Publishing and Promoting Your Book

20 Publish Your Book

When is your book considered published? Whenever you decide!

You can make your book publicly available online and make it available for export at any point. It’s easy to make changes and updates, so you can “publish” as many times as you need to.

We encourage you to share your book freely under an open license (discussed in the next chapter). However, you may wish to offer your book for sale through an online bookseller such as Amazon Marketplace, or another ebook platform. It’s your responsibility to ensure you have the rights necessary to enter into a commercial agreement with a vendor.

There are some factors that should be considered if you are hoping to feature your book in the UC Berkeley Library catalog or make it more widely available. The following table presents an overview (in no particular order) of these considerations and the circumstances in which they might be relevant to your needs and goals.

Step Library Service? Purpose Guidance
Proofreading and copyediting No Finalize text for publication
Add subject areas No Facilitate discoverability if book is featured in the catalog Add terms in Pressbooks in Book Info > Subjects
Get set up to sell your book online No Provide students and/or other readers with an option to purchase a hard copy via print on demand services Pressbooks recommends IngramSpark or Amazon’s CreateSpace.
Get an ISBN (International Standard Book Number) Maybe Unique identifier for published books, used for distribution in libraries and bookstores Request via email to schol-comm@berkeley.edu
Create a MARC record Maybe Enable book to be discoverable in the UC Berkeley Library catalog Request via email to schol-comm@berkeley.edu
Deposit the work in eScholarship No Exposure beyond campus. Download PDF from Pressbooks and upload to eScholarship (read more).
Get an ARK identifier Automatic Get a persistent URL for the eScholarship version of the book (if applicable) Deposit in eScholarship (see above)
List the work in the Open Textbook Library Yes Exposure beyond campus. Encourage other textbook authors to adopt or adapt your work. Four requisite criteria for listing (Notably: Must be Creative Commons licensed and allow derivatives). Request via email to schol-comm@berkeley.edu.
List the work in the Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB) No Exposure beyond campus. Support scholarly credibility. Book must be peer reviewed and your department will need to qualify as a publisher.
Register work with the Library of Congress No Exposure beyond campus. Online, searchable public record of your work. Necessary to pursue litigation for any infringement. Copyright Office charges $45 for single-author registration.

License

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UC Berkeley Pressbooks Guidelines Copyright © 2018 by Office of Scholarly Communication Services, UC Berkeley is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.

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