Run the launch-week availability audit
Capture baseline search results and listings
In publication week, save screenshots and a short log of what a search for your name and the title returns, and what each major listing shows, so later changes can be measured against something.
Why it matters
Without a baseline, every later question about what changed is answered from memory. With one, the 90-day audit can say exactly which listing gained the wrong description, which search result moved, and which library added the book. It also turns the vague feeling that visibility improved or declined into something you can look at.
Your part
- What you do
- Do it. You normally do this yourself.
- Who normally owns it
- Author
- When
- Publication week, then repeated at each later audit (Run the launch-week availability audit: publication day and the first week)
How to do it
The full walkthrough
A baseline is a record of what things looked like at a known moment. In publication week, search your name and the book title in a search engine (in a private window, so your own history does not shape the results), on each major retailer, and on Goodreads and WorldCat. Screenshot the first page of each. Save the screenshots in a dated folder with a text file noting the date, the search terms, and anything that surprised you.
This takes half an hour and has no immediate payoff, which is why it is worth considering rather than essential. Its value appears later: when a listing changes and you want to know when, when a search result that used to show your site now shows a retailer, when a wrong author photo appears and you want to prove it was not always there, or when you simply want to see what six months of work changed.
All publishing paths do this the same way. Traditionally published authors might also capture the publisher's page for the book, which tends to change with each season's catalog.
Repeat the capture at the 30-day, 90-day, and annual audits, in the same folder, using the same searches.
Common mistakes
- Searching in a logged-in browser, where results reflect your own history.
- Capturing only the retailer listing and not the search results.
- Saving screenshots with default file names in a downloads folder, where they vanish.
- Never repeating the capture, so the baseline is a snapshot with nothing to compare to.
Identifiers for Capture baseline search results and listings
Set a status on any record and it joins this step. All book identifiers.
| My status | Identifier | Why this matters | Yours |
|---|---|---|---|
| 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 | |
| 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 |
What done looks like
- A dated folder with screenshots of search results for your name and the title, in a private browser window.
- Screenshots of the main listing on each major retailer, Goodreads, and WorldCat.
- A text file listing the searches run, the date, and observations.
- The same searches repeated at each later audit and saved alongside.
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