ISBN and Legal Deposit

The ISBN is a code used to identify your book.

In the case of books, for their publication and subsequent sale, some matters must be covered for them to circulate generally in the commercial industry: the ISBN and the legal deposit.

ISBN

It is a worldwide standardized code to identify each specific book or literary publication. It allows recognizing the originality of work as well as its fast and efficient search or tracing.

This internationally accepted identifier code is visually nothing more than a bar code usually located at the bottom of the back cover of a book. At the time of its creation, it comprised only 10 digits, however, at present, it has been extended to 13 digits, to increase its mass identification capacity.

Each ISBN fulfills the function of identifying each of the important elements of the origin of a book. Using this method features such as the origin or country where the work was created, its author, or the number of copies in case of being printed can be reflected in the code.

It should be noted that this code will be different for each edition of the same literary work. Nowadays, and thanks to the progress of this digital era and Internet commerce, books or digital publications can also be provided with an ISBN code for their identification.

However, using this code in your work is up to the author’s choice since it is not mandatory. However, according to the opinion of experts in the field and publishing franchises, the ISBN code could be indispensable.

Legal Deposit

It is a regulation for new works or publications whereby the authors of such works or publications must register a certain number of their creations in a specific country, to contribute to the knowledge of future generations of the literary work previously done.

Unlike the ISBN, the Legal Deposit is mandatory in most of the countries where it is established.

It is an extraordinary and efficient measure to preserve a literary legacy for current citizens and future generations, facilitate reading and educational research and thus contribute to the cultural development of a particular nation.

How Do I Get My ISBN and Legal Deposit?

The ISBN application is made at the agency of the affiliated institution of each country. For this, you must carry out a registration process with different forms and data as well as make the corresponding payment, the cost also varies so you will have to consult it in the office of your country, which is higher if the application is made urgently.

Legal deposit is another procedure that, in this case, is mandatory if your book has an ISBN.

We must request it once our ISBN has been registered and before sending our book to the printer, in this way we will make sure that we can add it to the legal data of our book. To do so, we must go to the office in our country with the basic data of our book, such as the ISBN, the author, the publisher, the type of book, and the date of publication. They will instantly give you the legal deposit number that you have to add to your book.