Thread: When did Kobo's store starting using "Book ID" instead of ISBN?
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Old 06-30-2025, 06:58 AM   #12
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Quote:
Originally Posted by salamanderjuice View Post
They exist for more than physical shops! That's why ebooks get assigned unique ISBNs, to get identified differently from the paper version. They are useful for libraries, creating citations, anywhere a unique book ID is useful.

ISBNs are not required for self published paper books either.
They are if you want to sell the paper book in any physical shop.

As most English Language ebooks are sold via Amazon (over 90%), the ISBN isn't needed. Amazon uses their proprietary ASIN. The ISBN is only needed if the ebook is distributed on more than one ebook store (and Libraries count as an extra "store"). I did explain that. So any ebook in a regular Library (not solely Kobo Plus or Kindle Unlimited) will have an ISBN and will be on one or more ebook stores. I did explain this. Perhaps not clearly enough.

Note that SP titles in KU scheme, or Amazon published titles, are never in real libraries, and SP KU are never on other stores nor authors' web sites. Only large publishers can use KU non-exclusively and they always have ISBNs, because in bulk and ISBN is extremely cheap. That's why anyone SP only one or two ebooks should use Draft2Digital/Smashwords, get their free ISBN and let them redistribute to Amazon, Apple, Nook, Kobo etc. It's madness and hurting the then entire ecosystem to only use Amazon KDP, and now with Draft2Digital/Smashwords distributing to Amazon there is no need to use KDP at all.
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