A Quick Guide to Barcodes for Self-Publishers

If you plan on selling your book through bookstores, a barcode is essential. Most wholesalers, distributors and bookstores will not handle your book without one. In any case, barcodes are simple and inexpensive to create so even if you plan to do little selling through traditional channels, it's worthwhile to add one to your cover for the professionalism it confers.

The Barcode Coding System
Books have their own category of barcode called the Bookland EAN. Every Bookland EAN begins with the number 978, which identifies the item as a book. These first three digits are followed by the book's ISBN number, less the ISBN's final check digit. The barcode then adds its own check digit.

For example, the ISBN 0-9733846-0-3 becomes barcode number 9 780973 384604. (The ISBN's check digit of 3 was dropped and the barcode's check digit of 4 was added.)

Since an ISBN is itself a code that indicates the publisher, title, author and edition of a book, barcodes immediately identify specific books when they are scanned.

Price Extensions
Bookland EANs also include a price extension of five digits. The first digit indicates the currency. The number 5 is used for US dollars and 6 for Canadian dollars. The remaining four digits indicate the price itself. Thus, a price extension of 51995 means the book costs $19.95 US. Because the US dollar is commonly used as the designated currency, a Bookland EAN with a price extension is called an EAN-5.

If you don't encode the price of your book, your Bookland EAN will carry a price extension of 90000, which is simply a null code. This is known as EAN-9.

If you plan on selling in the US market, you must use an EAN-5 or EAN-9 since scanners in American bookstores cannot read barcodes without price extensions.



When you look at a Bookland EAN, there appear to be two barcodes side by side. The first, larger barcode contains the ISBN data. The barcode numeral appears at the bottom of the barcode, while the ISBN runs across the top.

The second, smaller barcode is the price extension. The example above shows a book priced at $14.95 US.

Your bar code should be placed at the bottom of your back cover, ideally in the right-hand corner.

How to Acquire a Barcode
Many book designers can take care of creating a barcode for you as part of the cover design process. You can also purchase software that will let you create barcodes yourself. Software is certainly a viable option, although it seems unnecessary unless you will be creating a tremendous number of codes.

One of the fastest and easiest routes is to use a barcode service such as Bar Code Graphics (http://www.barcode-graphics.com). Using their online form, you simply type in your ISBN and price information. Seconds later, you can download a fully encoded barcode file, ready for use. Best of all, it only costs $10.