Add and audit later editions
Create separate edition-level tasks for new formats
When a new format is announced, give it its own set of checklist tasks with its own publication date, because a paperback or audiobook launch is a launch.
Why it matters
The most common way a new format goes wrong is that nobody checked it. The paperback appears on a duplicate author page, the audiobook is priced oddly at one retailer, the ebook edition of a translation is never linked to anything. Each is a small launch-week problem that the original edition's checklist already knows how to catch. Giving the new format its own tasks makes sure someone looks.
Your part
- What you do
- Do it. You normally do this yourself.
- Who normally owns it
- Author. Author creates the tasks; publisher handles the format's release
- When
- When each new format or edition is announced, before its publication date (Add and audit later editions: whenever a new edition, translation, or format is announced)
How to do it
The full walkthrough
A new format is not a footnote to the original edition. The paperback has a publication date, a feed to retailers, a listing that must link to your author page, a price to verify, library records of its own, and, sometimes, its own award eligibility and its own review opportunities. The audiobook has all of that plus a separate production and distribution chain. Treating each as a small launch, with its own tasks keyed to its own date, is how the checks actually get done.
When the edition is recorded in the Book Identity Sheet, create the edition-level tasks: the launch-day audit, the availability and price checks, the profile association check, the 30-day audit, the update to the canonical book page and media kit, and any outreach that makes sense for the format (audiobook reviewers, large-print library channels, paperback-timed events). Set the dates from the new edition's publication date.
Traditionally published authors should ask the publisher what it plans for the format's release; a paperback often gets a modest campaign of its own. Hybrid authors ask the same. Self-published authors decide the scope themselves, and often find the paperback or audiobook release is a good excuse to revisit outreach that did not land the first time.
If the workspace you keep the book in supports multiple editions, use that. If not, a copy of the relevant tasks with the new date in the title works.
Common mistakes
- Assuming the paperback inherits the hardcover's correct listings.
- Finding out the audiobook launched from a listener.
- Running the original edition's annual audit and never a launch audit for the new one.
- Skipping outreach for the paperback because the hardcover campaign already happened.
What done looks like
- Each new edition given its own set of launch, audit, and profile tasks, dated from its own publication date.
- The publisher asked what it plans for the release, and the answer recorded.
- Format-specific outreach considered: audiobook reviewers, large-print library channels, paperback events.
- The canonical book page and media kit updated on the new edition's publication day.
- Results from the new edition's audits recorded alongside the original's.
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