In the UK, ISBNs are sold by Nielsen and the price per number falls sharply with volume — a single number is disproportionately expensive and a block of ten is far better value. You need a separate ISBN for each format, so one book in four formats is four numbers.
What it costs
What isbn costs — and what you're actually buying
What good looks like
- Bought in your own name if you want to be the publisher of record
- One per format, not one per book
- Registered properly so the book appears in trade databases
What your book will actually cost
Four questions — genre, length, what you have already, what you want at the end — and we send a costed plan for your book.
What you are actually buying
An ISBN identifies a specific edition of a book. You need one per format — paperback, hardback, ebook are three. Whoever owns the ISBN is listed as the publisher.
Why it costs that
In the UK, ISBNs are sold by Nielsen and the price per number falls sharply with volume — a single ISBN is disproportionately expensive, a block of ten is far better value per number, and a hundred cheaper still. You need a separate ISBN for each format: paperback, hardback, ebook and audiobook are four numbers for one book.
How to spend less
Take a free ISBN from your printer or platform if you are certain you will never move the book. The saving is real and so is the cost: a free platform ISBN usually lists that platform as the publisher, and moving the book later means a new ISBN and losing the sales history. If you intend to publish more than one book, or more than one format, buy a block of ten.
What good looks like
- Bought in your own name if you want to be the publisher of record
- One per format, not one per book
- Registered properly so the book appears in trade databases
Questions to ask them
- Do I actually need my own, or will the platform's free one do?
- Am I planning to sell into bookshops?
Red flags
- A service charging a large markup on an ISBN you could buy directly
- Being told you need one when you are printing forty family copies
Honestly
Most first books do not need their own ISBN. KDP and IngramSpark provide one free, and the only real cost is that they appear as the publisher. If you are printing for family, you need no ISBN at all.
What Your Book Pro does here
Your Book Pro is a British book-writing platform. You bring a book — an idea, a folder of notes, half a draft, or a finished manuscript written somewhere else — and it gives you the editorial process a publisher would run: a plan, structured feedback, a simulated beta read, a line edit, a proofread, a cover, a blurb and a print-ready file. You can type it, upload it or speak it. The tools sit in one place and work on the same manuscript, so the feedback compounds instead of arriving as twelve disconnected opinions.
These prices are here to be used, not to sell you something — brief a freelancer with them, sanity-check a quote, or work out what you actually need. Where Your Book Pro changes the arithmetic, the page says so; where it does not, it says that too.
Most first books do not need their own ISBN. KDP and IngramSpark provide one free, and the only real cost is that they appear as the publisher. If you are printing for family, you need no ISBN at all.
What it costs
| What you are buying | Typical range | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Single ISBN (UK) | £89 | Nielsen |
| Block of 10 | £164 | Nielsen |
| Free ISBN from KDP or IngramSpark | £0 | Platform-assigned; you are not the publisher of record |
CIEP suggested minimum rates effective 1 March 2026; Books.by; publishing.co.uk; The Ghostwriters Agency. Dated 9 September 2026.
Try it free
Get my costed planQuestions people ask
- Do I need an ISBN?
- For selling through bookshops and libraries, yes. For an ebook sold only through one platform, not always — but you cannot be listed properly without one.
- How many ISBNs does one book need?
- One per format. Paperback, hardback, ebook and audiobook are four separate numbers.
- Should I use a free ISBN from KDP?
- Only if you are certain you will never move the book. The free number lists the platform as publisher and does not travel.
- Can I reuse an ISBN for a second edition?
- Not for a substantially revised edition — that needs a new one. A reprint with corrections does not.