Create and connect the book's identity
Check the physical details and price
Once the physical and pricing specifications are final, check that the metadata carries the right page count, trim size, binding, price, and currency for each format.
Authors often hire help with this: design or production.
Why it matters
A wrong page count or trim size makes the book look like something it is not, and a wrong price can mean lost sales or a retailer discounting off the wrong number. These are also the facts that award entries, library vendors, and bulk buyers ask for, and having them written down saves a scramble each time.
Your part
- What you do
- Verify. Someone else may do it. Inspect the result yourself.
- Who normally owns it
- Publisher and Author. Publisher sets; author verifies when final and again at launch
- When
- As soon as final specifications exist, typically after typesetting three to five months before publication, and again at launch (Create and connect the book's identity: twelve to six months before publication, and kept current after that)
Your part changes with your publishing route.
How to do it
The full walkthrough
The physical and commercial facts of a book (page count, trim size, binding type, list price, and the currency of that price) live in the metadata alongside the title and description. Retailers display them, wholesalers use them to calculate shipping and discounts, and libraries use them to decide which edition to buy. Each format has its own set.
Ask for the final specifications when they exist, compare them with the metadata that has already gone out, and note anything still provisional. These change during production: the page count is not final until the book is typeset, and prices are sometimes adjusted close to publication, so check that the price in the feed is the one you agreed and not a placeholder. If you enter these yourself, the page count comes from your final interior file, the trim size from your design, and the price from your decision. Make them match across platforms, and set prices in other currencies deliberately rather than leaving them to automatic conversion if you have a reason to control them.
Record the final values per format in the Book Identity Sheet and re-check them against live listings at launch.
Common mistakes
- Sending metadata with an estimated page count and never updating it after typesetting.
- Listing the hardcover price on the paperback record, or the reverse.
- Leaving a placeholder price in the feed that a retailer displays.
- Confusing trim size with the size of the printed page area.
- Not noticing an automatic currency conversion that produces an odd foreign price.
Identifiers for Check the physical details and price
Set a status on any record and it joins this step. All book identifiers.
| My status | Identifier | Why this matters | Yours |
|---|---|---|---|
| ONIX for Books ONline Information eXchange: the standard file that carries your book's details from your publisher or platform out to retailers and libraries. | If your subtitle is wrong at one retailer, that is one mistake; if it is wrong at a retailer, in a library catalog, and on Google Books, that is usually not three mistakes but one, in the feed, copied three times. It also explains why correcting it in one store often does not stick, because the next feed writes the old value back over your correction. Nobody acts on the feed directly: traditionally and hybrid published authors normally find out who owns it, which is the publisher's metadata or operations team and sometimes a separate distributor, and send corrections there, while a self-published book's feed is generated by the platform from the fields you filled in on its dashboard. Find the person or team that owns the book's feed so a correction goes to the source that can keep it fixed. | Nothing to record |
What done looks like
- Final page count, trim size, binding, list price, and currency recorded for each format.
- The same values in the publisher's feed, on retail listings, and in the Book Identity Sheet.
- Provisional values clearly marked and re-checked when they become final.
- Prices in secondary currencies checked if the book is sold in those markets.
Ask your publisher
Copy this into an email. Replace the bracketed parts with your details.
Sources and last checked
- Official source
- No single official page for this step.
- Last checked
- Not checked against its source yet.
- How confident we are
- Verified