Best format for ePublishing

See my reply to a similar post you made regarding marketing. I gave you a link.

Pursuant to some advice I received from some other members, I've been looking into Draft2Digital... It may merit serious consideration since it appears to meet my current needs. Decide for yourself...

https://www.draft2digital.com/

I would not give someone ten percent of cover for a service I can get for a flat fee of $50 and about an hour of my time uploading to the vendors. That would be gross overpayment for the service.

D2D is great, but why leave money on the table. Other than Apple which requires a Mac, lists your real name as publisher unless you have a legal DBA or corporation, and is by all reports generally irritating.

Katie Elle said:

D2D is great, but why leave money on the table. Other than Apple which requires a Mac, lists your real name as publisher unless you have a legal DBA or corporation, and is by all reports generally irritating.

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Sorry, I'm confused... Are you saying D2D lists personal info (real name as publisher, etc.) even if the work is listed under a pseudonym?

I publish my books as ebooks directly to Amazon through their Kindle Direct Publishing program, and to Barnes & Noble through their Nook Press program.

https://www.amazon.com/?tag=absowrit-20
https://www.nookpress.com/

I publish the same titles to Amazon’s print-on-demand affiliate, the CreateSpace program.

https://www.createspace.com/

I investigated such avenues as Smashwords but decided against them. They take a cut I’m not willing to give them. Also, doing it all myself gives me more control and faster turnaround time.

Incidentally, “format” is the wrong term. You mean marketing channel. All three programs use the same format regardless of channel which delivers your book to them: Kindle mobi/prc, B&N epub, and Createspace pdf.

I use Sigil to create an epub file for B&N, then Calibre to create the mobi file from the epub. (You can do it the opposite way, but it's clumsy and error prone.)

http://code.google.com/p/sigil/
http://calibre-ebook.com/

If you're not in the US, you can't use B&N's own Nook publishing program. So Smashwords is a good option to allow you to get your books up there (I think there are other places that do something similar to Smashwords). For me, that's worth the cut that Smashwords takes, since it's something I couldn't do myself.

ironmikezero said:

Pursuant to some advice I received from some other members, I've been looking into Draft2Digital... It may merit serious consideration since it appears to meet my current needs. Decide for yourself...

https://www.draft2digital.com/

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I'm finding D2D pretty attractive too. Are there any cautionary tales out there yet?

I've read elsewhere that D2D charges a much higher commission on sales than Smashwords does, but I've not checked that out yet. If it's true, it's worth considering.

I also wonder if D2D has a wide-enough market reach to make it worth using. We'll have to see how it goes.

D2D doesn't have reach. No direct sales. They're a aggregator. You submit there and they get your books into Amazon, B&N, Kobo, and Apple. In return, they take a commission. Mostly I think it's people using them for Apple because Apple is a PITA and Europeans for B&N because it's US only.

Sorry, Katie, I didn't word that very well, did I? I know how Smashwords and D2D work; my point was that perhaps D2D didn't get books into as many markets as Smashwords.

As you've worked with them, can you let us know the commissions they charge?

They take 15% of net royalties. It works out about the same as Smashwords. D2D tracks on a daily basis 2 days delayed rather than monthly-sort-of and they pay monthly rather than quarterly.

I would like to suggest you Be your own personal best marketer. Part of being an author in today’s industry means being responsible for your own marketing and promotion. Equip your self with effective marketing strategies in addition to raise your book’s sales or Find the expert help you really need to attain good results. Depending on your goals.

In my experience, aggregators like Smashwords and D2D may make a show of "distributing and marketing" your work, but they're not doing that in any meaningful way. They're making sure things are formatted correctly and uploading them to the retailers, which you can do yourself, and maybe they're listing you on their website somewhere (which is unlikely to translate into sales.) If you want to take the headaches out of the process of getting from drafts to sales without giving up royalties, small services and freelancers will usually give you a lot more attention than big services for a flat fee.

D2D and Smashwords are good solutions for markets you can't get into on your own. You'll want to go direct everywhere you can, because the odds are you'll have more sales that way, and you will definitely earn more money that way.

Amazon is a no-brainer--just go direct. Invest the time to figure out how to publish there on your own. Unless you plan to only publish one or two things for some reason and don't want to bother, in which case pay someone to do it for you once, don't pay 15% perpetually to go through a service like Smash or D2D.

B&N through Nook Press--if your'e in the US, go direct. All the same reasons. The one exception would be that if you want to eventually make something permanently free. Then go through Smashwords, which is the only outlet i know of that will let you change a book's price to free on B&N. Lulu might, but I'm not sure they will, and uploading something through Lulu seems unreasonably complicated compared to Smashwords anyway.

Kobo through Kobo Writing Life--go direct here for all the same reasons.

Apple through either Smashwords or Draft2Digital--here's where the real benefit is. I'd recommend Draft2Digital for Apple. It'll probably show up faster, if it's rejected they'll tell you why (Smash doesn't bother) and your price changes go through quickly, all benefits over the way Smash does it. You can go direct with Apple, but you have to jump through a lot of hoops and using pen names isn't allowed unless you have appropriate DBAs for each one. You have to have a Mac, pay for Mac in the Cloud or get someone with those to do everything for you. Apple through D2D is much simpler.

Those are the biggees. If it's romance, go direct through AllRomanceEbooks. You can also upload to Smashwords if you want to get in places like Sony and Diesel stores and to sell on their site directly. The Channel manager lets you pick and choose.

I upload to Smashwords to sell on their site-no premium distribution with the exception of one title I wanted free on B&N. I use D2D solely for Apple. I go direct with everything else. The benefits go beyond not having to pay someone else. You have more control when you go direct, you can change things more quickly, and you can control your metadata better. I didn't sell a single copy on Kobo in over 6 months. As soon as I went direct I started selling copies there. When I went direct with B&N, I more than tripled sales. Many stories echo mine.

If you can't be bothered to read the instructions to upload direct, pay a service that will do it for you once and leave you in control. Don't pay someone a chunk forever when you don't have to.

If you expect to have any sales through Apple, it's probably worth it to find a way to go direct even if you don't have a Mac. If a trip to the library or an e-mail to a friend keeps you whatever extra percentage of your royalties, it's better than an aggregator.

radiocure said:

If you expect to have any sales through Apple, it's probably worth it to find a way to go direct even if you don't have a Mac. If a trip to the library or an e-mail to a friend keeps you whatever extra percentage of your royalties, it's better than an aggregator.

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True. It's my bias showing that I generally recommend D2D. Bias against itunes, not for D2D, necessarily.

It's all right to go direct if you want your real name listed as publisher, or you have an LLC or corporate name or DBA to use. If you write under more than one name, in more than one genre (as I do), and don't want all the names linked (I don't want erotic romance and YA under the same corporate name, for instance), it becomes a little more difficult. I prefer to use D2D for that reason.

If you don't have a company name and are writing as a sole proprietor, your real name will be listed as publisher on everything you upload through that account. Some people don't care, but it's something to be aware of.

You can purchase time on Mac in Cloud and do it all through there if you really want to go direct. You do have the benefit of better categorization than you'll probably ever get through Smash or D2D.

In my situation, if one genre stretches ahead of the other to make it worth incorporating just for that particular genre, then I'll go direct with that pen name. Until then, it's not worth the hassle. If I had just one pen name, I'd have already gone direct.

I may be in the minority, but I like Smashwords. I've been selling since the very beginning at B&N, Apple's iBookstore, Kobo, Sony, Diesel. I do agree that revisions can be very slow to make it to all channels, but I've found the upload process and meatgrinder to be easy to use and prefer getting royalty payments through only a handful of sources (Amazon KDP, Smashwords, NookPress and AllRomance).