Acquiring an ISBN – International Standard Book Number – has long been an essential step for every publisher, and now the ISBN registration agency Nielsen hopes to streamline the process and make ISBNs easier to obtain. For the first time, through Nielsen Book’s new ISBN Store, you can now buy ISBNs online. Publishers were previously bound to purchase the numbers in blocks of ten but in another new development, you can now buy them individually.
Established in 1970 to replace the less efficient Standard Book Number, the ISBN is the single most important element of a publisher’s work in preparing a title for print. The unique number allows each edition to be identified easily and its sales tracked.
Stella Griffiths, exeuctive director of the International ISBN Agency, highlighted the value of the ISBN in an increasingly confusing marketplace: ‘The string remains associated with that specific book for all time, and can be used reliably to order it in any country.