Exploring Beyond Amazon.

Rough passages covers

Two weeks?  Has it been two weeks since I dove into Draft2Digital and put a bunch of stories up for wide distribution? Are you sure? Wowza. Time flies when I’m feverish and sniveling. It feels like yesterday. Well, tis done, so I should write about doing it.

For the last two years all my ebooks were enrolled in the Kindle Select program and exclusively available from Amazon. Here’s why I broke up with my first e-publishing distributor, Smashwords, and went the Kindle Select route:

  1.  I call my authoring endeavors Dawnrigger Publishing. Selfish ego trip? Maybe, but names have power. Amazon let me list whoever I wanted as the publisher and doesn’t require an ISBN. (ISBNs are expensive in the US.) Smashwords, Draft2Digital, Lulu, and other ebook distributors all require authors to use exclusive ebook ISBNs. They all offer free ones, BUT they own those numbers and are listed as the publishers. Nope. Not doing it. I don’t like the idea.
  2.  Within Kindle Select my books can collect revenue from Kindle Unlimited reads as well as sales. I can also take advantage of Kindle Select exclusive promotion and sale-pricing opportunities.

And here’s why I branched out two weeks ago.

  1. I like pricing my short stories at 99 cents, but it disqualifies them from Kindle Select sales, and I’m only willing to run so many giveaways. Analysis showed I  wasn’t getting enough Unlimited reads to justify ignoring other markets.
  2. This spring I bit the bullet and bought my own ISBNs through myidentifiers.com.  (I’m surprised no one teaches a class on navigating that site. I would have dissolved in frustration on the first page if I wasn’t already well-versed in publishing industry jargon and standards.) But I digress. I saved my pennies so I could control my own publishing destiny, to use the sports cliche, and put that hurdle behind me.
  3. I published a combined edition of two novellas this year. I could make the story widely available in one form while keeping the originals as an exclusive.

The signs and portents were clear, so I removed  4 titles from Kindle Select and investigated Amazon alternatives.  Draft2Digital was my clear winner.  But–and I cannot stress this enough–YOUR MILEAGE MAY VARY.  Smashwords, Lulu, Ingram LightningSpark–they all have fine features.

So, why do I like D2D?  Universal short links, for one thing. D2D distributes through a web portal called Books2Read.com. It’s a clean, sweet site. Another sweet touch: the ability to download your formatted file as an epub, mobi & PDF as often as you want. The set-up process is clear and heavily netted with double-checks, the instructions are comprehensive and easily searched, and mistakes are easily corrected. (I make a lot of mistakes.)

Long story short, D2D uploading and conversion was easy & simple, the features are great, and approvals came through fast. I’m happy with the results.

Five fine books of mine are now available for purchase from multiple vendors. Amazon, Kobo, B&N and more, including a subscription reading service called Scribd. I made picture links. They’re at the bottom because WordPress did weird things when I tried to put them in-line with text. You can click ’em there.

Each link will take you to the book’s page at Books2Read.com, where you can choose a vendor and be directed to the proper sales website  for every country in the world. Or so I’m told. Being in the US and all, nothing changed for me. Look at all these cool icons you’ll be able choose from:

screenshot-2016-09-24-10-04-11

What next? Well, I posted to social media about the release. Now I’m announcing here. Onward to the fun of updating each book’s page on this site with excerpts and the universal links.

LOOK! LINK!

https://books2read.com/ap/xqvlwR/K-M-Herkes

 

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