Bowker Partners With Lulu.com

Lulu.com’s Published By You service is offered to users located in the United States and its territories, as well as Germany and The Netherlands. According to Pate, Lulu.com’s primary goal is to expand the service into more countries, and the company currently is in talks with the London-based International ISBN Agency on a partnership similar to the one with Bowker.

“I think [offering individual ISBNs to authors] is an important piece [of self-publishing],” says Pate. “The ISBN has worked well and served the industry for years. ... Now we’ve made it relevant to new models of publishing. The ISBN fuels and drives everyone along the supply chain. ... We’re taking what works in [traditional publishing] and using it in these new models.”