Business of Publication

I mentioned last week that my book is out with beta readers. While that is happening, I’m working on the administrative steps related to the business of publication. A handful of months ago, when I was looking into beta readers, a friend passed on a publication checklist. It includes a comprehensive list of steps with many links to help learn about the requirements or where to go for the best information. My friend received the checklist from author Lee Hadan. While I’m not going to share all of the steps in the list here, I will share a few with some supplemental research on the items added. 

First up: writing that is not part of the story. 

• Book description.
• Frontmatter/Backmatter.
• About the author.
• CTAs (including copyright).

I worked on my “blurb” earlier for getting beta readers and have done some additional work on it since then. This link has the information on book descriptions I found the most helpful for my fantasy novel. There are other sources in the checklist, but I did not feel they related specifically enough to my genre. 

Frontmatter and Backmatter include everything before and after your story, including “about the author” and copyright pages, but I decided to call them out separately. I found this link helpful for the overarching structure and as a rough guide for me to select from for inclusion. It explains the purpose of each section and when they would be used for reference text versus fiction or such. I looked at the link provided for the “about the author” section in addition to reading through a lot of those pieces in books I own. 

For copyright (CTAs), I heavily leveraged the link included in the checklist. It includes example copyright information and states that self-publishing authors can use them as templates. 

Next up: business purchases.

• ISBNs
• License/DBA

ISBNs are standard and you need one for each version/type of book you publish (audiobook, paperback, etc.). Bowker Identifier Services is where you purchase and register ISBNs in the USA, and they have package deals. As for a business license or DBA/Trade Name, I highly recommend researching your state and local municipalities. Many states have a sales tax that you will need to pay as the publisher, and this is based on the sale price, not on your royalties. I’m still following up with my city, but I have my state information now. 

Now I’m working on Amazon-related information like search keywords, but I will save that information and those links for next week. To sign off today, I will say, “Happy Birthday, Little Cat!” Her birthday is actually at the end of July, but I missed it last week with how busy things have been lately. 

I hope this information is helpful to some, and thanks again to Lee Hadan for being willing to share her checklist with aspiring authors!