Sunday 23 June 2013

How many platforms can you find for your ebook?

Calling all ebookers -

You've mastered Kindle - it's take serious coffee, much bad language and possible grey hairs but you've done it. The formatting is right, it looks fine on the e-page. Now you can sit back and feel smug.

Except you can't. You have to tackle Smashwords - which, apparently, is essential as it sells to e-readers other than Kindles. So you make more coffee, maybe something even stronger this time, reformat your precious manuscript and submit to Smashwords - this time biting your nails down to the knuckles as it goes through their 'meatgrinder.' ('Meatgrinder' is their word, not mine. It is a cruel word. You have images of your precious words coming out like mince. A made-up word, like 'e-rinser' would be kinder. I'm sure you can think of others ...)

But you've done it, waited a few days and there you are, listed as 'Premium' in Smashwords.

So you trot into town for coffee with cake this time (you've earned it) and drift by the Kobos in WHSmiths. Oh no, you forgot Kobo ... you must race home, forgetting milk and other essentials, even headache pills. It can't be that difficult, surely, starting again. I mean you've done it twice already ...

The sun is going down and the cake shop is closed. A friend rings. Is your book in iBooks she says? For all those people reading on their iPads. And what about Barnes and Noble ...

Please, fellow ebookers, what do you do? Do you burn midnight oil putting your precious book on all available sites, or do you retire, head under the blankets, and hope that Kindle and Smashwords are enough?

13 comments:

  1. As many as you can bear!
    Of course, The Zon remains the king, but increasing numbers of people are reading on iPads, smart phones, i.e. on the go.

    Smashwords is essential, I think, if you aren't using a publishing service.

    Good luck with it, Jo! What's the next one?

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    1. Just got Bombs and Butterflies out Alison, and now it's time to drop into a cheap-flight site to work out where I might go next ... any suggestions?

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  2. Oh Jo, I'm dreading this. I might need your advice as I've never done this before. In very early Kindle days, I just uploaded a word document and it seemed to be fine, but now I see it's more complicated than that. Can you point me in the right direction for tutorials for these programs? I'm a complete idiot, so they need to be simple!

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    1. Read Catherine Ryan Howard's book on Self-Printing - she's very bossy, and repeats herself, but leads you through it stage by stage. If you don't rush it's fine.

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  3. Basically there are 2 'distribution' formats, Kindle and epub (Smashwords are a distributor essentially but they will 'convert' your text for you into all sorts of formats to make it available in various outlets.

    Kindle is for amazon distribution and epub is for everything else. (Kobo, Apple, Nook etc)

    You can either get into contracts with each of these places for distribution and/or go with Smashwords and hope that they get you into other places.

    The upside of Kobo is that they deal in GBP and their site is pretty simple to upload to. The downside is, no one seems to buy from them.

    So that's distribution. You have to provide text in the appropriate format for each distributor (mobi/azw for Kindle and epub for everyone else)

    If you want to self publish you do have to learn some 'skills' and the learning curve initially is steep - I mastered a text editor called Sigil which I now use as standard for epub and convert from that via Calibre to Kindle. So I only do it ONCE for each text now really. I think I still have a how to sigil up on my site for the interested (though of course all these things do keep on being updated constantly!) Having said that, I can convert an ebook (properly formatted) in 10 minutes. A poorly formatted one takes hours so the key is to actually get it formatted properly in word (or sigil) before you try to 'make' it an ebook.

    There are loads of different ways and advices on software and distribution etc etc but really I guess everyone has to find their own way. Having said that I've sold NOTHING on Kobo in over a year and can't get Apple to acknowledge my existence. That's the sort of irony I appreciate since I find it easy to do epub format!!! Just can't find buyers in that format because it seems all the places I hang out are folks with Kindles.

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    1. Thanks for such a helpful reply, Cally - I can rest easy that as I'm on Kindle and Smashwords I need not feel neglected as no one seems to notice me on Kobo!

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  4. Hello all, I add my recommendation to see Catherine's book Self Printed and her website also: http://catherineryanhoward.com/ - disclaimer, I did contribute a wee bit to the book, and Catherine does generously mention us on her site.

    There are alternatives to the Amazon + Smashwords route, we offer additional ways to distribute to a wide network.

    One of our clients did sum up our service pretty well on her blog also: http://www.indiadrummond.com/2013/02/22/smashwords-alternatives-followup/

    Best wishes, Diana

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    1. Thank you, Diana - although this is, technically, spam I shall forgive you, as this is very relevant and you show no interest in enlarging body parts.

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  5. Sheesh, it was all so much easier in the old quill and parchment days!

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    1. In some ways, but if you made a mistake you had to strat - I mean start - again!

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  6. I agree, Carol! By the way, Jo, I just popped by to say I have bought the Catherine Howard book and it looks really helpful, so big thanks for the tip! I'm very grateful!

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    1. Good luck, Val - and do share the pain!

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  7. Oh how complicated. As a reader I've only been buying from amazon for my kindle I also have the kindle app on my ipad and only have a few books on the ibooks app and they were free.

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