The Complete Guide to Ebook Publishing Platforms

The Complete Guide to Ebook Publishing Platforms The Complete Guide to Ebook Distribution At Reedsy, our goal has always been to help authors through every stage of the publishing process, from the actual writing down to the marketing and promotion. However, if there's one thing our marketplace can't do, it's the actual publishing of the book. By that, I mean pressing the button that puts your book up for sale on Amazon - and other retailers.Ebook distribution is a complex, ever-evolving topic. Every year, new retailers open their gates, while existing ones close. To make authors’ lives easier, we’ve compiled everything you need to know about ebook distribution in this guide - which we religiously update every year to make sure that all the information in it is up to date. Everything you need to know about ebook distribution (but never considered asking) Now, there are two ways to read this post. If you want to know everything, go from top to bottom and absorb all the information. If you’re just looking for simple, clear-cut instructions on how to get your books onto the major ebook stores in the best way possible, then head straight to our optimized distribution setup infographic.What you need before you publish: formats, ISBNs moreBefore you can get your book up on different ebook stores, you'll need a couple of things: your properly formatted ebook files and a professional cover design.ISBN for Self-Publishers: The Complete Guide Read post Most e-retailers (e.g. Amazon) don’t require your ebook to have an existing ISBN, and most ebook publishing platforms (e.g. Draft2Digital) will provide one for free anyway. Some platforms like PublishDrive don’t offer a free ISBN, but will instead assign to your book another kind of unique identification number which will be accepted by the different stores they publish to.So, all in all, you don’t need an ISBN for ebook publication. Are there benefits to getting one? Yes: if you purchase your own ISBN and register it to your publishing company, your book will show up on retailers as being published by you (rather than by the publishing platform you used). Top #selfpub tip: If you purchase your own ISBNs, each format of your book needs its own. If you do purchase your own ISBNs, here’s the one rule you need to know: each format of your book needs to have its own ISBN. This means, in theory, that your .mobi on Amazon should have a different ISBN from your EPUB on the other stores. If you publish a print book as well (check out our list of print  book distributors right here), then your paperback and hardback will need different ISBNs as well.In the US, you can purchase ISBNs at Bowker. In the UK, you can purchase them at Nielsen. In Canada, you’re lucky, they’re free, and available through the Canadian ISBN Service System (CISS)! 🠍 A professional cover designOn top of your EPUB or .mobi, the other file you’ll need to upload is your book cover file. It’s important to check each retailer/distributor to see exactly what dimensions they require for covers. For example, Draft2Digital recommends a JPEG with dimensions of 1600 Ãâ€" 2400 pixels (a 1.5 ratio), whereas Amazon currently recom mends dimensions of 2,560 Ãâ€" 1,600 pixels (a 1.6 ratio). Knowing your dimensions ahead of time can save you and your cover designer time and ensure that your entire design appears as you intended.We have written extensively on this blog about the importance of hiring a professional cover artist to design your cover. If you want to find out to work with a world-class designer without breaking the bank, read this.Now that you have all the files you need to publish your ebook, it’s time to make one of the biggest decisions in your author career: are you going to publish exclusively on Amazon, or â€Å"go wide†?Amazon exclusivity vs â€Å"going wide†Surely, if I want to maximize my sales, I should make my ebook available to as many retailers as possible, right? That’s true, but here’s the trick: Amazon will offer you a lot of promotional advantages to entice you to publish your book exclusively on their stores. And depending on your book, genre, and marketing strategy, these benefits can far outweigh the drawbacks of not selling on Apple Books or Kobo. When is KDP Select not your best option for ebook distribution? #selfpub tips The case for Amazon exclusivityWhether you choose to be exclusive or not, your first ebook distribution step will be to upload your book to Amazon through Kindle Direct Publishing. This is when you’ll be presented with an option: enrolling in KDP Select.KDP Select is the name of Amazon’s exclusivity program. In exchange for not listing your book anywhere else (that includes direct sales or giveaways through your website, by the way) for a minimum period of 90 days, you’ll get access to:Kindle Countdown Deals: for a period of 7 days every 90 days, you can discount your book. This â€Å"countdown deal† will be promoted to Amazon customers, and you’ll earn the 70% royalty - even on sales below $2.99.Kindle Free Promotions: for a period of 5 days every 90 days, you can set your book as free on the Kindle store. This free promotion will grant your book quite a bit of visibility on the free store.Kindle Unlimited and Kindle Owners’ Lending Library : KDP Select books are automatically enrolled in Kindle Unlimited (KU) and Kindle Owners’ Lending Library (KOLL), two subscription services that are extremely popular among Amazon customers. KU/KOLL authors are paid a percentage of the KDP Select Global Fund based on the number of pages of their books read by KU/KOLL subscribers every month.On top of these benefits, a KDP Select ebook will also earn you 70% royalty for sales to customers in Japan, India, Brazil and Mexico (35% otherwise).The case for â€Å"going wide†Amazon controls around 80% of the ebook market in the US and UK, but their market share is much lower in other countries. In Canada, for example, Kobo alone controls over 25% of the ebook market. In Germany, Tolino has the same market share as Amazon.Not being exclusive to Amazon - what we call â€Å"going wide† - gives you a chance to reach these other readers. Also, building a meaningful presence on smaller retailers can sometimes be easier than competing on Amazon (even with KDP Select’s perks).For a closer look at the pros and cons of Amazon exclusivity, take a look at this in-depth article. The ebook publishing landscape is an ever-changing one, and can be hard to navigate even for the most seasoned indie authors. We hope this post helped shed some light on the numerous distribution channels and opportunities available to authors, and how to make the most of them. We promise we'll do our best to update both our recommendations and the huge spreadsheet of aggregators and retailers on a regular basis.Acknowledgements: we'd like to give our thanks to Dan Wood at Draft2Digital, Monica Dubà © at PublishDrive and Giacomo D'Angelo at Streetlib for their help on our research. Special thanks as well to indie author Rohan Quine  whose distribution setup inspired us to write this post in the first place, and to Janell Robisch for her feedback.If you have any questions or comments about our recommended setup, or if you just want to have a virtual fireside chat with us about ebook distribution (who doesn't love that topic?!), please drop us a line in the comments below!