What is EAN?
EAN stands for “International Article Number” and is the 13-digit standard for product identification in global trade. EANs are distributed by EAN International, an organization that also establishes the standards and rules for assigning numbers to products and encoding these numbers in readable bar codes, electronic data interchange (EDI), and RFID messages.EAN International designated the prefixes ‘978’ and ‘979’ for the identification of books within the global EAN identification system. The prefixes were assigned to the fictitious country of “Bookland” so that the book identifiers would be compatible with other EANs worldwide.For the past 20 years, the book industry has used the 13-digit Bookland EAN (EAN-13) to encode book identifiers in bar codes for scanning by retailers at point of sale. EAN International established the prefixes ‘978’ and ‘979’ for the identification of books and book-like products within the global EAN system.
EAN stands for “International Article Number” and is the 13-digit standard for product identification in global trade. EANs are distributed by EAN International, an organization that also establishes the standards and rules for assigning numbers to products and encoding these numbers in readable bar codes, electronic data interchange (EDI), and RFID messages. EAN International designated the prefixes ‘978’ and ‘979’ for the identification of books within the global EAN identification system. The prefixes were assigned to the fictitious country of “Bookland” so that the book identifiers would be compatible with other EANs worldwide. For the past 20 years, the book industry has used the 13-digit Bookland EAN (EAN-13) to encode book identifiers in bar codes for scanning by retailers at point of sale. EAN International established the prefixes ‘978’ and ‘979’ for the identification of books and book-like products within the global EAN system. EAN International, based in Europe, and GS1 (fo
