GooglePlay just recently worked out a nice little sequence of steps – a checklist – you can follow to publish your books there. 

While this would have been nice to have at the outset, it’s nice to have now.

(photo: Davide Mancini)

I’ve taken the liberty of scraping these pages for your (and my) reference down the line. A little easier than having to click through everything (IMHO, anyway.)

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How to sell a book on Google Play: a checklist

(See also their troubleshooter.)

Step 1. Create an account

To sell books on Google Play, you’ll need to join the Google Books Partner Program. This will give you access to the Google Play Books Partner Center, where you can manage your book catalog and payment settings.

1. Go to play.google.com/books/publish and either sign in using an existing Google Account, or create a new account.
2. Provide account details and contact information, then click Continue.
3. Review the Google Books Terms and Conditions and the Google Editions Addendum. If you accept these terms, indicate this with the appropriate selections.
4. Click Continue.

Step 2. Set up your payment profile

You must have a payment profile in order to sell books on Google Play. The country listed in this payment profile will determine the currency you’re paid in.

1. Go to the Payment Center in your Partner Center account.
2. Under Payment profiles, click Add a Payment Profile.
3. Enter a profile name. We suggest indicating the country and currency for this payment profile.
4. If you agree to the terms, continue by checking the box labeled I have read and accept these documents.
5. Click the Complete Signup button.

Step 3. Specify a bank account

You can start selling books without providing details about your bank account — Google will hold accrued funds from any sales. However, you’ll need to specify a bank account in order to receive any sales revenue.

1. Click the edit link next to the payment profile.
2. Click the Add a new bank account or Add new form of payment button.
3. Enter your bank account information.
4. The box labeled Make this my selection for future payments is checked by default. Do not uncheck this box unless you’re providing bank account settings that you don’t wish to activate yet.
5. Click the Save button.

Step 4. Add sales territories

Sales territories specify the countries where any of your books can be sold. For example, if one book can be sold in the U.S. and another book can be sold in Canada, your sales territories should include both countries (formatted as CA,US).

1. In the Payment Center, under Sales territories, click the Add a Territory button.
2. Select an existing payment profile. If you need to create a new payment profile, click Cancel and go to the the first step of this checklist. If the payment profile has been recently created and doesn’t display in the drop-down list, try reloading the page.
3. Enter the list of countries belonging to this sales territory, using two-letter ISO 3166-1 codes. (See our formatting guidelines.) If you can sell your books across all countries, an easy way to list them is to enter WORLD.
4. Check the box labeled Enable this region configuration.
5. If you’re subject to fixed price laws in the above countries, check the box labeled I am subject to fixed pricing laws in these countries. This setting should apply to all countries in the sales territory. You can create additional sales territories if you need to apply different settings to different countries.
6. Click Create Territory.

Step 5. Enable currency conversion (optional)

Google’s currency conversion tool allows you to set prices in a currency you’re familiar with, while buyers in other countries will see the price in their local currency. This isn’t a required step, but it may make it easier for you to sell your books in more places.

1. Scroll to the bottom of the Payment Center page.
2. Under Currency Conversion, click the Turn on currency conversion for your catalog button.

Step 6. Tell us about your book

In this step, you only need to provide general details for the book, such as the title and author. We’ll ask for additional settings in the next steps.

1. In your Book Catalog, click the Add books button, then select Add Book.
2. Enter the ISBN. You can enter either the 10-digit or 13-digit ISBN. If you don’t have an ISBN for the book, check the box labeled This book doesn’t have an ISBN or other identifier. Google will assign an internal identifier (prefixed with GGKEY) to your book.
3. If you have multiple templates in your account, select the template with the default settings you’d like to apply to this book.
4. Provide as much information as possible about the book on the General details page.

Step 7. Provide prices

We require a price in order to list your book on Google Play, even if you wish to make it available for free (in which case, please enter 0 as the value). Google will calculate your revenue share based on the list price you provide. There are three required components for a price:

• the currency,
• the numeric value,
• and the countries where the price applies.

Google needs a price in the local currency for each country where you want to sell the book — for example, to sell in the U.S., you must either:

• directly provide a price in U.S. dollars, or
• have currency conversion enabled, and include the U.S. in the list of countries where a price in another currency should be applied.

You can provide multiple prices with different settings (such as different currencies) if necessary.

1. Go to the Google Play settings for the book.
2. Click the Add a new price button.
3. Click Currency to enter the currency, formatted as a three-letter ISO 4217 code (e.g., USD for U.S. dollars).
4. Click Price to enter the numeric price.
5. Click Countries to enter the countries where you’d like this price to apply, formatted according to our guidelines.
   • If you’ve enabled currency conversion (see Step 4), you can list countries that use a different currency than the one you specified or use the keyword WORLD to indicate all your sales territories. Your converted prices will be based on your list price.
   • If you’re not using the currency conversion tool, you should provide separate list prices in the local currency for each country where you wish to sell the book.

Step 8. Configure distribution settings

Additional Google Play settings allow you to control the availability of your book.

1. If the book shouldn’t be available for sale until a specific date in the future, enter the date in the On Sale Date field. Use the format YYYY-MM-DD.
2. If you want to apply Digital Rights Management (DRM) to your book, check the box labeled DRM Enabled.
3. If you have the rights to include images in the eBook, check the box labeled Show Photos in eBook. If a book contains a significant number of images, we can sell it only if this box is checked or if we receive an ePub file.
4. If you wish to sell the book in PDF format, check the box labeled Include Scanned Pages.
5. Select the maximum allowable percentage of the book that buyers can copy and paste in the Copy / Paste Percentage field.

Step 9. Configure preview settings

Books available for sale on Google Play are also included in the Google Books index. Google Books settings apply to the preview of the book.

1. You can change the percentage of the book that can be previewed on Google Books with the Preview Type drop-down.
2. Make sure your preview territories are formatted correctly and include any sales territories (see Step 4).
3. If you sell your book directly on your own website, you may want to include a Buy link; the Buy Link Text should be the name of your website and the Buy Link is the URL for purchasing this specific book.
4. Enter your website homepage URL as the Publisher Website.
5. If you have a logo, you can upload it as the Publisher Logo.
6. If you have the rights to show images in the book preview, check the box labeled Show Photos in Preview.
7. If you set the preview percentage to 100% and you wish to make the book downloadable on Google Books, check the box labeled PDF Download Allowed.
8. If you set a future On Sale Date in the previous step (in the Google Play settings), and you don’t want this book to be previewable before that date, check the box labeled No Preview Before On Sale Date.

Step 10. Upload content

Google accepts eBook files in PDF or ePub format. If possible, we recommend that you submit both in order to provide buyers with more reading choices.

1. On the Content files page, click the Upload content button.
2. Click Choose files and select the files for this book from your computer. You can upload multiple files at one time. Please be sure to follow our filename guidelines.
3. Successfully uploaded and processed files will be listed under Content Files, although there may be a processing delay before they appear.
4. If you’d like to allow someone with a Google Account to see how the book appears on Google Play without purchasing it, click the Add button under Quality reviewers and enter their email address.

Step 11. Enable the book for sale

Because books can be listed just on Google Books or on both Google Books and Google Play, we need to know where you want to make your book available.

1. Click the Ready to publish button in the upper right corner. If this book was added to your catalog at an earlier time, it may have a different label, such as Live on Google Books, Needs approval, or Needs Action.
2. Select Publish to Google Play and Google Books. The button may have a different label for books that already existed, such as Enable for Google Books or Activate and enable for Google Play. If none of the options mention publishing to or enabling for Google Play, your book already has the appropriate availability settings and you can just save instead.

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This will also become part of my upcoming “How to Self-Publish on GooglePlay.”

Have fun with this.