Decide who is publishing the book
Define who approves descriptions, biographies, images, and claims
Agree in advance who signs off on the book description, your biography, cover and author images, and any factual or endorsement claims.
Why it matters
Unapproved copy spreads. A draft description pasted onto a retailer page can outlive the final one by years. An endorsement quoted without the endorser's sign-off can cause real trouble. A clear approval path prevents most of it and, just as usefully, tells you who to ask when something needs to change.
Your part
- What you do
- Ask. Someone else normally owns it. Get an answer, then record it.
- Who normally owns it
- Publisher and Author. Publisher defines its approval process; author confirms and records it
- When
- Six to nine months before publication, before descriptions and images start circulating (Decide who is publishing the book: as soon as the contract is signed, or the decision to publish is made)
How to do it
The full walkthrough
Once the book has a description, a biography, a cover, and a few endorsements, those assets get copied everywhere: retail listings, catalogs, press releases, your website, award entries. Someone needs to own the approved version of each, and everyone needs to know who that is. This item is about naming the approver, not writing the assets.
Name the approver for each asset. At a publisher, the catalog description and the cover are usually the publisher's, often with author consultation written into the contract, while the biography and author photo are usually yours, and claims ("the first book to", "as seen on", a quotation from a reviewer) may need legal or editorial sign-off; ask who approves each and how long approval takes. Where the rights are yours, which is common on a hybrid contract and always true when you are the publisher, the process is the part that goes missing. Being the approver is not the same as having no process: decide who else reads the description and the claims before they go live, an editor, a lawyer for anything legal, a trusted reader for tone, and keep one approved version of each asset.
Record the approver for each asset type in the Book Identity Sheet, along with where the approved version lives.
Common mistakes
- Assuming your biography needs no approval and then discovering the publisher has a house style for it.
- Publishing an endorsement quote before the endorser has approved the exact wording.
- Letting several people edit the description in several places with no canonical copy.
- Not agreeing who approves image use, so a photographer's credit or license is missed.
What done looks like
- A named approver for each asset: short description, long description, each biography length, cover image, author photo, and any claims or endorsements.
- A stated turnaround time for approvals.
- One approved version of each asset stored in a shared location, with a version date.
- Agreement on who may edit retail listings and who must be told when they change.
Ask your publisher
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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