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Originally Posted by salamanderjuice
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Do self-published eBooks get ISBNs? That might be why.
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No ebook actually needs ISBNs. They are for physical books, and a different version or different size with same content needs a different ISBN, because that are really P.O.S. EAN/UPC codes for physical retail.
There are several ways for an ebook to get an ISBN.
1. A distributor such as Draft2Digital/Smashwords. Then they are technically the publisher.
2. In Norway a SP physical book can have a free ISBN. I don't know how ebooks in Norway work.
3. You can buy an ISBN. It can only ever be used for one edition. Single or small numbers are expensive. Blocks of 100, 1000, 10,000 etc are very much cheaper, but depends on Country. Normally you have to use the ISBN agency for where you live, not where the book is published.
You don't need a company. Even big publishers use Imprints. An imprint is simply a name you register with the ISBN block selling Agency. Then no-one else can use it in that country, even if you don't register it as a Trademark.
The book world is strange. You can't copyright a title and can use one in use. The "pen name" doesn't need registered and isn't copyright, unless it's a Trademark.
You can take PD text and the edition with your formatting is your copyright. Someone has to treat that the same as any other paper or ebook in terms of copies, except they can freely copy the content without the formatting!
Hence the King James Version (AV) of the Bible is Crown Copyright, perpetually, no expiring, but the actual text isn't. The PD versions may use scans and proof edits of sources like Matthew Henry's Commentary as it's long out of copyright and includes the entire text of the King James Version.