Self-Publishing Part Two: Proofing and Purchasing

After you've finished the incredibly long and tedious editing process, it's time for the proofing process - and while you're proofing, you'll want to start purchasing everything you need to officially publish. There are some things you should purchase before the proofing process, and some you cannot buy until after proofing.

Proofing is the process of ordering a copy of the book exactly as it will appear when a customer buys it. You want to make sure that the cover is laid out and readable in print. The spine probably won't be perfect (most printers have an error margin of around 1/8-1/16 inch, which will be visible in the spine), but you want to make sure it isn't way too wide or narrow. Check that the synopsis on the back or inside cover is readable and doesn't have any obvious errors. If your picture is on the back, make sure it's a good size and that the ISBN/barcode box isn't covering anything. I'll write a post on cover design and book formatting tips soon!

Also, check the inside. You'll probably want someone who's never read the book to read through it - you'll mostly find typing errors and formatting errors, and it's easier for fresh eyes to find them. Check your margins, and how widows and orphans (single lines at the beginnings and ends of pages) look. Are chapter headings the right size? What about the indents? Is the copyright font small enough?

If you're making an eBook, it'll probably need to be either an Adobe PDF or an ePub file. Adobe PDF documents will most likely ruin your formatting - you'll have to change certain fonts to ones that Adobe has, and sometimes retype sections where it can squish characters together or spread them apart.

If you're using IngramSpark like I did, you'll need to make an ePub file. Adobe PDFs do not convert to ePub files, but Google Docs has an easy "Download as ePub" option. If you make an ePub, though, chances are you'll get some error messages when you try to upload it. Hopefully, I'll be able to make a post about ePub files, how to fix errors, and formatting eBooks. You won't order a proofing copy for your eBook, of course, but you can put it into an ePub viewer to see what it looks like. Now, on to purchasing!

Purchasing is just my name for the process of buying everything you need to officially publish. There are things you have to do and things you don't have to do but are helpful, and like with everything else, there are different ways to do it.

The first thing you need is an ISBN. An ISBN, or International Standard Book Number, is the ten- or thirteen-digit number on the back of every book. (They were ten digits [ISBN-10] before 2007 and now there are thirteen [ISBN-13].) ISBNs are the way retailers find your book. If you look up my ISBN on Amazon, you'll only see The Otherfolk. If you look up the ISBN for, say, a specific cookbook, you'll only see that cookbook. Every book in the world has a different ISBN. If my book and the cookbook had the same ISBN, websites wouldn't list them both. Retailers couldn't sell them both. When getting TO printed, I could receive a copy that is half TO and half the cookbook. Every book has to have a completely different ISBN for it to be sellable.

And what does this mean for you, as one author writing one book? Well, not only do you have to have one for each book, you have to have one for each edition. If you want to make edits or put in illustrations or change the cover, that's a new edition. If you want to publish an eBook and a paperback and a hardback, you have to have three ISBNs. I only have a paperback and an eBook, so I needed two.

So, how do you get ISBNs? You have to get them from the official ISBN provider in your region. In the US, that's Bowker (an easy Google search will tell you what it is in other regions). On Bowker, one ISBN costs you $125. Ten cost $295. Getting them in bulk is often the best option - even if you only want to publish a paperback and an eBook, that's already $250. I know I'm going to publish a trilogy with each book as a paperback and an eBook, so I will need six - getting ten was by far the cheapest way to go.

ISBNs do not expire. You do not have to put all the information in right away. You buy the numbers all at once and can assign them information at any time. (They don't work like the Dewey Decimal System, where the digits are based on the genre or specifics of the book.)

Okay, so, wow, that's crazy expensive. What if you're super eager to publish, but you don't have that kind of money? Can you still publish, or is that not possible without an ISBN?

Well, there's good news and bad news. The bad news is, you can't officially publish without an ISBN. The good news is, lots of places (like Amazon and IngramSpark) will give you one for free!

Yes, that's absolutely too good to be true. They do give you an ISBN - but it's their ISBN. If you get a free one from Amazon, you can't sell it anywhere else without releasing a new edition with an ISBN you own. When you look the ISBN up on the library's website, you see nothing. When you look the ISBN up on Barnes & Noble's website, you see nothing. You're not allowed to sell it outside of the institution you got it from because it simply doesn't exist outside of that program.

You can make the decision for yourself - is that a choice you're willing to make? It wasn't for me. I wanted my work to be mine - and thanks to a generous donation from my grandma, that was possible.

Enough about ISBNs! Let's talk about barcodes. Barcodes are way easier, cheaper, and less complex than ISBNs, because they can't exist without an ISBN. They are created to tell a computer what the ISBN is. Barcodes are $25 each on Bowker, and you only need them for printed copies of the book (not eBooks). You will need a new one when using a new ISBN to publish a new edition. They are auto-generated whenever you need them - Bowker will remember you purchased one and allow you to create a barcode for whichever ISBN you want.

You should purchase the ISBN and the barcode before you order a proofing copy. When you ask for a book cover template from the website you're using to publish, they should give you the option to input your ISBN. They'll either ask for the barcode you downloaded or automatically have it. When you receive the book cover template, there will be a white box with the ISBN and barcode properly formatted. You are allowed to move it around as long as it remains on the back cover, but you can't change the size. You want to have it on the proofing copy so you can make sure it doesn't cover up anything on the cover.

The last thing is to register the copyright. If I write something and put "Copyright 2025 Zoe Cottrell" on it, it's copyrighted. For example, this website is copyrighted. But if someone steals your work, it's very hard (or impossible) to prove that it's yours. So, whenever you want, you can register the copyright with the U.S. Copyright Office so that it's officially, legally, totally yours! Registering the copyright for one work by one author costs $65, plus the money you need to ship an official copy to the U.S. Copyright Office in Texas. Again, you don't have to do this if you're short on money, but it is good to have it registered!

You can't register the copyright before the manuscript is published unless you register it as an unpublished work, and definitely don't do it before you're finished proofing.

So, to summarize...

Proofing is printing a copy to check formatting and grammatical errors.

To publish, you need:

An ISBN: the identification number, which you can buy and own or get for "free"

A barcode: the way a computer reads an ISBN

To register the copyright: not necessary, but helpful - but you can't do it until you're published (unless you register it as an unpublished work)

And remember... it's long and hard, but it is possible! You can figure it out, and feel free to contact me if you have any questions!

The Otherfolk comes out in only 11 days! You can preorder it now on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.