Tim Lewis, ALLi Author Member and Twitter chat host
On the ALLi Twitter chat (#indieAuthorChat) this week we asked questions about Book Covers with Jessica Bell.
The Indie Author Twitter Chat runs for an hour, weekly on Wednesdays, at 8pm UK Time (3pm EST and noon Pacific Time). All you have to do to join in is follow the hashtag #IndieAuthorChat on Twitter.
The chats are a virtual meet-up for the self-publishing community on Twitter. If you're looking to connect with more people in our industry, joining The Indie Author Twitter Chat is the perfect way to start. Network with other authors and self-publishing professionals, learn new strategies and get answers to your most pressing questions from our guest experts.
Next time: This Wednesday (tomorrow) we have questions about Getting Book Reviews with Dale L. Roberts.
Last Time: Did you miss the summary of last week's Twitter chat about Creating author bios with Dianna Gunn. You can find that here: TwitterChat: Creating author bios with Dianna Gunn
Hello Tim
I have a question about book covers for you which you may be able to help me with. I have an ebook and paperback published on Amazon. Both have assigned ISBNs from Amazon. I am looking to update the cover. What are my options? I’m not clear regarding what I can do and cannot do. For example, can I upload a second book cover for the same book and keep the original reviews for the book? (Will the reviews carry over to the new book?)
If I pay for new ISBN numbers from NielsenISBNstore and upload the book with the same title but new cover will this appear as a “new” book or will it continue as the same book and have the same reviews attached to it? I’m trying to make the best decision for the new book cover… also where can I publish the book so that it appears on other online sites and book stores – will I need to publish it through another publisher other than KDP?
I know there’s a lot here and hope you can give me some guidance.
Many thanks and i wish you a good evening.
With best wishes, Soulla
Hi Soulla,
I believe you just need to update the edition number of the book (you can probably just republish but this makes the change clearer), it is not necessary (in fact it is a bad idea) to get a new ISBN. In terms of publishing to other eBook vendors, a service like PublishDrive, Draft2Digital or Smashwords can do this for you. For paperbacks ideally you’d use Ingram Spark, but this is complicated for books originally published on Amazon without your own purchased ISBN. Another option is to tick the expanded distribution option for the paperback on KDP, though this isn’t as good in terms of making the book competitive in other places.
Tim