Do Kindle Books Need ISBN Numbers? Reader Question.

Reader Question:  Hi Bruce, I just discovered your How to create a children's book with PowerPoint and was blown away at the simplicity of this process.   I noticed that the Kindle books do not display any ISBN numbers.  Do .mobi NOT need or have an ISBN?  I also noticed that your print books DO.  Just trying to make sense of it. 

Also, is the Print version of your book also produced by the .mobi or some other file format?

I would love to try something like this with a simple project to see how well I could produce a book as well.

I appreciate your public videos.  They are so helpful.  Please advise @ ISBN nums.  Thanks.

Answer: Hi Joyce thank you for watching my videos and for the questions. ISBN numbers are used for tracking book sales. So all physical books, paperback and hardcover, have them. Kindle books aren't tracked by the big tracking agency and are not required to have them. You can add them but Amazon doesn't need them. Physical books are also inventoried so the ISBN numbers are used for that. If you are publishing your book through CreateSpace you can use the free numbers that they will give your your can purchase them yourself and use that one. They cost $125 apiece.

Kindle book are created from html files or once it is processed mobi files. Mobi files and Kindle are really like a simple web page. No ISBN required.

Pretty much all of my print books are published through CreateSpace.com which is the print-on-demand side of Amazon.com. For book production I generally use Adobe InDesign or Illustrator. You can also use MS Word or Apple Pages or even PowerPoint. You might be able to use Scrivener if you can set up a page size at the size needed of your book. Really anything that can produce a higher res pdf file. CreateSpace/Amazon can handle books from 5"x8" up to 8.5" x 11". I will often create a Kindle version of my print books using the Kindle Kid Creator program from the source pdf. If the book is all text then I will format it from MS Word, just like everyone else does.

Resources:
Kindle Kid Creator, Great program for converting pdf book files into Kindle Books
CreateSpace.com
7 Steps to Publishing Your Book on line course
How to Make a Children's Picture Book for Kindle, on line course
Bowker site for purchasing ISBN numbers, MyIdentifiers.com

How to Make a Children's Picture Book Using PowerPoint Video.