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See also: Epub 3 identifiers
Some platforms require you to supply an ISBN for your ebooks. For example, to get your books into the premium Smashwords catalogue, you need an ISBN for each ebook. This needs to be separate for each book edition - paperbacks, hardbacks and distinct ebook editions for different platforms all need separate ISBNs. You can buy a set of ISBNs from the relevant agency (in the UK, it's Nielsen), or you can see if your ebook publisher such as Smashwords can supply ISBNs.
Having got your ISBN, where do you put it? Go to the metadata (just click on the Edit button on the toolbar) and click on the ... button next to the Identifier field. You will see the dialog captioned Editing Identifier. Click Add to add a new value to this element, and choose Add ISBN. Enter the ISBN (just the number, including dashes) into the Value field. Now delete the original value, Element 1.
OK, so you have different ISBNs for different ebook editions - but you want to publish your ebook to different platforms, with different ISBNs, without having to edit separate Jutoh files for each edition. There are two ways of achieving this: using the configuration option Identifier, or using string tables. The former is quicker and easier, but the latter allows you to show the identifier in your content as well as in the metadata by using a keyword that references the relevant string table value.
A UUID is a universally unique identifier, or rather an identifier that is unique with a high degree of probability. Jutoh can generate UUIDs that can be used as identifiers for your books. By default, Identifier contains a UUID (different in each configuration), but you can add an ISBN or other identifier, preferably with a urn prefix to specify the kind of identifier, such as urn:isbn: or urn:uuid:. If you leave your project metadata Identifier value blank, Jutoh will use the configuration identifiers instead.
In versions prior to Jutoh 2.18, there was a bug in the UUID generation on Linux and Mac that garbled the identifier. To correct this, blank out the Identifier value(s), and save and reopen your project. Alternatively, you can generate a UUID using Tools | Generate UUID or the UUID tool on the Jutoh Desktop. If these are not present, reset your Jutoh Desktop via Preferences/Desktop.
String tables allow you to set up substitution tables; since we can specify a different table for each configuration (Kindle, Epub and so on), we can put a variable called, say, %ISBN% into the ISBN value field, and substitute a different ISBN value from the different tables, depending on the current configuration.
Let's assume that you are using two configurations, Kindle and Epub. The Kindle book is going to the Kindle store, and the Epub book is going to the iTunes store.
Click Edit on the toolbar, then the Strings tab. Click the '+' button to add a new string table, and call it Kindle.
Click Add and enter ISBN to add a new string whose name is ISBN.
Click on the value field (second column) and enter the ISBN for the Kindle store.
Repeat the above, adding a new string table called Apple Books and adding the second ISBN value.
Click OK to dismiss the Project Properties.
Click Edit on the toolbar again, then the Configurations tab.
Click on the Kindle configuration, and scroll down to the String Tables group.
Select Kindle in the Project string table property.
Click on the Epub configuration, and scroll down to the String Tables group.
Select Apple Books in the Project string table property.
Click on the Metadata tab and enter %ISBN% into the Identifier field.
Press OK.
Now when you select a configuration, a different string table will be used and the %ISBN% variable will be filled in with the value of 'ISBN' in the appropriate string table.
If you have different editions of your book with the same format (for example, a Kindle file you put on your web site, and one that you upload to Kindle), you can just add another configuration (taking care to set the format property correctly) and a string table to go with it. So you can have as many configurations as you have sites that you upload to.
You can use the string table to change other things in your metadata and (if you check the "Replace strings in content" configuration property) your book pages, using the keyword %ISBN%.
For more information on string tables, see Working with string tables in the Jutoh manual.
Similarly, you can add EAN and UUID identifiers by clicking on Add in the Editing Identifier dialog. If you have more than one identifier element, make sure you change the value of the 'id' properties to be unique for each identifier element.
Contents | Start | End | Previous: KB0004: How to format drop caps | Next: KB0006: Epub 3 identifiers