Wednesday 25 February 2009

ISBN

Please forgive me for being a bit dim-witted, but I have a question which I was hoping you might answer for me: Does each book published have an individual ISBN Code? In other words, if I were to have 10 books printed, all the same title, they wouldn't each need to have a different ISBN code would they? Am I right to assume they would all carry the same one? Hope that makes sense!

Many thanks,
CJ xx

8 comments:

KeVin K. said...

ISBN is unique to each work.
(If there were 27 different books by 27 different authors each titled "Bad News" there would be 27 different ISBNs.)

Rowan Coleman said...

yep one isbn per title or edition - ie hardback or paperback or the same title would have an isbn each. Its like the books finger print.

Graeme K Talboys said...

They would have to be the same edition to carry the same ISBN. A hardback and a paperback of the same book would, for example, have different ISBNs. If the book was re-printed with substantial changes to the text, it would be a new edition and have a new ISBN. If was just a reprint of the same title with no change to the text, it would keep the same ISBN.

So, if your ten books were ten copies of the same title, there would just be the one ISBN.

The Wiki entry is accurate and has further references: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Standard_Book_Number

Graeme K Talboys said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Graeme K Talboys said...

They would have to be the same edition to carry the same ISBN. A hardback and a paperback of the same book would, for example, have different ISBNs. If the book was re-printed with substantial changes to the text, it would be a new edition and have a new ISBN. If was just a reprint of the same title with no change to the text, it would keep the same ISBN.

So, if your ten books were ten copies of the same title, there would just be the one ISBN.

The Wiki entry is accurate and has further references: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Standard_Book_Number

Graeme K Talboys said...

Good grief. Not sure how that happened.

Anonymous said...

Thank you all, I understand it now. Not much happens unless brain in gear.

Cheers,
CJ xx

Un Peu Loufoque said...

In a past life one of my jobs was to attribute new ISbns to new publications different ones for the paper back and hardback editions. We as a company were allocated a vast sheath of numbers en bloc and I was meant to allocate them in order as each new edition book whatever came up.. I used to get terrible bored and people were so ruddy paranoid about ISBN's as if they were some mysterical holy thing that I would occassioanlly decide to stick a poor book all on its own and pick a number form the centre of the list, makes it very hard to check up on follow up editions but it kept my simple mind amused.