The Catalog Desk: The Operations Manual for Running a 50-Book Indie Publishing Operation (PDF)

Publishing one book is a project. Publishing fifty is an operation.

Somewhere around book five, the habits that got your first book out the door start to break. A series name is spelled two ways, so the stores won't group your books. An ISBN ends up in your notes twice. A cover gets updated on KDP and stays old on IngramSpark. An account is locked behind an email address you no longer use. Each one costs an afternoon, and at fifty books those afternoons add up.

The Catalog Desk is the operations manual Carl Williams uses to run more than fifty books across fourteen series. Written for indie authors publishing in the United States, it shows you how to buy and plan an ISBN block and keep one register as your single source of truth, enter clean Bowker records the first time, use KDP and IngramSpark together with the royalty math done in advance, keep titles, series names and bios identical on every platform, register your copyrights inside the window that protects them, sell direct on Payhip, own your website, and run a weekly routine that catches errors before readers do.

Every fee and rule was checked in October 2026 and is collected in one appendix.

What you get: the full 184-page book as a PDF (8.5 x 11, easy to read on screen or print).

Want the system ready to use? The Catalog Desk Toolkit (fillable control sheets, a printable workbook and an Excel workbook) is sold separately or with the book in the Book + Complete Toolkit bundle. Try it first with the free Starter Kit.

Write the books. Then run the desk.