Question regarding publishing

Hi,

No worries. You can pub your book on Amazon Kindle, Smashwords and Draft to Digital all at once. What you can't do is add your book to the Amazon Kindle Select group. The requirement to be in Select is exclusivity for 90 days.

Cheers, Greg.

 

Kindle Direct Publishing is separate from the Amazon Select program. Anyone can publish through KDP. But joining the Select program requires exclusivity. If you don't want to be exclusive, just don't join Select. Simple as that.

 

I recommend publishing directly with the platforms, if you can. As you live in Canada, it's probably a good idea to publish directly with Kobo Writing Life (a Canadian company). And with Barnes and Noble and Apple iBooks (if you own a macbook), if not you could use a distributor like Smashwords or D2D.

Distributors deduct about 10%, but do offer convenience. I publish directly with Amazon and Kobo. Because I live in Asia, neither B&N nor Apple will let me publish directly, so I use D2D for those, and some other distributors.

Of course, if you decide to go exclusive with Amazon, then the choice is simple.

 

For a beginner, I recommend starting with exclusivity with Amazon (ie joining the KDP Select program). It simplifies things by having only one site to deal with, it gives you benefits like free or discounted promotions, and readers in Kindle Unlimited can borrow your book (for which you get paid). It's only a 90 day commitment, and once you've worked out what's what, you can decide whether to re-enroll or go wide (publish to Kobo, iBooks, etc).

The very best site I've found for all things self-publishing and advice from experts is the Writers' Cafe at Kboards.

You could also look at the 2 books by David Gaughran about self-publishing, Let's Get Digital, and marketing, Let's Get Visible.

Good luck!

 

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It does simplify things, and it works for some people, but it's possible an author will sell well on another platform too. I sell about 50% of my books on Amazon and about 40% on Kobo and B&N.

There's also the eggs in a basket argument.

Well worth buying, and his website it worth following too.

 

There are good arguments on both sides. The eggs-in-a-basket one is sound, but you also have to consider the money.

At the moment, I get 3 times as many borrows from Kindle Unlimited as outright sales. I don't imagine all those borrows would have been sales, so that's money in the bank for me. I've also used the KDP Select promotions, combined with paid ads, and that's been very effective at selling books and boosting my sales rank.

There are authors for whom Select doesn't work well, and they'd be better going wide - mega-sellers, for instance, and those selling fewer than a book a day or so. For those in the middle, particularly unknown authors wanting people to take a chance on them, KU is a benefit (in my opinion, although it does depend on genre).

For long-term career health, going wide is almost certainly the answer. For a debut, trying a 90-day commitment to Select before going wide makes sense.