SCENARIO 1
An indie author is ready to publish and they've already spent so much! Finally something for free! Amazon KDP, IngramSpark, and Draft2Digtial all offer free ISBNs!

And *timeout*
I’m super frugal. I want to advocate for authors to get more things for free if they can. The cost of 1 ISBN in the US is $125 dollars. For a number? A number? Are you kidding me?
So if an author can get a break, I’m all for it.

*Okay timein*

If the author has plans to do an eBook, a paperback, and a hardcover for her novel. That means she would need 3 ISBNs. So the savings are adding up here if she takes the free ISBN.

But here’s the catch.
The ISBN that is given for FREE from Amazon, or IngramSpark, or Draft2Digital can’t be used anywhere else.

So you have to lock in to that one platform.

SCENARIO 2
Let's say an author just wanted to get the book out, see how it did. Good news – it is doing great. But now customers want the book from other platforms. The author is ready to expand, but when she goes to take those same files and same ISBN and upload them elsewhere, she can’t because Amazon owns that ISBN and the other platforms won’t accept it.

But she can’t take the Amazon ISBN with her.

Because she should have used her own.
So now she needs to release a second edition of the same book with a new cover or a new bonus chapter or something under her own ISBN so she is free to upload it anywhere she wants.

Do you see why the Free ISBN is actually the biggest handcuff for you.

THE ONLY TIME YOU SHOULD USE A FREE ISBN
There are a lot of other creators on YouTube who talk about low-content self-publishing on Amazon KDP. These are usually journals or diaries. You have lined paper and the real selling point is the cover art. But these can be seasonal and the majority of the audience is on Amazon. Unless you are making beautifully handcrafted journals the people doing low-content books on Amazon are just on Amazon. The other platforms have limited low-content books. So the main place to publish them in Amazon KDP, there’s not much else you can do to take that journal elsewhere and then you’re constantly creating new ones to meet trends. If that is you, low-content journals and diaries on Amazon KDP – get the free ISBN. Because you’re not taking the book elsewhere and you’re gonna need a lot of em.

ISBN videos: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL5wG4jOiELp0BbfdZUAVE9BmHL51VJBf3

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