THANKYOU THANKYOU THANKYOU--to all who helped me get the word out about my new release this past week during the Your Words, Your Life Story: A Journal for Sharing Memories Holiday Book Launch.
So many tweets, FB posts, reviews and sharing sure let the world know about this book to help folks tell their life stories and memoirs. I also created a FB Group, Telling Life Stories and Memoirs Circle. You're invited to join in the fun of walking down memory lane, learning about getting your memories captured and saved and meeting folks on the same journey. as you. Click here to join in on the fun.
I'm happy to announce Beverly Stowe McClure is the lucky commenter to receive a copy of the book.
Congratulations, Beverly!!
DRAFT2DIGITAL
WHY USE DRAFT2DIGITAL
FOR PUBLISHING AND DISTRIBUTION?
Good question, Janet, (even if I thought of it myself. Draft2Digital, an aggregate publisher, publishes your ms and then distributes it to many digital booksellers. You can choose from Kobo, Apple, Barnes and Noble, Tolino, and Amazon as well as subscription services Scribd, 24 Symbols and Kobo Plus. Select only a few or all of them.I used D2D to distribute the eBook format for my guide, Your Words, Your Life Story: A Guide for Sharing Memories. My paperback version of the ebook, Your Words, Your Life Story: A Journal for Sharing Memories is not allowed to be pubbed as an ebook because it is a journal, a consumable book. And so far, one cannot write in an ebook. But I'm sure that's coming. I had a comment last week on the blog that the writer only types, no handwriting anymore. Probably a lot of us prefer typing nowadays, PDF forms that can be filled in are available now. So that has to be the future for ebook journals, planners, etc.
The information I am sharing is accurate at the time of writing this blog, but things change quickly in the publishing biz.
I made a list of why I like D2D. I cannot compare Smashwords, the pioneer in aggregate publishing, with D2D because I haven't used them for 8 or 9 years. If you have, please let us know something you like about Smashwords, just to be fair. Thanks.
I Like Draft2Digital Publishing because:
1. FORMATTING-- I put that in big letters because I am not good at formatting. I'm still learning. But with D2D, just get your ms into a Word doc and D2D will format it for you. You don't even have to make up a TOC. They do that for you as well as a TITLE PAGE, DEDICATION, COPYRIGHT PAGE and AUTHOR BIO if you choose to do that.
2. Easy to Use--Uploading and setting up the book information form is easy to do. Very clear with what is needed to fill in the forms for Details, Layout, Preview and Publish sections. I was thrown a bit by the keyword section. You know how important keywords are to getting your book out there, but instead of keywords, D2D calls them "search words."
The book description does not have to be in html format in order to make a passable page. I don't know if they accept html like amazon or not. Amazon, if not formatted in html, just ignores bold letters, paragraph spaces and bulleted information, a plain, blah-looking page.
3. PROMOTIONAL PAGES--Now this really is a perk from D2D--They offer Also By, New Release Notifications, and Teaser sections at the end of the book. Also By adds the books you already have published in D2D, with links. New Release Notifications are emails sent to folks who have purchased your previously published D2D books so they know you have a new book ready, and Teaser is just that. Choose one of your books in the D2D list and a portion of it will be added to the end and a convenient link for purchase.
4. UNIVERSAL BOOK LINK--The book link includes all the digital sellers you have chosen to sell your books, so you don't have to add individual links in your promotion/marketing literature. I decided this time not to upload my book to amazon, but rather to include it in with all the other sellers. So convenient. Unfortunately, the royalties are not 70% at D2D, but 65%. I doubt losing 5% will hurt me. However, you will lose the promotional perks at amazon by not uploading to AMZ.
When a reader clicks the Universal Link https://books2read.com/u/mdNzLW
for my book for girls, Girls Succeed, all of the digital bookseller choices are shown so he/she can choose their preferred bookseller. (Shhh--Not everyone likes amazon)
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| The Universal Link displays all the booksellers carrying your book with one click. |
6. CUSTOMER SERVICE is excellent. Response time is very reasonable.
If you are an indie publisher or author, what aggregate publisher do you use? What has your experience been like?
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TIP: I just uploaded the file for the guide version of Your Words, Your Life Story yesterday and four companies have already published them to their site. Amazon and Apple have not accepted the eBook because I mentioned amazon and other competitors in the book. They will not publish with their competitors mentioned in the book. So, keep that in mind when choosing these booksellers. I have to go through and delete those "offensive" phrases in my native file before trying again. I hope I catch each one of them. Once I get all accepted, I'll share the Universal Link for the guide.
If you have questions, please ask. If you have information to share about aggregate publishers, please share below. Thanks so much for stopping by.
5 comments:
A lot of indie publishers like Draft2Digital. I'm good at formatting, so DLP uses two different distributors and uploads directly to Amazon.
I use Draft2Digital to distribute primarily to Apple and Biblioteca and go direct to the other retailers. I used to use their formatting tool, but lately I've been using Reedsy's tool (also free) which I think makes a nicer looking epub and mobi. Love Draft2Digital's universal books links.
Good information, Ellen.I need to check into Reedsy. Thank you!
Authors and publishers are lucky to have so many good choices to make. Thanks for stopping in.
Good summary of Draft2Digital. They also have great videos.
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