Every printed book needs a scannable barcode on the back cover, and this ISBN barcode generator builds one from your number rather than leaving you to draw it by hand. Paste the ISBN, choose whether to encode a price, and download vector artwork at the exact size the standard specifies, ready to drop straight into your cover file.
Enter an ISBN-13 or ISBN-10 and the barcode redraws as you type.
An ISBN-13 barcode is an ordinary EAN-13 symbol. The first three digits are the prefix — 978 or 979 — which tells a scanner it is looking at a book rather than a tin of beans. The remaining digits are your registration group, registrant, publication number and a check digit.
The five-digit block beside it is an EAN-5 add-on. Its first digit is the currency and the remaining four are the price in that currency, so 51999 reads as nineteen dollars ninety-nine. Use 90000 when you sell in several territories and do not want a price locked into the artwork.
A book barcode is not a picture of your ISBN, it is an encoding of it. The thirteen digits are converted into a fixed pattern of ninety-five black and white modules using the EAN-13 standard, the same symbology printed on almost every retail product in the world. Books simply occupy the 978 and 979 prefix ranges, historically known as Bookland.
The encoding is not uniform across the symbol. The first digit is never drawn as bars at all: instead it selects which of ten parity patterns is used to encode the next six digits, mixing two different code sets so a scanner can tell which way round the symbol is being read. The final six digits use a third code set, and three guard patterns mark the start, the middle and the end.
The last digit of an ISBN-13 is a check digit calculated from the twelve before it, weighted alternately by one and three. If it does not match, the number is wrong and no scanner will accept it. This generator verifies that check digit before it draws anything, converts ISBN-10s into their modern thirteen-digit form, and outputs vector artwork so the bars stay razor sharp at any size.
Download the SVG and the bars are mathematical shapes that print perfectly at any size. A PNG scraped from a website is fixed resolution, and blurred bar edges are the single most common cause of a barcode that will not scan.
The five-digit add-on encodes a currency and a price. If you sell in more than one territory, or you may ever change your price, use 90000 instead so nothing is locked into the printed artwork.
Scanners need clear white space either side of the bars. Crowding the barcode with cover text, a keyline border or a background image is a rejection waiting to happen, however tidy it looks on screen.
Laser scanners read contrast in the red part of the spectrum, where red ink is effectively invisible to them, and a mid-tone background destroys the contrast entirely. Pure black bars on plain white is the only combination that reliably works.
The prefixes, currency codes and physical specifications behind a book barcode.
| Element | Value | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| Prefix | 978 | The original Bookland EAN prefix. The large majority of ISBNs in circulation still begin here. |
| Prefix | 979 | The newer book prefix, introduced once the 978 ranges filled up. The 979-8 block is where Amazon's free KDP ISBNs are issued from. |
| Price add-on | 5xxxx | US dollars. 51999 encodes a cover price of $19.99. |
| Price add-on | 6xxxx | Canadian dollars. 61250 encodes CAD 12.50. |
| Price add-on | 1xxxx | Pounds sterling. 10999 encodes GBP 9.99. |
| Price add-on | 3xxxx | Australian dollars. |
| Price add-on | 4xxxx | New Zealand dollars. |
| Price add-on | 90000 | No price encoded. The standard choice for a book sold across multiple currencies. |
| Nominal size | 1.469 x 1.02 inches | The reference size for an EAN-13 with add-on at 100% magnification. Do not print below 80% of it. |
| Quiet zone | 0.1 inch minimum | Clear white margin on each side of the bars. Anything printed inside it can stop the code scanning. |
| Colour | Black on white | Pure black bars on a plain white panel. Avoid red, avoid tints, avoid photographic backgrounds. |
For a printed book sold through retail or wholesale, yes. Bookshops and distributors scan the EAN-13 at the till and in their stock systems. If you publish only through Amazon KDP you can leave the space blank and Amazon will add its own barcode, but supplying your own gives you control over where it sits and how it looks.
Yes. The SVG is vector artwork with correct module widths, extended guard bars and quiet zones, so it scales without any loss of sharpness. Place it at 100% size where you can, never scale it below 80%, and always keep it black on a white panel.
It is the thirteenth digit, calculated from the first twelve by weighting them alternately one and three, summing them, and subtracting the total's last digit from ten. It exists so a scanner can detect a misread or a mistyped number. If yours does not match, the ISBN itself is wrong and this tool tells you the correct digit.
Yes. Enter it and the tool converts it for you: it drops the old check digit, prefixes 978 and recalculates a fresh ISBN-13 check digit. The result is the same book expressed in the current standard, and it is what you should be printing today.
The first digit is the currency, 5 for US dollars, and the remaining four are the price in that currency. So 51999 reads as $19.99. A block reading 90000 means no price has been encoded, which is what publishers use when a title sells in several markets.
Only if your price is genuinely fixed and you sell in a single currency. Many independent publishers skip it or use 90000, because a printed price you later want to change means reprinting the cover. Retailers can always price from their own systems.
The nominal EAN-13 with add-on is about 1.47 inches wide and 1 inch tall. You may scale it between 80% and 200% of that. Below 80% the bars become too fine for reliable scanning, and truncating the bar height to squeeze it into a design also reduces read rates.
Not safely. Scanners work on contrast, and many read in the red spectrum where red and orange inks appear white to them. Give the barcode its own white rectangle with clear space around it, then place that panel on your cover. It is a small design compromise that avoids a very expensive reprint.
Send us your artwork, page count and ISBN and we will wrap it into a print-ready cover with the right trim, bleed and spine width, and a correctly sized barcode sitting in its own quiet zone, so it clears preflight the first time.
See Book Cover Formatting