Understanding the Change to ISBN-13

So, you’ve decided to self-publish your masterpiece. You know you need an ISBN to sell your book anywhere. Now you hear that the entire ISBN system is undergoing a major transition. What does it all mean?

A Little History

Publishers, retailers, and warehouses use the International Standard Book Number (ISBN) to track and reorder stock. Each edition of a book (the hardback, the paperback, the mass-market paperback) has its own ISBN. Until now, each ISBN contained 10 numbers; however, shortages of numbers in some parts of the world prompted the transition to a 13-digit number.

The transition will have benefits beyond easing the number shortage: the bar codes on the backs of books (and nearly everything else) use International Article Numbers (EANs). EANs begin with a three-digit country code (with some exceptions in North America to accommodate the older 12-digit Universal Product Code (UPC) standard). Prefixes 978 and 979 were assigned to the fictional country of Bookland for use by the publishing industry so the bar codes would conform to those used on other goods. The three new digits in the 13-digit ISBN will be 978 and (eventually) 979, thereby making the ISBN identical to the Bookland EAN.

The new ISBN regulations go into effect on January 1, 2007. Books published before that date will use the old 10-digit ISBNs; books published after that date will require new 13-digit ISBNs. The International ISBN Agency recommends putting both numbers on the title page verso in books published in 2006, in this format:

ISBN-13: 978-1-873671-00-9
ISBN-10: 1-873671-00-8

Copies printed after January 1, 2007, should not include the ISBN-10 format. Also, those copies (and any book published after the implementation date) would revert to the current format: ISBN 978-1-873671-00-9.

What Does It Mean for Authors?

The ISBN transition should have little effect on authors. If you’re using a traditional publishing house or e-publishing company, your publisher will deal with it.

If you’re self-publishing this year, you may need to use two numbers as outlined above. Because the new ISBN numbers are the same as the Bookland EANs currently used for bar codes, you don’t need to worry about changing those. Books published after January 1, 2007, should include the full 13-digit number in human-readable form above the bar code with proper hyphenation. The EAN will continue to be printed in eye-readable form below the bar code. You don’t need to resticker old books for sale because the bar code itself isn’t changing.

If you have self-published before and have leftover 10-digit ISBNs, you’ll need to reformat them as 13-digit codes by adding the 978 prefix and recalculating the check digit. You can learn how to do that here: http://www.bisg.org/isbn-13/ISBN13_For_Dummies.pdf.

The procedures for getting an ISBN for your book haven’t changed. You must still apply for an ISBN from your national ISBN agency. You can find the Canadian form here: http://www.collectionscanada.ca/isbn/s11-202-e.html. You can find the US form here: http://www.isbn.org/standards/home/isbn/us/secureapp.asp.

The primary systems affected by this change are in the computers that publishers, warehouses, and retailers use to track their own (and one another’s) stock. Many of those systems use only part of the ISBN. Because publisher codes are unlikely to remain the same when the system expands into the 979 prefix, all that software must be changed to accommodate the whole number—not unlike the transition that happened just before January 1, 2000.

Resources

For more information about ISBNs and the transition to ISBN 13, see:

http://www.isbn-international.org/en/download/implementation-guidelines-04.pdf

http://www.bisg.org/isbn-13/ISBN13_For_Dummies.pdf