ISBN Vs GS1 What do I need and how do I get it?
Hi all, I’m new here so please be gentle with me! We are a small publishing company that wishes to sell our paperback/ebook/audio book. Turns out I need 3 accounts to do this; Seller/KDP/ACX - so far so good. KDP - a few teething issues but ebook listed and selling Hurrah! Can’t do the audio book until the paperback is on sale so I dive in… This paperback has an ISBN and Barcode and is selling fine in our own online shop. But Amazon’s system won’t let me list it as it doesn’t recognise the ISBN. So into the weird world of Seller Support (are they allowed to call it that?). 5 emails and 3 days later, they tell me I need GS1 barcodes - so I buy them - but can’t register my book with GS1 as GS1 don’t do barcodes for books according to…GS1. So I am left unable to list my book and unsure why - Amazon say I need a GS1 barcode and GS1 say I can’t have one for a book. HELP!!!
13 replies
Seller_taDBgt7LctucW
Is the ISBN registered and listed as an active title with Nielsen?
Seller_cJms0GbotqqtV
GS1 are correct. For books, the correct product identifier is the ISBN. If the book isn’t already in the Amazon catalogue, there is a procedure to create a new catalogue page. If your problem is that Amazon isn’t recognising the ISBN when you try to do this, that probably means that your ISBN hasn’t yet been registered on the Neilsen database, which is what Amazon rely on.
Paul
Seller_DROodOAYHftnc
Oh dear, you did not need to buy GS1 barcodes - all books are identified with their ISBN.
What Paul and Bairstows say is correct, the ISBN needs to be registered with Neilsen
Seller_mUuSCQ1ukh8de
Hi, to clarify - the ebook is fine and selling on KDP I am trying to list the associated paperback with Amazon (Seller Central). The ISBN is 978-1-913256-00-5 - your advice that Nielsen Registrations can take a couple of weeks to show in the Amazon catalogue is the most useful I’ve received in the past week - thank you! I guess that regardless of what Seller Support is telling me, that this may be the issue.
Seller_mUuSCQ1ukh8de
Thank you all for your kind replies. It has suddenly started working now with no response from Seller Support.
