isbn number zimbabwe

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The second part of the ISBN identifies a country, geographical region or language area participating in the ISBN system. Some members form language areas (e.g. German language group = group number 3) or regional units (e.g. South Pacific = group number 982).

Publishers should contact the national agency that serves the specific part of Belgium where they are located, based on language of that area – either French speaking, Flemish speaking or German speaking.

Publishers should contact either the English speaking or French speaking agency in Canada according to their location and the most usual language of their books or of their staff.

• Caribbean Community (Caricom) (976) includes: 

Antigua AG, Bahamas BS, Barbados BB, Belize BZ, Dominica DM, Grenada GD, Guyana GY, Jamaica JM, St. Kitts-Nevis KN, St. Lucia LC, St. Vincent and the Grenadines VC, Trinidad and Tobago TT

The Curaçao ISBN Agency assigns ISBNs to publishers based not only in Curaçao CW itself but also to the Caribbean territories of Aruba AW; Bonaire, Sint Eustatius and Saba BQ; and Sint Maarten (Dutch part) SX  

• Multi-national NGOs

NGOs that have offices in multiple countries should contact the International ISBN Agency for advice about obtaining ISBNs. ISBNs will be assigned and registered to the location of their headquarters. 

• South Pacific (982) includes:

Cook Islands CK, Fiji FJ, Kiribati KI, Marshall Islands MH, Federal States of Micronesia FM, Nauru NR, New Caledonia NC, Niue NU, Palau PW, Solomon Islands SB, Tokelau TK, Tonga TO, Tuvalu TV, Vanuatu VU, Western Samoa WS  

In June 2017, there was a significant change to the ISBN process in Suriname. Publishers in Suriname will no longer contact Interfund Group, which ran the ISBN agency based there. Instead, publishers located in Suriname should contact the International ISBN Agency directly.

• Territories and dependencies of the United Kingdom

The United Kingdom & Ireland ISBN Agency assigns ISBNs to publishers based anywhere in the British Isles, including Orkney, Shetland, Isle of Man IM, Isle of Wight and the Channel Islands.

It also assigns ISBNs to publishers based in most of the 14 British Overseas Territories: Anguilla AI, Falkland Islands FK, South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands GS, British Indian Ocean Territory IO, Cayman Islands KY, Montserrat MS, Pitcairn PN, St. Helena, Ascension Island and Tristan da Cunha SH, Turks and Caicos Islands TC, British Virgin Islands VG and Akrotiri and Dhekelia.

The exceptions are Bermuda and Gibraltar, which have their own national ISBN agencies.  

• Francophone and Lusophone countries

In some cases where there is no ISBN agency located in a specific country, publishers in t he respective country or territory may contact another national agency according to language. The agencies of France and Portugal will assign ISBNs to publishers based in certain other countries. For example, publishers based in Senegal should contact the ISBN Agency of France for ISBNs. For details of the countries covered by these arrangements click here .  

• Countries that do not currently have a national ISBN agency and are not part of any other defined regional or other group 

Contact the International ISBN Agency for advice. It may be that we have already made informal arrangements with an existing national ISBN Agency to provide ISBNs on behalf of your country. We also recommend that you contact the ministry of culture and associations responsible in your country for publishers or the book trade to inform them of the desire for the implementation of the ISBN system in your country.

© 2014-2023 International ISBN Agency

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Isbns for self-published books, what is an isbn.

"ISBN" stands for "International Standard Book Number". It's a unique number that originated as a stock-keeping identifier, to help identify a particular edition of a particular book. It is now an international standard used throughout the book publishing industry by publishers, distributors, retailers, and libraries. Contrary to what many writers assume, it has nothing whatsoever to do with copyright. For information on copyright, click here

Do self-publishers need an ISBN?

Any book which is going to be sold through a retailer needs to have an ISBN, and this applies as much to self-published books as it does to traditionally published books. There are certain rare instances where you can get away without one (such as if you are printing a book for personal or family purposes; or to give away as a freebie; or if you plan to only sell it directly to customers yourself; etc.), but by and large the answer is simply yes: you will need an ISBN.

How to get an ISBN

The traditional route for getting ISBNs is to obtain them directly from the body responsible for issuing the numbers in your country. For the main English-speaking countries these are as follows:

• United States: Bowker ( http://www.bowker.com );
• United Kingdom: Nielsen ( http://www.isbn.nielsenbook.co.uk );
• Canada: Canadian ISBN Service System ( https://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/ciss-ssci );
• Australia: Thorpe-Bowker ( https://www.myidentifiers.com.au );
• Ireland: Nielsen ( http://www.isbn.nielsenbook.co.uk );
• New Zealand: National Library of New Zealand ( http://natlib.govt.nz/publishers-and-authors/isbns-issns-and-ismns ).

If you live in Canada or New Zealand then you're in luck: you can get an ISBN for free via the relevant link above.

For everyone else, unfortunately, obtaining ISBNs can be an expensive business. The absolute minimum you will have to pay is $125 in the US; £144 in the UK (about €200 in Ireland); or $97 in Australia. And while this will get you 10 ISBNs in the UK and Ireland (the minimum you can buy), in the US and Australia these prices will only get you one single solitary ISBN. You may think that's all you need if you're only publishing one book, but unfortunately you need a different ISBN for every version of your book: hardback, paperback; and each and every type of ebook. At the very least you will need two ISBNs, so that means buying a pack of 10 from Bowker / Thorpe-Bowker, and that will set you back $295 in the US and $139 in Australia.

At this point you're probably wondering how you can get round this and get your ISBNs for free – and no, you can't just opt to get them through the Canadian and New Zealand outlets. Those are available to people and businesses with addresses in Canada and New Zealand only.

However, you will find that lots of self-publishing services (including CreateSpace) will give you an ISBN for free. They can do this because they buy ISBNs in such huge bulk that each individual one costs them very little indeed. They are "real" and fully-fledged ISBNs and not cheap knock-offs or imitations in any sense, but they do suffer from some limitations.

The first problem is that the imprint of record will be the name of the self-publishing service that gave you the ISBN. So, even though you are "self" publishing, all the records held around the world will list the company that gave you the ISBN as the publisher, not you. If you take the CreateSpace route and use one of their free ISBNs your book will be listed as published by "CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform". This is what will appear on all the websites and book ordering systems around the world. On your copyright page at the start of the book you would need to write "Published by CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform". Many authors don't like this, as there is a perception that this can make a book seem unprofessional.

The second problem is that you don't own the ISBN – your self-publishing service does. This doesn't mean they own your book, or its content, or your copyright, but it means they control the ISBN, which means you probably won't be able to use it with any other platform. In a new and rapidly changing industry, this is a real concern. What if you find a better way of taking your book to market? What if the one you have chosen declines, goes out of business, or (having got leverage over its authors by owning their ISBNs), adopts less favourable policies, knowing it will be hard for you to move elsewhere?

The answer is you'd have to get a new ISBN, and this can be a more difficult process than you might imagine. For starters, it will mean that you will have to change both your interior text file and your cover (including the barcode). Depending on the self-publishing path you chose, you may not own or have rights to access these files yourself, so you may need to create new PDF press proofs and a new cover just for the sake of the ISBN.

That, however, may not be the worst part. When you change your ISBN you are effectively hitting the reset button on your book. As far as all the book systems around the world are concerned, this will be a totally new book, unconnected to its previous incarnation. If somebody searches for your book by its old ISBN they will not find your new version. Your sales figures will be reset to zero, and so your book will have to prove itself all over again. Amazon and other booksellers promote books with strong sales records more than unproven books, creating a snowball effect where successful books become more and more successful under their own momentum. Once you change your ISBN, that all has to start all over again.

You'll also lose all the reviews you had built up on websites, as they will be attached to the original ISBN. What if all your original sales were thanks to a really good review left early in its life? What if, this time, the first review is a bad one? What if this means that you never manage to recover the success you enjoyed with the first ISBN?

And don't forget that we already advise that the best approach is to have a CreateSpace version of your book for Amazon sales, and another version with a printer for other sales channels. With a free ISBN from CreateSpace, however, you wouldn't be able to use it on another platform. You'd therefore have to have two ISBNs (one of which you'd probably have to buy anyway), and your total sales figures would therefore be split between the two books, rather than being aggregated under a single ISBN, reducing the exposure you receive.

Using a free ISBN – while initially attractive – can often be a decision self-published authors come to regret.

Retail ISBNs

The third option for acquiring ISBNs is through an ISBN retailer. These companies buy ISBNs in bulk from the ISBN issuers, and can then sell authors the right to use them individually at a much lower cost than the ISBN issuers sell individual ISBNs – if they sell them individually at all.

This makes getting your own ISBN much more affordable than buying it directly from the ISBN issuer, and also means that you get control over your ISBN. You will be able to use it with multiple printers at the same time, so you can have the same ISBN on the version of your book produced through CreateSpace, and on your version produced through an on-demand printer. If you change printers, you can take the ISBN with you. You won't need to change your internal files or your cover, and you won't lose the vital history you've built up for your book.

Importantly, however, the retailer cannot transfer the ISBN to you – they can only allow you to use it. Again, this doesn't mean that the retailer owns your book or your content or your copyright, but it does mean that this solution shares one of the drawbacks of the free ISBN option: the imprint of record will be the name of the ISBN retailer. The name of the ISBN retailer will appear as the publisher on all the records on all the systems all over the world. Now imagine having a copyright page for your book that reads "Published by Discount ISBNs 4 U" (for example), and you can see why this option can also be off-putting.

However, the good thing is that you are not stuck to the name chosen by your self-publishing system, as you are with free ISBNs. You can shop around and find an ISBN retailer that will use an imprint name that you're happy with.

The retail ISBN is therefore a good solution for avoiding astronomical costs, while maintaining control of your ISBN, but when selecting which retailer to buy from you need to watch out for a couple of important points:

• Check what the imprint of record will be, and that it won't compromise how professional your book appears.
• Ensure that the service includes the submission of your book details to the central record maintained by the issuer, and check whether there are any additional charges for this. Never buy an ISBN without knowing that you can get your book details included in the central record.

The whole thing can get very complicated, so we've put together the following comparison to help you make your decision:

Based on the comparison above, we think that the retail ISBN option provides the best balance of affordability and author control for self-published authors.

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Items related to The struggle for Zimbabwe: The Chimurenga War

The struggle for zimbabwe: the chimurenga war - softcover, martin, david.

This specific ISBN edition is currently not available.

• About this edition
• Publisher Zimbabwe Pub. House
• Publication date 1981
• ISBN 10  0949932000
• ISBN 13  9780949932006
• Binding Paperback
• Edition number 1
• Number of pages 378
• Rating 2.93 avg rating • ( 15 ratings by Goodreads )

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ISBN 10:  ISBN 13:  9780571110667 Publisher: Faber & Faber, 1981 Hardcover

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Book Description Softcover. Condition: Fair. First Edition. Signed by Johnson. 1st edition. 378 pages. The wraps are edge worn, a bit creased and marked. Tanning, foxing, minor marks. However, it is still in fair condition, tightly bound and intact. MK. Our orders are shipped using tracked courier delivery services. Signed. Seller Inventory # 12rd

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The Struggle for Zimbabwe

Book Description Soft cover. Condition: Fair. 1st Edition. *** PAPERBACK. Cover slightly rubbed on edges. Text block edges browned and a few spots. Front cover light stain. Good tight copy. 378pp including Acknowledgements; Foreword by Robert Mugabe; Preface; Notes; Index; Chronology; 2 Maps; 33 Black & white photographs. SUBTITLED: The Chimurenga War *** CONTENTS: The Observer, May 1981. "The most detailed and comprehensive account yet on the guerrilla struggle . . ." . This was written about a year after independence, before the country became a failed state. . Size: 210x130mm. Seller Inventory # 001381

Book Description Paperback. Condition: Good. The book has been read but remains in clean condition. All pages are intact and the cover is intact. Some minor wear to the spine. Seller Inventory # GOR003855067

Book Description Paperback. Condition: Fair. A readable copy of the book which may include some defects such as highlighting and notes. Cover and pages may be creased and show discolouration. Seller Inventory # GOR006211809

The Struggle for Zimbabwe the Chimurenga War

Book Description Soft cover. Condition: Fair ++. First Paperback Edition. Foreword by Robert Mugabe. Wraps are rubbed and some wear at the top front corner. Spine band is faded. Low quality paper has caused heavy age-tanning to the outer pages. Pages xvii + 2 maps following + 377 including index and with sixteen pages of illustrations. (Klfspc-EY-EWY-WaBy). Seller Inventory # 210409

Book Description Taschenbuch. Condition: Gut. 378 Seiten Alle B�cher & Medienartikel von Book Broker sind stets in gutem & sehr gutem gebrauchsf�higen Zustand. Dieser Artikel weist folgende Merkmale auf: Altersentsprechend nachgedunkelte/saubere Seiten in fester Bindung. Einband leicht belesen/besto�en. Sprache: Englisch Gewicht in Gramm: 320. Seller Inventory # 660886425

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A History of Zimbabwe

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• ISBN-10 110768479X
• ISBN-13 978-1107684799
• Publisher Cambridge University Press
• Publication date April 7, 2014
• Language English
• Dimensions 6 x 0.71 x 9.02 inches
• Print length 312 pages
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Book description, about the author, product details.

• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Cambridge University Press (April 7, 2014)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Paperback ‏ : ‎ 312 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 110768479X
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1107684799
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 14.5 ounces
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6 x 0.71 x 9.02 inches
• #33 in Zimbabwe History
• #46 in African History (Books)
• #70 in Southern Africa History

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A. s. mlambo.

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• Anthologies & Collections

Women Writing Zimbabwe

Edited by irene staunton.

The fifteen stories in Women Writing Zimbabwe offer a kaleidoscope of fresh, moving, and comic perspectives on the way in which events of the last decade have impacted on individuals, women in particular. Several stories (Tagwira, Ndlovu and Charsley) look at the impact that AIDS has on women who become the care-givers, often without emotional or physical support. It is often assumed that women will provide support and naturally make the necessary sacrifices. Brickhill and Munsengezi focus on the hidden costs and unexpected rewards of this nurturing role. Many families have been separated over the last decade. Ndlovu, Mutangadura, Katedza, Mhute and Rheam all explore exile's long, often painful, reach and the consequences of deciding to remain at home. In lighter vein, but with equal sharpness of perception, Petina Gappah , Manyika, Sandi, and Holmes poke gentle fun at the demands of new-found wealth, status and manners. Finally, Musariri reminds us that the hidden costs of undisclosed trauma can continue to affect our lives for years afterwards. All of the writers share a sensitivity of perception and acuity of vision. Reading their stories will enlarge and stimulate our own understanding.

"This is a valuable addition to contemporary Zimbabwean literature – reflecting the diversity of experiences, mostly painful, through which Zimbabweans are enduring in the first decade of the 21st Century."

"The publication of Women Writing Zimbabwe speaks to the resilience and resourcefulness of Zimbabweans, as well as to the vision of the founder of Weaver Press, who is still publishing books in Harare."

About the Editor

Irene Staunton

Irene Staunton began work in publishing in London in the 1970s. Returning to Zimbabwe after its independence, she became the editor at the government’s new Curriculum Development Unit. In 1987, she co-established Baobab Books , which rapidly acquired a reputation as an exciting literary publisher. In 1999, she left Baobab to co-found Weaver Press . She was also the editor of the Heinemann African Writers Series for several years. Staunton has also researched and compiled a number of oral histories including Mothers of the Revolution .

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