if you are an aspiring or newbie author
you may be wondering
where or should you self-publish your
novel and in what formats paperback
hardcover and or ebooks
or perhaps you're a veteran author who's
been publishing books for a while and
you're looking to see
what other options are out there in this
video i'm going to run through the best
self-publishing companies for novels in
2020. stay tuned
[Music]
hey book nerds i'm meg latorre i'm the
author of the cyborg tinkerer which
comes out to november 17
2020. if you pre-order a copy and fill
out the pre-order giveaway form in the
description below you will be entered to
win
one of more than 30 prizes some of those
prizes include
signed copies of the cyborg tinker tct
merch character art bookmarks books by
authors you know and love
and more stay tuned to the end of this
video to see if you won
this week's prize i also formerly worked
at a literary agency
on this episode of iwriterly let's talk
about the best
self-publishing companies in 2020 for
novel
writers now before we get into today's
content hit the subscribe button and
ring the bell if you haven't already
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today's
sponsor before we get into publishing
options let's first talk about
where readers are picking up books for
the most part in 2020
in other words the place where you want
your book to be
sold the biggest option for indie
authors also known as self-published
authors or independent authors
are as follows amazon rakuten kobo
google play apple ibooks barnes and
noble
today's discussion will center around
hardcovers paperbacks
on ebooks and not audiobooks that will
be
a different video and a different
discussion please be aware that some of
these publishing options
only distribute ebooks while others only
distribute paperback and hardcover
and some distribute both in addition
some of the folks that we are going to
discuss today are aggregators and not
retailers meaning they distribute your
books
to the places where people are going to
buy the books versus
uploading your books directly to the
platform in other words
going direct these aggregators will
often take some type of a fee
as either they take a percentage of
whatever it is that you make or there is
a monthly subscription fee
when in doubt do some extra research on
your own but today's video is going to
give you a big
overview for paperback and hardcover
options i highly recommend looking for
pod companies also known as print
on demand rather than companies that
require you to bulk
print your books and then store them in
your house somewhere
there are pros and cons to each option
but i would say generally speaking
i feel that print on demand company
seems to be the best option for
a lot of indie authors the reason for
that is the business model of these
print-on-demand companies or pod
companies i'm probably going to use both
throughout this video as they quite
literally print books as they are
ordered print on demand
they don't print a bunch and hold on to
it they might but usually speaking
there's one book ordered
one book gets printed that way no one
has too much
extra inventory laying around
[Music]
for each of these self-publishing
options or self-publishing companies
that we go through
i'm going to talk about the format
distribution pricing
as well as some of the pros and cons for
each at least as i see them
the first one is ingram spark the
formats are hardcover
paperback and ebook ingramspark is a
book
distribution company meaning they don't
sell books directly to consumers they
distribute the books to the retailers
and places
where people are buying the books
according to the website they distribute
to about 40 000 libraries and retailers
as far as pricing you do have to pay to
upload your book to ingramspark so you
pay to upload your manuscript and your
cover i think it's like a hundred
dollars i will put it up on the screen
whatever it ends up being let's talk
about some pros
you can offer hardcovers many of the
other options we're gonna go through
today
do not offer hard covers they maybe they
just do ebooks
maybe they also offer paperbacks but a
lot of them do not offer hard covers
and you are able to sell hardcovers to a
lot of places that do
sell hard covers versus some of the
other options maybe they offer hard
covers but you can only sell it with
that specific
platform another pro is that you can
offer paperback and hardcovers for
pre-order final pro i'm going to talk
about at least for now is their
distribution network and i'm gonna have
a little asterisk next to that
is that they do have a wide distribution
network and it's
the best one out there as of 2020. let's
talk about the
cons their distribution network they
can get your book in too many places but
that doesn't guarantee your book is
going to be in those places or even
available for folks to purchase
i've reached out to some bookstores and
libraries where i'm like hey
like my book is available to you through
the platform that you say you pull your
books from but then they still can't
find my book in their database
so their distribution network is
fantastic
but it's also ah there's some holes in
there where maybe your book isn't going
to be found anyway
and from my experiences from publishing
the cyborg tinkerer their customer
service and response time is
so slow
it's really bad if they get back to you
at all there's also no real-time data
for example
ingramspark doesn't offer any data when
it comes to pre-orders i have no idea
how many people pre-order the paperback
and hardcover and i won't know that
until after the book comes out and even
then it won't be an exact
number i also think the platform is not
user-friendly it's not easy to use and
there's a lot of
instances where you're uploading your
book and you're like am i
am i doing this right am i about to
publish my book five months early
there's a lot of things that i think
it's very easy to make a mistap
because the platform is not very clear
another con is that receiving author
copies can take
months it just so happens that
the pandemic happened when i was in need
of my proofs and then eventually my
author copies so
i've heard even before this that
shipping was atrocious but
it took two months for my hardcover to
arrive from ordering to arriving at my
door paperbacks was slightly better but
i think it was about a month
for the first proof and then another
month for when my
author copies arrived the last con is
that the printing quality
isn't consistent and i learned this
through first ordering that single proof
and then ordering
40 author copies to distribute to
influencers and arc reviewers and things
like that
and nine of them were defactive so that
alone and i
talked about this in my unboxing video
if you want to see just how they were
defective
definitely go check out that video i
have like screenshots and stuff but
there was like glue on the spine
parts of the spot other spines were
ripped off some of the books the spine
itself was broken or there was big black
marks across the front cover it was
extremely disappointing and as of
recording this it has been
three weeks since i submitted a
complaint and asked for a refund for
those books and i have had
zero response i also followed up and was
like hey
what's that like sorry we just haven't
gotten to yours yet
so response time's bad printing quality
isn't always consistent but
the books that they printed were
gorgeous and they looked great
the ones that came out properly anyways
all that to say there are a lot of cons
but at the same time
they're really the only option if you
want to have really extensive
distribution options and to have
paperbacks and hardcovers available for
pre-order they are just the only options
so because of that you kind of have to
deal with these cons if you will
the second option is amazon kdp or
kindle direct
publishing the formats they offer are
paperback and ebook
as for distribution you can choose to
elac to put your book
in expanded distribution however they
only currently work with us distributors
and i believe if you choose this option
then you cannot do the expanded
distribution with ingramspark which is
much more than amazon at this time as
far as pricing they're going to take a
percent on every book sold and that
percent is going to depend on how you
price the book and in what format
but it's free to create a kdp account
and to upload your books
unlike ingramspark it is free to create
an account with ingramspark but to
upload your books there is a fee
so amazon it's free you only pay for
proofs and author
copies and those proofs have the big
watermark across it so it says not for
resale not for resale but it does cover
a little bit of the cover spine and back
which is kind of unfortunate
let's talk about the pros thus far my
experience is that they have good
customer service and response time i
made a complaint
24 to 48 hours later i would hear back
from them and that was in the middle of
a pandemic
they also have real-time dashboard
metrics which i am all about i like to
see my metrics
right then and there and know what it is
real time they also have a quick
turnaround time for proofs and author
copies i have heard
other people have had poor experiences
with their proofs and author copies and
that
the quality for some of them have been
questionable but thus far for me it has
been
good let's talk about the cons they
don't offer hard covers
at all so if you want your book
available for hardcover sorry
not an option you can only do paperback
or ebook the biggest con to me
was that you could not offer paperback
or hardcover
available for pre-order that was not an
option only e-books can be set for
pre-order and for me pre-orders
are a big part of my marketing strategy
and so if i couldn't offer
paperback or hardcovers for pre-order
that was a big
con one other thing is that i would say
as far as printing
quality their colors are not as vibrant
as ingramspark's covers and it's not
just me that have said this there's tons
of other people who have compared the
two and
usually even if ingramspark's printing
quality can be fickle the quality of the
ink of the image is usually
nicer in ingramspark's versions number
three is barnes noble press
also known as nook for the ebooks
formats are hardcover paperback and
ebook
the distribution is strictly to barnes
and noble press
like they're they're not a distributor
they are themselves you can publish your
books through them
but they don't distribute it to other
places as far as pricing they take a
percent of your book sales
the pros you can pre-order all formats
on their platform
they also have exclusive marketing and
promotion opportunities for authors who
go direct
on their platform and then the cons at
least as far as i see it is that
barnes noble is a retailer they're not
like a publishing company or a
distributor they are a retailer and book
retailers these days have been known to
go out of business
i used to love borders i don't know if
we're allowed to like you know mention
them anymore but
i used to love borders and they were a
huge chain back in the day and they went
out of business so i do think if you
publish your book through a retailer
that is a risk you're making
rather if it's exclusively for paperback
and hardcover like if you choose not to
use ingramspark or anything like that
and you go direct
through barnes and noble that's the only
place you can do paperback and hardcover
if they go under that is what it is
number four is for cute and kobo hope
i'm saying that correctly
or walmart the formats for this one are
just ebooks
and the distribution is strictly to kobo
or rather
walmart too rakuten if i'm saying that
right which owns kobo
made some kind of a partnership with
walmart where they distribute ebooks to
kobo readers
in other words if you are publishing
your books to kobo you're also
publishing your books to walmart
as far as pricing they take a percent of
your book sales as far as pros
cobo is a primarily canadian based
company so you're really targeting
a new audience with this platform
assuming you are living in the united
states and primarily have been targeting
the us market
but it is also growing in the united
states as far as cons the one i really
could think of it's it's just one more
place to upload your book and remember
to do all the things number five
is google play the format is just ebooks
distribution strictly to google play
pricing they take a percentage of your
sales
as far as pros they offer exclusive
marketing and promotion opportunities
for authors who go direct
number six is apple ibooks the format
here is
just ebooks distribution strictly to
ibooks
pricing they take a percentage of the
sales that you make the pros they also
have exclusive marketing and promotion
opportunities for authors who go direct
on their platform just like a lot of the
other ones we mentioned another pro is
that this platform is growing in
popularity and especially in the united
states i've talked to indie authors who
have shared
that ibooks is making almost as much as
they are on amazon
and for most indie authors a lot of your
income does come from amazon so to kind
of overtake
the amazon beast i think that is pretty
impressive so i do think that there is a
big
readership growing on this particular
platform as far as cons in the past you
had to have an apple computer of some
kind in order to upload to
ibooks directly i believe that has
changed in recent months or maybe even
in the past year but
if you use an aggregator this isn't
going to matter so it depends on if you
want to go direct or not
number seven is draft to digital this is
an aggregator
so on top of whatever price the retailer
is going to take off the top of your
book
and whatever the printer is going to
take off the top of your book or
well i guess it wouldn't be really
applicable for ebooks but for
aggregators they also take a small
percent the formats they distribute
are ebooks as far as distribution they
distribute books to the following
amazon apple ibooks kobo barnes
noble tolino hoopla vivlio
overdrive bibliocheca and baker and
taylor if you guys don't recognize some
of these that's because a lot of them
are library distribution platforms
as i mentioned before the pricing is
that they take a percentage of your
sales
in other words they don't get paid until
you get paid and that percent could be
anything from 10
to 15 percent and that's on top of
whatever the platform is taking the pros
you don't have to upload directly to all
of these platforms that we've been
talking about
another pro is that they get your ebook
to these digital library platforms that
you might not have been able to
distribute your book to
otherwise as for cons they take a
percentage of your book sales and that's
on top of say
apple ibooks or amazon they're going to
take a percent
and then 10 to 15 on top of that is
taken
by this aggregator we're going to talk
more about this later but that is
something that you have to wait for
yourself and decide what
do you have more of time or money if you
have more money then using an aggregator
would save you time and that might be
your priority or vice versa
number eight is smashwords this light
draft digital is also
an ebook aggregator as far as formats
they distribute ebooks
and they distribute to the following
places smashwords
so in this case this aggregator just
doesn't distribute books elsewhere
they also sell books directly on their
platform
i don't know how popular that platform
is as far as who actually downloads
directly from smashwords versus
someplace else but they do distribute
and sell books directly on their
platform they distribute to amazon
apple ibooks barnes noble kobo
baker and taylor overdrive scribd cloud
library
gardeners and odilo and just in case you
guys haven't noticed this
hopefully i said this correctly in the
previous one neither distribute to
google play for whatever reason you have
to upload directly to google play you
are not able to do so through these
aggregators as far as pricing
just like any other aggregator they take
a percentage off of the sales that you
make
they don't charge money up front they
take a percentage and i believe it's
about 10 percent
let's talk about the pros they sell
books directly on their platform
it's one more place that people can
purchase your book and
you as the author can earn some income
now the pro of an
aggregator in general is that you don't
have to upload directly to all of these
platforms you upload once and they
distribute it to everywhere else
similar to draft2digital they distribute
your books to
digital platforms for libraries that
might be difficult to
distribute to otherwise as far as the
cons they take up
extra percentage of your sale so it's an
extra 10 that does not go into your
another con in my opinion is that this
platform is not
easy to navigate i thought smash words
was not intuitive at all versus draft
digital was much more
intuitive number nine is working
directly with a manufacturer
so if you don't want to use say
ingramspark or amazon or barnes noble to
make your paperback and hardcovers you
could reach out to a manufacturer who
can make them
for you the pricing and all that's going
to be different depending on who you
work with so let's go right to the pros
and cons
for the pros you have more flexibility
as far as the
format and special things about your
book you're really only limited to what
the
manufacturer can do so if you want
special
embossing on your book if you want a
special thing on the spine or a special
material or
if it's a nonfiction book you want it
ring bound instead of the typical
binding you have that flexibility
you're only limited to what the
manufacturer can do another pro
is you sell directly to the consumer
unlike selling through amazon or
ingramspark
you don't get to keep that customer's
information at the end of the day
amazon has that information barnes and
noble has that information
but if you're selling your own paperback
and hardcover books
then you have the email you have the
contact information of your customers
which i think is a big pro
let's move to the cons you may have to
order books in bulk and store them at
your home
and depending on the model of what
you're doing you might also have to
ship books directly to your customer so
you get bulk books shipped to your home
and then you have to
manually physically package each book go
to the post office and ship it to your
customer
versus having the printer ship your book
directly to the customer you have that
middle man to do that
legwork for you in this model you
probably are going to post office
many days every single week assuming you
get a lot of sales
the last con that i'll mention today for
this one is that you can't
access an existing reader database
meaning readers are currently going to
amazon to apple ibooks to kobo
to buy books they are pre-programmed
i don't know they know to go to those
platforms to buy books
versus if you have a website where
you're selling your books readers don't
know don't think to go to your website
you have to pull readers and bring them
to you versus going to a place where the
readers already are
in other words you're going to have to
do a lot of marketing to get the readers
to come buy your stuff
on your website or somewhere else there
are a few other publishing options that
we didn't get to today
some of them i didn't necessarily like
the business model but i'm going to list
them really
quick in case you want to check them out
and maybe they'll work better for you
publish drive lulu street lib book
baby zinzi blurb as far as ebook
aggregators if you choose to use one i
recommend that you use
more than one often these ebook
aggregators distribute
two different retailers or different
library ebook databases
that way if you use both and then
uncheck the ones that are already being
distributed by the other
aggregator you are essentially getting
even more places that you can distribute
your book to
in addition i personally don't like the
model where you have a monthly
subscription fee
in order to use an ebook aggregator or
to publish and distribute your book
at least when you're first starting out
because a lot of times authors don't
sell very many copies for a long time
until maybe things take off they have a
bigger backlist
whatever so that's a lot of money that
you're going to be spending up front
if you only sell a couple of copies per
month instead i recommend
thinking about using platforms that take
a percentage of your sale so they are
commission
only platforms they take like drafted
digital
and smash words they take 10 to 15 of
the sales that you make
versus having to spend 20 to 50
per month just to host your book on
those platforms
later on especially if you're making
more money on book sales it might make
sense to move to a monthly subscription
model if you're making hundreds of
dollars or thousands of dollars per
month on book sales it might make more
sense to move to that model versus
having to give up 10 of a larger pool so
carefully consider
what business model you think would work
best for you and of course
do your research
in my opinion what self-publishing
company you should choose comes down to
one thing
what do you have more of time or money
if you have more time than money
uploading directly to the big five
publishing platforms as they're called
so
amazon apple ibooks kobo
barnes and noble google play might be
the best option for you
that way you don't have an aggregator
taking an extra 10 percent off of
whatever sales that you make
there are a couple downsides in my
opinion if you
ever want to change something about your
book your cover
maybe you edit the part of your book you
notice there's a typo and you want to
re-upload it
you have to re-upload to like i don't
know five ten
platforms to make sure your book is
uploaded and updated everywhere
in addition when it comes to tax season
you're gonna have a lot more reports to
pull and things to kind of track
to make sure you're submitting all the
proper stuff it's also more to track as
far as
expenses and sales so if you're making
you know x
per month on this platform x per month
on this platform you have to track that
through maybe 10 different places
every single month now if you have more
money than time using an aggregator
might be a better option for you
in this case a percent of your sales
would probably be taken if they do the
commission model so maybe 10 to 15
percent however you only have to pull
a few reports during tax season you only
have to track
one or two or three different publishing
platforms in order to track your income
for that month or that quarter depending
on how often they pay you
and then if there's ever an issue with
your manuscript maybe you want to have a
new cover
maybe you have to change the inside
content of your book there's a typo that
you missed maybe you end up wanting to
add
the first chapter of book two at the
very end of book one as a teaser for
readers
then you have to only upload that to a
couple of platforms versus uploaded to
every single platform what publishing
path that is best for
you and your books because a lot of time
it's different for every single book
that we publish
is really going to be dependent upon
your goals and what you hope to
accomplish
as well as what your financial situation
is and how much time you have to devote
to the publication process of a given
book keep in mind that no publishing
path is perfect and there are always
going to be hiccups along the way
but there are many more publishing
options than there were a few
years ago and i anticipate there's going
to be even more options in the coming
years
and now for the exclusive opportunity
you have all been
waiting for prowritingaid is giving
iwriterly viewers 20
off pro writing aid premium click the
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more and now it's time to announce the
winner of this week's pre-order giveaway
for the cyborg tinkerer the winner of
this week's pre-order giveaway is
this person you will be going home with
a free one-month subscription
to one stop for writers by angela
ackermann and becca puglisi thank you so
much to everyone who has pre-ordered a
copy of the cyborg tinkerer and stay
tuned for a future video to see if you
won
the next prize thank you for tuning into
this episode of i
writerly the best self-publishing
companies in 2020.
cyborg tinker is available for pre-order
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you