Ask Shelley - The Difference Between ISBNs and Barcodes

Welcome to the Author Audience show, the podcast that helps you reach more people with your message. Create a book, connect with your audience, change lives. Here's your host, Shelly Hitz.

What is the difference between an ISBN and barcode? And if you buy your own ISBN, do you need to buy a barcode as well? That's what you'll learn in today's Ask Shelly session session. Hi, my name is Shelli Hitz and I am an author coach on a mission to help you reach more people with your message. It's time to let your light shine. And in today's Ask Shelly segment, I have a question from Renee. It's Renee Appelin. I hope I said your last name correctly. Thank you for submitting this question. And she says, hello, Shelly, I used CreateSpace to publish my first children's book. Yay. I have just published my first print children's book and I'm going to be sharing more about that soon. And she says, I used the free ISBN they offered. I've since learned a lot about the importance of having your own ISBN. Yes, we could go into that, into a whole other training, which I do talk about in authoraudienceacademy.com but she says, I want to have complete control over where my book will be distributed, as well as getting the most out of my royalties. So now I'm in the process of publishing my second children's book. Good for you. I love when I see authors publishing series or multiple books because that is a great way to serve your audience. And she says, I plan to purchase my own ISBNs for this in future projects. I heard about a website called myidentifiers.com that sell them in bulk. I'm considering purchasing 10 ISBNs for $2.95 from this website. But I soon realized that the ISBN and the barcode are two separate things. So questions are number one, is it necessary to purchase a barcode along with the ISBN? Let me go ahead and answer that question first. So I have purchased my ISBN from myidentifiers.com that's what I recommend. And I do realize that some people get confused on this with ISBN, the barcodes, because they are separate, all you need to purchase is the ISBN. You do not need to purchase barcodes. I've had some of my clients in Authorities Academy ask the same question. So you're not alone. This is a common question and that's why I think it was a great question to answer in a training. And so no, you don't need to buy the barcodes. What happens is when you publish with a print on Demand company like CreateSpace, you will have the barcode generated for you from CreateSpace, so they'll generate a barcode based on your ISBN so you don't have to worry about that with places like ingramspark, and that's what I've used to create a hardback version of my children's book. What happens is when you go to publish on IngramSpark, there's a place where you can generate your barcodes for free based on your ISBN and then use what is generated in your book cover going forward. And so whatever option you use for printing your book, you do not need to pay for barcodes. So please do not pay for the barcode. You can invest that money into other things. But I do recommend purchasing your own ISBNs. It does give you so much more flexibility, so much more control. And that is what I do now. I actually purchased a batch of 100 just because my husband and I have so many books. We already have over 50 books, and so that's what we did. But 10 is really what I typically recommend for most authors. 10 is a really good place to start. It's a lot cheaper than just buying one at a time. And if you know you're going to be writing more than one book, that's usually the best thing to do. Occasionally my identifiers will have sales. And so when I purchased my bulk package of ISBNs, they were having a sale and so I got it for a discount. So be looking for that, look for sales, look for discounts. Because occasionally I'm not sure how often they do that or if they still do that, but I know they did do a sale like that when I purchased mine. Renee's second question is, can I replace the ISBN on my first book with my own ISBN? So that's a little bit more of an in depth question, but basically what you will have to do is you'll have to retire your current version of that children's book. And all that takes, if you've used CreateSpace, just call them up on the phone and say, hey, I have this children's book, I want to retire it and republish it with a new ISBN. They'll take care of it in a day or two, literally. I've done this several times. And so just retire the old version and then you'll have to go through the process and upload your book again. Make sure you change the ISBN and in the interior of your book, because on the copyright page it should be there so make sure you change that and then use your new ISBN when you're uploading it to CreateSpace and you should be fine. So that's definitely something you can do. Typically when I have retired my books, I have made sure that I had a Kindle version as well so that I can keep my reviews. But I think even if you have like a retired version of the same book, basically what you'll do then is just once your book published, just let Amazon know through Author Central, it's authorcentral.Amazon.com just click the contact link and let them know it's the same book and to connect the different versions. And that way you keep your reviews, you keep the information from the book because you haven't really changed anything, you're just changing the ISBN. So that's what I've done in the past. If you have additional follow up questions on that, definitely I'm available inside authoraudienceacademy.com and, and I'm able to answer questions like that all the time. All right, the third and final question Renee had is should I invest in multiple ISBNS and barcodes? So I think I've already mentioned that I think, you know, if you're planning on a series, if you're planning on publishing more than just one more book. I know many authors, it's just one and done. They want one book that's a business card for their book or they have one book that's like a passion project or one book that they've really decided that they want to write or God's put on their heart to write. And, and if you're that type of author, then just buy the one ISBN. No need to buy multiple ISBNs. But if you're already planning a series, which a children's book series would be ideal because once they get to know your writing, they like your writing. Parents, grandparents may eventually buy more than one book from you. So I would say buying it in the 10 pack would be good. So I hope that was helpful for you, Renee and I hope that the rest of you learned something today from this this about ISBNs and barcodes. If you found it helpful, please share it with some of your author friends and make sure to check out all of my free training. I have so much free training for you guys. You can just go to shellyhits.com free and there is just so much for you to enjoy. I always have my trainings transcribed, so if you prefer to read rather than listen to a podcast or watch a video on, make sure to check out my blog. I've rearranged some things on my blog due to my new branding and I've talked about that in recent trainings, but you can find all the blog posts@shellyhits.com Authors thanks so much for being here and I will see you next time. Bye Bye. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Author Audience. I would like to invite you to attend one of my free trainings on three proven book writing formulas every nonfiction author needs to know. This is a fun and fast way to write a nonfiction book, but also a book that you're proud of. Plus, I will give you two free gifts just for attending. No credit card required. First, you'll get my 10 nonfiction book title templates and you'll also get my ebook titled Brilliant brainstorming. It's a 28 page ebook and both of these bonuses are yours at no charge. Just for joining us for the training, you can sign up for my free training by going to shellyhitz.com formulas. That's Shellyhitz S H E L L E Y H I-T Z.com formulas. This training and the two bonuses are free and I would love to help you write your next nonfiction book.

Thanks for listening to this episode of the Author Audience Show. Connect with us online@authoraudience.com where you'll find all the resources mentioned in today's episode. While you're there, grab Shelly's free video training on how to write and publish your book using her Six Step Ascent method. Join us again next week to learn how to reach your audience with your message.