Publishing your work has never been easier. In such a market, making sales has never been more difficult. One of the most important factors in making your book available to as many points of sales as possible is owning your own ISBN.
Imagine that we have a warehouse of books. You want to know what all the books are in the warehouse so you can choose the ones you want to read. You are provided with a list of ISBN numbers. Now you can look up those numbers and find out what each book is.
There are huge databases that are nothing more than book catalogs based upon the principle of attaching each book an ISBN. The publisher will spend a good deal of time filling out all of the information in this database so that the book is well represented. Now any bookseller can find the book by name, author, genre, etc. They even have you upload a copy of the book so they can have their computer scan the digital copy for keywords to use. What this does is make your book available to anyone looking for something similar to your book. Once they find it, then the ISBN tells them who to order it from and the pricing.
When one self publishes, typically, the company you publish with, Createspace, Lulu, etc. provide you with an ISBN. They do not, however, spend a great deal of time filling out the information on the ISBN. This means that many places looking for your book will not have an easy time finding it. It is our recommendation at Shoestring Book Publishing that it is best to have your own ISBN that you bought and paid for and that you (or your publishing agent) are responsible for filling out properly. Only this assures that you have control over the information and the accessibility to your book. Think about all of the extra hits your book will get just from having a plethora of keywords selected directly from the book's pages. These are the little things that make a huge difference in sales.
Do not let a publisher represent this service as some kind of special marketing they do. Any decent publisher worth their salt will properly maintain the information on each ISBN number for every book. You may need one for a paperback, one for a hardcover and even one for an ebook. Having an ISBN for your ebook means that it can be looked up in any library. Why would anyone NOT want that for their book?
ISBN numbers are not inexpensive. They can cost up to $50 apiece. I assure you, that is a great amount of marketing you get for such a small investment.
Imagine that we have a warehouse of books. You want to know what all the books are in the warehouse so you can choose the ones you want to read. You are provided with a list of ISBN numbers. Now you can look up those numbers and find out what each book is.
There are huge databases that are nothing more than book catalogs based upon the principle of attaching each book an ISBN. The publisher will spend a good deal of time filling out all of the information in this database so that the book is well represented. Now any bookseller can find the book by name, author, genre, etc. They even have you upload a copy of the book so they can have their computer scan the digital copy for keywords to use. What this does is make your book available to anyone looking for something similar to your book. Once they find it, then the ISBN tells them who to order it from and the pricing.
When one self publishes, typically, the company you publish with, Createspace, Lulu, etc. provide you with an ISBN. They do not, however, spend a great deal of time filling out the information on the ISBN. This means that many places looking for your book will not have an easy time finding it. It is our recommendation at Shoestring Book Publishing that it is best to have your own ISBN that you bought and paid for and that you (or your publishing agent) are responsible for filling out properly. Only this assures that you have control over the information and the accessibility to your book. Think about all of the extra hits your book will get just from having a plethora of keywords selected directly from the book's pages. These are the little things that make a huge difference in sales.
Do not let a publisher represent this service as some kind of special marketing they do. Any decent publisher worth their salt will properly maintain the information on each ISBN number for every book. You may need one for a paperback, one for a hardcover and even one for an ebook. Having an ISBN for your ebook means that it can be looked up in any library. Why would anyone NOT want that for their book?
ISBN numbers are not inexpensive. They can cost up to $50 apiece. I assure you, that is a great amount of marketing you get for such a small investment.
RSS Feed