Export the permanent book record
Export and retain the complete book record
Every quarter and after any milestone, export the Book Identity Sheet, your logs and records, the contracts, the statements, and the materials into one dated archive you control.
Why it matters
Ten years from now, someone will ask for the ISBN of the first edition, the exact wording of an award, or the date the audiobook came out, and the tool you kept it in will be gone. A quarterly export is an hour a year of insurance against every platform, publisher, and password you no longer have access to. It is also the record you hand to an agent, an estate, or a new publisher when the book moves on.
Your part
- What you do
- Do it. You normally do this yourself.
- Who normally owns it
- Author
- When
- Quarterly, and after publication, new editions, awards, rights sales, or changes of publisher or agent (Export the permanent book record: once a year, and whenever anything important changes)
How to do it
The full walkthrough
The complete book record is everything that describes and documents the book: the Book Identity Sheet with every identifier and edition, the awards calendar and entry records, the outreach and corrections logs, the contracts and rights schedules, the royalty statements, the media kit and its source files, the audit results and baseline screenshots, and the login details for every claimed profile (stored securely, separately from the rest). Much of it lives in tools and accounts that can change, close, or lock you out.
Exporting means saving copies in ordinary file formats (spreadsheets, plain text, PDF, image files) into a dated folder on storage you control, with a backup elsewhere. Do it quarterly, and again after any milestone: publication, a new edition, an award, a rights sale, a change of publisher or agent.
Traditionally published authors should include everything the publisher has sent: the metadata sheet, the cover files, the catalog page, the press release. Publishers reorganize, imprints close, and contacts move on; the author's archive is often the only complete one. Hybrid authors should be especially thorough, because hybrid publishers vary in longevity. Self-published authors hold everything already and mainly need the discipline of the dated export.
Your Author Profile on this site can export your record. Do that too, and keep the file with the rest.
Common mistakes
- Keeping the only copy inside a tool whose subscription lapses.
- Exporting the spreadsheet and forgetting the source files for the media kit.
- Storing passwords in the same folder as everything else.
- Doing it once at launch and never again.
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
- A dated archive folder each quarter containing the identity sheet, logs and records, contracts, statements, materials, audit results, and screenshots in ordinary file formats.
- Login details for claimed profiles stored securely, with a note in the archive of where.
- A backup copy on separate storage.
- An additional export after each milestone, labeled with the milestone.
- The export from your Author Profile on this site included.
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