For those of you that have self-published... does your book have an ISBN? How did you obtain your number, and, if you're willing to share, how much did it cost? Do you consider the ISBN to be a worthwhile investment?

I've had someone tell me that if you're publishing as an ebook, ISBNs are unnecessary. You don't need one for publishing with Kindle, at least, and this person hypothesized that ISBNs do not help the self-published author much. Therefore, they are an expense that can be cut.

I was curious what other self-publishers think about this.

For my paperbacks, I used the ISBN numbers provided for free by CreateSpace. I still own all rights, but CS is listed as the publisher. CS now offers two new options. An ISBN # for $10 that you can choose who the listed publisher is, but it can only be used on CS, and then a # for $99 that you can use with any printer.

For my next books, I plan to buy a block of 10 ISBNs for $250 (definitely the best deal since 1 is $125). I could use CS's $10 ISBN, but I want to be able to print with another printer like Lightning Source and still use the same ISBN. But, if you choose CS as your printer and don't intend to use anyone else, the $10 ISBN is a great deal. I'm not sure what kind of offers somewhere like Lulu has. I've never really checked into it, so someone familiar with Lulu would have to comment on that.

As far as ebooks, I don't have numbers for the ones on Kindle, but I had Smashwords assign free ISBNs to my ebooks there. It's not absolutely necessary, but it is required for the books to be distributed to Apple and Sony for their various e-readers. Again, with a free ISBN Smashwords is listed as the publisher, but Apple and Sony are the only ones who see that, not readers. And it doesn't take away any rights to you work. So it didn't bother me not to be listed as the publisher in this instance.

Thank you for explaining your experience in this area, Molly. That makes sense.