Before your book is ready to be printed and sold, you need to do a few things first to get the document ready.  If your intent is to sell the book through book stores, you will need to complete the proper registrations for your own ISBN number, bar codes etc.

You may also need to have your manuscript edited or to have a professional cover designed.  Below is a general "laundry" list of the steps you'll need to go through to get your book ready to sell.

• Publisher registrations (ISBNs, LCCN, CIP, EAN, etc.)
• Editing
• Cover design and layout
• Custom illustration for your cover
• Interior design, layout and typesetting
• Page size reformatting
• Printing and Binding
  

Regarding your ISBN number, a good place to go is www.isbn.org.  ZDOCS does not buy and resell ISBN numbers.  The reason we do not resell ISBN numbers is that it is very important that authors own their own numbers.  If you go to www.isbn.org, a good place to start is the FAQ, or Frequently Asked Questions, section.  Regarding the reselling of ISBN numbers, here is what you'll find:

There are over 160 ISBN Agencies worldwide, and each ISBN Agency is appointed as the exclusive agent responsible for assigning ISBNs to publishers residing in their country or geographic territory. The United States ISBN Agency is the only source authorized to assign ISBNs to publishers supplying an address in the United States, U.S. Virgin Islands, Guam and Puerto Rico and its database establishes the publisher of record associated with each prefix.

Once an ISBN publisher prefix and associated block of numbers has been assigned to a publisher by the ISBN Agency, the publisher can assign ISBNs to publications it holds publishing rights to. However, after the ISBN Agency assigns ISBNs to a publisher, that publisher cannot resell, re-assign, transfer, or split its list of ISBNs among other publishers. These guidelines have long been established to ensure the veracity, accuracy and continued utility of the international ISBN standard.

As defined by the ISO Standard, the ISBN publisher prefix (or "root" of the ISBN) identifies a single publisher. If a second publisher subsequently obtains an ISBN from the assigned publisher's block of ISBNs, there will be no change in the publisher of record for any ISBN in the block as originally assigned. Therefore, searches of industry databases for that re-assigned ISBN will identify the original owner of that assigned prefix as the publisher rather than the second publisher. Discovering this consequence too late can lead to extensive costs in applying for a new prefix, re-assigning a new ISBN, and potentially leading to the application of stickers to books already printed and in circulation.

If you are a new publisher, you should apply for your own ISBN publisher prefix and plan to identify and circulate your books properly in the industry supply chain. You may encounter offers from other sources to purchase single ISBNs at special offer prices; you should be wary of purchasing from these sources for the reasons noted above. There are unauthorized re-sellers of ISBNs and this activity is a violation of the ISBN standard and of industry practice. A publisher with one of these re-assigned ISBNs will not be correctly identified as the publisher of record in Books In Print or any of the industry databases such as Barnes and Noble or Amazon or those of wholesalers such as Ingram. If you have questions, contact the US ISBN Agency for further advice.

Some self-publishing companies that do resell ISBN numbers are actually "renting" ISBN numbers to authors.  In these cases, the authors could end up not owning the rights to their own books.  ZDOCS is an alternative publishing company and we want the author to own the rights to their books and so to make ownership very clear, we recommend all authors get their own ISBN numbers.  

The smallest block of ISBN numbers you can buy is 10 and if you buy through www.isbn.org these 10 numbers will cost you about $250.00.  I have met authors who have paid a $1,000.00 for their ISBN numbers so it is best to go directly to the ISBN agency.

We also recommend you call or email ZDOCS at this stage so we can discuss your product and offer suggestions to keep your initial costs as low as possible when you are ready to start printing.  We will discuss the proper book size, the best paper to use, using color and any other questions you may have.  Please call us at (801) 375.4945.