On Going Direct

Although I've tried using Kindle Unlimited a couple of times for my books, I prefer to go wide with them to serve as many readers as possible. In the past, I've used distributors such as Smashwords and Draft2Digital (I highly recommend the latter over the former). Distributors make it easy to reach multiple sites with one process. However, publishing directly to sites such as Barnes and Noble, Kobo, Google Play, and Apple also has advantages. You can have greater control over pricing, gain access to special site-only promotions, and receive higher royalties. So last month, I stopped using Draft2Digitial for the distributors listed above and started going direct.

So far, it's been a tedious process republishing my work at different vendors. Kobo and Barnes and Noble were the easiest, since they accepted the files I'd used elsewhere. Google and Apple are more complicated. I have to submit my manuscripts to Google as PDFs and to Apple as epubs. While Word does a straightforward job of creating PDFs from Word documents, I have to use a conversion program like Calibre to create EPUB files. This worked for some of my books, but others got rejected for embedded font errors, and I haven't figured out why. So Apple currently has only one book out of my five-book fantasy series and Lyon's Legacy but not the sequel, Twinned Universes. I'll have to do some more research to figure out what the problem is.


Once I get everything republished properly, then I have to convince Amazon to set the first books of my series back to permafree. Then I can promote them to encourage readers to get the rest of the series.

If you plan to publish your books on multiple sites, I recommend gathering all the information and files you need before you start. It's not just manuscripts and covers; it's blurbs, ISBNs, and other information such as original publication dates. I wound up collecting some of this information in a single document I can use as reference later.

If you're an indie author, do you publish just on Amazon or other sites too? What's your favorite store for ebooks? Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments.

Going to Google

I was a bit reluctant to publish my books on Google Play because I'd heard it was complicated and that they tend to discount unexpectedly, which can create havoc on Amazon if they price match when you don't want them to. However, I found a great checklist that guides you through the process. It's not that hard, but to me, it's strange how much Google uses ISBNs to identify books. You start the process by entering an ISBN, and you have to use the ISBN as part of the file name(s).

 Lyon's Legacy is live on Google Play, and Twinned Universes went live this morning. Unfortunately, I do have to price my books higher on Google to get around the random discounting. Lyon's Legacy is $0.99 on Google (I don't think they discount this price), and Twinned Universes is $3.49 but discounted to $2.65. EDIT: After raising the Google price to $3.99, they discounted TU to $3.03. That seems reasonably close to Amazon's price of $2.99, and I will say Google was very fast about updating the price.

As for my other books, Seasons' Beginnings will be coming out of Select next week, and I plan to distribute it via Draft 2 Digital and Google Play. The sequel, Scattered Seasons, will also get wide distribution. I might even put my poetry book on Google Play because, hey, why not?

Do you buy books on your phone? If you do, do you use an e-reader app or buy from Google Play?