How to Avoid the Landmines
98.2% of today’s self-published authors wet their feet with Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP). I made that stat up, but it’s gotta be close. And rightly so, Amazon is THE main marketplace and an author can have a finished book out for sale with less than an hour’s work. So, it makes sense to start there. I did. Then I went wide. Publishing with KDP and D2D proved to have several pitfalls.
I published A Night to Remember with KDP just to see what the hubbub was all about. After the ebook had been out a while I decided to release it in paperback. That was relatively easy, too. The hiccup I found was the cover creator. Amazon couldn’t take my ebook cover and expand the background color to encompass the spine and back cover of the print version. So I had to go back to my clutch Photoshop guru Laura Beard Hayden (who helped with the ebook) to make a paperback happen. Those paying attention will note differences between the two covers. Kind of like those old cartoons in the newspaper where you were challenged to spot what’s off with pic two versus pic one.
Anyway, that all done I had me a paperback and ebook. The book did fairly well, garnered a few revues, etc. Thus I decided to try releasing it wide. Hell, I used to work at Barnes & Noble and wanted to be able to go up to that mid-store desk and ask if they could get me a copy of…my own book. So I went to Draft2Digital.com. It helped that I met Mark Leslie Lefebvre at a Pikes Peak Writers Conference and he gave a great workshop on D2D.
Start with KDP, stay with KDP. Start with D2D, stay with D2D.
D2D has a great support team. They are exceptionally responsive and considerate. I know because I’ve emailed them back and forth a half-dozen times.
Here’s the meat in this sandwich. When you start a PRINT project with KDP (especially if you opt for Kindle Unlimited) I recommend you stay with KDP. This is what I’ve learned:
- Publishing an ebook with both KDP and D2D is pretty much seamless. It may take a couple days for all the markets D2D sources to “publish” your ebook, but it will be within 48 hours of you completing the work on the D2D website. Ebooks are easy. With short stories, even easier.
- Paperback is a different monster. D2D’s cover creator is much more intuitive than Amazon’s and easily converts an ebook cover into paperback, but they won’t give you a download of the cover to use for promo, etc. Amazon does. D2D, you need to fix that.
- Also (granted D2D is still in the beta phase of paperback publishing), even though the D2D website says paperbacks take up to two weeks to be available, it’s really more like a month. I created A Night on D2D as a paperback on November 10th for a Thanksgiving release (11/24). It was on B&N the end of the first week of December. Nothing on the sight warned me that my release date may not be met. So, just give yourself a one month window for a print book to be available at Barnes & Noble et al.
- Once you publish with a “3rd Party” like D2D, Amazon treats your work as second class. I canceled the print run of A Night via KDP once D2D told me my paperback was published through them (to include on Amazon). That day Amazon raised the price on my paperback by nearly five dollars (from $6.99 to $11.57). Authors, you need to know they have that right: Amazon.com, as well as other retailers, set the selling price of items on its website. In some cases, the selling price will be above the list price. In other cases, the selling price will be discounted lower than the list price. Keep in mind that you set and control the list price of your work, while the selling price and any discounts are set at the discretion of the retailer and are subject to change.
- Running a sale or promo on KDP is easy IF you’re in Kindle Unlimited. Running a sale on D2D is easy, too. But, running a sale on one doesn’t necessarily reflect what the selling price is through the other. Right now I have two ebooks on sale for FREE UNTIL DECEMBER 15. But that sale is not reflected on Amazon, only on markets fed by D2D. Amazon is not bound to honor a sale price (see my previous bullet quote).
Bottom line: it’s hard to go wide when you self-publish IF you start as Amazon exclusive via KDP’s Kindle Unlimited. D2D offers a great service. They put your book in markets, especially overseas markets and local brick-and-mortar stores, that Amazon can’t touch (believe it or not Amazon is only #1 in the US, not everywhere else).
My advice? Learn from me. If you know you want to go wide, publish with D2D from the get-go. If you’re cool selling only off Amazon, then stick to KDP and don’t stray from their divine path. Avoid the landmines I stepped all over. Self-publishing writers, I wish you the best of luck.
