Repeat the post-publication audits
Audit metadata at 30 days
A month after publication, repeat the launch-day checks on every listing and profile, because the feeds have now settled and what is still wrong will stay wrong until someone reports it.
Why it matters
Thirty days is the point where a wrong description or a missing format stops being a launch glitch and starts being the permanent public record of the book. It is also early enough that the publisher's attention is still on the title and a correction request gets acted on. A thorough audit now saves a year of readers seeing the wrong thing.
Your part
- What you do
- Verify. Someone else may do it. Inspect the result yourself.
- Who normally owns it
- Author and Publisher. Author audits; publisher corrects feed data
- When
- 30 days after publication (Repeat the post-publication audits: thirty days, ninety days, and then once a year)
How to do it
The full walkthrough
The 30-day audit is the launch-day audit done again, with less urgency and more authority. By now every retailer has processed the final feed, the early corrections have either landed or not, and the listings reflect what the systems will show for the foreseeable future. Anything wrong at 30 days is a real error rather than timing.
Use the same checklist as launch day: each retailer, the publisher page, Google Books, Goodreads, WorldCat, your own site, and a search for your name and the title. Check title, author name form, cover, description, formats, prices, publication date, profile associations, and whether editorial reviews and any recognition have appeared. Compare against the baseline screenshots. Then check the corrections list: which reported items are fixed, which are not.
Traditionally published authors send the publisher one consolidated report of remaining discrepancies, distinguishing new findings from items already reported. Hybrid authors do the same. Self-published authors fix what they can in their dashboards and open or chase support tickets for the rest.
This audit is essential; the 90-day and annual ones are strongly recommended. If you do only one post-launch audit, this is it.
Common mistakes
- Skipping it because launch day looked fine.
- Reporting items already on the corrections list as new.
- Checking retailer listings but not library and search records.
- Not saving the results, so the 90-day audit has nothing to compare to.
Identifiers for Audit metadata at 30 days
Set a status on any record and it joins this step. All book identifiers.
| My status | Identifier | Why this matters | Yours |
|---|---|---|---|
| Google Books Google's index of book records and previews, often the first thing a reader or librarian sees when they search your title. | Because Google's web search draws on it, a wrong record here is visible to readers and librarians and gets cited in other databases, and an old edition or an advance file left previewable is the version people will read. Corrections go to whoever holds the partner account for the title rather than to the search result: traditionally and hybrid published authors normally ask the publisher or its distributor, once they have established which of the two holds it. If you publish the book yourself, you may hold the account, in which case the fix is yours to make. Search every edition by ISBN, check the core facts, and make sure any preview shows the current file. | Add your Google Books link | |
| WorldCat The shared library catalog where member libraries report which books they hold, free for anyone to search. | Catalogers reuse records from here, so an error in one record tends to spread, and a missing record, a duplicate, or one record that mixes two formats makes your book harder for a library to order correctly. No author on any route can edit a record. Traditionally and hybrid published authors normally send the correction to the publisher's metadata team or distributor, and a self-published author normally goes to their platform, or to a library that holds the book and can report the problem. Record the OCLC number for each edition, note any error, and remember that public holdings counts are incomplete and delayed. | Add your OCLC number | |
| Amazon Author Central The free Amazon page where you claim your author name, attach every edition of your books, and write your biography. | Unclaimed, the author page a reader sees is whatever Amazon assembled, and any edition listed under a different spelling of your name sits apart from the rest of your work. Only you can fix that: a publisher cannot claim your author page for you, and the platform account a self-publisher publishes through is a separate login, so the job is identical on all three routes. Amazon's help says author pages are not removed once created, so use exactly the name that appears on your books rather than creating a second page you would rather not have. You're done when one author page carries the right name and every edition and format is attached to it. | Add your Amazon author page link |
What done looks like
- Every listing and profile from the launch-day checklist re-checked 30 days after publication.
- Comparison against the launch-day baseline, with changes noted.
- Editorial reviews and any recognition confirmed as visible where they were sent.
- One consolidated report to the publisher or platform, separating new findings from open items.
- The corrections list updated and the audit date recorded.
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