Withdrawing and restoring a title

Withdrawing takes a book off sale without deleting it. The title stays in your workspace, keeps every sale and statement it earned, and drops out of the places that sell it. You can put it back at any time, and nothing you recorded about the book is lost.

Withdraw or delete

Delete removes the book and everything under it. Withdraw keeps all of it and stops only the selling.

If any royalty history names the book — sales lines, statement lines, or both — Pubblish refuses to delete it. The delete page explains why and offers Withdraw Title instead. Deleting would leave those money rows with no book attached, and that money still has to be paid.

Withdraw when a book goes out of print, when the rights move, or when it has to come down. Delete only when the record itself was a mistake.

Withdrawing a title

The Withdraw button sits in three places, on any title that is not already withdrawn:

  • On the title’s page, in the header beside Edit Title.
  • On the title’s edit page, in the same header row.
  • In the More actions menu on a title card, between View and Delete.

All three lead to the same Withdraw Title page. Then:

  1. Read the What happens list at the top. It says what withdrawing will and will not do.
  2. Pick a reason under Why is it being withdrawn? if you want one recorded. The choices are Out of print, Withdrawn for legal reasons, Rights transferred and Other. Leave it on Not saying to record none. The reason is optional, and it shows on the title’s page afterwards.
  3. Leave the edition checkbox ticked unless you have a reason not to. It counts the title’s formats, so it reads Also mark this title’s 3 editions as Withdrawn on a book with three. It appears only when the title has at least one edition, and it starts ticked. The next section explains why it matters.
  4. Click Withdraw Title. Cancel takes you back to the page you started from.

The title’s page now carries a warning panel headed This title is withdrawn, with the date and the reason. Restore replaces Withdraw everywhere the button appeared.

What changes when you withdraw

Your generated websites

New site builds and deploys stop adding a page for the book, and the book leaves your author, publisher and series book lists. A page you have already published stays up — Pubblish never deletes a page you might have edited. Each deploy’s sync report names the page and tells you it kept it. Remove it yourself in the page editor if you want it gone.

Embeds

The book card and buy-button embeds stop resolving for that book. The embed URL returns “not found”.

A smart link for the book’s ISBN or slug stops resolving.

Books you build

The Also by this author list Pubblish prints in the back matter (the pages after the story) of a built book leaves the title out.

The book leaves the Title and Edition pickers on reader magnets (free content offered in exchange for an email address), and the Titles and people results in the Ctrl+K search. A reader magnet that already points at the book keeps its link.

Your dashboard

The Active Titles tile stops counting it. A flow, the step-by-step publishing plan on a title, is checked against its target date, and a late one on the book stops appearing in the warnings at the top of your dashboard. The flow itself is untouched and still sits on the title’s page.

Royalty readiness

The book leaves the Titles with no royalty rate gap on the Before you calculate page. Its royalty-rate check on the title’s progress card also stops asking. A withdrawn book earns nothing in future, so a missing rate is no longer a job you can finish.

The help assistant

It no longer finds the book when you ask about your catalog.

What stays the same

  • The book stays in your Titles list, marked with a Withdrawn badge.
  • Sales already recorded are still paid. Statements, sales lines and the royalty calculation all still include the book.
  • It stays in the Titles Catalog report, which carries a Withdrawn column holding the date.
  • The Export page still exports it, and fills in a withdrawn column with the date. The blank import template has no such column, so nothing asks you to type it back in.
  • Editions, contributors, assets, contracts, flows and history are untouched.

Editions and your ONIX feed

Withdrawing the title does not automatically change your editions. The checkbox on the Withdraw Title page is what sets each edition’s Publishing status to Withdrawn.

Leave it ticked if you send ONIX (the metadata file retailers use). Retailers take a book down when the record you send them says Withdrawn. Dropping the book out of the feed instead leaves their last record saying it is still available. A withdrawn title’s editions still go into the ONIX catalog export, carrying that status.

You can set an edition’s status by hand at any time.

  1. On the title’s edit page, open the Editions tab.
  2. Click the pencil Edit button on the edition’s row.
  3. Set Publishing status in the panel that opens.

Restoring a title

Restore sits wherever Withdraw was: the title’s page header, the edit page header, and the title card’s More actions menu. Click it, then confirm in the dialog that opens.

Pubblish clears the withdrawal date and the reason, and the book goes back into every list it left.

Editions are left alone on purpose. Nobody can know what each format’s status was before it was withdrawn, so guessing would turn a forthcoming edition into one that says it is in print. The title’s page instead shows a panel counting the editions still marked Withdrawn, with a link to each on the Editions tab. Set those back yourself.

Who can withdraw a title

Anyone who can edit titles can withdraw a book and restore it. That is deliberate. Both actions are reversible, neither destroys anything, and an editor can already set every edition’s publishing status by hand on the edition form.

Deleting a title is a separate permission, and only members who can delete titles see the Delete button.