CIP data, legal deposit, and the library end of publishing
Two things arrive with publishing a book that sound official and get mistaken for each other. One is a block of text printed inside the book. The other is an envelope you post to a national library.
They are unrelated, and only one is ever a legal obligation.
What a CIP block is
CIP stands for Cataloging in Publication. It is the dense paragraph of library data printed on the copyright page of many trade books: author, title, subject headings, classification numbers, the control number a library system files the record under, set as a small block that looks nothing like the rest of the page.
Its purpose is workflow, not status: a library receiving the book does not have to catalog it from scratch, because the record is already written, in the library's own vocabulary, and inside the book. It is produced before publication, from the manuscript and the planned metadata — hence the name.
It is not required by anyone, it is not a mark of legitimacy, and no reader has ever looked for it.
Why your book probably cannot get one
Here is the part that catches self-publishers.
The national library programs that produce these records are restricted, and self-published books generally fall outside the restriction — the usual reasoning being that the program serves publishers issuing a list of titles by other people, not a book whose author is also its publisher. Eligibility is set by each country's national library, the rules differ, and they change. Check the one that applies to you rather than assuming that a rule you read about somewhere else is yours.
If you are excluded, you are in the same position as most independent titles ever published. It is not a mark against the book.
The commercial equivalent
Commercial cataloging services will prepare an equivalent block for a fee: a real bibliographic record, made by a cataloger, formatted to sit on your copyright page.
What you are buying is a competent record in the standard form. What you are not buying is the national program's name on it — a commercially prepared block is normally labeled to show who prepared it, and a service that cannot tell you plainly how yours will be labeled is not one to use.
Whether it is worth the money is a presentation judgment. It makes the copyright page look like a trade book's and saves a cataloger a few minutes. It will not get your book ordered.
What you must not do is invent one. A fabricated block is worse than none, as What belongs on a copyright page puts it: it is checkable, and the people who read that page are the ones who would check.
A library can catalog your book without it
This should take the pressure off. Cataloging is something libraries do: a record can be pulled from a shared catalog where another library already made one, or written from the book in hand by a cataloger reading your title page and copyright page. A missing CIP block is a convenience lost, not a barrier.
Legal deposit is a different thing
Legal deposit is the obligation to send copies of a published work to a national library, or to several designated libraries, so that the country keeps a permanent record of what was published in it. In many countries it is written into law and falls on the publisher — which, if you self-publish, is you.
Almost every detail varies: what counts as published, whether a print-on-demand title counts, how many copies, which libraries, whether an ebook is covered, how long after publication you have, and who pays the postage. There is no general answer, and a confident answer found online is usually one country's rule wearing no label.
So do the only reliable thing: search your national library's name together with "legal deposit" and read their page. It is usually short, carries a form and an address, and settles the question in fifteen minutes. If your situation is unusual — you live in one country, your printer is in another — that is for their inquiries desk or a professional, not for a guide.
In the Interior Formatter. Enter your copyright details once and the page is built from those fields and placed on the correct verso — and because the ISBN is a field, each binding and the separate large print edition carry their own number rather than inheriting the paperback's. Start a book → · about the Interior Formatter
Why deposit is worth doing even where it is voluntary
Your book enters the national bibliography. That is the authoritative list of what has been published in a country, and one of the places library supply systems, some retailers and aggregators, and researchers look.
A copy survives. A print-on-demand book has no warehouse and no back stock. A deposit copy is a permanent one, held by an institution whose job is keeping it.
It is cheap. Usually a couple of copies and the postage.
One thing it is not: deposit is not copyright registration, and does not stand in for it. See Copyright: what you have automatically, and what registering adds for that separate question.
What a librarian actually needs to shelve your book
Less than you think, and you probably have most of it.
- An ISBN, unique to this edition and binding. The number is the handle everything else hangs on. Do you need your own ISBN? covers where it comes from and why the registrant matters.
- Consistent metadata. The title, subtitle, author and publisher in the record must match the book exactly. Metadata: the fields that decide who ever sees your book is the long version.
- A spine that reads correctly. Shelved, the spine is the whole book. Title and author, oriented conventionally, and actually printed — KDP prints spine text only at 80 pages and above. See Designing a spine people can read on a shelf.
- A printed copyright page. Publisher, year, edition, ISBN. That is what a cataloger reads.
None of that is a cataloging block. It is the ordinary work of producing the book properly, which is also what Getting into libraries and bookstores asks of you.
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: Getting into libraries and bookstores · Also in this guide: What belongs on a copyright page · Do you need your own ISBN? · Should you invent a publisher name?