Episode Details

The best places to publish your books are the one/s that best suit you the best given your audience, energy, time and publishing philosophy. So how do you decide what platform is right for you?

Should you “be Amazon exclusive, “go direct”, “publish wide” and/or use an aggregator? And what do those terms even mean?

Firstly the definitions:

Amazon Exclusive – means publishing your ebooks exclusively on Amazon and in the Kindle Unlimited subscription reading program for at least the initial 90 day period. This exclusivity requirement by Amazon applies to ebooks only; you can publish your print books and audio books on other platforms if you so wish.

Publishing Wide – means publishing your ebooks on as many retailers as you choose, including the “big four” : Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo and Apple Books.

Going Direct – means setting up your publishing account directly with each retailer and uploading your books yourself.

Aggregators are service providers who you upload your books to, select which retailers you wish to publish on, and they then distribute them widely to your chosen online retailers in return for a percentage on sales. We use Draft2Digital.

FIRST RULE no matter where you publish: ALWAYS read the terms and conditions for each online retailer so you understand what you’re agreeing to. Each retailer has clear guidelines and comprehensive information for authors. Take the time to understand them.

The following is OUR summation as at the time of recording, August 2024. Things change in the self-publishing landscape, so do your due diligence. The pros and cons are for us; you may feel differently which is perfectly okay too!

Amazon

• You want to sell on Amazon, the #1 book retailer that captures 60% of the market. However, you also want to maximize your sales potential by reaching the other 40% of the market with channels like Apple Books and Kobo.
• Amazon’s KDP Select program requires you to sell exclusively to them for 90 days. There are a few pros to this program. But if 90 days’ worth of non-Amazon royalties matter to you, ditch the exclusivity and publish wide.
• There is a way to reach Amazon and everywhere else. An aggregator like PublishDrive simplifies the process and lets you keep 100% of your net royalties.
• Amazon generates around $28 billion worldwide from book sales every year, responsible for over 50% of sales, controlling between 50-80% of book distribution in the US.
• Amazon dominates the ebook market by around 70%. Amazon sells 3x more print books than ebooks. Its Audible platform captures around 60% of the audiobook market.
• Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) is the largest ebook publisher of self-published books. Around 30% of Amazon’s ebook sales are self-published.
• KDP Select is an ebook-only program you can enroll in while uploading your title to A