Brave New World of Publishing

Hi Folks,

Man things change quickly in this new world of publishing. On the first of this month, so just over two weeks ago, I devoted an entire blog post to telling you why I was no longer going to publish and distribute my books through Smashwords.

And then this morning, I uploaded and published ten new titles to Smashwords. It seems Smashwords recently signed a contract with Gardner’s, a massive book distribution agent in Great Britain. You can Read About It Here.

So this morning, I uploaded… well, I already said all that, didn’t I?

Only one thing seems to remain the same in this new world. For independent publishers — and by extension, for readers — things just continue to get better.

This post is for those of you who already have made the leap into indie publishing AND for those who are still thinking about it.

Now understand, when I say “indie” or “independent” publishing, that has absolutely NOTHING to do with subsidy publishers like AuthorHouse or Wheatmark or Booklocker or ANY OTHER “publisher” who charges you an up-front fee PLUS keeps part of your royalties.

If you’re going through those, you are not self-publishing and you are not independently publishing. Those are scams, folks, in every case. They play on your ego (wanting to get your work out there), and they play on your fear that your work isn’t good enough to get published otherwise. And it’s all hogwash.

Okay? So by “indie” or “independent” publisher, I mean a writer who has set him/herself up as a publisher. It isn’t difficult to do, and there are no big overwhelming legal issues. In fact, you can learn most of what you need to know in my free PDF ebook, Quick Guide to Self-Publishing & FAQs. And there are other things that will help on my Downloads page.

But for today, MAN do things change quickly in this beautiful new world of publishing!

Let me just lay out for you what I’m doing now and why. Remember, successful indie publishing isn’t about the unlikely prospect of making a bajillion bucks from one revenue stream (like that nasty old Amazon KDP Select).

Successful indie publishing is about the much more reasonable and likely prospect of making a few bucks here and there from as many different revenue streams as you can lay your paws on.

My paws have been busy lately. Here are my distributors:

Pronoun — This is a brand new publisher/distributor. I signed up this morning. They are not yet fully operational, but when they are, they will distribute my work to Amazon, Apple, B&N, Kobo and Google Play. (This will keep me from having to mess with Amazon’s incredibly frustrating upload process, and I get the same royalties from all of these venues that I would have gotten otherwise. This is a win/win.)

Draft2Digital — After Pronoun stands up, I will still use D2D to distribute to Inkterra, Oyster, Scribd and Tolino.

Smashwords — Effective earlier this morning, I’m using Smashwords to distribute my books to Gardners Extended Retail (400 ebook stores powered by Gardners operate in 32 countries and serve customers in 138 countries), Gardners Library (2,000 public libraries in the U.K., and 400 academic libraries in the UK, Europe and Middle East), Baker & Taylor Blio, txtr, Library Direct, Baker & Taylor Axis360, Overdrive, and Flipkart. Plus of course in the Smashwords store.

XinXii — After visiting XinXii and seeing what great strides they’ve made regarding distribution, I reactivated my account there. XinXii will now distribute my books to Angus & Robertson (Australia), buch.de (Germany), buecher.de (Germany), Casa de Libro (Spain), Der Club Bertelsmann (Germany), Donauland (Austria), Family Christian (familychristian.com),  Fnac (France),  Indigo (Canada), Libris BLZ (Netherlands), Livraria Cultura (Brazil), Mondadori (Italy), OTTO Media (Germany), Rakuten (Japan), Thalia (Germany), Weltbild (Europe), Whitcoulls (NZ), and WHSmith (Great Britain). Plus the XinXii online store and plus Google Play if Pronoun doesn’t work out for whatever reason.

OmniLit (also All Romance Ebooks) — I only recently found OmniLit. It and All Romance Ebooks are run by the same folks. Granted they are only one venue, not a distributor, but hey, they’re big and one more venue is one more stream of revenue.

Now, if you’re anal enough to have counted, you will see that my books will be in 36 different venues, not counting Amazon’s and Apples’ and others’ subsidiaries, and not counting the 400 stores and 2400 libraries offered by Gardners.

Oof. A year ago, I was scrabbling around to find 100 venues. (Amazon was in 57 countries, Apple was in another 23, and so on.) And today there are so many, I can’t even realistically count them all.

Ahem. Of course, if you decided to go exclusive with Amazon KDP Select, you’ll miss out on selling through those other 430-some stores, not to mention around 2500 libraries now. But hey, that’s your decision.

Okay, that’s it for today. Note this is an extra, not in the usual rotation. I just didn’t want to wait until the 21st to put this out there to you.

By the way, you know I started writing seriously on October 19, 2014. That’s 365 days (one year) ago tomorrow.

On many of those days I didn’t write at all. On many of those days I wrote only a few hundred words. On two or three of those days I exceeded 5,000 words. On maybe fifteen or twenty of those days I exceeded 4,000 words.

Yet right now, since October 19, 2014, I have written over three-quarters of a million (750,466) words of fiction. Of those, in the same time frame, I’ve published all but 11,000 words. Those comprise the currently stalled Book 9 of the Wes Crowley saga.

Now I’m not telling you that to brag. I’m telling you that to show you what’s possible even when you don’t write every day, even when your best day is only a few thousand words.

It all adds up. Keep writing.

‘Til next time,

Harvey

Note: If you find something of value in these posts or on this website, consider dropping a tip into Harvey’s Tip Jar on your way out or just click paypal.me/harveystanbrough. If you’ve already contributed, thanks so much. If you can’t make a monetary donation, please consider forwarding this post to a friend or several. (grin) Again, thank you.

8 thoughts on “Brave New World of Publishing”

  1. Guess what Harvey? I’m almost ready to need all the publishing stuff you wrote about today! Just spent a week at the beach in Mexico & about 3 hrs every day working thru edits on The Widow’s Circle. 4 chapters to go!

    • Happy for you, Karen. I hope for the next one you start one day, write straight through until the story’s finished 25 or 30 days later, send it off to a first reader or proofreader, and then publish. 🙂
      h

  2. Thanks Harvey. I’m not writing (fiction) at the moment due to other work commitments, but your blog is always an encouragement. My current work has led me into writing training manuals and other materials which I guess you could say is keeping the keyboard oiled. I love how you are growing in the industry and willing to share with others what you are learning.

    Keep it coming,

    Mike

  3. [Note: This post is heavily edited to save space.]

    Just last week or the week before I published my second book in the Tec and Sara series. This one is Deadly Pairs. That’s two books this year and the second one is better. Have done all of this with the help of Deb Lewis. If you find the act of formatting overwhelming and just want to write, Deb at ArenaPublishing.org can help you understand how it all works and do the heavy lifting for you.

    By the by I have written short stories and poetry as well this year and the third novel in my series is about half done.

    Bon

Comments are closed.