Once upon a time, stunningly not so long ago, there were exactly 2 ways to publish a book. You could do it via a major publishing house or vanity press for self-publishing. The former came with marketing and distribution. The latter didn’t. The latter also tended to be pricey.
Then, eBooks came into being, and a new option came with them. Genuine self-publishing with the distribution power of Amazon was a new way to get a book out into the world. I didn’t get in on this at that time, so I’m not sure if adding a paperback was also an option initially. However, CreateSpace – and then Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) – presented a free option for uploading an eBook and paperback to Amazon.
You, however, like the former vanity press option, are responsible for marketing and the like. No major publishing house putting your work into the world means you’re a one-person solo operation. In other words, you’re an authorpreneur.
Along the way, Amazon got competition. To be fair, it might have always had competition. But in the past few years, however, that has opened the way for wider distribution options that are free, relatively speaking.
Like KDP, you can upload your eBook or paperback for distribution to a wide range of options in addition to Amazon.
What’s more, this is increasingly not the only game in town. Still, it presents a choice for the authorpreneur as to where and how to distribute your work.
Free doesn’t mean zero cost
Having the option to upload an eBook, paperback, hardcover, and/or audiobook doesn’t mean it’s for everyone. Also, just because the tools are free for use doesn’t mean there’s no cost involved in doing the work.
Unfortunately, some will do it all without considering the importance of the parts that do cost money. Specifically, this is editing and cover art.
Professional editing for your book is a must. No author is so good that they don’t need another set of eyes to look over their stuff. You can’t trust it all to spellcheck or the newer AI tools alone. Catching typos, contextual mistakes, developmental errors, and the like, requires human observation.
Unless you’re a decent graphic artist you also need cover art made. KDP offers a free option for this. However, the old adage that “you can’t judge a book by its cover” isn’t legit. People can, will, and do judge books by their covers. Ergo, if yours is sub-par it will not help your book sales.
Still, people do put their books out into the world with minimal effort beyond the writing part. Maybe some succeed. It’s entirely possible that someone is the exception to the rule and can edit their own work and handle cover art, too. More often than not, in my experience, such self-publishers just flood the market with half-assed product.
Having addressed this, let’s get back to the topic at hand.
Wide distribution for a wide world
Amazon is not the only online place to buy eBooks and other books online. Barnes and Noble, Apple, Walmart, Smashwords, and others are out there. They offer a broader range of distribution than Amazon alone.
This can present a challenge if you start with Amazon. Part of this is related to what’s called KDP Select. This is an option in Amazon that allows you to offer discount pricing for your books, as well as free and countdown sales options. However, to participate, you must keep your distribution exclusively with Amazon for 90 days.
The other is one of formatting. KDP offers excellent free software for proper Kindle book formatting. You can do a lot there to get back material and front material, in addition to the book itself, where it needs to be. Formatting for paperback is a whole other process, which partially depends on what software you’re uploading the text from.
Beyond these challenges, however, some websites offer tools for multiple elements of your book creation, including eBooks and paperbacks. These include Draft2Digital, IngramSpark, and others. They also give you some formatting options that can be quite robust and are largely user-friendly.
The upside to all of this is that you can set your work up for wider distribution to the wider world. This is especially useful, as Amazon has been experiencing some backlash over certain practices, and some people prefer eBooks but don’t have a Kindle.
Wider distribution means more options to generate sales.
As I’m learning how to use these new tools, I’m adding more works. Part of why I’m writing about this now is because it coincides with the wider release of my Infamy Ascending standalone fantasy villain’s journey novel. It is now available for eBook and paperback across a much wider range of retailers.
This is scary in many ways, There is a lot more information to keep track of. The controls on Amazon are direct, whereas the control I have with other distributors is indirect via the third-party website I’ve chosen to work with. However, to expand my reach, wide distribution is necessary.
However, this is also super exciting. Readers who prefer eBooks can get my work from other sources, and I open myself and the writing I do to a wider audience. How cool is that?
The other consideration in addition to wide distribution
There is an increasingly growing movement among self-published authorpreneurs I’m just beginning to explore. Direct sales.
Direct sales means setting up my books for purchase off my website. The upside is that you remove the “middleman” and earn all the profit on sales. The downside is learning all the elements of marketing and managing the sales on the website. I need to learn the tools and how to utilize them if I take this route. We shall see what the future holds, but I suspect I’ll be working with this soon.
Does a wide world call for wide distribution? For me, I believe that it does. Time will tell what this will do for me getting my work out to the world and expanding my author business.
Please keep doing your art, whatever it might be. The world needs all the creatives it can get.
Thanks for reading. As I share my creative journey with you, I conclude with this: How are you inspired to be your own creator – whatever form that takes?
Please take a moment to check out the collection of my published works, which can be found here.
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