Over the last two weeks I’ve sent out inquiries to fellow writers, some of whom allowed me to ‘pick’ their brains for both opinions of–and personal experiences with–many online self-publishing platforms available to writers of eBooks. The replies to my queries were highly appreciated, some proving a bit surprising. Note: not all self-pub platforms are included here, only the ones I received real experience data on and/or have used myself.


Pub-It
: Barnes & Nobles ‘answer’ to Amazon’s rather rhetorical question, namely the Kindle Store publishing platform. On initial impression Pub-It appeared as sleek and well-designed. Two things unsettled me upon creating a new ‘free’ account: the large amount of personal information “needed” in order to register, and that—unlike any other platform I’ve used–a credit card was required by the writer. The explanation for this was that in the event of a return the book price would be deducted from the author’s card. I’d like to point out that in much of the paper publishing world, part of the percentage the “publisher” holds back on each book sale is supposed to cover any possible book returns, whether by consumer or distributor.

Lulu – The eBook creation portion of this particular platform got high marks for ease of use, cover customization and great overall site design, but lost out on many author votes due to flagging consumer interest in actually purchasing the eBooks on Lulu.

“There’s no point to making great-looking eBooks if you have to drag potential customers to the site…” one author told me.

Lulu got much better marks for sales from the other side of self-publishing: POD paper books. These high marks included positive consumer feedback on quality of product and also the timely delivery of books. However, one black mark on the POD services was the cost of delivery, which in some cases doubled the price of the book. On the other hand, Lulu has options for posting a free/sample ebook and as such offers said title free hosting. If selling your book(s) Lulu takes a 25% commission, one of the more reasonable rates in self-publishing. Ebooks and books created on Lulu are automatically assigned an ISBN.


CreateSpace
– Another option for offering POD books to consumers. CreateSpace is owned by Amazon, which acquired the company in 2005 and claim to offer authors free accounts with “some of the highest royalties” in the industry, as well as a free in-house ISBN. Author Julie Achterhoff gave me an delighted earful on why she switched from traditional publishing to self-publishing through CreateSpace:

“I started out going the traditional way with a small publishing house. I became more and more unhappy with the way things were set up, especially with the fact that I had so little control over my work. An author friend finally convinced me to self-publish my next book, Earthwalker, with CreateSpace. I was so pleased with the ease and new sense of control that I also self-published my novella, Native Vengeance, and asked my publisher for the rights back for the two books I had published with them. They only agreed to turn over Quantum Earth, but I waited the 90 days and published that with CreateSpace as well. Now I can go to their website and my own personal dashboard there and check out exactly how many of each books have sold and where. I can change anything I want at anytime, too. There are also graphs telling you about sales over time. All in all I am very happy with the way CreateSpace is set up. I can’t say if it is he best way to go out there since I don’t have experience with the others, but I’m very happy going the self-publishing route.”

The Kindle Store Direct Publishing Platform won the highest number of votes from the various self-published writers polled, including a vote from my husband and myself. Consumers seem willing to search the shifting shelves of the Kindle Store looking for new eBook to read and new authors to try; many self-published writers publishing report very little in the way of ‘returns’. Using the Amazon site for both getting and advertising consumer reviews of eBooks is appreciated by writers across the board. Also listed as a reason to continue publishing with DPP was the ability to set an eBook’s price as low as 99-cents, citing various reasons. Kindle offers writers two options for royalty amounts, one based on file size (set at $0.15/MB), and the other set at 70% royalty for the writer–provided the eBook is priced between $2.99 USD and $9.99 USD. The few downsides of Kindle are title placement (being lost amid ten-thousand titles) and competing with a plethora of highly-popular free titles.

Smashwords
– Partnered with Sony. Universally liked by writers who have managed to format their eTitles to match the rather stringent (but good) guidelines Smashwords has set up. Upload your own cover and eBooks free of charge. You are allowed to offer folks your work in multiple formats for devices like Kobo, Nook, Sony Reader, Kindle, iPad, also in HTML, RTF and PDF. The one drawback here is shared by many other self-publishing platforms: the amount of work required by the writer to advertise their own work (aka selling books), something generally accepted by self-pub/indie writers as “part of the business”, and so it is. (Tax tip – don’t forget to keep track of and charge yourself for your time; this comes in handy during tax season. And yes, many US indie eBook writers do actually report their eIncome.)

Via Meredith Greene’s Greene Ink blog

4 COMMENTS

  1. I agree with the assessment of Lulu, but feel I should mention that Lulu also allows one to upload digital files in any format (through their Digital Files option), which no other self-publishing platform that I know of will permit. I use Lulu for selling a zipped version of my Website and for giving away free audio books.

    “[At Smashwords] you are allowed to offer folks your work in multiple formats for devices like Kobo, Nook, Sony Reader, Kindle, iPad, also in HTML, RTF and PDF.”

    At the moment, Smashwords doesn’t permit downloads of the HTML format; it’s purely a preview format.

  2. I’m not sure what the author meant about keeping track of your time. You aren’t allowed to write off your time spent marketing, unless you pay yourself for your time spent marketing. The basic rule is, you can only write off what you spend. So, if you buy a LuLu publishing package, that’s a writeoff. If you pay someone to print post cards, that’s a writeoff. If you pay someone to spend ten hours crafting a press release, that’s a writeoff–but they have to pay taxes on what you paid them. If you spend your own ten hours, you don’t pay yourself and the IRS doesn’t care how long it took you.

    Other than that, I’ve had good experiences with LuLu, CreateSpace, Amazon Digital Publishing, Smashwords, and B&N.

    Rob Preece
    Publisher

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