Book and literary reporting fact-check checklist

What to take away

• Match every quotation, page number, and judgment to the edition reviewed.
• Verify authors, translators, editors, illustrators, narrators, and other contributor roles.
• Check publishing, prize, sales, and rights claims outside promotional copy.
• Treat archival descriptions as maps, not proof that every item was inspected.
• Correct edition and quotation errors wherever the false claim traveled.

Use this checklist for reviews, interviews, profiles, publishing reports, prize stories, archive features, and reading lists. Keep a source log beside the draft. An unchecked box means the copy is not ready or the item must be marked not applicable.

Edition and format

• Confirm title, subtitle, author credit, publisher, imprint, and publication date.
• Record edition statement, format, page count, price, territory, and ISBN.
• Identify advance, first, revised, corrected, export, paperback, large-print, ebook, or audiobook version.
• Check whether introductions, notes, images, chapters, pagination, or text differ across formats.
• For audiobooks, confirm narrator, runtime, production credits, and abridgment status.
• For ebooks, identify the location system and avoid unsupported print pagination.

The Library of Congress specification for the MARC International Standard Book Number field explains that a record may contain information relevant to one ISBN, including qualifiers, and that an ISBN can relate to a title or specific edition. An ISBN is therefore a precise locator only when it is copied correctly and matched with the manifestation in hand.

People and responsibility

• Check names, initials, pen names, pronouns, and current role descriptions.
• Distinguish author, translator, editor, contributor, illustrator, designer, photographer, and narrator.
• Verify agent, publisher, imprint, bookseller, festival, library, and prize relationships.
• Do not assign a jacket, translation, introduction, or annotation to the main author by default.
• Attribute disputed biography and give a subject time to respond to consequential allegations.

Quotations and literary facts

• Compare every quotation with the reviewed copy.
• Check punctuation, capitalization, spelling, italics, line breaks, omissions, brackets, and page or location.
• Identify speaker, narrator, epigraph, note, jacket copy, and interview language correctly.
• Credit the translator for quoted translated text.
• Recheck character names, relationships, event order, setting, and ending claims.
• Preserve ambiguity when the work does not settle a point.
• Mark spoilers according to publication policy without hiding essential analysis.

Argument and outside claims

• Distinguish the book's claim, a quoted source's claim, and the reviewer's judgment.
• Check nonfiction statistics, dates, quotations, and archival assertions at their cited sources.
• Verify claims of first, only, rediscovered, banned, bestselling, definitive, and unprecedented.
• Compare translations or editions only when the copies and language competence support it.
• Do not treat author intention as final evidence of meaning.
• State the criterion behind a strong positive or negative judgment.

Publishing, prizes, and events

• Confirm acquisition, publication, cancellation, reprint, and rights-announcement dates.
• Distinguish advance, royalty, sales, shipment, print run, return, and revenue figures.
• State currency, territory, format, source, and period for numbers.
• Check prize rules, eligibility year, category, judges, longlist, shortlist, nomination, and winner status.
• Verify festival session, venue, time, participant, cancellation, access, and ticket terms close to publication.
• Give publishers, authors, staff, or institutions a fair chance to answer disputed facts.

Archives and documents

• Record collection title, repository, creator, date span, series, box and folder, and access date.
• Distinguish a finding-aid description from a document personally inspected.
• Check provenance, restrictions, closure periods, and reproduction permission.
• Confirm that a scan is complete, in sequence, and connected to the correct item.
• Avoid exposing private information without a clear public-interest reason.
• Preserve wording that marks inference or an uncertain date.

Quotations, images, and rights

• Use only the amount of quoted text needed for the article's purpose.
• Confirm every image subject, date, creator, source page, license or permission, caption, and modification.
• Distinguish permission to inspect or photograph an object from permission to publish an image.
• Do not promise that a word count or percentage automatically makes a quotation lawful.

Columbia University Libraries' fair use guidance describes fair use as an opportunity to make reasonable and limited uses of copyrighted material, weighed under the four statutory factors, and points writers to a checklist for applying them. Escalate uncertain or high-stakes uses for legal review rather than inventing a safe quota.

Independence and final copy

• Disclose relevant blurbs, acknowledgments, friendships, rivalries, shared agents, publishers, teaching ties, gifts, travel, and paid events.
• Reassign when disclosure cannot cure a conflict.
• Check headline, deck, caption, metadata, rating, and social text.
• Correct false quotations, credits, editions, and publication facts visibly.
• Use dated updates for later awards, new editions, schedule changes, and corrected printings.

Common questions

Is the publication page enough to verify an edition?

It is primary evidence from the copy. Compare it with catalog and publisher records when details conflict or matter to the story.

Must page numbers be included in a review?

Not always, but the newsroom should retain locators for quotations and consequential passages.

Can a press release confirm sales?

It can document the publisher's claim. Independent records and clear attribution are needed before adopting it as fact.

Does a correction need the edition number?

Include it when the error or corrected passage differs among editions.