How Much Does an ISBN Cost? Price It Per Book, Not Per ISBN

A single ISBN costs $125 from Bowker, the US agency. It costs $19 through ISBNdirect. Third-party services like ISBN Services charge $22.99 or $109.99, and KDP will assign one for nothing at all.

Those are real prices. They're also the wrong numbers to compare.

What your book costs in ISBNs depends on how many you actually need and whether each number works where you publish. A cheap ISBN your printer rejects is the most expensive one on the list, because you pay for it and then republish anyway. Here's how the options compare across one, two and three ISBNs.

The real cost for one, two or three ISBNs

Two things stand out once the numbers sit side by side.

Bowker's pricing pushes anyone who needs three numbers into the 10-pack, since three singles would cost $375. That leaves seven unused ISBNs in your account. They never expire, so it isn't wasted money if you'll publish again. It is still $295 up front for a book that may only need two.

The second is that ISBN Services' Custom option has no multi-pack discount. Three Custom ISBNs cost $329.97. That's $34.97 more than ten bought directly from Bowker.

How many ISBNs does your book need?

Before reading across that table, work out which column you're in. The rule is one ISBN per format. A paperback and a hardcover of the same book are separate products and need separate numbers. A reprint with a typo fix or a new cover doesn't need a new one.

The part most price guides skip is the ebook. On KDP, ISBNs are optional for ebooks, and Amazon identifies the book by its own ASIN instead. If you distribute the ebook wide through Draft2Digital, it assigns a free ISBN automatically. Plenty of authors buy a number for the ebook because it feels like the professional thing to do. It changes nothing about where the book can be sold.

That leaves print, and here the count depends on where the book goes.

A paperback sold only on Amazon needs one ISBN, and KDP gives you that one free. Add a hardcover, still only on KDP, and you need two, both of which KDP also offers free. The math changes the moment a print edition goes anywhere else. KDP's help page is blunt about this: its free ISBNs can only be used on KDP. Once you want the same paperback on Lulu or Barnes & Noble Press, or think you might later, a purchased ISBN starts earning its price.

For most single-book authors, the honest count is one or two. Not three.

The cheap ISBN that costs the most

The $22.99 Basic ISBN looks like it competes with the $19 one. ISBN Services' own product page tells a different story. It lists Basic ISBNs as incompatible with KDP print editions, Lulu, Amazon Seller Central and IngramSpark. The publisher on record is Primedia eLaunch LLC.

If your paperback is going through KDP, that number is unusable. You'd find out at upload, after paying, and then buy another one.

The free KDP ISBN has a milder version of the same problem. It works perfectly, but only on one platform. Move the paperback to Lulu later and you're publishing a new edition with a new ISBN, which means a second product listing instead of one book with one sales history. Our guide to getting an ISBN covers how that plays out in the metadata.

So the question to ask of any cheap option isn't the price. It's where the number is allowed to go.

When Bowker is the right answer

Buying direct from Bowker gets you something the cheaper routes don't: your own name or imprint as publisher of record in Books in Print. If you're building a small press, that matters.

It also matters if you upload directly to IngramSpark. IngramSpark only accepts ISBNs where you're the publisher, so an ISBNdirect number, registered to Staten House, won't work there. You can still reach Ingram's distribution network through KDP Expanded Distribution, Lulu or PublishDrive.

Volume shifts the math too, though not where you might expect. Bowker sells packs of 1, 10, 100 and 1,000 with nothing in between, so ten cost $295 and the next step up is 100 for $575. ISBNdirect sells smaller steps: $125 for 10, $275 for 25, $475 for 50. That keeps ISBNdirect cheaper until you need somewhere around 55 to 60 numbers. Beyond that, Bowker's 100-pack at $5.75 each is the better buy, so an author with a long backlist planned should go direct.

One limit to know about: Bowker is the agency for the United States and its territories. If you live in the UK, Canada or elsewhere, the direct route runs through your own national agency, at its own prices.

Two things not to pay extra for

The first is the barcode. Bowker sells one ISBN with a barcode for $150, which puts the barcode at $25. A book barcode is just a standard EAN-13 image generated from your 13-digit ISBN, with an optional five-digit price code. Our ISBN barcode generator makes one for free, with no sign-up.

The second is the LCCN. Some packages bundle a Library of Congress Control Number as a paid extra. The Library of Congress issues them free to eligible US publishers, and most self-published authors don't need one.

Which one fits

If your paperback lives only on Amazon and you don't mind "Independently published" on the listing, take KDP's free ISBN. It costs nothing and does the job.

Go to Bowker if you want your own imprint on the record, plan to upload directly to IngramSpark, or will need more than about 60 ISBNs.

If you want a Bowker-issued number that moves between KDP, Lulu, Draft2Digital, PublishDrive and Barnes & Noble Press without buying ten of them, that's what ISBNdirect's packages are for.

Whichever route you take, count your print formats first. The number you need is usually smaller than the one you were about to buy.