During the beta period and while we work the bugs out, OSBNs are indeed free! But please understand that the beta period may be shortened or extended at our discretion. After the beta period ends, our intention is for OSBNs to be made available for a very nominal cost.

At the moment, no. While both OSBN and isbn are identification systems for books, OSBN does not yet have the traction with publishers, libraries, retailers. Maybe one day. For now, your OSBN serves to drive readers here and then to the place you choose, whether that's a web site, review site, or a purchase link, or all three.

No. At the time of this writing, Ingram has three options: buy your own isbn or they can give you an isbn, or they can assign an internal SKU to your book and put that on the back cover. If you choose the third option, you cannot distribute with Ingram, which means you have to buy your own books, and then sell and ship them yourself.

Those companies offer free isbns but they are limited. You cannot sell outside of their platform, they mark up your book with their publisher and printer info and at least in the case of Lulu, the isbn may never make it to the centralized database of isbn numbers to be looked up. With Lulu in particular, many of the books in their bookstore don't show up when you perform an isbn lookup online. And speaking on online bookstores, With the exception of Amazon, they have very limited viewership and only present one option for purchase (through them). What if you are selling in another way as well? And Amazon suffers from too many listings, is poorly curated, and has algorithms in place that make sure your book never gets the exposure you want.

If you have received this message: "We can't determine what country you are logging in from. You must login from the country listed in your profile." Unfortunately our one major requirement is that you choose a "home" country at registration and then login only from that country. We are working on allowing logins for from more than one country but until then please use a VPN back to your home country before logging in.

Sorry, we can't help you. You'll need to create a new account.

No.

Within the terms of our service, once approved, OSBNs last forever. Even if you delete your account, your OSBNs remain available for lookup and will show basic information - roughly the same amount of info as an isbn lookup.

If we determine that you are trying to use the OSBN.io system for fraud or other criminal activity, your OSBN can be removed at our discretion.

OSBN.io doesn't concern itself with the content of your book. Your OSBN listing won't be removed just because you've written provocative material.

Look, osbn.io is a community as much as it is a directory and database. Minors may be using the service so we ask that you compose your listings with that in mind. Don't put anything in your listing that would be generally considered shocking if it were seen on the shelf in a bookstore. If reported to us, profane content may result in the temporary suspension of your listing until you make some changes.

While we welcome applications all over the world, at this time we can only create listings using the Latin alphabet.

You can request that your account details be removed by contacting us.