An ISBN lookup returns title, authors, description, cover image, publisher, and 10+ more fields. Here is exactly what you get and how it maps to Shopify.
TL;DR: An ISBN lookup pulls title, authors, description, cover image, publisher, page count, binding, language, weight, dimensions, and both ISBN formats from professional book databases. The Book Importer for Shopify maps every field to the right place in your Shopify catalog, so you don’t have to.
You’ve heard that ISBN lookup can auto-fill your Shopify product listings. But before you commit to a workflow, you want to know: what data do I actually get? Is it enough to create a professional listing, or will I still end up filling in half the fields by hand?
Fair question. The answer depends on the book, the publisher, and how well the title is registered in global book databases. But for the vast majority of commercially published books, the data is surprisingly complete. Here’s a field-by-field breakdown.
The full title as the publisher registered it, including subtitle when available. This becomes your Shopify product title. No need to retype it or guess at capitalization.
For a book like Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman, the lookup returns the exact title. For something with a subtitle like Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, you get both parts.
All listed contributors, not just the primary author. Co-authors, editors, illustrators, translators. The app stores them as structured data in product metafields and adds the primary author as a product tag for filtering and search.
A book like Good Omens correctly returns both Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman. No manual lookup needed.
The publisher’s synopsis or back-cover copy. This is real marketing text written by professionals, not “Good condition, ships fast.” Typically 100 to 300 words. It becomes your Shopify product description (body HTML), and you can edit it before the product is created.
Some niche or older titles have shorter descriptions. Some have none at all. But most books published by major publishers return a full, usable synopsis.
The front cover at a resolution suitable for e-commerce display. The app downloads it and uploads it directly to your Shopify product as the main product image. No Google Image Search. No saving JPEGs from Amazon. No copyright guesswork.
Cover images are one of the most commonly missing elements on Shopify book listings. ISBN lookup solves that in one step.
The publishing house name. This maps to Shopify’s vendor field, which means you can filter and sort your catalog by publisher. Useful if you stock multiple titles from Penguin, HarperCollins, or any indie press.
The original publication date or the date of the specific edition. Stored in product metafields. Helpful for customers browsing by release date or for you to identify which edition you’re listing.
Total number of pages. A small detail, but customers expect it on book listings. It’s the kind of field you’d never bother entering manually for 200 books, but ISBN lookup includes it automatically.
Hardcover, paperback, mass market paperback, spiral-bound, board book. Customers care about this. A parent buying a board book for a toddler and a collector buying a first-edition hardcover are making very different purchase decisions.
The language the book is written in. Critical if your store carries books in multiple languages. Stored as a metafield and available for display on your product pages through the app’s storefront block.
Physical weight and size of the book. These feed directly into Shopify’s shipping calculations. Without them, you’re either guessing at shipping costs or charging a flat rate that may be too high or too low.
Not every ISBN returns weight and dimensions. Older titles and smaller publishers sometimes skip these fields during registration. But when available, they save you from weighing every book on a kitchen scale.
Both formats, stored and normalized. ISBN-13 becomes the product’s SKU and barcode (it’s EAN-13 compatible, meaning it works with any standard barcode scanner). ISBN-10 is stored in metafields for completeness.
If you enter an ISBN-10, the app converts it to ISBN-13 automatically. Both get preserved.
Many books return subject classifications: “Fiction / Literary”, “Science / Physics”, “Cooking / Regional”. These can inform your Shopify collections, tags, and merchandising strategy.
The publisher’s suggested retail price, when available in the book’s registration data. You’re free to use it, adjust it, or ignore it entirely. Products are created as drafts, so you always have time to set final pricing before publishing.
Raw data is only useful if it lands in the right place. Here’s exactly where each field goes when the Book Importer creates your product:
Products are created as drafts. You review them in your Shopify admin, make any final changes, and activate when ready. Nothing goes live without your approval.
Getting the data into Shopify is step one. Showing it to customers is step two. The app includes a theme block that displays book-specific details (authors, ISBN, publisher, page count, language, binding) directly on your product pages.
You configure it from the Shopify theme editor. Choose which fields to show, customize labels, pick a layout, and match your theme’s colors. Works in English and Dutch. No code required. We cover the full setup in our guide to the storefront display block.
This means all the metadata you imported actually reaches your customers, formatted professionally, without you pasting it into every product description by hand.
Not every ISBN returns every field. Here’s what to expect:
The app searches multiple book databases and merges results. If one source is missing the description, another often has it. If one lacks the cover image, another fills the gap. This multi-source approach is why coverage is higher than what you’d get from any single database.
Take ISBN 978-0-06-112008-4. That’s To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, published by Harper Perennial Modern Classics. An ISBN lookup returns:
All of that becomes a Shopify product in about 30 seconds. Compare that to manually searching for each piece, copying it into the right field, downloading a cover image, and uploading it. For one book, it’s annoying. For a hundred, it’s a full workweek of data entry you’ll never get back.
Setting expectations matters. ISBN lookup does not provide:
Incomplete book listings don’t sell. A product with no cover image, a one-line description, and a missing author name looks unprofessional. Customers scroll past. ISBN lookup fills in 10 to 15 fields that most merchants would either skip entirely or spend hours entering manually.
If you’re migrating an existing inventory to Shopify, knowing exactly what data you’ll get per book helps you plan the process. For most catalogs, the vast majority of titles import with complete, professional metadata. The few that don’t can be filled in by hand, which is manageable when it’s five books instead of five hundred.
The fastest way to see the data quality is to test it. The Book Importer for Shopify includes 15 free imports. Grab a book from your shelf, enter the ISBN, and see exactly what comes back. Full metadata preview before anything touches your catalog.
For step-by-step instructions on the full import workflow, see our guide to adding books by ISBN. For the big picture on ISBN-based import, start with the complete ISBN import guide.
