What is ISBN and why do you need it?
ISBN (International Standard Book Number) - is a unique numeric commercial book identifier. There are two ISBN formats: ISBN-10 and ISBN-13. Since January 1, 2007 all books are published only with ISBN-13.
Having the book ISBN identifier you can quicker find it on the book sites. Besides the batch Web Update tool in Alfa Ebooks Manager updates books only by ISBN.
How can I get book ISBN?
You can get ISBN in one of the following ways:
- download ISBN when updating book data from the book sites
- find ISBN on the book cover (if you have the physical book)
- retrieve ISBN from the ebook file name (if the ebook file is named with ISBN identifier)
- retrieve ISBN from the ebook file content (because ISBN is often mentioned in ebook text)
The Retrieve ISBN icon is available in the Book Properties toolbar. But if you want to Retrieve ISBN from multiple ebooks at once, you can either use the appropriate option in the Scan tool (when importing new ebooks), or use the Retrieve ISBN tool (for ebooks that are already in the database).
How to retrieve ISBN from multiple ebook files
1. Select the books for which you want to retrieve ISBN. Note that all these books should have linked files.
2. Open the Retrieve ISBN tool in the Books menu. The selected books will appear in the opened window. You may unselect some ebooks if needed
3. Select to retrieve ISBN from ebook name or content in the Options
4. Start the process. It make take some time before all book files will be processed. You can stop the process any moment.
5. Check and save the result to the database.
The Retrieve ISBN operation supports the following file types: FB2, LRF, EPUB, TXT, PDF, CHM, HTML
How to check found ISBN
If you select to retrieve ISBN from file content, the Retrieve ISBN tool will parse each file and search for numbers, looking like ISBN. If it finds more than one ISBN, you'll see the drop-down list with all found values near the corresponding ebook in the list. To select the right value you can use Check ISBN tool - a little button near the ISBN in the list:
The Check ISBN tool uses isbndb.com - the largest ISBN database on the Web. If the given ISBN found, you'll see the notification with book details, so that you could make sure that this is the right ISBN.
