I’m happy to announce that I finally received a set of ISBN registration numbers, which allows me to publish printed versions of my upcoming novels under my own name.
For those of you just starting out, or wondering what the benefits of having your own ISBNs rather than using the free ones that Amazon provides are, I had the exact same questions three months ago. I mean ‘free’ sounds wonderful, right? And if I had used those Amazon registration numbers, I would have been able to publish the paperback at the same time as the ebook. To be clear, the ISBNs from the Library and Archives Canada are also free. But the 3-5 business-day wait for those numbers is now closer to 2-3 months.
What was the advantage of waiting and disrupting my launch momentum? It all comes down to this: if other distributors see those registration numbers coming from Amazon, they won’t touch your book.
Think of it this way: If you own a business, and the big chain store that has taken a huge chunk of your business comes to your store and asks you to stock their product on your shelves, what would be your reaction? You’d get very little of the revenue, and the store taking your business pockets even more market share.
I’ve had to learn this over the past few months: having my own ISBN allows writers like me to get into those boxed stores, leading to the ability to distribute my published works to a worldwide market, not just within a closed ecosystem of Amazon. Granted, Amazon is still currently the most widely used book distributor. As a business model, the choice not to use Amazon would be detrimental and almost impossible to avoid. Having my work available on all platforms will prove advantageous in the long run… provided I can punch through the noise and get my books out there.
That’s the battle that I will now face.
As someone who tends to default to YouTube for short clips where I don’t have to invest time and emotional currency on long-form TV series, I see an uncomfortable number of posts pushing “authors” to use AI to generate novels with just a few weeks of work. As a Human-AI interaction specialist, I see the pitfalls of using AI to create long-form stories. Producing “AI-slop” is almost unavoidable, unless you know how to properly augment that work with a high level of intuitive creativity. More on that in another article.
I’ll just say this for now: From personal experience, crafting a full story takes months, and even years—not weeks—especially when writing a series. I started book one in the summer of 2022 and book two in the winter of 2023 (which will be released on September 20th of this year). Book three, which I’m over 300 pages into, has been in the works for over a year and will be out in March 2027. Book four…well, it’s too soon to give a proper estimate.
If you’re one of the people who have been waiting patiently for a printed copy, thank you. For now, you can find it on… you guessed it, Amazon. And if I’m successful at punching through the noise, eventually at a brick-and-mortar store near you.
Happy reading,
Lincoln
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