About Books, Amazon, Lulu and Other Booksellers

[Theresa M. Moore]

The fact is that I had to bite the bullet and remove my titles from my favorite printer owing to the onerous expense of buying ISBNs. Now I am working with Lulu, but apparently no book is being recognized as legitimate in the publishing world unless it's on Amazon. I have begun listing my print books with unique catalog numbers and you can order them directly through my site; and they are for sale on the Kindle store. But until the ISBNs come down in price or made available for free as many other countries do, I'm not using them on my own dime. In the coming months I will make my books available to Amazon through Lulu, and let Lulu deal with the headache. Does everyone have this problem? Since ISBNs are not legally required, it would seem to me that Bowker is making hand over fist. The isbn agency only registers the numbers voluntarily, and the Library of Congress appears to think they are superfluous. Feel free to chime in here and let me know how you are handling this problem.

[Harley Sachs]

Even if you buy ISBNs from Bowker and register them, which will put them into every chain bookstore computer, you will not be able to selll them. The bookstoresw only buy though the distributors which demand a 55% discount off the cover price, which put you out of the running, POD being so expensive. I bought 10 ISBNs and wickly used them up on my paperbacks and audio editions, but no sales were generated. ISBN won't help you.
I recommend pitching your book to librarians. When they see you and hold your book in their hands, they will be more convinced. Of course, some libraries have no money, but they have been my best customers.
If mybooks were in every library I'd be a best seller without ever being in a bookstore.
My latest, :"The Lollipop Murder" which is at lulu is now getting heavy use at our local library. the more people read my books, the better the chances that they will tell their friends and ask the librarians to buy more of them. "The Lollipop Murder" is really written for authors and publishers and is about a rebellion of irate, crazy authors against their nasty tightwad publisher. Sound familiar? It's inspired by arebellion this year against a publisher whose name will not be mentioned.

[Theresa M. Moore]

No, I have found that the only way to sell the books is to get a web site, brand my publishing company and market and sell them myself. No ISBNs needed, but I do allow my printer to post them on Amazon with their own. Besides, I doubt if many readers even look at the numbers, so it's not a real concern. Libraries do have limited budgets, and most libraries depend on donations from regular users or from charitable donations by big publishers. There is no real market there.

[Christy Pinheiro]

ISBN numbers are cheap-- they are only $275 for 10 ISBNs!

That doesn't seem like a lot of money to me.

Lulu is terrible. If you are that against buying your own ISBN's, use CreateSpace, which will give you and ISBN for free, but then your "publisher" will be listed as CreateSpace, which lets everyone know that you are self-published, and this is a death-knell for a lot of authors.

I buy my own ISBN numbers under my own company name-- PASSKEY PUBLICATIONS.

Boom, instant legitimacy.

Christy Pinheiro
The Publishing Maven
The Step by Step Guide to Self Publishing for Profit

[Theresa M. Moore]

No, I've tried Createspace before and they were more trouble than they are worth. They only work with Amazon, which means there is no way to branch out if you don't have the money. I had already invested a great deal of money before choosing to sell them out of my own site and Amazon. And I only sell through Amazon because everybody does. And I have published my own book about self-publishing: PRINCIPLES OF SELF-PUBLISHING: How to Publish and Market A BOOK On a Shoestring Budget, now in a revised edition, and I am publishing the 2nd Edition soon. I have also posted comments on other sites about how the ISBNs are voluntary, but many booksellers think they are required. The fact is that readers of books don't especially care if the books have them or not.

I don't think that being self-published is a death-knell for many authors. Some of the most famous authors in the book world were self-published until their books were picked up for reprint by the big houses, so I am not concerned about that.