Tag: Kobo

Book Promotion Through Kobo Writing Life

Author Bruce FottlerGuest Post
by Bruce Fottler

Remember Kobo? They’re the Canadian eBook retailer where many of us distribute our titles through Smashwords or D2D. Since I could count on one hand how many books I’ve sold there, I wanted to bring some life to this lethargic retail channel.

My first step was to withdraw my books from the Smashwords Kobo channel and deal directly with Kobo Writing Life. What I thought would be a hassle was actually a surprisingly smooth process. Smashwords withdrew my titles from Kobo within 24 hours, and I found the Kobo Writing Life setup/upload interface simple and straightforward. I had my titles entered and uploaded within a day. It took another day for them to go live, which is similar to the Kindle Direct process. Continue reading “Book Promotion Through Kobo Writing Life”

Choices for Publishing: eBooks, Part 2

publish buttonLast week, we talked about publishing your ebook by uploading your file to a distributor such as Smashwords or Draft 2 Digital. There are valid arguments for letting a distributor do the job for you. For one thing, you only have to upload to one place (well, two places – more on that in a sec), which means that you only have to prep one electronic version of your book. And when you need to correct the inevitable typos, you only have to upload the corrected file to one place.

But there are disadvantages, too. For example, a distributor won’t pay you for your sales until the merchant has paid them, and merchants don’t update the distributor in real time. For another, you are going to get a smaller royalty if you use a distributor, because the distributor is going to take their cut before they pay you. Let’s use Barnes & Noble as an example. If you upload your book directly to Nook Press, B&N will pay you 65 percent of your list price (assuming your list price is between $2.99 and $9.99). If you put Smashwords in the middle, B&N will pay Smashwords 65 percent of your list price; Smashwords will pay you 60 percent of list, and keep the other 5 percent for its trouble. And while Smashwords pays quarterly – and must wait for B&N to report sales to them first – Nook Press pays 60 days after you’ve made a sale (although, like Smashwords, you must accumulate $10 in sales before they’ll pay you anything).

You should also keep in mind that you’re going to have to prepare a separate file for Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) anyway, because KDP doesn’t play nice with any distributors. So you may decide that it’s worth the hassle to cut out the middleman and prepare separate files for each retailer. Your call.

Let’s run down the Big Five: Continue reading “Choices for Publishing: eBooks, Part 2”

Smashwords Now Offers Preordering, But Is It for You?

When I heard that Kobo was gearing up to let authors upload books on preorder status, I didn’t know that Smashwords would soon be leading the charge on most of its premium channel distributors.

Yes, Mark Coker and company are now offering preorders, but in a public beta test. The big news is that you don’t have to be James Patterson’s staff of assistants or Hugh Howey to make your next book available for preordering. Continue reading “Smashwords Now Offers Preordering, But Is It for You?”

Of Apple, E-books, and Game-changers

The Apple e-book price-fixing trial finally got underway in U.S. federal court in Manhattan last week. Five of the six original defendants – the Big Five publishers – agreed to settle with the government, leaving Apple as the sole defendant at trial.

I’m tempted to insert a pun here about the U.S. Justice Department making like William Tell and aiming the arrow of the law straight at Apple. But I’m restraining myself because this is serious business. Continue reading “Of Apple, E-books, and Game-changers”