Assign and check every ISBN
Search every ISBN in a general search engine
Type each of your ISBNs (International Standard Book Numbers) into a search engine to see every place the book is listed, and check what those listings say.
Why it matters
You can't fix a listing you don't know exists. Searching the ISBN finds the long tail of sites that copied your metadata, and those are the places where errors persist longest because nobody looks. It also reveals when a format is missing from a retailer entirely, which is a distribution question rather than a metadata one.
Your part
- What you do
- Monitor. Check again on a schedule, or after something changes.
- Who normally owns it
- Author. Author searches; publisher or platform fixes what is found
- When
- Thirty to sixty days before launch, once listings should be live, and then quarterly for the life of the book (Assign and check every ISBN: twelve to six months before publication, before any listing goes live)
Your part changes with your publishing route.
How to do it
The full walkthrough
An International Standard Book Number (ISBN) is a precise search term. Put it into a general search engine and the results are every public page that carries that number: retailers you knew about, retailers you did not, library catalogs, price comparison sites, review platforms, and occasionally a page that should not exist. It is the cheapest audit of your metadata there is.
The search tells you what your distribution actually produced, not what it was supposed to produce. It shows you the whole market rather than the two sites you check by habit, which retailers your feed or your aggregator really reached, and the listing you uploaded to a second platform with a slightly different subtitle. Note any listing with a wrong title, price, date, or contributor and add it to the correction log. If the ISBN appears on only one retailer when it should be everywhere, that is a distribution question rather than a metadata one, and it is worth raising with whoever sends the feed.
Do the search for every ISBN (each format separately), thirty to sixty days before launch when listings should exist, and then quarterly. Search the 13-digit form with and without hyphens.
Common mistakes
- Searching the title instead of the ISBN, which finds the famous listings and misses the wrong ones.
- Searching only the primary format's ISBN.
- Doing it once before launch and never again, when new sites pick up the record for years.
- Treating a price comparison site's stale data as a publisher error; note it, but prioritize the sources.
Identifiers for Search every ISBN in a general search engine
Set a status on any record and it joins this step. All book identifiers.
| My status | Identifier | Why this matters | Yours |
|---|---|---|---|
| ISBN The International Standard Book Number, printed above the barcode. Most formats sold through the book trade get their own. | Every retailer, wholesaler, and library orders and lists your book by this number, and the title, contributors, format, price, and publication date attached to it are what those systems display, so one wrong detail shows up in many places at once. Traditionally and hybrid published authors normally receive the numbers from the publisher and check what is attached to each one. If you publish the book yourself, you buy the numbers and assign them, and you are the one who decides whether your imprint or a platform is recorded as the publisher. Keep one list of every ISBN beside the edition and format it identifies so you can check listings against it. | Add your ISBN-13 | |
| WorldCat The shared library catalog where member libraries report which books they hold, free for anyone to search. | Catalogers reuse records from here, so an error in one record tends to spread, and a missing record, a duplicate, or one record that mixes two formats makes your book harder for a library to order correctly. No author on any route can edit a record. Traditionally and hybrid published authors normally send the correction to the publisher's metadata team or distributor, and a self-published author normally goes to their platform, or to a library that holds the book and can report the problem. Record the OCLC number for each edition, note any error, and remember that public holdings counts are incomplete and delayed. | Add your OCLC number | |
| Google Books Google's index of book records and previews, often the first thing a reader or librarian sees when they search your title. | Because Google's web search draws on it, a wrong record here is visible to readers and librarians and gets cited in other databases, and an old edition or an advance file left previewable is the version people will read. Corrections go to whoever holds the partner account for the title rather than to the search result: traditionally and hybrid published authors normally ask the publisher or its distributor, once they have established which of the two holds it. If you publish the book yourself, you may hold the account, in which case the fix is yours to make. Search every edition by ISBN, check the core facts, and make sure any preview shows the current file. | Add your Google Books link |
What done looks like
- Every ISBN searched, in 13-digit form, before launch and then on a quarterly schedule.
- A list of every site where each ISBN appears, with a note of whether the listing is correct.
- Discrepancies added to the correction log with the site and the field.
- Missing retailers noted and raised with the publisher or platform.
- Any listing that seems unauthorized (a pirated copy, a lookalike) reported through the appropriate channel.
Sources and last checked
- Official source
- No single official page for this step.
- Last checked
- Not checked against its source yet.
- How confident we are
- Verified