Q – 

I am working through the contract in preparation to work with Booklocker. Can I purchase my own ISBN in case I land a traditional contract in the future? Forgive me to any confusion I may have. This is all new to me.

Looking forward to beginning this next chapter of the publishing journey.

A – 

We assign BookLocker ISBNs to our authors at no extra charge. Since we buy them in bulk, we get them really cheap ($1.50 each for 1,000 ISBNs, instead of $125 if you buy just one at a time).

Even if you land a traditional contract at some point, you would still need a new ISBN at that time. They can’t be transferred from one publisher/printer to another, even if the author owns the ISBN.

For example, your book will be under the BookLocker imprint in the retail systems. If you tried to use the same ISBN later, the retailers would reject the duplicate number because it’ll already be in their systems (even if that old book is no longer for sale). That happens whether you use your own ISBN or your publisher’s, and it happens across the board.

So, there is no need to buy your own ISBN. If you did land a traditional contract in the future, that company would assign a new ISBN to the new edition anyway.

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