Keep public materials current
Update published reviews and media links
Each week during launch, move every new review, interview, and article from your outreach log onto the book page, the media kit, and, where the publisher allows, the retailer listings.
Why it matters
A book page that shows the coverage the book has received is more convincing than one that does not, and a retailer listing with editorial reviews looks like a book people have written about. Interviewers also check what has been said before. Coverage that sits in an email folder does none of that. Weekly updates keep the visible record current at the moment when the most people are looking.
Your part
- What you do
- Do it. You normally do this yourself.
- Who normally owns it
- Author and Publicist. Author or publicist collects; publisher adds to metadata feed
- When
- Weekly during the launch period, then monthly (Keep public materials current: whenever something real changes)
How to do it
The full walkthrough
Coverage arrives in a trickle during launch: a trade review here, a podcast episode there, a local paper, a newsletter mention. Each is worth something only if it is visible where readers, booksellers, and future interviewers look. That means the book page on your site, the media kit, the publisher's title record (so retailer listings can show editorial reviews), and your author profiles where they have a space for press.
Set a weekly slot during the launch period to go through your outreach log, collect the new links, and post them. For each piece, record the outlet, the date, a short pull quote if there is one, and the link. Quote accurately and briefly; a sentence, not a paragraph.
Traditionally published authors should send new reviews to the publisher, which can add them to the metadata feed as editorial reviews (retailer pages often display these) and may quote them in the next printing. Hybrid authors do the same through their publisher contact. Self-published authors add editorial reviews through their platform dashboards, where the platform allows, and on the book page.
After the launch period, the weekly slot becomes monthly, and then as-needed. The habit is what matters.
Common mistakes
- Waiting until the end of the launch to add everything at once.
- Quoting a review selectively in a way the reviewer would not recognize.
- Posting a link without the outlet name and date, so it is useless once the link dies.
- Forgetting that the publisher can put editorial reviews into the retailer feed, and never sending them.
Identifiers for Update published reviews and media links
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
- A weekly pass through the outreach log during launch, with every new link posted the same day.
- The book page's reviews and press section current, with outlet, date, quote, and link.
- The media kit updated with the same items.
- New reviews sent to the publisher for the metadata feed, or added through the platform dashboard.
- Quotes short, accurate, and attributed exactly.
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