17 Publishing Checklist / Questions to Address in order to Finalize your Book

On the admin dashboard of your book, work your way down the menu to address the following items:

Organize:

This shows a list of all content in the main 3 sections of your book: Front Matter, Chapters, and Back Matter. Review and confirm the following visibility settings for each element of your book:

• Show in Web – these parts/chapters will appear in the webbook (visitors to your site can see the content online)
• Show in Exports – these parts/chapters will appear in exports (they will appear in your various export files)
• Show Title – setting these to ON (with Show in Web off) will allow the title of part or chapter to appear in the webbook and exports, but with a little lock icon next to it; visitors can’t read the content of those parts/chapters

Note that toggling these on and off is a strategy for managing what others can see at what times. It can be useful if you are still working on the book while teaching from it, as well as if you only want students to print certain chapters at certain times.

Book Info:

1. Set the title for the book. Unless it is a cloned book to which NO changes have been made, a new title is recommended.
2. A short title is not required, but may be included. This can be helpful if the title is long…it will be chopped off in the running head of exported PDF.
3. Add a subtitle; this can help differentiate if slight differences exist from the cloned book.
4. The default author will be the user name of the admin who first generated the project, so that will likely need to be changed.
5. Click the X on the user name in the Author box to delete the default & select the correct author name from the drop-down list.
6. If the author isn’t listed, OR If you would like the cover of the book to list an editor, rather than an author, follow these steps:
7. Click Add New Contributor
8. Enter the author name (or “Edited by Firstname MI Lastname”) in the Name field
9. Enter any other data you want to include about that person; no other fields are required though
10. Scroll to the very bottom and click Add New Contributor
11. Follow the same steps as i – iv. above to enter other roles, if applicable.
12. Enter Tulsa Community College as the publisher
13. Enter Tulsa in Publisher City
14. Set the publication date (I recommend using the date you first plan to make the book available to the public)
15. Ignore all the fields dealing with on-sale date, ISBN, DOI; leave the Language set to the default, or change if needed
16. Use the Choose File feature to upload an image to serve as the cover
17. Note: this will not appear in your file export copies….pdf, etc.
18. See instructions under Choose File button for details on best practices for images
19. See special requests section to learn how to include the cover (sort of) on your PDF versions
20. Set the Subjects and Institutions (if you would like to; not mandatory)
21. Keep the Source Book URL as is.
22. Set the copyright year to match the pub date
23. Set the Copyright Holder to the Author
24. Select your Copyright License
25. Revise your Copyright Notice as appropriate based on the material you re-mixed. (There are examples in the Extra Resources folder of the Workshop Series Bb course.)
26. Include a book tagline, short description, long description (and Additional Catalog Information) if you wish.
27. The Short description will appear on the book landing page, just below the author, above the license
28. The Long description will appear further down on the landing page, under the heading Book Information; the Book source, author, license, license/copyright statement, and subject appear here as well.
29. Additional Catalog Information is not needed at this time; leave any defaults in place.
30. Click Save on the right side of the page to finish.

Appearance:

1. Themes: You can explore and apply various themes to your book. If you are happy with the theme, leave Themes as is.
2. Theme Options: Most of these will stay as defaulted. You can check and set the following:
   • Global Options: these are options that impact all versions of your book
   • Web Options: these options only change the look and behavior of the webbook (online version) – again, review these and experiment to see what options you like
     1. 1. Enable Social Media: Do you want the book to be sharable with a Twitter button on the home page? If not, uncheck that default
        2. Enable Source Comparison: If you cloned a book as your source, this is a good way to help sort out different versions of the reused material
   • PDF Options: these settings will apply to the print and online PDF exports you generate
     1. Body font size – ideally, this is 11 or 12
     2. Page Size – you will want to make sure this is set to US Letter (8.5” x 11”)
     3. Make sure your margins are set to at least 2cm, in case your PDF is sent to a commercial printer
   • Ebook Options – no real recommendations here; defaults haven’t caused any problems as of yet

Export:

This is where you can generate files of your book. These will be static, a snapshot of the book how it is now.  Any changes you make to the web book will not apply to the files once they are generated.  Generating the files does not put them on the home page for others to access; that is done in Settings.  We recommend that you generate these files at minimum:

• PDF for print (to ensure your appearance settings are good)
• PDF for digital distribution
• Epub (this allows users to load to a kindle or other e-reader device for offline reading)
• Pressbooks XML (this is a good file to save for yourself; it preserves this exact version of the book…it can always be re-imported to Pressbooks and the book will appear exactly as it was when the file was generated)

Once you have generated the files, save them all somewhere locally.  Then, if you are attempting to manage or encourage responsible printing, delete the two PDF file exports from the Latest Exports list before following the instructions below in settings to make the other export files available to users.

Publish:

Ignore this menu for now; we aren’t at the point where we are putting our OERs on those purchasing/access platforms.

Settings:

1. Sharing and Privacy

• Set the Book Visibility to Public (this will allow anyone with the link to view it; no Pressbooks account needed)
• Private Content: I recommend keeping the default – Only logged in editors and admins can see chapters we’ve marked as private
• Disable Comments: I recommend keeping the default YES
• Share Latest Export Files: This gives users access to all the files you generated above in the Export menu unless you have downloaded and saved them locally, then deleted them from the Exported Files list
• Save any Changes you made

2. At this time, no other recommendations for the Settings section