Create and connect the book's identity
Create the canonical Book Identity Sheet
Build one document that holds every fact about your book, so every listing, form, and pitch is checked against the same source.
Why it matters
Metadata errors mostly come from retyping. A subtitle typed three slightly different ways produces three different books in the eyes of a search engine. The sheet gives you one canonical spelling to paste, and one place to look when someone asks for the ISBN at 5 p.m. on a Friday.
Your part
- What you do
- Do it. You normally do this yourself.
- Who normally owns it
- Author. Author builds and maintains; publisher supplies the facts
- When
- Start the sheet about nine months before publication and keep it updated through launch and beyond (Create and connect the book's identity: twelve to six months before publication, and kept current after that)Checked September 14, 2026
Your part changes with your publishing route.
How to do it
The full walkthrough
A Book Identity Sheet is a single document, spreadsheet, or page that records every settled fact about the book: exact title and subtitle, author name as it should appear, contributors and roles, every International Standard Book Number (ISBN), publication date per format, publisher and imprint, price, page count, trim size, subject codes, descriptions, biographies, and contacts. It is the version everyone copies from.
Where the facts come from depends on your route, but the sheet does the same job either way. At a publisher they arrive in pieces over many months, and when a retail listing disagrees with the sheet you know which one to question. When you type the values into the platforms yourself, the sheet is how you type them the same way every time.
Keep it boring and complete. A plain spreadsheet with one row per fact and a "confirmed by, on date" column works better than anything fancy.
Tip: you can keep the sheet on this website. With an author profile, your book record here holds the title, subtitle, the name you publish under, publishing path, publisher and imprint, formats, publication date, and description, the Identifiers pages hold every identifier value you enter, and the media kit page publishes the public parts. Keep the private facts (prices, contacts, the correction log) in the same file you would have used anyway, and use the site as the copy everyone else checks against.
Common mistakes
- Keeping the facts in a chain of emails instead of one document.
- Recording the working title and never updating it when the final title is set.
- Storing formatted text (curly quotes, odd characters) that breaks when pasted into forms.
- Not sharing the sheet with the publicist or assistant who will be filling in submission forms.
A template for this
Book Identity SheetThe single source of truth for your book: every settled fact, from exact title and International Standard Book Numbers (ISBNs) to subject codes, descriptions, and contacts.
When to use it: Use this when the title and formats are settled, usually around nine months before publication. Keep it current for the life of the book, and copy from it every time a listing, form, pitch, or entry asks for a detail. Do not use this when a fact is still undecided. Mark it provisional rather than guessing, because everything downstream copies from here.
What done looks like
- One document, in a format you can search and share, holding every fact listed above.
- Each fact marked confirmed or provisional, with who confirmed it and when.
- Every ISBN with its format, price, and publication date on the same row.
- The approved short and long descriptions and all three biography lengths pasted in as plain text.
- Contacts and the correction log linked from, or stored in, the same place.
Sources and last checked
- Official source
- No single official page for this step.
- Last checked
- September 14, 2026
- How confident we are
- Verified
Rules and deadlines change. We last checked this information on September 14, 2026. If you see something that needs updating, please tell us.