action. So I encourage you to listen in to this exclusive private podcast. It is free, 100% free. You don't have to pay for it and be prepared to be inspired by my next Hits Blitz. So you can sign up at training authors.com forward/hits blitz and if you have any other writing friends that you think could benefit from it, definitely share it with them. They can go to the same link trainingauthors.com hitsblitz to get access. Again. This is a private podcast so you cannot get access to it any other way. It's completely free. All you have to do is sign up and then you'll get all the information on how to add it to your podcast player of choice. So I can't wait for you to join me over there. I share a lot of things behind the scenes and more content just in a real time basis so it's more like chatting with a friend or following someone on stories on social media. Except you don't have to get caught up in any of the algorithms. You'll just have this in your podcast player and you and be able to listen in wherever you're at, whatever you're doing. Some of the listeners told me this week that they were listening while waiting in the Target parking lot, while brushing their teeth. You can fit this into the pockets of time that you have, so I hope you'll join me. Come over to trainingauthors.com hitsblitz.

Thank you for listening to this episode of Kingdom Writers. We believe that you, as a Christian writer, have a specific role to play in the Kingdom of Heaven to impact lives for eternity.

And because of this, we choose to pour out our lives into encouraging writers like you to not only tell your stories, but to take the courageous step of self publishing your stories in books that will outlive you and leave behind a powerful legacy. This podcast is sponsored by Christian Book Academy, where we help you give birth to your books. We invite you to join our community of Kingdom Writers.