Chris A. Baird | May 14, 2020
Can you edit your ebook after it is published?

Can you edit your eBook after it is published? It's a very good feeling to finally published your book online. Find out for more tips in self-publishing.

Fix Formatting Issues

Before I answer this question, I just want to let you know that I am going to later in this blog. On the fourth answer, I hit the problem with paperback books and if you want to edit them.

This is a warning you are not going to want to miss. So let's get right into it. The question that was sent to me was, can you edit your eBook after it is published?

This is a fantastic question because as you can see, there are going to be some risks associated with publishing an eBook. Afterwards, you change your mind or you need editing.

It can be that people are complaining about what you've got going on with that particular book. Or maybe your cover needs to be swapped out. There are all sorts of stuff we are going to want to change.

Before we get into that, check out my free Self-Publishing Secrets Checklist. It will help you get publishing right away, nice and easy. I have used it for 170 books so far and it has done amazing stuff for me.

So, let's get into it. When I first started publishing, I started with eBooks. Surprise! Surprise!

The reason being is because it is the easiest way to get started and of course I was dealing with the very same risk. I paid people to try to put together the eBook, I guess it was the print book but the ebook originally.

Check out this related article: Can You Make Money From An Ebook?

Then I needed changes almost immediately. The table of contents wasn't working when you put a black background on it. It wasn't working correctly, so we had a lot of formatting issues.

There were some spelling issues even though I had run it through editors who are editing for all of my original books. So, there was a whole series of things that were going to need to be changed. That was something I knew was going to happen.

Take Your Time

But, did I know any of these? Of course, I didn't know it. I didn't know how exactly to go about doing it.

So let's get to the answers. First is yes, you can do editing after you have published your eBook. If there is anything that you made a mistake on, you can publish it.

The reason this is so good is that this means you don't have to slow down the rate of your publishing. You don't have to have everything absolutely perfect when you are going to publish it right out there.

This is something a lot of people make a huge mistake on, which is they are waiting for everything to be perfect before they get their first book out. You can go back and change it, so there are no worries, whatsoever on that side.

So you are going to make mistakes. You can easily fix those mistakes in your eBook. The other is, you should still edit it before so you don't get negative reviews and have to take it down.

Check out this related article: Most Important Factors For eBook Publishing?

So it depends upon what you are throwing out there. If there are a lot of problems with the books that you are putting onto the market, well then, of course, you should take the time. Take the necessary time to get them fixed before you throw it out.

Because if you take the book down, now this is a big one. And then you have to resubmit the book. You may have an issue or resubmit it as a different book.

You Can't Fool Amazon

Amazon may look and say, wait, this is a copy of the first book. This is a strategy some people use which is taking the same book over and over and posting it and Amazon is not stupid.

They have computers that are watching for this sort of thing. You could risk your entire account as a result of that. So be very careful.

If Amazon does a takedown or you take a book down and then decide to "hey I got bad review so I'll just post the same book again in another location". I would warn you against that but the biggest thing is with the paper books. Like I commented right at the beginning.

The big warning on those is the fact that you cannot change the metadata. The ISBNs have already been submitted and you can't change it.

Check out this related article:  Where To Get ISBN Number?

Now, don't get me wrong. I've got books that I have put out there. I attempted and want to change the metadata. The eBook version no longer matches the paperback version of the book, and that my friends, is a huge problem.

So you are going to want to be very very careful about the metadata. Making sure that everything is correct before you put the paper books out there. Now, it is not the end of the world but it is a good idea to make sure that it's right.

You will not be able to change it on your paperbacks that you publish because of the ISBNs and it gets locked down. So, that is a big one.

What have you found? Have you found any other issues when you were trying to edit your eBooks?

Have you ever found that you weren't able to do it? Check out my other blogs and videos for more questions just like this one.

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