Getting Started with Pubblish

This guide takes you from signing up to having your books in Pubblish. Most of it is the first ten minutes; the rest of your catalog’s detail can wait.

If you already have your books listed in a spreadsheet — any spreadsheet, however you happen to have organized it — you can bring them all in at once. That is the quickest way to start, and it is covered below.

Creating Your Account

Signing up is one form.

  1. Workspace name — names your workspace, and becomes the publisher name readers and retailers see. Your own name is fine if you publish under it.
  2. Your Pubblish web address — the address of your workspace, for example mycompany.pubblish.com. It is suggested from your workspace name as you type, and you can change it. Letters, numbers and hyphens only, at least three characters.
  3. Your email address and a password.

Then choose a plan and enter your card details. Your workspace is ready within seconds of payment, and you land on your dashboard.

Choose your URL with some care. You cannot change it yourself afterwards, and bookmarks and saved links are built on it.

Verifying Your Email

We send you a verification link when you sign up, and a banner sits at the top of the page until you click it.

This never blocks you. Everything in Pubblish works while the banner is showing. It is there so we know we can reach you.

If you mistyped your address, the banner lets you correct it. The new address gets a fresh link, and the link sent to the wrong address stops working. You can also ask for the link to be sent again from the same banner.

Your Dashboard

A new workspace shows a welcome panel with two ways in. Take whichever fits.

Your situation The door
Books already in a spreadsheet Import your catalog
Starting from nothing Add your first title

Underneath are three more things worth doing early, though none of them is urgent: Set up your publisher profile, Invite your team and Set your workspace defaults. The last two show only for owners and admins.

The welcome panel retires itself once you have a title, and you can dismiss it at any time.

Importing Your Catalog

This is the fastest route if you have a spreadsheet, a retailer export, or a list you have kept for years in your own layout.

Step 1: Upload your file

Go to Import — either the Import titles button on the dashboard, or the Import button on the Titles page, which is always there.

The dashboard’s Import titles button only shows before your workspace has any titles.

Drop in your file (.xlsx or .csv) and click Check my file. You do not need to rearrange your columns, rename them, or put them in any particular order first.

Nothing is imported at this stage. Uploading only looks at the file.

Step 2: Check what we understood

The preview opens with Understood n of m columns, split into two lists.

  • Being imported — the columns we recognized, and what each one became.
  • Not being imported — the columns we could not place. Nothing in them will be imported.

Read that second list. A sales report is full of columns a catalog has no use for, so leaving them out is often exactly right. But if one of them matters, open Tell us what a column is, say what it holds, and click Apply and check again.

We never guess at a column. If we cannot tell what it is, we say so and leave it alone.

Step 3: Import

Check the summary — titles, editions, contributors, series — along with any errors and warnings. Then click Import Now.

If some rows have problems, you can still import the good ones: the button offers to import the valid rows and skip the rest. Correct those rows and upload again whenever you like. Importing the same file twice updates your books rather than duplicating them.

What a row needs

One row per edition.

  • A new book needs a title, an ISBN and a format.
  • A book you already have needs only the ISBN — that is how a row is matched to an edition. Everything else on the row updates it.

A row can also carry the edition’s pages, price and publication date; up to eight contributors with their roles; a series name and number; and the copyright year and holder.

Write dates as YYYY-MM-DD. We will not guess whether 03/04/2019 is March or April. If a column of dates never makes clear which way round it is, we leave those dates out and tell you — rather than quietly getting them wrong and sending them to retailers.

Starting from nothing?

If you have no spreadsheet to bring, use Download a blank template on the Import page. Every column is set up, with notes on what goes where.

Adding a Book by Hand

Use Quick Add Title — the Add a title button on the dashboard, or Quick Add on the Titles page.

You only need a title. Everything else can wait, and nothing is lost by starting thin.

When you save, you have three choices. Create Title returns you to the list. Create & Edit opens the full record so you can keep going. Create & Add Another clears the form for the next book — the quickest way to type in a shelf of books.

The Titles page also offers Full Form, which opens the complete record straight away if you would rather fill everything in at once.

The dashboard’s Add a title button only shows before your workspace has any titles.

What to Do Next

None of this is required to get started, and none of it is urgent.

  • Add editions. A book comes in different formats — paperback, hardback, ebook, audiobook — and each one has its own ISBN.
  • Add metadata. Subject classifications, keywords and descriptions are what retailers use to list and rank your book. See the Metadata Guide.
  • Set up your publisher profile, so your imprint details appear correctly on exports.
  • Invite your team, if anyone else works on your books.

Finding Your Way Around

Everything lives in the sidebar on the left, grouped into sections you can collapse.

Once you are working, though, the menu is a long way from wherever you are. So there is a shortcut.

Press Ctrl+K — Cmd+K on a Mac — anywhere in Pubblish, and a box opens listing every page in the menu. Type a few letters to narrow it down, use the arrow keys to move, and press Enter to go. Escape closes it and puts you back exactly where you were.

If you would rather click, the same box opens from the Go to… search box in the middle of the header. On a narrow window it shrinks to just the magnifying glass.

It searches the menu and your records. Type a few letters and matching titles and contributors appear under Titles and people, below the pages. Owners and admins also see matching person records there. Draft and withdrawn titles are left out, so go to Titles and use the search box there to find one of those.

Getting Help

Start with the assistant. Inside Pubblish, click Help in the page header, then Ask. It answers from these guides. It can also look up your own books, imports and conversions, so it can point to what’s wrong with one book, not books in general. It cannot change anything for you.

To read instead, browse the sidebar or use the search box. If neither gets you there, the Support page shows how to reach us — and you can reply to any email we send you.