Amazon or Barnes/Noble?

You can use both stores so long as you do not join Kindle "select".

What Veinglory said.

I'd generally suggest get your book in as many retailers as you can. There are now a number of services that will help you do this; I've used Smashwords and been pleased, and there are others that provide similar services.

There may be merit in going with Kindle and Kindle select only at first; I think it depends on you and your book.

I'm getting ready to use Draft2Digital to self-publish a novella to many different vendors.

Filigree said:

I'm getting ready to use Draft2Digital to self-publish a novella to many different vendors.

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I'd second D2D. I haven't tried Smashwords, but so far D2D has been quick, responsive, and has great support.

WriterBN said:

I'd second D2D. I haven't tried Smashwords, but so far D2D has been quick, responsive, and has great support.

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A bit off topic, but D2D appears to have just lost their distribution deal with Amazon. D2D books are in the process of being delisted.

This is a big blow to the ultimate simplicity D2D offered.

J. Tanner said:

A bit off topic, but D2D appears to have just lost their distribution deal with Amazon. D2D books are in the process of being delisted.

This is a big blow to the ultimate simplicity D2D offered.

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Can you point me in the right direction so I can read more details about this?

OP, you want your book in as many places as you can get it. You can use sites like Smashwords or D2D to get your book out there, or you can upload them individually yourself. I have my books on Amazon, B&N, Kobo, All Romance Ebooks, and my 1st book is in print on Createspace. I also use D2D for my 1st book for iBooks.

Re: too bad about D2D. That Amazon distro was the main reason I considered them. Smashwords has kludgy issues. So the self-publishing venture has to go on hold. I certainly don't have the formatting and other skills to self-publish it myself.

Filigree said:

Re: too bad about D2D. That Amazon distro was the main reason I considered them. Smashwords has kludgy issues. So the self-publishing venture has to go on hold. I certainly don't have the formatting and other skills to self-publish it myself.

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I don't know about other platforms, but all you need to publish on Amazon is Microsoft Word and to go to Createspace. I have no special skills whatsoever and it took me less than an hour.

LOTLOF said:

I don't know about other platforms, but all you need to publish on Amazon is Microsoft Word and to go to Createspace. I have no special skills whatsoever and it took me less than an hour.

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For those of you reading along at home, Amazon's CreateSpace is for printed books only; you'll need to go to Amazon's Kindle facility to self-publish an e-book there.

You don't really need D2D (or Smashwords, for that matter) to publish on Amazon. The real benefit of a distributor is when you want to publish to all the other channels.

I try to publish on all possible channels. As veinglory said, you can use Amazon and Barnes/ Noble stores so long as you do not join Kindle select.
Amazon is the easiest when it comes to self-publishing, imo.
It's great to have other options.

Celeste Carrara said:

Can you point me in the right direction so I can read more details about this?

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Hm. We're getting a bit far afield, but perhaps a mod can split it off to a new D2D thread if it's a problem.

Here's the second email that went out to D2D users with Amazon distribution:

We have finally received follow-up communication from Amazon concerning the suspension of Draft2Digital books that took place on Thursday, January 30th. They offered us no opportunity to appeal or correct their complaints, and showed little concern for the impact that action has had on our users, but they did at last provide some detailed information concerning the fate of the books in our account.

Any of your books listed at Amazon through Draft2Digital will be removed from sale shortly. They recommended that you upload the books through your personal KDP account. We asked them to provide some way to migrate the current books (with rank and reviews intact), but no such option is available.

However, we were assured that if you list the book again using the same title and contributor names, their system will automatically recognize it as a match and transfer the existing reviews to the new book.

We understand and sincerely regret the inconvenience this causes you. We have made every effort to comply with Amazon’s requirements and to resolve their complaints, but Amazon’s absolute failure of communication and hostility toward our business model thwarted our best efforts.

We will continue to pursue a more stable business relationship with Amazon, but for the immediate future, we will cease all distribution there. We did receive assurances that they intend to make timely payment for all book sales that occurred through our account.

In the meantime, if we can assist you in any way, please contact our customer support and we’ll do our best to ease this transition.

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And this is the fairly definitive thread on KB about all things D2D (started by an company insider, Aaron Pogue):

http://www.kboards.com/index.php/topic,137808.0.html

The comments about this situation start around p.52 (Jan 30) of the thread.

Filigree said:

Re: too bad about D2D. That Amazon distro was the main reason I considered them. Smashwords has kludgy issues. So the self-publishing venture has to go on hold. I certainly don't have the formatting and other skills to self-publish it myself.

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Smash doesn't mass distribute to Amazon. I think they have a couple hundred people at most who were invited to do that. Mark Coker himself has said that Amazon has never moved forward on allowing distro from them, so that's not even an option.

Also, you don't have to put off publishing, because you don't have to format anything. Use D2D to distribute to the other retailers. Let it format your book for Amazon, and take the resulting mobi file to publish at Amazon yourself. They are perfectly happy for people to do that, this coming from the company's own rep on another board.

Publishing through KDP isn't hard, especially when you have the formatted book ready to go.

I went ahead and submitted the short novella to one of the major genre markets, after getting a clarification on guidelines from the magazine editor. That way I have the possibility of a reasonably large payout and recognition in a respected magazine...and I can still self-pub if it gets rejected.