Book Files and Formats: How to Protect Your Writing Investment

Today’s post is by David Wogahn, the author of Countdown to Book Launch and the president of AuthorImprints, a self-publishing services company.

A writer’s investment in their book is more than time and creativity. Our words, and sometimes visuals, are then turned into electronic files—another investment. Publishers cover the cost of creating publishing files, while indie authors bear the expense of creating the files for their books.

This has long been the case, but when bringing a book to market in today’s shifting publishing landscape, doesn’t it pay to be proactive in terms of file ownership?

A traditionally published author may one day have their publishing rights reverted. For indie authors, the firm or freelancer you hired to prepare files may close or disagreements may develop. Or perhaps you want to publish your next book using a different team.

The costs to republish a book or to make changes to a book—or to take your book to a new designer—depend on whether or not you have the appropriate files. Common file types used in publishing are Microsoft Word, Adobe InDesign (an industry-standard software program for typesetting manuscripts), and PDF. The type of file you have determines how easy, and how costly, it will be to make changes to the book.

Here are five real-life author stories about corrections and republishing, and an explanation of why having the files—the right files—is important:

1. Mark’s publisher reverted the rights to two of his books but wanted to charge him for the PDFs. Mark instead found his old manuscript in Word and had to update it to match the published version. It was time-consuming because he had to cross-check the Word document with the printed book to find last-minute changes made during the publishing process.
2. All Michael had was a physical book. With no files at all, the only option was to cut the spine off the paperback book, scan the loose pages, and then correct the errors created during the scanning process. This expense was in addition to standard publishing fees incurred for republishing.
3. Tiffany could no longer use her original book designer and needed to make corrections to her book. She had an InDesign file, but it was missing the image files. The project was abandoned.
4. Mary Jean chose to republish her three books using her own publishing imprint. One of the books required changes to the cover but all she had was a PDF, not the publishing source files nor the original image file. The cover had to be redesigned.
5. Grace had an agreement with a hybrid publishing company, but during the proof review phase, she learned that the firm was going out of business. Unfortunately, she had no recourse in getting her publishing files, and she found herself back at square one, with only her Word file.

The difference between source files and publishing files

Publishing source files are files that can be edited or changed—for example, adding a new chapter, correcting a spelling error, or changing a font.

An InDesign file is a publishing source file (and often a group of files, when you include fonts and images). Many authors draft their manuscript in Word, which is imported into InDesign for the design, layout, and formatting process. Once the book is designed, it is output as a PDF, and this PDF file becomes the publishing file.

It’s also worth noting that it is possible to design and format a book using Word (or Google Docs). In this case, Word is a publishing source file. As with InDesign, one then saves their Word document as a PDF for use as the publishing file.

But in all cases, a PDF is never a publishing source file. A PDF is simply a publishing file to be used for printing the book and it cannot be edited the same way one edits a publishing source file.

Staying organized is the first and minimum level of protection

No matter what path you take to publication, you have at least some ability to maintain control over your writing investment. The first and most obvious control is completely within your power: it’s staying organized.

At some point in the process there will be a final manuscript, and you should save and identify it as such, along with any other files, such as image files. This applies to all authors, whether they’re working with a traditional or hybrid publisher, managing the process themselves, or using a publishing services firm.

But this form of backup applies only to your manuscript. Unless you plan to prepare the book layout yourself using Word, Scrivener, or any of their competitors, you’ll be working with a publisher, publishing services firm, or freelancer that likely uses InDesign.

For ultimate protection, negotiate ownership of the source files

As noted above, getting ownership of the source files will allow you to make changes and republish your book, should the need arise. Will getting these files be possible in all situations? Probably not, but the truth is that you won’t know until you ask. It comes down to negotiation. (For more about this skill, see Jane’s post: The Business Skill I Wish I Could Grant to All Writers.)

• For traditionally published authors, the most common option I’ve seen is to purchase the PDF of their book from their publisher in the event of a rights reversion. Perhaps you can negotiate the price, or even get the source files. The point is to ask.
• Authors working with a hybrid publisher, freelancer, or publishing services firm should have better luck getting the publishing source files. After all, you are paying for this service, right? A services provider that refuses to provide the source file seems to me to be taking an unreasonable position. The primary source file of the book’s design with your content has no value to anyone but you. It’s certainly worth asking about.

3 bonus tips for additional peace of mind

When personal computers were first introduced in the 1980s (yes, I’m dating myself here), there were no standards for exchanging files. With more than a dozen word processing programs in wide use, and no PDF format, you would have to ask the receiving party what software program they were using if the intent was for them to open and edit your file. Consequently, it was not uncommon in our office for a document to be retyped.

Here are three hard-earned lessons I’ve learned since then:

1. For maximum flexibility, protection, and cost savings, use widely supported software programs and file formats—the industry standards. This will allow you to easily exchange your files with others such as editors and publishing services providers.
2. Understand the limits of file conversion. Word documents are commonly converted to InDesign files, but the reverse is not easily done without impacting the formatting. Generally, you can exchange files created by the same software program, but conversion to another file format can be a one-way trip.
3. The more popular the software program, the more people you will find that can help you. For example, if you create a cover in Photoshop, you’re usually safe—thousands of designers use this program.

Owning and protecting your publishing source files is one of the most important things a writer can do to protect their writing asset. You never know when you may need to make a correction or wish to publish a new edition.

David Wogahn

David Wogahn is the author of Countdown to Book Launch and the president of AuthorImprints, a self-publishing services company that helps authors professionally self-publish books using their own publishing imprint.