Updating an ebook after it is published
A print run is a decision you live with. Once a thousand paperbacks exist with a missing word on page 41, that word is missing for as long as the copies do.
An ebook is not like that. You find the typo in week two, you fix it, you upload the corrected file, and the book on sale on Thursday is right. This is the one place where digital is simply better, and it is worth knowing how to use properly.
How a re-upload works
The mechanics are much the same everywhere, even though the details differ.
You upload a corrected file to the listing you already have. You do not create a second listing — the existing one keeps its reviews, its ranking, its links and its sales history. The store re-processes the file, which takes some hours, and during that window the old file is usually still what is selling.
After it goes through, new buyers get the new file. That part is reliable everywhere.
Existing buyers usually do not get it automatically. Someone who bought the book last month generally keeps the copy they downloaded. Some stores have a way to push a significant correction out to people who already own it, sometimes only when the change is large enough to matter and sometimes only on request. The rules, the thresholds and the wording vary by store and they change, so check the store's own help pages when a correction is serious enough that you want existing readers to have it.
Do not promise readers an automatic update before you have confirmed it happens.
A correction, or a new edition
This is the distinction that decides whether you need anything more than an upload.
A correction is the same book, fixed. Typos. A broken link. A wrong date in the copyright page. An image that came out muddy. A chapter heading in the wrong style. Nothing about what the reader bought has changed — it is just less wrong. Upload it to the same listing and carry on.
A new edition is a different book. Substantially new content, a new or changed title, a rewrite, a different translation, a version with added chapters or an added co-author. That is a new product, it needs its own ISBN, and it usually needs its own listing. See Do you need your own ISBN?
The line between them is not about word count — it is about whether a reader who bought the first one would feel they had bought the wrong thing. A hundred fixed typos is still a correction. One new chapter is not.
In the Interior Formatter. Corrections belong in the .docx, and re-exporting rebuilds the EPUB and the print PDF from it together — contents, chapter numbering and page count regenerated from the same source rather than patched by hand. Start a book → · about the Interior Formatter
Fix the source, not the export
This is the rule that makes everything else work, and it is the one most often broken under time pressure.
When you find the typo, the fastest-looking path is to open the exported file, or the store's own online editor, and fix it there. Do that and the fix lives in one file with no source. The next time you export — for a paperback, for a large print edition, for a store that wants a fresh upload — you export from a manuscript that still has the typo in it, and the correction quietly disappears.
Fix it in the manuscript. Re-export. Upload the export. Every time, even for one character. Preparing a manuscript that typesets cleanly covers keeping that source file in a state where re-exporting is a five-minute job rather than an afternoon.
Keep a note of what changed
A short log, in a plain text file beside the manuscript, saves you more than it costs:
- The date you uploaded.
- What changed — "p. 41 missing word, p. 112 wrong year, fixed dead link in back matter".
- Which files went out — ebook only, or ebook and print.
- Which stores you uploaded to, if you are on more than one.
Six months later, a reader emails about an error and you can tell in ten seconds whether it is one you already fixed, whether their copy predates the fix, and whether the paperback has it too. Without a log, you re-read your own book looking for something that may not be there.
Re-check the file after every re-upload
A re-processed file is a new file, and it can surface a problem the first one did not. A fresh export can break a link that used to work, drop an image, or trip a validation error in a section you never touched.
Run the validator again. Open the result on a device and look at the front matter, the contents, one chapter opening, and whatever you actually changed. Checking an ebook before you publish it is the same checklist you used the first time, and it is shorter on a second pass.
Skipping this is how a book that was fine acquires a fault in the act of being corrected.
Keep print and ebook in step
Most corrections are found in one format and belong in both.
If you fix a typo only in the ebook, the paperback carries it forever — or at least until the next time you happen to re-export, which may be never. The two files drift apart, and the version a reader quotes back to you depends on which one they bought.
This is the real reason the source-file rule matters. One manuscript, corrected once, re-exported to both. Then upload both: the corrected interior PDF to the printer, the corrected EPUB to the stores. If the page count moved, the cover moves with it, because the spine is computed from the page count.
Fixing a book that is already published covers the print side, where the same correction costs more and moves slower.
Make yours
Everything here is built into the tools, and they are free to use: name your book, bring your manuscript or your artwork, and work as long as you like. You only pay when you want the files without the preview watermark.
Next: Checking an ebook before you publish it · More: Fixing a book that is already published · What makes an EPUB pass validation · Links in an ebook, and where they should point