The records a self-publisher needs to keep
A traditional publisher keeps a file on every book, because in five years somebody will ask a question about it and the person who knew the answer will have left. Self-publishing removes the publisher and keeps the questions.
Almost none of this is interesting. All of it is cheap to do while the book is fresh and expensive to reconstruct afterward.
What to keep
The ISBN register. One line per number: which ISBN is on which format of which edition, and the date you assigned it. An ISBN is never reused and never transferred to another product, so a number put on the wrong format does not fail quietly — it is copied into every retailer, wholesaler and library record that touches your book, and untangling it later means a reprint. A paperback, a hardcover, an ebook and a large print edition are four products with four numbers. See Do you need your own ISBN?, and Buying your own ISBNs if you hold a block and need to track which of them you have already spent.
The files you actually uploaded. The final interior PDF and cover PDF for every format and every printer, plus the EPUB, each named with the date it was uploaded. Not the file you think was final — the one the store accepted. When a printer rejects a reprint two years on, the first useful question is what changed, and you can only answer it if you still have what worked.
The cover artwork at full resolution, plus its source file. The flattened export is not enough. Keep the layered original, the original artwork file at the size you licensed or were sent, and the fonts used, so the cover can be rebuilt at another trim or another binding without starting over.
Licenses and receipts for everything you did not make. Stock image licenses with their invoice numbers and dates, font licenses, the agreement with an illustrator or cover designer. This is the paperwork you will want if anyone ever asks what rights you hold, and the paperwork nobody can produce three years later because it was an email. Stock images: what the license actually lets you do covers what those terms mean.
Contracts with everyone who worked on the book. Editors, designers, translators, illustrators, co-authors. What matters in each is the same thing: who owns what, and what you are allowed to do with it. A cover you paid for is not necessarily a cover you may reuse on merchandise or in an audiobook. Co-authors and anthologies: one file out of many is the harder version of this problem.
Your metadata record. Title, subtitle, series name and number, author name, publisher, description, categories, keywords, publication date, price. Keep it as a plain text file per book, because reconstructing what you typed into a form two years ago is miserable, and because the same strings have to be pasted identically into every store. Metadata: the fields that decide who ever sees your book explains why character-for-character matters.
Sales and royalty statements, by year. Download them rather than trusting a dashboard to keep showing them. Stores change reporting, close accounts and retire old periods. Filing them by year takes seconds each month and makes any question about income answerable; what you then do with them is between you and whoever handles your taxes.
A change log. One file per book, one line per change: what you corrected, in which format, and when. "Fixed the chapter 11 running head, paperback interior, uploaded 2026-04-18." When a reader reports an error, this tells you whether it was already fixed and which printings carry it — see Fixing a book that is already published.
In the tools. My Books keeps every project you make, and can duplicate one into a new book with its design and settings intact — the fast way to build a second edition or another binding from something you already proved. Start your book → · about the tools
How to keep it so it survives
The system matters less than having one, but three habits do most of the work.
One folder per book, with fixed subfolders. Manuscript, interior, cover, artwork, licenses, metadata, statements. Use the same names for every book so you never have to think about where something went, and so the shape is obvious to anyone else who ever opens it.
Date file names in year-month-day order. interior-6x9-kdp-2026-04-18.pdf sorts correctly in every file listing on every machine, forever. interior-final-v3-REALLY-final.pdf does not, and in two years you will not know which one shipped.
Keep a copy somewhere that is not the machine you work on. One copy is not a backup, and the drive with your only cover source on it is a single point of failure for the whole book. Backing up a manuscript, properly has the full version, and it applies to everything in this list, not just the text.
Two more things worth doing once. Keep the records in formats you will still be able to open — plain text, PDF, standard image files, not the export of a tool you are trialing. And keep the contact details of everyone who worked on the book with the contract, because a designer who changes studios is much easier to find while you still know their name.
The test worth applying
Could you reprint this book in five years, if the tool you used no longer exists, the designer is uncontactable and the store account has been reset?
Answering yes means you hold, yourself: the text, the cover at full resolution with its source, the ISBN for each format, the metadata you typed, and a note of what you have already corrected. Answering no tells you exactly which of those is missing, which is the only useful output of the question.
There is a harder version of the same test, and the filing above is most of the answer to it: could somebody else reprint the book, if you were not there to be asked? What happens to your books after you covers what a successor needs beyond the files — the accounts, the logins and the instruction that tells them the records exist at all.
Our tools keep your projects and will happily duplicate a book for you. That is convenience, not custody. The copy you hold is the one that means you still have a publishing business if anything else goes away.
Make your book
The tools 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: Fixing a book that is already published · More: Metadata: the fields that decide who ever sees your book · Do you need your own ISBN? · Reprinting a public domain book