A Little Bit About Distribution

There seem to be a lot of questions in the comments about when Exposure will be available at different portals, so I’m going to try to answer that.

• I publish directly to Smashwords. When I publish to Smashwords, the title goes live for purchase on the Smashwords site in about 15 minutes from upload, in both EPUB and MOBI formats.

• I publish directly to Amazon. When I upload to Amazon, the title goes live for purchase in about 24 hours, sometimes less if the queue is shorter. Amazon also distributes my titles to their other portals – Amazon UK, Amazon FR, Amazon DE, Amazon ES, Amazon IT, etc. – but sometimes it takes a little bit longer for the title to become available there. For example, there was about a 6 hour lag for Exposure to become available on Amazon UK after it was available on Amazon US.

• I publish directly to All Romance eBooks, in EPUB, MOBI and PDF. When I upload there, the title is live for purchase immediately. I often do this upload the day after the Smashwords and Amazon upload, as it requires some extra formatting.

• My books are also distributed to Barnes & Noble, KOBO, Apple, Diesel, Baker & Taylor’s Axis, Library Direct, Page Foundry and Sony through Smashwords. This takes a bit more time, and how much time it takes depends upon how many titles are in the various queues. Here’s how it works:

First the title must be reviewed and approved by Smashwords for Premium Distribution. This has taken up to two weeks in the past, but they’ve been working on cutting down the time – Exposure, for example, was approved last night for Premium Distribution, about 48 hours after upload. That’s really good!

The second part of the process is that the title has to get into the queue for distribution for the particular portal. It can be taken by the portal immediately, in a couple of days or in a couple of weeks, depending upon the length of the queue. Exposure is standing patiently in line right now. 🙂

The third part happens at the individual portal. They all do some formatting or checking of titles before making them available for sale. This again can happen pretty much instantly or take up to two weeks.

Right now, distribution to these portals seems to be taking two to three weeks. My hope is that Exposure will be available at all of them by the end of September, so fingers crossed.

I hope that clears things up a bit!

One thought on “A Little Bit About Distribution

  1. I always purchase through Smashwords now. I am happy with that. I prefer to purchase through Kobo but am too impatient for your books to arrive there, lol.

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