: What is the difference between an ISBN and an ISBN Barcode? Is the ISBN the same as the ISBN Barcode or are these 2 different things? I want to publish my own books, so need some clarification.

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The International Standard Book Number (ISBN) is a numeric commercial book identifier which is intended to be unique.

ISBN number is assigned to a book for each variation and edition except re printings.

ISBN barcode (13 digits) = Unique country code(3 digits) + ISBN number(10 digits)

Last digit is Check digit that is a form of redundancy check used for error detection. In general ISBN barcode gives different check digit from the corresponding 10 digits ISBN number as shown in attached picture.

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ISBN or International Standard Book Number is a unique number assigned to a book. It is issued by a central ISBN agency in your country. In USA, you can obtain your ISBN numbers from the Bowker Agency.

So the basic difference between 2 is just of the form. As ISBN is just a Number and ISBN Barcode is a Barcode.

ISBN Barcode is a unique commercial book identifier barcode. It is encoded in an EAN-13 format barcode with a Price Supplemental barcode.

ISBN Code
Human Readable Text (optional)
Pricing Supplemental Code

This 2-part barcode is required by traditional book sellers such as Barnes & Nobles, Books-a-Million, and others.

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Older ISBN numbers are ten digits long and divided into four fields, the country/language code, the publisher code, the book code, and the check digit. they were printed in ocr-a (a font designed for machine reading). Newer isbn numbers are actually ean numbers with ean checksums and use ean barcodes, with isbn numbers having 2 ean country codes (978 being used as the prefix for legacy isbn numbers, with the checksum recalculated).

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(picture can be found here: dLSoft)

978-3-16-148410-0 is the ISBN (number).

The vertical strokes below that number are the barcode (which represents the number above).

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