20 Publishing your Book
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. However, you may wish to offer your book for sale through an online bookseller. It’s your responsibility to ensure you have the rights necessary to enter into a commercial agreement with a vendor.
The following table presents an overview (in no particular order) of considerations that may factor into your publishing decisions and when they might be relevant to your needs and goals.
| Step | SAALCK Pressbooks Committee Service? | Purpose | Guidance |
| Proofreading and copyediting | No | Finalize text for publication | Check with your institution’s library for available services. |
| Add subject areas | No | Facilitates the discoverability in the Pressbooks Directory | You can add terms in your Pressbooks book in Book Info > Subjects. |
| Get set up to sell physical copies of your book | No | Provide readers a hardcopy option via a print on demand service | Check with your institution’s library or bookstore for available services. For commercial sales, Pressbooks recommends IngramSpark. |
| Get an ISBN or DOI | No | Unique identifier for published books, used for distribution in library or bookstores | |
| Include in library catalog or institutional repository | No | Enable discoverability within your institution | Check with your institution’s library for available services. |
| List book in the Pressbooks Directory | Yes | Facilitates public discoverability and sharing | You can opt to share your book in the Pressbooks Directory. Check with your Pressbooks institutional admin for more information. |
| List the work in other OER repositories | Yes | Facilitates public discoverability and sharing | Contact your institutional admin or contact SAALCKPressbooksAdmins@l.uky.edu to learn about your options. |
| Integrate your work into your LMS | No | Enable students to access your work from the course page | Check with your institution’s library or instructional designers for available services. |
Apply a License
As you prepare to publish your book, you should consider how to manage your copyrights, and what rights you want to keep or grant to others. The way you can grant rights to others is by applying a license. Before you apply a license to your work, be sure to confirm first that you hold copyright in your book.
Pressbooks allows you to select any (or no) license at a page, chapter, or book level. You will be able to choose from the full suite of Creative Commons licenses, which allow copyright owners to retain copyright but grant certain rights to copy, distribute, etc., depending on the copyright owner’s preferences. Creative Commons licenses also specify that anyone who uses your work must attribute you as the owner. Check out the Creative Commons Choose Your License Tool for help selecting a license.
As you’re choosing whether to apply a license, you should keep in mind a number of benefits from selecting a Creative Commons License:
- Increased citation and impact: Choosing Creative Commons licenses that promote reuse of your work by others mean that your book is likely to get wider readership and accrue greater citations. Readers feel more comfortable reading and citing works that clearly allow them to make various uses.
- Increased discoverability: Choosing a Creative Commons license that allows the creation of derivative works is the only way to get your book listed in the Open Textbook Library, which can greatly enhance how easy your book is to find.
Export Options
Pressbooks offers a number of options for exporting your work in online formats depending on how you want to make it available to others to read.
Summary of the available export options:
| Format | Purpose | Notes |
| PDF (Print) | Optimized for print-on-demand | Export will not include cover image. Does not support transparent images, interactive elements, or links. |
| PDF (Online) | Optimized for all PDF uses besides print-on-demand | Export will not include cover image. Does not support interactive elements. |
| EPUB | For ebook readers | Compatible with all ebook readers (Note: this includes Kindle, which previously required MOBI files). |
Learn more about exports in the Pressbooks User Guide.
Updates and Revisions
Pressbooks makes it easy to update and revise books on an immediate and ongoing basis. You can implement and publish new changes instantaneously. If you have made your book available as a PDF or in another file format, make sure to run new exports of the latest version as these files will not update automatically.
If the work is being used by others, you may need to release the updated version as a new edition.
Delete or Unpublish a Book
You have several different options for deleting or unpublishing a book, depending on how and where you have made your book available as well as on your desired outcome(s).
| Option | Description | How-To |
| Delete book | Remove book entirely from front and backend | From your Dashboard, hover over the book title in the top navigation bar until a menu appears, click Delete. |
| Make a book private | Restrict visibility of book to be completely private, only visible to you and any viewers you designate | From your Dashboard, go to Text > Organize and change visibility to Private. |
| Make a chapter private | Restrict visibility of a book chapter to be completely private, only visible to you and any viewers you designate | From your Dashboard, go to Organize and select or deselect the Show in Web value for each chapter. |
Move a Book to a Different Platform
If you want to move your book to a different platform, you are free to export the files to migrate or use elsewhere. For maximum portability, we recommend that you download the EPUB files along with any other formats that you anticipate needing in the future.