Using BookBaby for eBook Distribution

As the adoption of digital media continues to become more widespread and common, it makes sense for authors to use as many platforms as possible to distribute their ebooks. The two earliest big players in the ebook market were, and still are, Amazon's Kindle and Barnes and Noble's Nook.

As the ebook and digital content market continues to grow, other players are beginning to emerge. With the decline in the effectiveness of the KDP Select program to promote ebooks, it now makes sense to move beyond KDP Select, which has an exclusivity clause stating the title cannot be sold on any other ebook platform.

Reports seem to indicate the iBookstore is starting to gradually increase its market share as well as several other ebook retailers. 

For self-published indie authors who wish to take advantage of these opportunities, the biggest hurdles are the time involved to upload titles and in the case of some ebook retailers, only publishing companies can list and sell titles, a practice that excludes indie and self-published authors.

Some authors have worked around these two drawbacks by using Smashwords. The issue with this was Smashword's "meatgrinder" produced files that were unattractive to read after going through the conversion process.

An alternative approach that I think might be better is to use BookBaby for ebook distribution. The basic package, priced at $99, allows me to upload my publishing-ready files to BookBaby who will then distribute my books to the following ebook retailers:

• Amazon Kindle
• Barnes and Noble Nook
• Scribd.
• Pagepusher
• iBookstore
• eSentral - SE Asia ebook retailer
• eBookPie
• Baker & Taylor
• Kobo
• Reader
• Copia

For the price, increasing the distribution of one of my books to an additional nine retailers is worth experimenting with. To not have to open nine new accounts, learn to use nine new systems and to gain access to iBookstore, I think it might well be worth the $99.

The added benefit is I receive 100% of my royalties. Bookbaby allows me to set the dollar threshold for when I get paid. Once my royalties hit that threshold, I am paid the following Monday.

Ingram Book Distributor Starts IngramSpark - New Distributor for Lightning Source and CoreSource

Ingram, the book distributor who owns Lightning Source, the primary print-on-demand competitor of the Amazon owned CreateSpace, has announced a new company, IngramSpark, will be up and running by July 1st.

IngramSpark will act as the gateway for publishers, small and self-publishers with a big enough list, to use Lightning Source for print-on-demand distribution and CoreSource for ebook distribution.

For authors who already use either Lightning Source or CoreSource, IngramSpark might not be of interest. But for those who are considering whether to use Lightning Source or CreateSpace, this could be a major factor in the final choice of which company to use.

Why use IngramSpark instead of dealing directly with LSI? The stories of how complex using LSI can be exist for a reason. Aaron Shepard himself, one of the primary advocates of using LSI for POD as a major part of any self-publishing author's business plan, suggests first time authors investigate, if not actually use CreateSpace for their print-on-demand service and distribution to Amazon.

Questions authors will want to check into include the discounts an author will be able to set using IngramSpark. The primary advantage of using LSI instead of CreateSpace was the ability to use the short discount business model. Discounts as low as 20% could be set using LSI while CS requires a 40% discount.

Competition is good. If IngramSpark can serve as a source of competition for CreateSpace, self-publishing authors and small publishing companies who rely on print-on-demand will be well served, by the two giants of POD in the industry no less.

Smashwords and ePub - Surprising Conversion Information

This post should probably have gone in the most recent round up post but I only discovered this story today.  Since I am searching for ways to economically, both in terms of time and financially, expand distribution of my non-fiction ebooks beyond Amazon and Barnes and Noble, I have been looking at a wide range of ebook distributors.

Smashwords is one of the better known distributors and one that I had considered until I learned you had to use Smashwords' "Meatgrinder" to convert your book. Having heard and read all the nightmare stories about the final product resulting from the Meatgrinder conversion process, I decided not to pursue Smashwords as a distributor.

Since I have my books converted professionally by eBook Architects and receive both a Mobi (Kindle) and ePub (Nook and others) file for the same title, it simply made no sense to me that Smashwords would not take my already converted files and distribute them for me. Less work for everyone and the files were already inspected for quality and any possible issues.

Well, it would turn out there is more to the story.

Smashwords did not create it's infamous Meatgrinder process. Read this story about how one publisher determined what is going on at Smashwords when it comes to converting files to ebooks.

eBook Distributors Versus Self-Distribution

They say you get what you pay for. Who ever "they" are, is probably right. I have given up on trying to upload my ePub versions directly to Google Books myself. It is simply too confusing for me. Yes, I am fully aware it is probably quite easy to do and takes only minutes per book to upload.

The problem is, what is simple and intuitive for many people is not for me. As I work to expand the "infrastructure" of my business to increase sources of revenue, I have to make decisions about the best way to use the limited time I have to work for myself.

I have a full time job as a high school history teacher and coach. If any of you are or have been teachers, you know teaching is not a job for clock watchers. Neither is coaching.

The predicament I currently find myself facing is I have to spend all my time working on my website, my other blogs, my newsletters, etc, in order to expand my potential customer base. In other words, I am no different from any other self-published author.

So it made sense to me to try to find an ebook distributor. I thought about what my requirements for an ebook distributor would be. This is the list I came up with:

1) Must be extremely easy to use.

2) Must allow me to deal with both Amazon and Barnes & Noble directly myself. Since I "Aim at Amazon" all of my marketing efforts direct my customers to Amazon. I already have most of my Kindle books available as Nook editions at Barnes and Noble. All of the additional retailers are simply extra sources of sales I would not be able to generate otherwise.

3) Must distribute ebooks to as large a number of retail outlets as possible.

4) If there are costs involved on my part, those costs must be as low as possible.

5) I set the retail price.

6) I receive as large a piece of the pie for each sale as possible.

7) There must be no hidden costs or surprises.

8) Everything is transparent. I must have the ability to track all of my sales and royalties owed with ease. I like the Member Dashboards of CreateSpace for my POD titles, Amazon's KDP reports for Kindle sales and the set-up Barnes and Noble has for Nook sales.

9) Payment needs to be on a regular, predictable basis.

10) I want good customer service that is available to help me with my inevitable goof-ups in uploading my files or any other seemingly impossible mistake I will be able to make.

Jane Friedman wrote an excellent blog post titled 10 Questions to Ask Before Committing to Any E-Publishing Service. If you are searching for an ebook distributor I suggest reading this post.

My initial research led me to create a short list of three companies to consider: Smashwords, BookBaby and Pigeonlab. Smashwords is a pretty well known name and one of the first ebook distributors. BookBaby is another familiar company. I had never heard of Pigeonlab but that particular ebook distributor is recommended by the company I use to do my ebook conversions, eBook Architects.

I ruled Smashwords out nearly immediately. The more I read about their "meatgrinder" process of conversion and the problems associated with it, the more certain I was I would not use their service. A lot of my books have photographs and detailed diagrams. These have to be as high quality as possible as the ebook medium is not the best to begin with for this type of display with the current levels of ereader technology.

This left BookBaby and Pigeonlab. After visiting the two company's sites here is the side-by-side comparison of the two distributors.

My plan is to start with one book using BookBaby. Once that book earns out the $99 investment I may, or may not, list a second book with PigeonLab just to have an actual comparison. Whichever company I finally select, my plan is to only add one book at a time as the cost of listing a new book earns out from previous books distributed by one or both of these companies.

I just simply do not have the time and it might be worth the money to use this source of distributing my e-books. So I will start slow with one or two of my best selling titles and slowly expand as I learn.

As always, I will keep the readers of The Self-Publisher's Notebook informed of what I learn.