How Do I Republish My Book?

We hear from a lot of authors who want to republish a book they self-published in the past, but they aren’t always sure how to go about it or what to do first. Let’s look at a few factors that might impact your decision, your rights, and your publishing plans.

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Topics Covered in “How Do I Republish My Book?”

Why Republish Your Book?
Common Questions about Republishing a Book
     What Happens to My Old Book Listing?
     Can I Transfer My Amazon Reviews to My Next Edition?
     Can I Use the Same Design Files to Republish My Book?
     Do I Need a New ISBN?
     Can’t I Get a Free ISBN from KDP?
Preparing to Republish Your Book
​​Publish the Next Edition of Your Book with Spoonbridge Press

Why Republish Your Book?

There are lots of reasons you might choose to republish your book. You might be considering a second edition of your book for any of the following reasons:

• They want to build new buzz around the book by refreshing their cover design and/or updating their introduction (especially fiction authors).
• They want to update the content of their book to include new ideas or more recent studies, or to align with the current landscape (especially nonfiction authors). 
• They have recovered their backlist and regained the rights to their traditionally published book and plan to rerelease it by self-publishing under their own imprint.
• They’re unhappy with the quality, customer service, or contract terms offered by their previous self-publisher and want to take control of their books moving forward.

Regrettably, many of the authors we hear from fall into the last category. The good news is that if you self-published your book (on your own or through a self-publishing company) and retain the copyright to your manuscript, you should be able to republish a second edition at any time.

Common Questions about Republishing a Book

Republishing a book as a second edition could be easy, or it could be tricky. It all depends on how the first version was published. Let’s look at a few questions you should ask yourself when you’re considering republishing your book.

What Happens to My Old Book Listing?

This depends on whether you decide to keep the book available for sale or not.

If you published your first book with a self-publishing company, contact that company and ask them to de-list your book. (Check your contract—you may not be able to republish your book until you cancel your initial publishing agreement.) Even if it’s not required, you probably don’t want that company to keep selling an outdated edition of your book!

If you published yourself through KDP, you can decide whether you want to keep your old listing active. But you probably want readers to only buy the new edition, so you may want to unpublish your first book.

Or, if you used a different distributor to list your books on Amazon, that’s where you should go to delist your book.

However, keep in mind that even after you delist your book, that listing will remain on Amazon. The book just won’t be available for sale anymore.

This can be a silver lining for authors who published their first book through a different publisher and aren’t able to transfer their reviews to the new edition: at least the reviews will continue to exist!

Another thing to keep in mind: if your old publisher used a single distributor to list your book on Amazon along with everywhere else,  keywords in the listing may not be optimized specifically for the Amazon ecosystem. This means that readers can still access your old book listing, but they’re more likely to find your new KDP listing because you can optimize it specifically for Amazon.

Can I Transfer My Amazon Reviews to My Next Edition?

One of the best things about being an author is connecting with your readers and watching those great reviews come in. And with 67% of US book buyers turning to Amazon, these are the reviews that authors tend to covet the most.

So what happens to all of those Amazon reviews when you publish a new edition? This depends on how you or your self-publishing company distributed your book.

For clarification on this issue, we reached out to KDP and learned this:

To transfer the reviews [from a previous edition], the metadata of the books need to match … and … the books need to be published from KDP and not from a different source outside of KDP. (KDP customer service chat, March 1, 2023)

Unfortunately, this means that if you or your publishing company used a distributor like IngramSpark to distribute your book to Amazon, KDP will not be able to transfer the reviews to the new edition.

(If you don’t know how your publishing company listed your books on Amazon, ask them!)

Can I Use the Same Design Files to Republish My Book?

You guessed it—this depends on how you originally published your book. If you paid a self-publishing company to create your book, they probably won’t allow you to reuse the cover files. This may be the case even if you hired your own cover designer because you licensed it to that company so they could publish your book. Check your contract to be sure.

Of course, if you published through KDP yourself, there’s no reason you can’t use the same designs to republish. But why would you?

Keep in mind that a big part of republishing a book is creating new buzz around your new publication. A new cover design is a great way to separate the new publication from the old one. And with a new interior design, you can include an updated introduction or foreword. Why waste the opportunity?

Do I Need a New ISBN?

Yes. Regardless of how you published your own book and who owns your original ISBN, any new edition is considered a new format, and you’ll need a new ISBN.

(Pro tip: Buy a block of 10 ISBNs from Bowker so you’re covered for future editions, formats, and publications! The cost for 10 ISBNs is only a tiny bit more than what you’d spend on two individual ISBNs, which you’ll need anyway for your print and ebook, so there’s no reason not to future-proof your publication efforts now.)

Can’t I Get a Free ISBN from KDP?

Technically, yes—but for most situations, you probably don’t want one.

This goes back to the owner on record. If you use a free ISBN from KDP, Amazon is the publisher on record. If you own your own ISBN, you (or your imprint) are listed as the publisher.

Remember, if you have even the slightest interest in getting your print book into bookstores, libraries, and gift shops, none of these retailers are likely to order books from their greatest competitor. This means distributing through a more traditional network, which requires you to own your own ISBN.

Preparing to Republish Your Book: Delist Your First Edition

Once you track down the details, it’s time to republish your book. Here’s how.

If you published on your own…, 

Yyou’re in control of your book listing! Just go into your publisher dashboards and click “unpublish” when you’re ready to delist it. Depending on how your book was distributed, this could take anywhere from a few days up to a month. After your book has been unpublished, your listings will show your book as “unavailable” or “out of print.”

If you used a self-publishing company to publish your book…, 

Yyour best first step is to check your contract. We are not legal advisors, and we strongly urge you to run any questions by your attorney, but Hhere are a few things you should consider beforelook for as you’re considering how to republishing a book you originally published through a self-publishing company. (Note: we are not legal advisors, and we strongly urge you to run any questions by your attorney!), but:

• Copyright: YIt’s almost certain that you probably retain the rights to your own manuscript (i.e., the words), but it’s best to double-check.
• Exclusive/Nonexclusive Distribution Rights: This section will clarify whether you have the right to distribute your book at the same time as your publisher. If your publisher has exclusive distribution rights, you’ll need to cancel your contract before moving forward with your own plans.
• Termination: No surprise here: this will outline the conditions for terminating your original contract. Expect a short waiting period until your publisher is able to delist your books from all platforms, which is reasonable.
• Work Product: It’s very likely that you won’t be able to use your cover or interior PDFs—not a lot of publishers allow this. It’s also likely that you —and you probably also won’t be offered your source files, but it never hurts to check.  
• Third-Party Property: Did the company license any outside images for your cover design and/or marketing materials? If so, you probably can’t use those images for your new cover. (But don’t you want to redo your cover design anyway?)

To learn more about navigating self-publishing contracts, we highly recommend Self-Publisher’s Legal Handbook by Helen Sedwick. (The author also offers free publisher contract analysis and advice to ALLi members.) 

If your book was traditionally published, you can start by looking into the following terms in your contract:

• Reversion of Rights: This will describes when the rights to your book revert from the publisher to you.
• Termination: This will outlines the conditions for terminating your contract and, as well as how long you’ll need to wait until the agreement is canceled.

Remember, we are not legal advisors, and this should be taken as general information only. PBecause all publishing contracts differ, andthe very best thing to do before republishing your book is to hire a lawyer experienced with book publishing canto review your contract and advise you of your options.