I've been looking into self-publishing an ebook. There are so many options out there that I'm a little overwhelmed and hoped maybe some people's experiences and such could take the bite out of some of this. I'm seeing Amazon KDP, IngramSpark, Lulu, BookBaby, SmashWords, etc. and understandably want to make a good decision, too. So far I lean towards KDP only because it seems the royalties are higher and it's so widely used, but want to know what is out there.
This is a big topic but lets try to simplify there are basically two routes to self publishing ebooks.. KU and Wide KU means that you put your book into Kindle Unlimited on amazon where you get paid for page reads... but you have to be exclusive to amazon... you can still sell it on amazon, and you can sell the print and audio elsewhere the exclusivity is ebook only. You commit to KU in periods of 90 days, so if its not working out for you you can pull it out and go wide if you go wide in addition to amazon the main markets are Kobo, B&N (nook), Apple books, and Googleplay..plus there are a bunch of smaller ones.. If you are going wide you can either go to each vendor yourself (going direct) or you can go through an aggregator... the main agregators being Smashwords, Draft2Digital, and Publishdrive (Ingram and Lulu do offer aggregator services but are mostly print companies and arent as good as an aggregator as the others) Bookbaby are a service company - that is you pay them (quite a lot) to do stuff with your book - best avoided unless you are money rich and time poor. For your first book I suggest either going into KU or if you want to go wide going direct to KDP (amazon) and Kobo and using Draft2Digital as an aggregator for the others
It's easier and less expensive to get a digital version of your book published on Amazon’s KDP platform or with an e-book distributor (aggregator) like Smashwords or Draft2Digital than it is to get it published in a magazine, an e-zine or with a small or large press publisher. The process is, however, more involved than simply writing your book and uploading it to Amazon or an e-book distributor. Amazon's KDP platform dominates the e-book market, but your e-book is a small needle in a very large haystack. So, keep in mind that… Preparation is about quality—doing things to give your readers your best writing in the best format. People won't buy your book if it's poorly written. Promotion is about quantity—doing things to compete with e-books like yours. People can't buy your book if they can't find it.
Forgot I had posted this xD Thanks for your advice I found a digital platform that I was most comfortable with a while ago, thankfully, after browsing my options.
You're welcome. Every now and then, I forget a post or a reply I made. Sometimes the reminder comes in an email from a site or a forum I no longer am active in... Hope the digital platform you found works well for you. Some of my writing is on the Amazon KDP platform, but my stories and how-to articles are tiny needles in a big haystack.
Draft2Digital is the one that I chose. I like that it has an e-book conversion, sales tools, print-on-demand services, multiple e-book stores it can put your book in instead of just one, plenty of different ways to get paid, explanations on things feel easy to read/understand, website feels easy to use, and I feel like I have a lot of options and more control over my book with them at this point.
Self-publishing is a popular way to reach more readers than just family and friends -- especially if you've had little success at getting your writing accepted by editors and agents. And D2D does have a good reputation for being a simple way to self-publish your writing. I tried D2D a few times but was disappointed by what I thought was poor customer service. Their automatic conversion software handled fiction okay but butchered the illustrations in my how-to e-books, and the customer service people were unable to fix the problems. That was, however, several years ago, so maybe that's no longer a problem.
D2D's print-on-demand is only recently out of beta testing. I know your original question was about digital publishing but, if you also go with print-on-demand, please order an author copy for yourself and report on the book's quality.
Thanks for the tip and that's totally the plan. It sounds like the author copy will only charge you the shipping or a minimal fee from what I understood. Definitely a surefire way of doing it to double check the quality!
my experience of D2D is that they are a good agregator but their formatting software isnt up to snuff - its better to format your own epubs ... i use velum, but jutoh, sigil, calibre etc are option then just upload them
Yes, I'd have to agree that D2D's converter needs some work -- at least that was my experience with my how-to guides (text plus illustrations) which I uploaded in Word Doc format. I'm familiar with HTML, so I could have uploaded my guides in the EPUB format, but D2D's customer service reps were so difficult to work with I gave up. The Smashwords converter is called "Meat Grinder" and it deserves the name in my opinion. Smashwords allows you to upload your source document in the EPUB format but restricts the conversion to just EPUB, which means your e-book will be distributed to only those sales points which use the EPUB format. And nine times out of ten Smashwords declares my EPUB failed validation, despite the fact that it verifies okay when I use their own validation site. The Kindle Direct Publishing platform allows uploads in DOC, DOCX, EPUB and several other formats. I've never had any problems with the KDP conversion, regardless of the format I use to upload my files.
