An off-website project: my first independently published poetry chapbook is out in the world! It’s an old work, but I’ve been wanting to do something with it for a while. I’ve published many zines and other printed materials, but I wanted to give this piece some more permanence, and so set about working my way through the baroque systems of publishing and copyright in Canada.
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ISBNs. My first step was to apply for an ISBN account through Library and Archives Canada. It took just a few days to be approved, at which point I signed in and used the logbook to assign three ISBNs: one print (“Book”), one PDF (“Digital”), and one EPUB (“Electronic Book”). Each format requires a separate ISBN. ISBNs can be reserved prior to publication, allowing authors and publishers to set the status of the publication to “forthcoming,” and then change that status to active once the work is released.
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itch.io. The next step was to create a chapbook page on itch.io, which is a pretty straightforward process for me now, having made so many in the past. Nothing fancy: a description taken from the work itself, a copyright notice from the frontmatter, tags and metadata for indexing, and then promo images: one of the chapbook cover itself, a 630x500 itch.io cover image, a 1024x576 Twitter banner, a 1200x480 itch.io banner, and a favicon.
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Internet Archive. To support the work, you can purchase digital and physical copies from itch.io. But I also wanted to make community copies freely available through the public archival institutions available to us, the first of which being the Internet Archive. Upload is quite straightforward, and once complete some processing occurs in the backend to OCR the text, make sure the cover appears, and process for viewing directly on the site.
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Library and Archives Canada (Digital). After the Internet Archive, I also made a digital deposit of the work to Library and Archives Canada. This should eventually show up in the LAC Aurora catalogue, but two weeks later it’s not there yet. I wonder if each deposit has to be processed manually by collections staff?
- Cataloguing in Publication. While referencing the frontmatter of books that I own, I noticed that many, if not most of them had a CIP reference, and so I looked into the Canadian system to see if this was something I should or could get. However, CIP services are not provided for self-published works, so I skipped this step.
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Copyright. It’s not required to register copyright for literary works, but since I have plans to do more publishing work in the future, I wanted to learn how the copyright system in Canada works. First, I had to get set up with a My Canada Business Account and register for the Copyright E-Filing service. Then, I logged in to the application and followed the steps to register copyright for my chapbook, including paying the $50 fee. This is the first pay-gated step in the process that I’ve encountered.
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Sole Proprietorship. Since I’m publishing and selling the chapbook under my own name, and plan to continue doing so with my other printed materials, I don’t need to request a business name or register the business with the province of British Columbia, where I live. This keeps things simple. If I want to sell goods locally, however, I would then need to purchase a business license from the district in which I live.
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GS1. Though the process so far has been relatively complicated and slow, none of the steps have made me feel bad… until this one. The global monopoly on barcodes by GS1 is just gross. When you try to find independent information on barcodes, Google is just clogged with pages from GS1. I filled out the application form, got all the way to the end of the process, but was then presented with only the Basic plan ($150/year) as the minimum option, and not the Individual plan ($25/year). The whole experience felt predatory.
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Canada Barcodes. So I looked around, and Canada Barcodes showed up as a reasonable alternative. A barcode reseller authorised by the International Barcode Network, the experience here was straightforward and reasonably pleasant. They have a specific option for ISBN barcode images, and for $20, and no annual membership, I received my barcodes via email in several different formats in under a minute.
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Mixam. Now with a barcode, I re-exported the cover from Canva for print, combined it with the body of the chapbook, and then saved the whole file as a Press-Ready PDF (PDF/X-4). I took this file to Mixam and prepared a quote for a booklet, which worked out to $242.50 for the run, plus $33.44 shipping. I decided to do a test print first since I’m trying a slightly different paper combination, and since this is the largest zine I’ve ever printed, which cost $39 plus $22.17 shipping. The specifications are as follows:
- 100 copies
- Greyscale printing
- Portrait, A5 (5.8” x 8.3”)
- Uncoated, 60 lb. Text
- Staple bound
- 64 bodypages
- Plus 4 cover pages
- Satin, 100 lb. cover
- Greyscale, inner same as front
- No cover finish
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Stripe. I have been set up to take payments on itch.io for a while, with the platform collecting and then paying out via PayPal. But I wanted to expand the number of outlets through which I can distribute the chapbook, and so needed to get set up with Stripe. Though the signup process is quite involved, carefully following the steps got me through, and now I’ve hooked up my Stripe to Gumroad, where I am selling physical copies, and can get a physical Stripe reader in the future in case I want to sell copies in person.
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Library and Archives Canada (Physical). Once the chapbook is printed, I also need to make a physical deposit of two print copies, one of which will be preserved in a controlled archival environment, and one of which will be stored for public use.