The Bookland EAN and ISBN Page

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International Standard Book Number

Please note that the 10-digit ISBN-10 is being transitioned to a 13-digit ISBN-13. On January 1, 2007, the ISO ISBN-13 standard will take effect, and the ISBN will be redefined as a 13-digit identifier. Current information can be found at:

ISBN-13 Sunrise

Further information about converting ISBN-13 to barcode can be found here.

BooksPrice.com offers a free ISBN-10 to 13 converter here. It provides an online conversion of any number of ISBNs, and the ability to save the results to an Office Excel file.

Please note that what follows may be somewhat out-of-date. I will be revising this page.

The International Standard Book Number (ISBN) evolved from the Standard Book Number (SBN) previously used in some English speaking countries. An SBN is converted to an ISBN by prepending a digit '0'.

The ISBN consists of 9 digits plus one check digit. To calculate the check digit you must multiply the last digit of the number by 2, the next to the last by 3 etc. and add these results. The number needed to fill this sum to the next multiple of 11 is the check digit. If it is 10, the check digit is replaced by the letter 'X' . If the ISBN is 111111111, then the check digit would be calculated as follows.

1*10 +1*9 + 1*8 + 1*7 + 1*6 + 1*5 + 1*4 + 1*3 + 1*2 = 54/11 = 4 with 10 remainder. 11 - 10 = 1 then check digit is 1.

The true ISBN consists of three parts that may be (but need not be) separated by hyphens. The first part indicates the language or country of origin. This part can vary. The second part indicates the publisher and the third part the book number. The size of each field is not fixed, for instance a very small publisher will have a large field for the publishers number and a very large publisher will have a small field, leaving much more space for book numbers. When a publisher's book number space is exhausted, the publisher will be assigned a new publishers number. A reprint will not receive a new ISBN, but a modified reprint should be assigned a new number.

The language or country codes for ISBN include the following:

0	English ) (UK, US, Australia, NZ, Canada,
1	English )  South Africa, Zimbabwe)
2	French    (France, Belgium, Canada, Switzerland)
3	German    (Germany, Austria, Switzerland)
4	Japan
5	USSR
7	China
80	Czechoslovakia
81	India (see also 93)
82	Norway
83	Poland
84	Spain
85	Brazil
86	Yugoslavia
87	Denmark
88	Italian   (Italy, Switzerland)
89	South Korea
90	Dutch/Flemish
91	Sweden
92	International (Unesco)
93	India (see also 81)
950	Argentina
951	Finland
952	Finland
953 Croatia
954 Bulgaria
955	Sri Lanka
956	Chile
957	Taiwan
958	Colombia
959 Cuba
960	Greece
961 Slovenia
962	Hong Kong
963	Hungary
964 Iran
965 Israel
967	Malaysia (see also 983)
968	Mexico (see also 970)
969	Pakistan
970	Mexico (see also 968)
971	Philippines
972	Portugal
973	Romania
974	Thailand
975	Turkey
976	Carribean: AG,BS,BB,BZ,DM,GD,GY,JM,MS,KN,LC,VC,TT
977	Egypt
978	Nigeria
979	Indonesia
980	Venezuela
981	Singapore (see also 9971)
982	Pacific: CK,FJ,KI,NR,NU,SB,TK,TO,TV,VU,WS
983	Malaysia (see also 967)
984	Bangladesh
985	Belarus
987	Argentina
9960	Saudi Arabia
9963	Cyprus
9964	Ghana
9966	Kenya
9968	Costa Rica (see also 9977)
9970	Uganda
9971	Singapore (see also 981)
9972	Syria
9973	Tunisia
9974	Uruguay
9976	Tanzania (see also 9987)
9977	Costa Rica (see also 9968)
9978	Ecuador
9979	Iceland
9980	Papua New Guinea
9981	Morocco
9982	Zambia
9983	Gambia
9984	Latvia
9985	Estonia
9986	Lithuania
9987	Tanzania (see also 9976)
9988	Ghana
9989	Macedonia
99903	Mauritius
99904	Netherlands Antilles
99908	Malawi
99909	Malta
99911	Lesotho
99912	Botswana
99913	Andorra (see also 99920)
99914	Suriname
99915	Maldives
99916	Namibia
99917	Brunei
99920	Andorra (see also 99913)
99921	Qatar

If you are a new publisher and need one or more ISBNs, the agency responsible for assigning these numbers in the USA is R.R. Bowker.

Bar Code and ISBN

The barcode symbols that appear on the back of books are known as Bookland EAN bar code symbols. However, although the type of bar code is the same as others used for retailers, the numbering system used to generate the bar code is different. The EAN for normal retail products is a 13 digit number which uniquely identifies that product. However, a book already has a unique number to identify it, the ISBN. The EAN bar code for a book is generated from the ISBN for the book.

When encoded in an EAN-13 bar code, the ISBN is preceded by the digits 978 and the ISBN check-digit is not encoded. However, an EAN-13 check digit is added to the end of the bar code.

Much more information can be found at the International ISBN Agency. You can also find where to get an ISBN if you are outside the USA.

You can find the much more information about ISBN at the Book Industry Study Group site.

Alongside the main bar code symbol there can also be a five digit add-on bar code. If the add-on is the book's price, it will begin with a 0 for British Pounds and 5 for US Dollars. A supplemental code of 90000 indicates that the book has no suggested retail price. Supplemental numbers in the range 90001 to 98999 may be used by publishers for internal purposes. Complimentary copies of books are marked 99991. The National Association of College Stores uses 99990 to mark used books.

You can also find a list of Bookland EAN film master suppliers at the R.R. Bowker site.

There is a free program written in Python for printing Bookland. You simply key in the ISBN and price and the program translates to the proper EAN-13 number and prints a Postscript file to print the bar code. You can get it here free. Also, the site has a web page that generates the image on the fly for you.

A free online ISBN bar code generator based on bookland.py, provides bar codes in EPS or JPG format.

For information about ISSN, look at the ISSN Page on BarCode 1.