Be Vigilant When Publishing Book Titles

Girl at computer cryingI’m in the middle of dealing with several clients (one of whom is myself!) who have made errors when entering book titles on Amazon. This is how it goes:

The Fatal Error

You enter an eBook in Kindle Direct Publishing. You put up the title, subtitle, author, etc. and all goes well. It goes so well you think now you’ll get some print copies to sell locally, give away as prizes, etcetera, so you do a softcover edition. You used to go to Createspace for this, but now you just go to Kindle Direct Publishing and it’s all done in one place. Which is probably better, because I think they now use exactly the same book information entry form, the lack of which was what caused my problem in the first place.

This time, when you enter the title, subtitle and author for your softcover book, MAKE SURE YOU HAVE THE EXACT SAME FORMAT AS THE eBook! Believe me, if you don’t, you’re in for a bucketload of hassle. Because here’s the problem. At least, according to Amazon, anyway.

Set in Stone

Once you push the “Publish my Book” button, certain elements of the book’s metadata (including the ISBN, of course) are now permanent. And if, for example, you somehow got one of these books with a subtitle and the other without, you can never change the dead-tree edition. eBook: yes. Softcover: no way.

In my case, I have several books in different series, and I noticed that three of them were not linking up with their corresponding eBook in my new combined Kindle dashboard. When I tried to link them, they wouldn’t link. I discovered that some of them had subtitles attached to the title and others didn’t. Okay, better fix that.

I Hit the Wall

I could change the eBooks to match the soft covers, but if my preferred format was on the eBooks, or if other softcovers in the same series had the different format, I couldn’t change them. So now I have some books in the series with subtitles and some without. Sure, the covers all show the subtitles, but it’s just a mess. Very unprofessional.

Emails from the Kindle helpline reiterate the same information: they can’t be changed. Period.

Author Name Likewise

One of my editing clients had a much simpler problem. He published his book under his usual name, say, John Smith, and discovered there were a lot of other John Smiths who were authors, so later he tried to change it to John L. Smith. Can’t be done, and he only discovered it after he had changed the cover image. I don’t know how that’s going to pan out when he puts up an Author Central Page on Amazon, but I’m not hopeful.

The Solution

Unless one of you wonderful IU readers comes up with a better idea, the only fix is to publish a second edition of the book, complete with a new ISBN, and make sure you get it right this time.

Fortunately for me I’m Canadian, so I just call up the Library and Archives of Canada and order ten new ISBNs for free. Some Americans have to deal with Bowker, or you can get a new, free one through Amazon. But we all have the added hassle. Of course, I should probably go over my backlist and do another sweep through for proofreading errors, etcetera and put up a new edition. But who has time for that?

The Real Solution: Do It Right the First Time.

No further comment needed.

Author: Gordon Long

Gordon A. Long is a writer, editor, publisher, playwright, director and teacher. 
Learn more about Gordon and his writing from his blog and his Author Central page.

16 thoughts on “Be Vigilant When Publishing Book Titles”

  1. I also had a problem with KPD ordering proofs. I’m travelling to the US and wanted my proofs delivered there – with CS I could do that – KDP? No way. They refused. so I cancelled the order, put in another order for my own address and made arrangements with a neighbour to collect for me. then, I noticed that the first order had been re-routed to my home address. I than had two packages on the way. When they arrived (taking a lot longer than CS ever did) the books were falling out of the box and two were damaged. Printed in Poland, posted in Germany – I am not a happy bunny. 🙁

    1. I have heard of some other problems since the switch from CreateSpace, plus my softcover orders seem to be taking longer to be delivered. Hope they iron out the glitches.

  2. Thanks for warning about this potential problem Gordon. I, too, am Canadian, and am at the stage where I want to reproof/edit my novels and give them a spiffy new cover. However, I’m pretty sure if I use a new ISBN ( not the Createspace one given to them several years ago), I’ll lose all of those precious reviews these books have earned. Do you or anyone else know if this is the case?

    1. There should be a way to update your edition number when you update your covers and reproof, and I would definitely pursue that first before contemplating a fresh ISBN. I think you may be right, that a fresh ISBN = a new book and your reviews wouldn’t carry across.

      1. We have a tutorial on that here – you can do that through author central – it’s called merging editions. I’m on the road right now, though, so I can’t look it up for you.

  3. Good grief. Did they explain WHY it couldn’t be done? (Probably not.) Your friendly neighborhood programmer is m sitting here trying to think of some reason they can’t allow changes to those fields. Unless it has something to do with interfaces to other systems like Bowker’s Books in Print, it makes no sense.

  4. Try the following: As long as paperback and kindle ebook are published through kdp then Amazon Author Central can link the paperback to the kindle version and not kdp. Claim your paperback and ebook versions in author central, while logged in, use the support link at the bottom of the author central page. Request a subtitle change, I have been able to change subtitles for my paperback books, and series names, and link books together under the same series name for my kdp editions.

    If you use IngramSpark to publish your paperback hardcover and ebook you need 3 separate Bowker ISBNs with the title, author and subtitle and series matching perfectly.

    1. Thanks, Joe. I’m still under the impression from Amazon staff that you can’t add or subtract a subtitle to a softcover once it’s been published. I’ll try your method that enters from the author central page and post my results.
      I’m hoping for everybody’s sake that working through only KDP will mean this sort of problem occurs less often.

  5. My problem concerned the cover – the eBook was fine but when I tried to upload a photograph for the soft back, it was rejected. Guess what I did? I thought I’d look up CreateSpace and it was still working and I sailed through the set up easily. Now I’m waiting for my proof softcover from CreateSpace. I wonder if I can change the cover for my eBook? Though I quite like having different ones…
    Why doesn’t KDP just let CreateSpace survive? It would save us a lot of trouble!

  6. My problem concerned the cover – the eBook was fine but when I tried to upload a photograph for the soft back, it was rejected. Guess what I did? I thought I’d look up CreateSpace and it was still working and I sailed through the set up. Now I’m waiting for my proof softcover from CreateSpace. I quite like having different covers.
    Why doesn’t KDP just let CreateSpace survive? It would save us a lot of trouble!

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