The Journey to Self-Publication, Part 7: Formatting and Distribution

I've gotten quite a few questions about why I finally decided to delve into self-publishing and how I'm doing it, so I figured why not create a new blog series!

Every Monday, I'll be sharing a piece of the self-publishing puzzle---from how I came to this choice to writing, editing, marketing, sales, and everything in between. Please remember that this is simply my experience, how I chose to do things. Others do things differently, and that's fine! So, your mileage may vary, but in the end, I hope seeing yet another way of tackling self-publishing will help you on your path. 

Need to catch up on previous posts? Find them here:

Part 1: Making the Choice

Part 2: Creating an LLC

Part 3: Writing the Book(s)

Part 4: STILL writing the Book(s)

Part 5: CPs, Beta Readers, and Editors

Part 6: Cover Art!

Today, we're diving into formatting and distribution, and I decided to cover these two topics together because they kind of go hand-in-hand. Each vendor that sells your book requires a different format, so knowing where you plan to distribute your book will help determine what types of formatting you need to have done. 

When self-publishing, there are a lot of options for distribution. The most popular ones are: 

Kindle Direct Publishing -- This is Amazon's self-publishing company, and probably the single most popular option authors use, because like it or not, Amazon is still the biggest retailer for ebooks. With this option, you can create and sell both your ebook and print book all from the same platform / dashboard, which is really convenient. You also have the option to enroll in Kindle Unlimited, which pays you per page read whenever someone borrows your book via KU. The drawback to this, though, is that they require exclusivity for 90 days, meaning you can't sell your digital book on any other sites. It's limiting, but for some genres--like romance--authors make a bulk of their income via KU pages read. And best of all -- it's FREE to publish via KDP. When using this option, KDP requires either a PDF or mobi file for upload. 

Smashwords -- This is a great and easy to use option if you want to distribute your ebook widely. Once you upload to Smashwords, you can have your digital book distributed to places such as iBooks, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, WalMart, Overdrive, etc. It's a one-stop upload, and then they handle the distribution to the rest of the vendors. For this option, it appears you can use a Word doc. While I haven't looked into this one too much (yet), it does appear to be free as well, though if you want to opt-in to their expanded distribution, there is a fee. I'm not sure how much. 

IngramSpark -- This is typically used for print books, though they do have an option to publish ebooks as well. This option is great for print because you can (1) do pre-orders, and (2) it's ideal for bookstores to order directly from Ingram when hosting book signings or other events. (Most bookstores / events won't order from Amazon, so bear that in mind if your marketing plans include a lot of in-person events.) For this, you need a PDF of both the book and the cover. This one, unfortunately, is not free. It's $49 for both print and ebook, $49 for print only, and $25 for ebook only. 

Now, I know there are a lot of other options -- Draft2Digital comes to mind -- but I haven't really explored any others because I don't plan to use them, so I've been focusing my time on the above three. 

Currently, I have Eternal Curse enrolled in Kindle Unlimited for the required 90 days. My plan is to see how many pages read I have once the book releases. If it's a fair amount, I'll leave it as is. But if I see little to no pages read, I will un-enroll it from KU and use Smashwords to distribute widely. My print book is being printed and distributed via IngramSpark. Because of COVID, I obviously don't have any big in-person events planned, but I hope to someday be able to do so. Not to mention, I wanted to be able to have it available for pre-order, which you sadly can't do via KDP for print (you can for ebook).

Once I knew what my plans were for distribution, and I knew what various formats I'd need, I reached out to my formatter. Luckily, my cover designer also does book formatting, so I was able to use her for both. 

While I only technically needed PDF, mobi, and Word documents, I had her create an epub as well--mostly because I decided to utilize NetGalley for early reviews and they prefer an epub--but also because I figured it couldn't hurt to have all formats handy just in case I ever needed them in the future.  

Here's what the final formatting looks like: 

Isn't it gorgeous?? I'm so pleased with how it turned out, and it looks even more amazing in person! 

So, my advice is to plan ahead. Figure out where you want to distribute your books, then work with a formatter to create the various formats you'll need. But, be sure the book is fully edited BEFORE you get it formatted, because trust me, it's a pain to go back and make changes once the final files have been completed. It can also get expensive if you're using distributors that charge for file changes (Ingram does this, so fair warning. I learned this the hard way, unfortunately. LOL.) 

Come back next week when I'll dive into my personal marketing strategy for this series--and I'll even share if it's actually working ;-) 

Got questions?

Drop them in the comments! 

A (minor) Revelation and a FREE Book!

As you can see, I've reverted to the old blog layout and branding. You're probably wondering why. Well, I'm glad you asked :-)

Over the past couple of weeks, I've been doing more thinking and soul-searching and looking at all my half-started projects, and I've realized something important -- All of my books have romance in them! Regardless of which age category I choose to write in, all of my stories have some sort of love in them. Whether it's love of ones self or friendship or family or significant other, love is a common theme, and I don't want that to change. While I still have no intentions of writing in the adult secular romance genre, (adult Christian romance is still undecided) my young adult books will always have some element of romance. And as my blog header says, "At the heart of every story, love waits." That's still true!

All right, now for the BIG announcement....

DANGEROUS LOVE IS FREE ON AMAZON!!!

That's right! For the first time ever, you can get Dangerous Love for absolutely FREE!

Check it out HERE!

He’s fighting to forget his past while she struggles to remember hers…

Doctor Josh Parker lives with guilt about his wife’s death every day. He believes himself incapable of ever loving again, but when a mysterious woman arrives in the Emergency Room, brutally beaten and left for dead, he starts to feel something he hasn’t felt in far too long: hope.

Alessandra Matthews has no memory of the events that led to her being hospitalized. Worse, she has no idea who hurt her or why. Although she’s uncertain of who she is, she is fully aware of one thing—she’s falling for her doctor.

Sometimes, what you don’t know can kill you… 

As Josh and Alessa work to solve the mystery surrounding her past, she soon realizes just how much danger she’s really in, but Josh refuses to let her face the darkness of her memories alone. With each of them struggling to put their pasts behind them, theirs is a DANGEROUS LOVE.

GET IT FREE HERE!

South of Bixby Bridge -- A bait and switch?

I was on Facebook a few days ago and one of those annoying little ads on the side of my news feed caught my attention. Normally, I ignore them, but this one I couldn't.  It read: If you liked Fifty Shades of Grey, you'll love South of Bixby Bridge by Ryan Winfield. So of course I had to check it out. It was only $3.99 for the Kindle version. I bought it and started to read it the next day.

I finished within a couple of days and I have very mixed emotions about it.

First of all, I bought it because I was expecting it to be like Fifty Shades of Grey. I was expecting an intense love story with lots of graphic sex. South of Bixby Bridge didn't have any of that.  (I know, I know, shame on me for not reading the product description or any of the reviews before I bought it, but I'm really glad I didn't because if I had, I probably wouldn't have read it.)

Yes, it was a shocking, raw, gritty tail of addiction and the lengths one man will go to for a fix. Yes, there was a slight love story to it and yes, there was some sex in it. However, I didn't buy into the love story between the main character, Trevor, and his boss's wife.  I believe that Trevor had a physical attraction to her and that he was infatuated with the image she portrayed, but I just didn't find it believable that they loved each other enough to run away together.

As far as the sex goes, the author took a "fade to black" approach. He would clearly state that there was sexual activity going on, but he didn't give us any real descriptions. I found that to be a huge disappointment. Okay, I realize that coming from me, this is a very biased opinion. But seriously, considering how shocking the entire book was, a few really descriptive, hard-core sex scenes would've made it so much more awesome!

With all of that said, I'm glad I read it. I found myself both hating Trevor and rooting for him all at the same time. And even after having read the book almost a week ago, it still sticks with me. That's the sign of a great novel.

Now that I have an idea of what kind of novel this is, I'm going to re-read for what it is, which is not Fifty Shades of Grey, but that's okay. South of Bixby Bridge is a great novel by a very talented (and sexy) new author. I've already recommended it to a few people and I will continue to do so.