A lot of what I have to say here I cover in this post, but the focus of that post was merely setting out clearly what a given book’s copyright, ISBN, and barcode were. Here I want to focus a trifle more on the scamming side of the street, and also on a few practical issues.
This essay is a bit of work in progress, so check back and see what updates I have made.
In what follow, I give some straight information in an attempt to clear out the muddle that has been produced (often deliberately produced) around such concepts as copyright, copyright registration, Library of Congress number, ISBNs, and barcodes. Briefly put, there are a lot of scammers out there who will try and convince a self-publishing writer that his or her book MUST have certain registrations and numbers, and that they are hard to get, and paying big bucks is the One True Way to get them. None of this is true. A lot of this stuff, you don’t need. The things you do need, you can get for free or very cheap (except for ISBNs, which do cost), and you can get them very easily for yourself.
The following discussion pertains to works published in the United States of America in 2016. Laws changes, and there are always exceptions and caveats. I am not a lawyer and am not giving legal advice. You’re on your own, and I am not responsible for your decisions. But, in what follows, you will find a factual and accurate description of the issues in question.
The short form is this: the moment you finish writing a book, it is copyrighted, and the copyright belongs to you, unless you have made some unusual contractual arrangements ahead of time. You don’t have to do anything to secure the copyright. It is already secured. Registering the copyright is sometimes a worthwhile additional protection, but it is not required. It costs something, but not much. (On the order of $35 to $55 for the average work being copyrighted.) See http://copyright.gov/eco/eco-tutorial-standard.pdf and http://copyright.gov/circs/circ04.pdf and http://copyright.gov/help/faq/index.html – or just wander around copyright.gov.
Getting a LCCN (Library of Congress Control Number) for your book so it will be have a Catalog In Print (CiP) entry is free, but does involve logging onto a website and entering some data. The LCCN/CiP can be helpful for libraries should they wish to order your book, though there is nothing (except, perhaps, some library system having a really rigid in-house policy) to prevent a library from stocking a book that doesn’t have a LCCN/CiP number. See https://www.loc.gov/publish/pcn/ .
There is no legal requirement to register a copyright, or get an LCCN or CiP. For the vast majority of small-press publishers and self-publishers, in most cases, there is no particular benefit to taking either step. Neither could hurt, and they are not hard to accomplish. You can do both of them for yourself. There are lots of companies that offer “packages” of publishing services that include copyright registration and LCCN/CIP. They typically bury the cost of these services, but usually charge a hell of a lot, and make it seem as if these services are absolutely essential, and difficult and expensive to get on your own. If you are smart enough to write and/or publish a book, you can get these things for yourself — and you are smart enough to judge whether they are worthwhile for you.
There is no legal requirement to get an ISBN (International Standard Book Number) for your book. The ISBN has no relation to copyright. However, having an ISBN is almost an absolute necessity if you want to sell books through the usual commercial outlets. Virtually all booksellers base their entire system of ordering, storing, shipping and selling books on some sort of database system that uses ISBNs. Just as you could not mail a letter to someone who did not have a postal address, or may a phone call to someone who did not have a phone with an assigned phone number, you more or less can’t order a book through the normal channels unless it has an ISBN.
This does not mean you have to have an ISBN to sell books. You can sell books off your own website, or out of your own store, or through any third-party outlet willing to buy them from you. But, because ISBNs are used almost universally, it will be a lot easier to get people to sell your book if it has an ISBN.
ISBNs are not assigned to a particular book, but to a particular edition of a given book. If you have a hardcover, a trade-size (larger) paperback, a mass-market (smaller) paperback, and an audiobook, each of those editions will have its own ISBN. ISBNs as related to ebook editions of a given title get more involved.
Some of the larger ebook sales outlets require that each ebook format or version have its own an ISBN. Others ebook sales outlet do not require ISBNs, but allow you to have an ISBN if you wish.
Amazon and Barnes & Noble, for example, assign their own internal Stock Keeping Unit Identity, or SKUID number to your book. These SKUIDs go by different names at different businesses. Amazon calls theirs ASIN, which I believe is Amazon Standard Identity Number. For books, the ASIN is the ISBN. Barnes & Noble has the BN ID, which is a separate, internal number from the ISBN. However, if you enter an ISBN into BN’s search, you should see the book pop up.
It is probably the best practice to assign an ISBN to an ebook. Some feel you should have a separate ISBN for each outlet’s version of your ebook (one for Amazon, another for B&N, another for the Apple iTunes iBook store, etc.). Others are of the opinion that one ISBN can cover all the ebook editions of a given book. I come down firmly on the fence (ouch) on this issue, but for the average small-press publisher, it’s not a big deal. The XYZ Booksellling Business is not going to sue you for all your dollars if you put a book on their service that has an ISBN that is the same as on the PDQ website. They might pull the title, or ask you to give the title its own ISBN, but that’s your worst case (probably).
If you make trivial changes to the content of a book — adding a review quote, correcting a few typos, etc. — there is no need to assign a new ISBN to a new version of an existing edition. If you make substantial revisions, adding significant new material, or deleting a lot of old material, that calls for a new ISBN. If you publish a version that is a different physical size, or has a change in page count, that calls for a new ISBN.
A price change does not require a new ISBN.
I am not crazy about the options available for getting an American ISBN. Each country has its own way of distributing ISBNs. In many countries, some arm or another of the government issues them. In the U.S., a company called R.R. Bowker sells them. See their ISBN website at https://www.myidentifiers.com/get-your-isbn-now (link opens in new tab). As of this writing, they’ll sell you one ISBN for $125, ten for $295, or a hundred for $575 (that’s how I buy them). You can also buy ISBNs by the thousand, or ten thousand, or even the million.
To oversimplify a tad, Bowker will happily sell you all sorts of other stuff, none of which you need. They’ll sell you barcodes you could get for free or cheap elsewhere, and marketing packages, and smartphone apps. All you need is ISBNs.
Lots of companies resell ISBNs, and/or offer a “free” ISBN if you buy a bunch of other services, and that is perfectly legal — but there is a catch. If you buy one or ten or 100 ISBNs from Bowker, they will be registered in your name (or, more probably, your publishing company’s name). If you buy an ISBN from someone who has purchased a thousand of them for $1500 and reselling them for $15 each or whatever, your book will be listed in various databases used by booksellers as being published by that company. This isn’t exactly the mark of Cain, but if your book is listed as being published by Joe’s House of Fishbait & Discount ISBN Service, it is a flag that tells a savvy bookseller that you’re dealing with such a shop — and that won’t make them want to take you or your title more seriously.
There is no legal requirement or commercial regulation that says your book needs to have a barcode. Barcodes have nothing to do with copyright. A barcode is simply a way of displaying information that is easily decode-able by various types of scanners and cameras. The particular type of barcode used for books is called various things. One term for it is the Bookland EAN Bar Code. It is similar to but not identical to the barcodes used on grocery products. Each sequence of thin and wide bars represents a different letter or digit, just as different sequences of dots and dashes represent different symbols in Morse Code. The bar codes used on books contain no other information other than the book’s ISBN and, optionally, the book’s price. Because each edition of each book has its own unique ISBN, a computer can use that ISBN to pull up all other information about a given book — its price (if changed from what’s on the barcode), its title, author, page count, shipping weight, most recent review, the ISBNs of other editions, etc.
Even if they are not required, ISBNs and barcodes are used so widely for so many purposes that you’d be shooting yourself in the foot not to use them.