ISBN-barcodegenerator

Usually not. Amazon says it plainly: if you use Cover Creator, or choose not to provide your own barcode, KDP places one on your back cover for free — and an Amazon-placed barcode is guaranteed to meet its own manufacturing requirements. You need your own in three cases: you want the price encoded in it, you are printing the same cover somewhere other than KDP, or your designer wants the whole cover finished in one file. If none of those is true, leave the area blank and let Amazon do it.

KDP — Barcodes

In the lower right corner of the back cover, in a white box 2 inches by 1.2 inches (50.8 by 30.5 mm), at least 0.25 inch (6.3 mm) from the spine and from the trim edge. That area is reserved whether you supply a barcode or not: KDP prints over it, so a cover with text or artwork under it will be rejected. Keep the space clear from the first draft of the design rather than clearing it later.

KDP — BarcodesKDP — Create a Paperback CoverKDP — Create a Hardcover Cover

Vector for preference — that is the PDF or SVG here — and 300 PPI if the image is rasterized. The suggested size is 2 by 1.2 inches, the minimum is 1.4 by 0.8 inches (35.56 by 20.3 mm), and it must be 100% black on a solid white background, right way up, square to the cover, and not flattened into the cover as a single image. This tool measures every download against those numbers and tells you before you save it.

KDP — Barcodes

The price. It is a separate little barcode called an EAN-5 add-on, and its first digit says which currency the other four are in: 5 for US dollars, so 51299 means US$12.99. It is optional, and the honest default is 90000 — the code the Book Industry Study Group designates for a title with no encoded price. KDP's own example barcode carries 90000.

BISG — price encoding rules (PDF)KDP — Barcodes

Only if it is a price you can live with for the life of the print run. The barcode is printed into the cover, so changing your list price later means uploading a new cover, and Amazon discounts books at its own discretion regardless of what your barcode says. KDP's rule is simply that the price code should match your list price if you include one — so a mismatch is a reason for rejection that 90000 avoids entirely. Encode a price when a bookshop or a distributor asks you to; otherwise use 90000.

KDP — Barcodes

Because no code for them exists. The scheme was designed in the 1980s around a handful of English-speaking markets and never gained a digit for the euro. Publishers everywhere else use 90000 and print the price as text, which is what this tool offers.

Because those codes were withdrawn and reused, and encoding one today is worse than encoding nothing. In 2004 the Book Industry Study Group raised the ceiling on encodable prices from US$99.98 to US$499.99, and to find room it checked whether the leading digits 2, 3 and 4 were being used for prices anywhere. Its report records that book industry groups in Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and India knew of no instances, so the range 10000 to 49999 was reassigned to US dollars from $100.00 to $499.99. A generator that still encodes A$12.99 as 31299 now produces a block that a United States till reads as US$399.99 — on a cover that will be printed thousands of times. Choose no price and print it as text instead.

BISG — price encoding rules (PDF)

Yes — it is the same book. ISBNs were 10 digits until 2007 and every one of them has a 13-digit twin: the same registration group and registrant with 978 in front and a recalculated final digit. The barcode has always carried the 13-digit form, so paste the 10-digit number here and it converts. If you typed it with hyphens, the hyphens are carried over too, because their positions come from your publisher prefix and cannot be worked out from the number alone.

KDP — What is an ISBN and Imprint?

This tool does not issue them — nobody can generate an ISBN, it has to be assigned to you. KDP gives a free one for paperbacks and hardcovers, registered in its own name with the imprint shown as Independently published, and that one can only ever be used on KDP. Buying your own from your national agency — Bowker in the United States, Nielsen in the UK, and a national agency elsewhere — lets you use the same ISBN with any printer or distributor and put your own imprint on it. An ebook or a low-content book needs no ISBN at all on KDP.

KDP — Get an ISBNKDP — What is an ISBN and Imprint?KDP — Troubleshoot ISBN errors

PDF for a printer or a cover designer: it is vector, so it cannot go soft at any size, and its black is a single-ink black rather than a mixture that a press would print as a slightly fuzzy dark grey. SVG for design software that prefers it — it opens at its true physical size. PNG only when the tool you use accepts nothing else, and then at 300 PPI or more. Whichever you pick, place it as its own object in the cover file rather than flattening it into the artwork.

KDP — Barcodes

You can upload a new cover, but not a new ISBN: KDP will not change an ISBN once a book is published — that takes unpublishing and publishing a new edition. It is the reason to be sure the number is right before printing rather than after, and the reason this tool refuses to quietly correct a mistyped check digit for you. A valid ISBN is not necessarily your ISBN.

KDP — Change or view your ISBN

Free, with no account and no watermark, and nothing you type leaves your browser. The barcode is drawn in the page itself — there is no upload, no server call and nothing stored — which also means an unannounced title stays unannounced.