Suzanne Anderson: Amazon Is Not The Only Place to Publish Your E-book

Suzanne Anderson

It seems like everyone is publishing e-books these days and the most commonly talked-about platform is Amazon. But there are other platforms that can get your book out to millions more potential customers worldwide. While Amazon is probably the largest digital book platform, it is a proprietary company and they use their own unique file format, which can limit sales. Let’s explore who is out there to help you get your e-book into the devices of readers

Amazon The largest online marketplace on the planet, it can make your book available on sites such as Amazon.ca (Canada), Amazon.co.uk (United Kingdom), and Amazon.com.au (Australia) as well as Amazon.com in the USA. Their marketplace is in nineteen countries. They turn your book into a MOBI file, which is their property and they are the only ones to use it. So, the reader has to have Kindle in their device.

To make it more enticing for customers, Kindle is free and can be downloaded into any device such as smartphone, tablet or laptop. You upload your Word document file (either .doc or .docx) to the Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) site and they convert it into an e-book. KDP includes the former CreateSpace.

Apple Books If you are a Mac user, you can make your book in Pages and save it to iCloud. You upload it from there to Apple Books. It will be available for readers who use an iPhone or iPad. When you create the book in Pages, it will be converted to an EPUB file, which is the most commonly used file for readers in the world. Then you upload the EPUB to Apple Books. If you do not have a Mac, you can have your books made available to Apple Books through IngramSpark or Smashwords. That way you will not have to convert them to EPUB files yourself.

Barnes & Noble They are an American firm, so that gets your book into any American bookstore that carries e-books for the NOOK reader. You simply upload your Word document (either .doc or .docx) and they convert it into an e-book and distribute it. NOOK is free to download to any device. IngramSpark They are the only company that requires a set-up fee, and for digital books it is $25 USD. They do not convert Word documents, so you have to have your book converted into an EPUB file before uploading it. But IngramSpark has twenty-one global online distribution partners including Kobo, Amazon, and Apple Books. If you already have your book on Amazon, IngramSpark will not publish it for twelve months, and if you have books on Apple Books you will have to remove them. If you plan to use IngramSpark, upload your book there first.

Kobo Canada’s online digital bookstore was started by Indigo/Chapters who sold it to Rakuten in 2012. Often overlooked, Kobo has 10,000 retail points and 100 million customers in 190 countries. You upload your Word document and they convert it into an EPUB. They also have marketing tools for their authors. The KOBO reader is free to download to any device.

Smashwords If you want your e-books to be available from the library then you need to have them on Smashwords. They are an e-book distribution service, but they will convert your Word document (.doc only) into a book.

While Smashwords will put your e-book on Apple Books, Barnes & Noble, and Kobo, they also make books available to OverDrive, which is the world’s largest library e-book platform serving 20,000+ libraries and includes Vancouver Island Regional Library. They do not distribute to Amazon until your e-book has seen sales of $2,000 or more.

Amazon, IngramSpark, and Barnes & Noble are also Print-On-Demand (POD) and can make print books for you to both sell locally and on their websites.

As you can see, there are several options to look at when you plan to publish an e-book.

Some industrious authors that I know use several platforms to make their books accessible to a large audience of potential readers. Decide what is best for you.