Choices about independent publishing
Posted on | November 4, 2009 | 4 Comments
Goodness what an interesting group of questions I have received in the last few days! Several people have written to ask about the reasons why I chose particular printers or publishers. So here are some of the answers.
First of all, more and more of you seem to be specifically interested in e-books. But a question that I got several times in the last four days was WHY did I go with SMASHWORDS and not just use Amazon’s Kindle Reader upload program.
The Amazon program is probably lovely for rather a lot of writers — but ONLY if you happen to live in the USA and do your banking there!!! That’s more than a bit limiting.
Since I live in Australia and have no financial accounts in the USA, that precludes me from using the Amazon program unless I want to ‘redeem’ my Kindle-version e-book sales in a gift certificate to be SPENT at Amazon. Sorry, that’s a bit of a joke as far as I am concerned. I write to generate income — not gift certificates!
To be really honest, I think that Amazon is cutting themselves off from a vast source of additional income stream by NOT allowing anyone who lives and works overseas to contribute. They are perfectly happy to sell the print version of my books since the publisher sorts out payment to me, not Amazon. But how EASY it would be for Amazon to increase their e-sales by just paying their authors via PayPal which can be received in your own local currency anywhere in the world!
By using SMASHWORDS (which pays via PayPal), I can sell my book in an entire array of electronic versions including Kindle. You can download the book to read on your computer or via a Kindle or a Palm reader or even on your iPhone. And there are zippy-doo new versions coming out every day. My book is in SO many version at SMASHWORDS that you can find a version for any reader — not just Kindle. So that’s exactly why they were my first choice — because they offer my readers so many options.
Now, about my choice of LULU as an independent publisher, I own my own small publishing company – Paper Paradigm Press. If I could even FIND a printer in Australia that could do the work as required from my already proofed manuscript and cover art at a price that was comparable to American costs and not 2 or 3 times the cost, then I might consider that. But LULU offers the complete printing package once I do all of the hard work of writing and editing AND they offer an international distribution package so I don’t have to hire someone to fill the orders and run to the post office. That is a blessing and a time saver as far as I am concerned. And they make sure that my book is offered at everyone from Amazon and Barnes and Noble to the local bookstores who can order it by ISBN number. Again, I would have to hire a book distributor in this country — so working through LULU is an excellent option for me, they produce beautiful quality books, they are wonderfully reliable, and in the end I am essentially using them on behalf of my own publishing company as a printer and distributor.
The writing and publishing world has certainly changed and the Indie Press option is more and more viable as we see small publishing houses folding or being absorbed into larger ones and even the ‘big boys’ are cutting back due to the global financial downturn. So independent publishing no longer carries a ‘stigma’ and is considered quite viable and sensible, especially if the author does not wish to wait for an 18-24 month turnaround time from acceptance of manuscript to actual publication. Independent publishing isn’t exactly instantaneous because there are so many factors involved including truly thorough editing, cover art design, and sourcing ISBN barcodes and such, but it is lightning speed compared to the traditional publishers!
My next book will be out in a few weeks and it too will be published with SMASHWORDS for electronic formats and LULU for the print version.
Hope that helps answer a few of your queries.
And by he way, know that I am seriously giggling as I type this — I did NOT get compensated by Smashwords or Lulu for writing nice things about them!!!
Tags: book > e-books > e-readers > independent publisher > indie publishing > Kindle > Lulu > publishing > Smashwords
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4 Responses to “Choices about independent publishing”
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Deborah Harmes, Ph.D.
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November 4th, 2009 @ 4:18 PM
Nice writing style. Looking forward to reading more from you.
Chris Moran
November 6th, 2009 @ 4:51 AM
Very interesting why Smashwords and not Kindle. Right now I don’t use any of them, since I am a paper gal (yes, I know) and known to carry the heaviest of books with me. I still prefer to read the Newspaper instead online. But I considered a Kindle for my next big trip instead of guidebooks. I have to reconsider and research a bit more. Can I read everything, including Amazon products, on Smashwords?
November 6th, 2009 @ 8:34 AM
Yes, ANY book on Smashwords that has been formated in Kindle-version (and mine certainly was!) can be downloaded and read on an Amazon Kindle. I wanted my readers to have as many options as possible, so I made sure my book was in multiple formats and Smashwords certainly fits the bill on that score!
There are going to be a lot of options for brands of electronic readers in the coming months and Kindle is certainly going to have a LOT of competition from the upcoming Apple reader and several other platforms. I am actually holding off on purchasing an electronic reader for just that reason. I want to read some performance reviews prior to spending those dollars.
Thanks for the questions. I’m sure they will be useful for other people reading this blog as well.
November 6th, 2009 @ 8:42 AM
Thanks for stopping by, Chris!