Choosing the Best Self-Publishing Platform 2023

K
Hello, my beautiful cinnabar moths or any kind of moth you’d like to be. Welcome to the writers triangle, a podcast about publishing and all things books. And today we’re going to be talking about something that I think is super interesting, because of the level of diversity that’s involved in it. And that is publishing platforms. And when a publishing platforms like Ingram sparks, KDP, one drive, all of those are different publishing platforms. So basically, it can be printing plus any place that you can take your book, to then publish it, or print it, and then get it distributed, is what I mean, when I’m talking about publishing platforms. I’m going to do I was looking around and I didn’t really see any discussion in the publishing space about how to pick the best one for you. Without it being like a super deep dive, like what you need to know before you do the deep dive kind of thing. But I did come across a really cool YouTube video that does like a tear linking of them by pay per tire, and I’m going to put that down in the link. So I’m not going to go one by I’m not going to do a one by one analysis, but rather general things that you should be considering for yourself, as an author or an anti press things that you need to be aware of, that could hinder the progress of your press, and also hurt the distribution or search ability of your book. And that is where I want to start is discoverability. What is the discoverability for the platform? So if you’re looking like at Kindle, or Ingram sparks, or Lulu, or any of those, is there a way that when you go onto their website, if you are an indie bookstore, or a big book chain? How would they discover your book, if they went onto the website, and I am faiz? Just looking for a book on the website yourself? And looking at how would you find your book? Because that’s how booksellers find books. They go to the publishing platforms, and they look through books if they’re looking in the Sci Fi section, if they’re looking in the why a section, and that’s another part of discoverability is what are the genres? And how fine are the genres broken down. And for me a really great breakdown as to see if they include new adult, if they have a new adult section, then you know that they usually have a really great age breakdown that’s really refined.

K
So authors can really look for what authors can look for what their demographic is, right? And also bookstores can and retailers can look for if there’s holes in their demographic. Because if you’re a bookstore owner, and you’re going and you’re looking on site, you notice that you know sci fi is really selling in your store, then you’re going to want to have more sci fi, and you’re going to want to have some of those funnier things. Like do they have a listing for like sapphic sci fi? Or space opera? Or is it just LGBTQ i A plus, looking at those genres. And are those sub genres broken down, as LGBTQ i plus is a huge umbrella. And we do have books from our press that have you know, intersex, trans, gay, lesbian, bisexual, and non binary characters in that one book. And so they really fill out a lot of what your LGBTQIA plus stands for. But not every book has that level of LGBTQ plus representation in it. And I think knowing if it’s going to be bisexual, for example, is it going to be gay, bisexual or lesbian, bisexual, and what type of bisexuality is going to be represented can be really important. I know for us, we have two books with bisexual characters. One is an assigned male at birth, one is assigned female at birth, and they’re both cisgendered, and bisexual. So I think those kinds of if you want that level of that’s the level that you’re writing at in terms of the diversity in your book, then being able to know does your distributor have that level of refined search up and search options so that your books discoverability will be raised because the finer details that we can get in our genre discussions and in our genre selections, is going to increase the discoverability for your audience for your book. And that means all of the retailers that can you know, access it and that are shopping these different, different platforms to decide what book which books to carry, and which books to celebrate.

K
And when you’re looking at the difference between like, Barnes and Noble and Katy P really look at what are they doing in terms of supporting you, once you go with their platform, look to see is there an exclusivity clause because if you’re being exclusive with a specific platform, that means you cannot sell that book on any other platform for the lifetime of that contract. And also look at, you know, like I’ve talked about in the past look to see if they’re setting the prices for your book. And I do think that having a platform that is going to give you some idea of what you should be charging for your book is really important, especially when you’re new to the game. And you’re trying to figure out how to sell your book. Because there’s such a wide range of choices. Some authors are giving their their books away for free, and other authors are charging at the highest end for their book. And that’s about your comfort level with what you want to do. We have a marketing team that does research for us that goes beyond what our platforms tell us to know, within the range, where does this particular particular book fall? And it goes into like, is it part of a series of something we consider when setting cross when setting cost rather, are price of the book and also cost of making the book and, and return on investment, I think I do a different video about how to price your books because I could talk for hours about that. So having a platform that’s going to give you a little bit of guidance on that I think is really important. And the cost for setup, I think Lulu and Ingram digital to digital, I don’t think they have any setup costs anymore, but I’m not sure. Don’t trust me on that I’m putting links down to about 10 or 11 platforms that I’m aware of there are hundreds of platforms out there. These are not picked based on any favoritism. They’re just picked based on my familiarity with what happens when I go and I sit and listen and attend conferences. These are how things come on my radar and also talking with our authors, their own experiences. These are how the different platforms are known to me and our own discovery process when we were deciding what platforms we were going to use as a press and so I apologize for the the limit of it that I’m not able to do hundreds but I do think there’s 10 or 11 that I’m doing down that are listed down in the description are a great starting place for you to do your research and get an understanding of what it is you want and what it is you don’t want when you’re publishing your book.

K
And so in addition to costing you to think about the setup process, how many templates do they require? Is there a different there’s usually going to be a different template for the book, audio book, paperback and hardback. The reason that there’s going to be a different cover for each is because the trim size of each is different. And like audio books, specifically the audio books, platforms do require a square cover, which is different than the more rec not rectangular. I can’t think of the word it’s not rectangle. It’s the longer square. So there’s different shapes and and different sizes. I think it is rectangle. Yeah, I was confusing rectangle and try and triangle. Thank you dyslexia, president of the day, it’s very interesting being in publishing and being dyslexic. It is triangle that rectangle that I’m thinking of like, I always confuse those two. So the square versus the rectangular the elongated form of a Paperback or hardback is different than the square. And I think there’s a little bit of difference in the eBook trim size, though, is the same size as the softcover. Usually the soft cover of a book. And the the size of the cover is the trim size is based on how, what is the actual measurements of the book, and that’s impacted by page count. And then you have the box size of the book and the box size of the book is how many books will fit inside a box, the standard box for whatever box size they use for shipping books, looking into do they have in the cost? And in the setup process? How friendly as a setup process to how much research are you happy? Do you need to do to understand what their setup process is?

K
Like? I was just talking about cover trim and box size? Are they providing definitions for those types of things? Or are they expecting you to come in already knowing the jargon ease of publishing? And I think some some of the companies do expect a lot of experience with the jargon ease of what it takes to set up a book and others are more accessible. I don’t know in 2023 Which ones are more accessible than the others and that So I advise looking at paper tires video that I’ve linked down in the description to get more of that platform by platform breakdown on those types of things, a deeper dive. I think another big thing is looking at the types of reports available. What are they reporting on? Are? And I know that some places with reports and also frequency of reports, are they reporting on how many of your books are sold? are they reporting on how your books are doing? Do they provide a daily breakdown, weekly breakdown monthly breakdown of the the sales of your book? Do they give regional breakdown for the sales of your books? Do they give information on the different formats of your books, some places just give sales, they don’t do ebook versus paperback versus hardback. Others do give for each different type of formatting of the book, whether it be audio, ebook, paper, whatever it is, what it’s sold, how many quantities are sold, what region of the world it is sold in, and are you wanting that level of information, just because some of some provide these really deep dive reports, it may not be what you’re wanting. And so really look at yourself and respect yourself, and your own boundaries and your own energy. Because it’s great to have the information if you’re going to use

K
it. If you’re not going to use information, if it’s not valuable for you like for me, I don’t find daily reporting of book sales to be beneficial for our press, because I no one is checking sales every day, we have other things that we’re doing. And I worry that if we were involved with, I think we could sign up for days reports, if we wanted to, I don’t know. I just feel like for me that that’s kind of be a rough way to go. I would think energy wise, and I’m super protective of my energy and my positivity. I think if I was looking at the sales on a daily basis, that that would be so disheartening. And I look at the sales, to be honest, we don’t look at the sales for every book, every day or every week, we don’t even do it every month, the sales that that we track our sales reports, there is a three month lag time on the reports that we get. And so we don’t have any real time sales information. Because we also don’t have the ability to change the market or react in that way. Because I don’t really anyone who says they would know what to do based on a specific sales based on specific days report. I’m not thinking so. Because what if it was just that one day and it’s not the next day, and then you make all of these changes. And those changes cost you the day after? So I don’t really value day to day, but again, that that is a deeply personal choice. Another thing to consider that’s super, super important that will completely wreck your life, if you don’t pay attention to it is what country are they set up in? And what are the tax laws and, and implications and regulations in the company in the country rather that they’re set up in. So for us, we do have distribution globally, and the tax laws are regionally different. The tax laws that we go on that we work with the two countries I’m most familiar with on a personal level are Japan and the United States.

K
And the tax laws are night and day in terms of reporting for the business. And each country that we report in for the business affects every other countries report. Because we are a global company, we are doing global taxes. And so we’re filing our taxes in multiple regions. And you need to know what is specifically if you’re doing it outside of your country of origin or your country of residence, it’s important to know what is the number four exemption there every country has, if you make less than this amount of money, you’re exempt from filing taxes. So look into that country’s tax laws and regulations and also look into their copyright laws. So we distribute in China, and we know that we because we’ve made the choice to distribute in China, their copyright laws are very, very different than the copyright copyright laws in the United States and Japan and we understand that for us, it means that there’ll be some violation that because they’re one of the top three markets in the world, we view like the the risk for better fed, you know, the risk reward is worth it for us, you have to ask yourself is the possibility of your book being bootleg? Does that prevent you from wanting to go into regions of the world that have laxer copyright laws. And if that’s the case that you don’t want your book distributed in certain countries or certain regions, then looking at the platform and seeing does that platform allow you to make those kinds of restrictions, because some platforms have global distribution. And that’s just their distribution. And you can’t have any say over where it where your books distributed. And I think it’s a personal choice, like for us risking, you know, we don’t want our books being bootleg. And we have, the reason that we’re not as strict is because we do have a dedicated person who searches every day for bootleg copies. And we also have automated systems that are out on the internet, scouring the internet to find bootleg copies, or illegal copies of our books, and we’re able to shut them down. Because we have the backing of of a company and that sort of gives us a different relationship.

K
When we’re asking for things to be taken down or when we’re saying this is a copyright violation. And because we have a legal team, we already have the legalese for that. Our does, it’s a standard form that we have that we that we put out that is specific to us, or I would share it with you. And I’m sorry for that. Because it does have to be modified from for book for region. And I apologize that I can’t just give because if there was just one standard, I would be able to give that to you. But it really depends on what type of bootleg it is where you found the bootleg. And who’s the person bootlegging it is it a company that’s doing it isn’t an individual or is it a website. And there are a lot of websites out there shady websites, that won’t even have bootleg the book that will just have a couple of sentences from the book, to use that to get people to come in and buy the book. And anytime one of our books wins an award or gets an honorable mention, we immediately see an increase in those types of behaviors, or gets a positive review on a big platform like y Central or something like that, then we know that, okay, it’s a forage review come down. Okay, we’re gonna have to do the work to to really be village be vigilant for about the next 30 days to make sure that this one specific book is not being bootleg. And if you’re distributing globally, that’s something that you’re going to have to be mindful that you need to do globally. And it is a different process for each country. Because the World Wide Web, the internet is not the same everywhere. So you do have to look at it through the lens of other countries and I you know, amazon.co that’s in the United States, amazon.jp that’s in Japan, and looking at the different filters during the different countries. And it can be quite exhausting. To be honest, and I’m so happy that it’s not my job to do that for for the company. And I really appreciate the team that stays on top of it.

K
They do a wonderful job protecting our authors and protecting the press. And there are days that you see us on Twitter and their days that I’m tweeting about it because I’ve had it officially with just the number of times that we’re we’re having it and Gracie and Zeus the dream that look for some reason we know it’s an award winning book for one. And it’s an awesome book. And that book, people just want to bootleg that book so much. And I feel really sad because Elizabeth is such an amazing human and such an amazing author. If you want to support this author, and you like their book, buy a copy of their book, don’t buy bootleg copies, you’re hurting authors, you’re hurting authors more than you’re hurting presses. When you you buy that and steal their art. So that’s the book that we we get a hit about once a week for Sally for Gracie and Zeus live the dream so if you’re listening to us, and you’d like any of our books stop it. And we just were very vigilant and knock on wood. We don’t think any copies of Binsar have slipped through the net or been significant because we know that that book in particular is for someone for some reason really popular with with bootleggers. So when you have your book catalog and you’ve published a couple of books, you will get to know the personality and the public’s relationship with your books. And now if if global distribution is for you if you want to put the time energy and work, there are pros and cons to global distribution, I think I’ll do a separate podcast on that. That’s a whole, that’s a whole can of worms all on its own, and I be on the mic for hours and hours and talking about it. And during my my Woe is me. But the main thing beyond you know, bootlegging copyright is make sure that you understand the regional laws and tax implications, please, please, please pay your taxes. And please, please, please file your taxes any country in any country, that you have to file your taxes, and most of the distributors don’t ask for, you’ll be required to have a tax ID. If you’re required to have a tax ID, then you are definitely identifying yourself in that region as somebody who their tax revenue services will be aware of. And these platforms, they have to do their own accounting and their own taxes. So they will be reporting and they will be using your tax ID to report not to report you specifically, but to report their own earnings and their own income. Another thing to be really aware of are what are the royalties going to be and this is where I think comparison shopping becomes super important because there are royalties. For some places, I’m surprised, I’ve heard tell that some places are as low as 15%, to the author in some regions, and I’ve also heard that for some vanity presses, authors are paying and not getting royalties, if you’re getting zero royalties, or 15%. royalties that is predatory.

K
Don’t stand for that immediately book it the other direction, from whoever’s telling you that you need to pay to publish your book, where it’s telling you that you’re getting less than 50% royalties. On your book. When you’re looking at platforms. I think the standard and platforms right now I want to see in 2023 is between 75 and 80%, with 75 to 80% Going to the author and 20% 25 to 20% Going to the platform, and that may change over time, and I find what affects the split is whether or not there are any setup fees, when there are setup fees, you tend to get a higher split of the royalty and the royalty is when they sell the book to someone, I’m going to do an episode on book sales, and that’ll cover a royalties when they sell the book, then that’s not the royalty. And it is just about looking at the entire package and considering what the percentages are. And if that works for you. And if that’s going to work for your budget and your lifestyle and give you everything. So look at the complete package, not just one aspect of it, and see which one is the total package for you. And what’s going to keep you feeling the most positive and optimistic. And one thing for me that I was really kind of shocked about is the variant and customer service. A lot of platforms these days, don’t have a phone number. And I don’t know why I find this odd. I have another business that I run I’m a therapist, I have a therapy practice, and I don’t have a phone number because I don’t do on call therapy. And I only booked appointments via email.

K
So you would think that I would be like, as a press owner, I would totally understand when they don’t have a phone number, but I was just I don’t know. Because for me with the the reason that I don’t have a phone number as a therapist, is because when I’m in session, I’m in session, you can’t call and leave a message and the way my session flow goes, I might not be able to get back to you 24 hours. It’s much faster for me to check emails in between sessions than it is for me to answer a phone call because it’s not interactive, right? I can just read it and get on and buggy with my day. And I think that a lot of these places also have that that same same instance and the various platforms that we use, y’all know that that we do Amazon, there’s no number to call us. It’s all by email. And it can take us two or three weeks to resolve an issue. And we don’t find that to be stressful or worrisome. Because we’re we’re set doing our setup, you know, at least four months.

K
In a perfect world six months before the book comes out. Sometimes things happen. And we’re under the wire and we’re at the three month mark when we’re when we’re doing that we try to avoid that, but because we give ourselves that lead time. The purpose for that is to work out any kinks in there. Getting it launched and having the launch date. And that’s something to look at with the different platforms. I know, Amazon doesn’t do pre launch. And so with Amazon, where we have our printer and our distributors that then do Amazon, and then once the book is launched, we let Amazon print. So for us having that lead time, having that pre launch time, having that pre sale time, having that pre order time is really important to us. And looking at do they allow that and will that give you pre launch time, because we really enjoy putting out bonus content, creating a buzz and getting some and also having, you know, some art reviews on both up in and on Goodreads before the launch date of the book, top people really excited about it. That’s another thing to consider. And also the ability to offer specials and giveaways. What something interesting that I found is that to put a back set together of your book of your physical book, is really, really difficult to do. And I know that for audiobooks, you can do a boxset by putting your entire audio book together, and then just putting the covers in between the different books as they end and having them as one continuous book, we are able to, to send out boxset as promotional materials. But we haven’t been able to do this distribution where we’re doing box sets, where you can buy a box set that’s pre made and available on through various retailers. And if you can find a platform that is going to do those boxes for you, they’re absolutely worth their weight in gold. We do know some that do but we just we the way that they would do it and the level of control that we would like to have over it. There’s a disconnect and a mismatch in the industry. And that’s, that’s why we’ve kind of held off on that. And instead, we just go ahead and make our own boxes and send them out to our PR team and let everybody on the PR list enjoy that box experience. And some box companies just sell our books and and include them in their boxes. But during like a boxset for a trilogy or something, I think that that really is at the highest level. And usually those have the lowest royalties. So looking at what’s more valuable to you is going to be so important for us royalties matter a little bit more than than putting together a trilogy box and having it having it on Amazon, doing specials and giveaways on Amazon, you can do it. But be aware that on Amazon specifically there is you have to do it for 30 days, Barnes and Nobles a little bit trickier. The way that we negotiated our deal with Barnes and Nobles, is that we’re not Aten.

K
Now as as a press, we’re not able to go in and do something different than what the corporate the corporation Barnes and Nobles wants do the same with Walmart. And the reason that we did is because we have a business agreement with them, we’re not doing an individual agreement with them. And I think if you go in as an individual, and I think that you’ll have more wiggle room, because we do give them permission to do certain things with our books. And that has them buy more of our books, and we’re looking were purely in a volume business. So anything we can do, that increases the volume of books that we sell, and the willingness of retailers to pick to put our books in their stores and put our books on their websites. That’s our primary primary focus. And I don’t think that has to be your focus as an indie author or your focus as a press presentation matters and feeling good about the way you’re presenting and feeling positively about your relationship with your platform. And your distribution of feeling good and feeling like yes, this is how I want my art represented and the world. That should be the thing that you lead with. Were a business. And we love every single one of our books, and they’re all our little babies but not as much as it is for an author. And any author we sign we do talk to them about our marketing plan. And we do talk about what we will and won’t do for the book so that they can know are we the full fantasy, because it may be that we’re not the full fantasy because we’re not going to do something that that they would do on their own. And you know that is completely okay. Because at the end of the day as an author, you need to feel as confidently as you can, that you represented your yourself in the best way that’s going to make you happiest. And yeah. So when you’re looking at different, different platforms, and there’s there’ll be all kinds of resources linked down in the description. Please check those out. And remember your happiness matters as an author and your choices are just that your choices. I want to thank all of our beautiful cinnabar moths for listening and you don’t have to be you don’t have to be a moth. You can be a butterfly, but I’m not Mariah Carrie. I’m not trying to bite her rhyme. And I’ll talk to you next week. Bye