If you are an independent author who has published a Book in the past and are wondering whether you need to get a new Isbn for your ebook, then you are not alone. The quagmire created by the digital book industry surely makes it hard to determine what the best step is for you as an author or an independent publisher.

ISBN or International Standard Book Number, is an identifier for the book industry that distinguishes your book from all the rest of the books out there in the world. There are close to 160 agencies globally those offers the service of providing an ISBN and the cost of an ISBN can be high upto a $100 depending on the services you get along with it. On a site selling ISBN, you may come across claims that indicate ISBN allows people to find your book even online visitors – they state that the entire search engines key off an ISBN (Google, Amazon, Yahoo, Bing) and it is important for being able to sell your books. While it is true that bookstores organize their database listings off on the basis of an ISBN (such as Borders, B&N), I believe that getting your book exposed on search engine does not require ISBN. Especially not a specific ISBN for your eBooks. What you may require for your books to come high on search engine results is a well thought through internet marketing strategy for your website selling your ebook.

Many publishers choose to have eBook ISBN, as it allows better reporting of their sales data. But come to think of it, books on CD or Audio books don’t necessarily have additional ISBNs. And what about different eBook formats? Should you have a new ISBN for Kindle .mobi or .ePub or eReader etc? If you do require reporting of your book sales then having a format specific ISBN may not be of any additional help. Since most eBook content is being sold online and through web retail outlets, it would not require that books be sold on a separate ISBN to generate reports of formats or even volume. The web applications selling ebooks should be able to provide you with the reports.

ISBN, as an organization, requires that your current print book ISBN should not (or even cannot) be used for your eBook ISBN. In fact they recommend using a separate ISBN for each format for your eBook (one for Kindle mobi and another for ePub). However, something to be noted is that Amazon.com does not require an author to have an ISBN in order to be able to sell the books on their website. Technology is changing the publication industry and the old barriers for entry of good literature are being removed. Welcome to the good news of digital publication.

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