The Independent Publisher Setup Checklist: Imprint, ISBN, Distribution

Most people starting a small press begin with the book and work outwards. That is the right instinct creatively and the wrong one administratively, because several of the decisions you make in month one are difficult to reverse in year three.

Here is the order that causes the least pain.

The imprint name

Check three things before you commit. That the name is not already in use by another publisher in your language market, that the domain is available, and that it does not describe your subject so narrowly that you cannot publish anything else later.

That last point matters more than people expect. A press named after one subject area will struggle the day it wants to publish something adjacent, and specialist publishers almost always drift outward over time.

Register the business properly before the first sale. Contracts, ISBN registration, and distributor agreements all need a legal entity behind them, and retrofitting one after you have already signed authors as an individual creates avoidable mess.

ISBNs

An ISBN identifies a specific edition of a specific book in a specific format. Hardback, paperback, ebook, and audio each need their own. A reprint with no changes does not, but a new edition with changed content does.

Buy them as a block, not singly. In most territories the price per ISBN drops sharply with volume, and you will use more than you think once you start counting formats. Buy them under your own imprint rather than accepting free ones from a printing or self-publishing service, because those register that service as the publisher of record.

The agency differs by country. In the UK it is Nielsen, in the US it is Bowker, and most other territories have a national agency, some of which issue ISBNs free of charge.

Metadata, which is the actual product for retailers

Retailers and libraries do not see your book. They see a metadata record, and the quality of that record determines whether anyone finds it.

The fields that carry weight: title and subtitle, contributor names with roles, format, extent, dimensions, publication date, price, a short description and a long description, and subject codes. Thema is the international standard, BISAC is used in North America, and most distributors want both.

Subject codes are where specialist publishers lose visibility. Take the time to find the most specific code that genuinely applies rather than the broad category. Specificity is how a librarian or a specialist retailer finds you.

Set your publication date at least three months ahead of the actual date and get the metadata into the supply chain then. Retailers build buying decisions on records that appear months in advance, and a record that lands two weeks before publication has already missed most of them.

Distribution, and the honest version of the choice

There are three routes, and the right one depends on your print run and your subject.

Direct sales through your own site give you the full margin and the customer relationship, which for a specialist press with a defined audience can be the largest share of sales. It also means you handle fulfilment, returns, VAT, and international shipping yourself.

A distributor gives you access to the trade, meaning bookshops, wholesalers, and library suppliers. They take a substantial percentage, typically a quarter to a third of the receipts, and most have minimum list requirements. For a press with fewer than a handful of titles this is often not available yet.

Print on demand through a retailer platform gives global availability with no stock risk and the thinnest margin of the three. Useful as a long tail option for backlist and for territories you cannot ship to economically.

Most small publishers end up running all three at once, with direct as the primary channel and the others as coverage.

Legal deposit and the things that get forgotten

Most countries require copies of every published book to be deposited with a national library. In the UK that is six copies, one to the British Library and five to the agency covering the other legal deposit libraries. It is a legal obligation, not a courtesy, and it is easy to overlook in the first year.

Also worth settling early: your copyright page template, your position on territorial rights in author contracts, and how you will handle VAT on digital versus physical products, because those two are taxed differently in most jurisdictions.

What to do first

If you are starting now, in this order: register the entity, secure the name and domain, buy a block of ISBNs, build a metadata template you will reuse for every title, then decide your distribution mix. The book can be in progress the entire time.