Quote:
Originally Posted by pdurrant
ISBNs are intended to uniquely identify a book so that if a bookshop orders it, it gets the right edition. Publishers, readers, libraries and other book users also make use of the ISBN for this purpose.
But since an ebook sold through Amazon (in one of Amazon's formats) is never sold or available anywhere else, an ISBN is unnecessary (although Amazon in the KDP system do now allow you to give an ISBN, it is not required).
All products sold on Amazon are given an ASIN - ?Amazon Stock Identifying Number? - and can be easily referenced using that ASIN like so:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/ASIN/
e.g. My edition of Kim at Amazon has an ASIN of B003JBHNS4 and can be found at http://www.amazon.com/dp/B003JBHNS4/
I do also have an ePub version of this book, ISBN 9781905946143. But I haven't given an ISBN to the version on Amazon. |
So are the ASIN numbers as good as ISBN numbers? I'm presuming they can't be used anywhere else but Amazon, so maybe not.