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| 5 x 8" Createspace POD needs title moved to the right. |
by Louis Shalako
The number of publishing platforms continues to
proliferate, even since I last researched this story under another pen-name.
More on that in a minute.
A while back I signed up for Kobo Writing Life. I
have only a couple of ebooks there. I’ve never really promoted it and probably
haven’t sold a single book.
It’s an experiment, and those books are also on
Amazon. Those books I promote in some small ways. I can compare results of
promotion versus non-promotion, also there is the theory of having your books
in as many bookstores as possible. This works online as well as in the real
world.
I also signed up for OmniLit a while back. I couldn’t
get in past the section where you put your Canadian and U.S. tax ID, mostly
because my Microsoft Internet Explorer browser simply wouldn’t do it properly.
Google Chrome seems to have fixed that, and I’m all signed up. All I have to do
is to click on the confirmation email and begin learning the system. That’s
under a new publisher name, so what book or books I will actually load up there
is still a mystery.
But it might be worthwhile to see what I have in
romance or erotica, whatever categories they have over there. I can publish all
five authors under the new publisher name—that’s using your head and thinking
ahead.
Now, if you’re publishing on Smashwords and Kobo, you can unclick the
Kobo distribution channel on your Smashwords dashboard, or you end up with a
conflict, a double entry on your one author page.
Smashwords was recently named the number one ebook
distributor in the world or something like that.
Pretty much everybody knows all about Amazon's Kindle Direct Publishing.
So if you sign up with some platform that has or is acquiring access to a distribution
system, making deals with iBooks, Nook, Kobo, Sony, etc, then you have to
decide if you even want to put up a book on different platforms. If you can get
your book into a lot of channels, putting up a book in a unique new platform is
still a good idea, the question is can you keep the book out of streams where
it already exists.
The platform might still represent one new, stand-alone
store.
If nothing else, you can still get your books in
that one new store—it’s a question of putting in the time.
Some of these new platforms have an upfront cost,
$99.00 looks about standard for the low-level service.
As far as formatting goes, typing in metadata,
handling the upload etc, that’s probably a fair price if you can’t do it
yourself, have no idea what that means and aren’t interested in learning it
yourself. You might have a daytime job, right? In which case free publishing
might not be your top priority, although it is one of mine.
That being said, there are some free services,
although the two-week free trial (on any platform) is pointless from my point
of view because it’s just a come-on and you’re never going to see any results
in that amount of time anyway.
BookTango: says here
that it’s free. Royalty system.
EBookLit:
converts from DOCX files, says it’s free.
Vook: ebooks and
PODs. Paid service.
Draft2Digital:
claims no up-front costs, no risk, royalty split based on price categories. See,
this one I might check out later.
Kobo
Writing Life: no results as of yet on my own experiment, but it was easy
enough to use and I do have books published separately from Amazon and
Smashwords there.
ReadMill:
claims you can interact with readers right in the margins of your book. (Now closed. -- ed.)
WidBook:
another site where you can write onsite, totally mobile from anywhere in the
world, and interact with readers, build or find an audience, etc.
Rhovit: looks
like about ten bucks a month. Distribution platform for books, comics, film,
etc.
Libboo:
claims to use audience measurement algorithms to help authors ‘tune’ their
works.
Authorgraph:
allows personalized messages in ebooks, signed copies, etc.
Lelivro:
another publishing platform, this is the author landing page.
WattPad: you can write directly on WattPad, click on
folks who might follow you back and read your stories. I upload the first two
chapters of books as
excerpts, and I usually get quite a few reads, which is useful information
to an author.
Nook Press:
free to use, books appear in the Nook Store.
iTunes:
sell your content. Since they have a Canadian store or a foreign platform, you
might be able to avoid the withholding tax. I haven’t checked this one out yet.
Infiniti:
publish in hardcover and ebooks. Ebooks $349.00.
With careful key-word search, you can find dozens of
soft and hardcover print on demand book publishers, some of whom are or soon
will be offering ebook conversions. The proliferation of platforms in this
market is undeniable.
How to sell ebooks on eBay.
There are places to publish your photographs, art
prints, CDs, books and films, (for example on Createspace.) Other free POD places include Lulu, and there are dozens of others, most of
which are on a paid service basis.
Before I publish anything on any platform, I want to
know if they have provision for Canadian or overseas authors to avoid paying
the standard U.S. withholding tax of 30 percent. (That's why I'm not on Nook Press.) Can I publish for free? How do
I get paid? Do I control my prices? (On Kobo the minimum price is $1.99 and you
can’t set it to free.) Are there additional distribution channels and should I
take advantage of them, if they are free and if they go places I’m not already
represented on? How does everything actually work?
Bearing in mind I have five pen-names, a load of
titles and more coming, the time consideration comes into play—how much time is
this going to take, and is there any real chance of some rational payment?
It’s only a matter of time before there are more
free publishing platforms, ones with good services and good business plans,
with multiple distribution channels and access to some new stores that I haven’t
even heard of yet.
We’ll keep our ears out and see what we can pick up.
END
