Book Distribution Options for Self-Publishing Authors

Foreign hello and happy Tuesday to you. Welcome, welcome. Today we are going to be diving into distribution, selling direct to your reader or basically, let's just call this not selling only through Amazon. So if you're trying to figure out how to distribute your book or you have questions about book distribution, well, today's Live is the perfect place to be. So welcome and do say hello. If you're new around here, you may not know, but we give prizes for participation. So make sure you're saying hello and playing along because if you don't say hello, we don't know you're here. So you have to say hi to get entered. And of course, the other way to win around here is by making sure that you have gone over to subscribe and turn on notifications and at YouTube and and that you are commenting the day a video is released. Every Tuesday and Friday, except in July, we have new content every Tuesday and Friday. You post a comment on the day a video comes out and then you get entered to win here too. Okay, so while we give folks a moment to join in, I want to let you know that our next Self Publish and Succeed Live class is coming up March 18th. And in past classes we've actually had 100% of of the participants in the 12 week class finish their manuscript and submit it for a content edit. This past class, admittedly we did not get 100% of the class to submit a content edit. However, what I can tell you is that 100% of the people who came to 80% or more of the live classes and there's 12 live classes Monday evenings and then there's four bonus sessions on Saturdays. So. So people who came to 80% of those 16 sessions did submit. A hundred percent of those people did submit their content edit. So that's a pretty big win in my book. So if you want to get your book written by July, you want to work with me. Because a lot of people write us and ask for a way to work with me. And in general I am working on the business and I'm not working on the books. But with this class I do teach a big chunk of the classes so we get to work together. So if you want that Self Publish and Succeed Live is the class and you can get the link. Angela will put the link over on the side. It's self publishandsucceed.com forward/live class and that gets you in. And I do believe there's still a slight discount if you join over the next couple days. So it's a great day to register. All right. Now the other thing I wanted to mention is our February deep dive which happened, I don't know, it's a blur. The month of February is a bit of a blur for me. But it was on cover design and interior book trends and it was a smash hit. I have heard nothing but fantastic things. So much so that a lot of people who weren't there or they were only able to attend, half have asked to be able to get access. Now our deep dives are for clients only. The replays we let anyone come and join live for free. But. But the replays we only provide for our full service clients. Now that said, Angela who was running. That said, you know what, why don't we charge a nominal fee to anyone who wants to have access so that our clients are still getting the benefit of getting it free. But anybody else who wants access to this really high value training, you can do that. So Angela will have a link for you in the comments as well if you are interested in grabbing the replay of the February deep dive which was on cover design trends and interior trends. And by the way, this was back by popular demand because it was a session that my production manager and our lead designer did last year and it was so popular that we brought it back again this year and we'll probably make it an annual thing because it is so popular Now March, we're going to be talking, our deep dive is going to be on March 16th and we're going to talk about all things audiobook, which is, is going to be big. It's always, I mean it was, it's always a big topic anyways. But with the, all of the excitement that happened around Findaway Voices in the last couple of weeks, I think it's going to be an even more timely discussion. But we're not just going to talk about distribution and find a way voices. It's a much bigger picture. Look, it's going to be a solo session. Well, they're never solo. Thank goodness Angela is there for us just like she's here on the live. Angela is our book launchers operation manager and she just helps these live streams go so much smoother so that I can focus on content and she can make sure that you guys are getting supported and we're getting prizes given out and prizes, you know, all of those fun things that happen, questions get answered and all those, all those things that really have to happen to make a live stream. Good. So she'll be there, but it will be a session that I put on and we're going to talk about everything from, you know, narrating. So how do you prepare to narrate the book? How do you know what books are going to be good? Well, you never really know. But what, what makes a good criteria for a book to be an audiobook? Then how do you prepare to narrate it? Should you narrate it yourself? If you're hiring a narrator, what are your options? I'm going to skip the technical pieces of this because I'm not an expert. So if people start asking me technical questions like what kind of microphone, what kind of this, or you know, how many megabytes, all those kind of questions, I don't know. I have professionals on my team that are true pros of that. But I will talk about hiring experts for it and I'll walk you through how we've hired our audiobook editors and producers in the past and how you get voice coached and all those pieces. And then I'll talk about distribution and marketing of audiobooks. So this is going to be a two hour really masterclass in all things audiobook that's happening March 16th. If you are not on our newsletter, you will not get the link. So make sure you are on our Book Launchers newsletter. Simple way to get there is book launchers.com newsletter. Okay, so last week on Friday I I put out a video on book distribution which was really geared towards understanding bookstore distribution options. And it was something that got me thinking overall about how you distribute your books as a self published author and Direct is one piece of this now and it's really become very popular. But there's a whole ecosystem of how you can distribute your books and there's trade offs. There is not one path that is right. And I think that if there's one thing you take away from today is that every choice you make has trade offs. Certain things will give you more access but will cost you more. Certain things will give you less access but they might be simpler to manage or they will, you know, you'll make more money per book sold. So those are some of the trade offs and considerations. And you know, in just a sec after I say hello to all of you who have joined in, we'll talk about how we at Book Launchers essentially generally not always recommend our authors set up their distribution. I'll walk you through ebook, print and audiobook distribution and we'll talk about how you can also go direct with all of these options. So should be a good one. It's something we haven't dove into in this way in quite some time. So if you have questions, as always, just go ahead and post them in the comments and Angela will. Will be collecting them for me to answer at the end. Okay, so Stella's in the house everyday. Dan is here. Renee, hello. Bill here. Let's see. Darla, hello. Hello. Let's see. Ralph is here as well. And Victor, the rookie card specialist is saying hello from Northwest Indiana. I love it. Okay, and so there's comment and so Angela dropped some of the links there and. And Kevin showed up late. I'm glad you're here, Kevin. Thanks for joining in. And let's see. Okay, cool. And so before I go too far, I'm going to attempt. I'll see if this is going to cooperate with me today. I'm going to attempt to just kick it off with the giveaway from the commenters on the Tuesday and Friday videos, which I will attempt. Let's hope this works today. Last, if you were here two weeks ago, my system was just not being cool with me. There's Streamyard. There it is. Okay, now this is going to the giveaway tool, but I'm hoping. Let me just see if I switch over tabs if it will. Let me show you the random name picker. Did that work? Yes. Okay, cool. All right, so everybody who commented on Tuesday or Friday videos, you. You will be entered to win. Angela, what do we have these days? Hello, Michael. Welcome. What do we have for prizes? As always, we have copies of Self Promote and Succeed and Self Publish and Succeed. We were getting a little light on our mugs and journals, so I don't know if we have stock of that. We might not. There is still, I think, some old, not, I don't want to call them old T shirts, but there's still a few sizes of T shirts available that we might be able to give away. So Angela will let you know what is available at the moment. And you might be up for a book or you might be patiently waiting for a mug or a journal, but it'll take a few days. All right, so let me hit this giveaway button and we'll give away our first prize while we're here. Then I'm going to dive into distribution. Oh, that's hilarious. I guess I didn't remove the dates. Congratulations, February 16th, you are the winner. All right. Okay. For real. The winner is Warrior Class Media. Thank you for your comment and your likes on video. And please email teamoklaunchers.com to and share your mailing address and your choice of prize with Angela so that she can. So that she can send you your prize. Mugs and journals are not in stock. So we are going to give away books. We have book totes, which I don't have it here, but it's not a backpack. It is like, you know, I don't know how to explain it. It's a bag with a zipper and you carry it like this. It's a book tote. And we also have a few sizes left in our T shirts. So that's your prizes for today. Okay, so let's talk distribution. So first of all, I'm going to lay out how we generally set up distribution for our authors. Now, book Launchers is, you know, we're, we're full service self publishing, so our authors have all the accounts and they are the publishers. We look like a publisher, but. But at the end of the day, all of our clients are their own publisher. If I grab, let's see, what do we have here? Here's a couple books. Sorry, sorry for turning my back on you guys, but I got some books back here. So if I pick up, say this book which just recently came out, DJs book, the foreclosure fix, you will see little touches that make it look like it was published. Like this logo on the side and inside of the book, inside on the copyright page, you've got a publishing house or a publishing logo. Those little touches just make it look like it was published by a publisher. But at the end of the day, DJ fully owns and is on record as the publisher. And so that's how we do it. So our clients will set up all these accounts and like I said, there's no right path. There's trade offs to every choice you make. So. And sorry, it says I'm still sharing Firefox. So let me make sure. No, you guys aren't seeing it. Okay, I was just making sure you weren't staring at the random name picker while I was talking. So generally how our authors set up is we usually use IngramSpark for pre sale print distribution. So when the book is ready, we're setting up usually or we're having our clients set up three accounts in the beginning, which is usually IngramSpark. And we're not using IngramSpark for ebook distribution, we're using IngramSpark for print distribution. And they offer the print pre sale ability. So that's what we're doing there. Then we set up KDP in pre sale. KDP is for the ebooks. And then once the book launches, we then switch Amazon distribution or we don't really switch it, but we activate the print distribution so that KDP is the one fulfilling the orders for Amazon. Then generally most of our clients, but not all, will also set up a Draft 2 digital account and Angela can put a link in the comments. That is our affiliate link. I'm actually doing a video on Draft 2 Digital coming up, but there's a lot of reasons why Draft 2 Digital is generally our preferred choice. There is also Publish Drive is another aggregator that some authors use. I like Draft 2 Digital because they don't charge an upfront fee. If you're selling mass volumes of ebooks through other platforms other than Kindle, you may want to look at Publish Drive because they're a fixed fee, not a flat, not a, not a per book sold kind of fee. But Draft 2 Digital has a robust library system. So if you want access to Hoopla, Biblioteca and Overdrive, which are the library places, then they are a great option for that. And so we usually use it for ebook wide distribution. But I say usually because some of our authors do choose to go into the Kindle Unlimited program which gives them some, you know, more money made per ebook sold on Kindle and also access to a few other programs which we've talked about before. So that is generally the pre sale to launch setup for reaching Amazon bookstores online and beyond. And so one of the things I was touching on with the video that came out on Friday again Angela put it in the comments and I'll put it in the description below after or after the Live is over was how some companies, for lack of a better word, prey on authors desire to be in bookstores. And I know this feeling because I spent a lot of time and effort and energy with my first book getting widespread bookstore distribution. And I did. And to this day, more than 10 years later, there are still bookstores that are carrying my book. However, as I've talked about many times, the bookstore distribution for self published authors and any author frankly a lot, unless you're in certain genres. And you'll know those genres when you walk into a bookstore because they're the ones that are big and prominent and they're selling. But unless you're in certain genres, you're unlikely to be found in a bookstore. So it's up to you to drive demand. And most people are likely to buy online anyways because it's easy. It's quick and easy. So yes, there are people who are going to bookstores browsing and they're buying books at the bookstore, of course, or there would be no more bookstores. But it is not an easy place to sell through on your books. And your energy and efforts are usually better spent just driving discoverability online. Plus, there's a host of other challenges with bookstores, but there's nothing that really replaces the feeling of seeing your book on the shelf. You know, I totally, I get that. And so there's other ways to get yourself on the bookstores. But some of these companies, where I was going with this is they prey on you and your desire to see yourself on a bookstore. And in many cases, the one that really irritates me is the. When they sell it, like you're going to have this physical distribution, but really all they're doing is uploading you to IngramSpark. And now you're available online in all of these stores. But they make it sound like you have physical distribution. So that one really bugs me because people pay thousands of dollars to companies for this upload to IngramSpark. But that's not how it's presented. Right. It's presented as through our publishing network, you will be available in Barnes and Noble and blah, blah, blah, and you will be available in all those places when you upload through IngramSpark. But then other companies do sell you bookstore distribution. And this is where some of the hybrids come in. So some people choose to go with a hybrid. I always, I always push back gently on some of the hybrid choices just because some hybrids, you know, they're not doing anything different than what a company like Book Launchers would do. When you self publish or get assistance with your self publishing, like what we do, but then they're going to charge you $1 or $2 per book sold. So what's the true benefit of that hybrid? Well, in a couple, and I say a couple because there really aren't very many hybrids that do this and do it well. But in a couple of cases, the hybrids have a book sales team that goes bookstore to bookstore to sell your book into those bookstores. And in a few cases, they will sell you space in a bookstore or a bookstore package where they have paid for space so they can guarantee you that space. If bookstores are really important and you have a clear plan for how you're going to utilize that bookstore distribution, that makes a lot of sense. But usually it's just companies, you know, going, oh, authors want to be in bookstores here. We'll make it sound like they're going to get there. And you may or may not actually be getting that bookstore distribution. So that was the gist of my Friday video and the inspiration for wanting to share this with you. So you understood and you've thought about your big picture goals because again, there's, there's trade offs, there's not a right path. And it's not to say going one route is the wrong way. It's just understanding what you're trying to achieve and choosing the right path for you. So now with audiobooks, the other thing that we haven't touched on is how we set up audiobook distribution for our clients. Now, the vast, I mean, all of our clients we upload through ACX for their audiobook all. But I think one ACX is the Amazon Creative Exchange. I think I've just blanked on what it was. I have notes on it. Later I'll pull those up and tell you exactly. But ACX is how you get on Audible and we always upload there because if you go through anywhere else to get on Audible, you're paying even more in a fee to distribute there. So we upload direct to ACX no matter what. And many of our authors will essentially they'll go exclusive with Amazon to make more money per audiobook sold. Now, typically we would also recommend that you go wide with your audiobook on Findaway Voices, but less of our clients do this than go with Draft two Digital. Now, my recommendation has not changed based on the drama, the excitement, however you want to pose it. That happened with Findaway Voices and I'll talk about all of that in the deep dive on March 16th. It hasn't changed. I still like Find a Way Voices. However, I'm definitely going to be spending more time. Sorry, there's a little thing in my eye. I'm going to be spending more time talking about Authors Republic and selling audiobooks directly. Or what I'm doing with Self Promote and Succeed is I'm just giving it to you. I have it loaded on YouTube so you can watch me record the audiobook, but I also am giving it away@self promoteand succeed.com audio so Angela can put that in the comments for you as well. But Findaway Voices was our recommended platform for going wide and I'll break all these down in a minute. And then we're using some platforms like Book Funnel to go direct with ebooks as well as with audiobooks. I also have a video coming out I think next week, might even be Friday on using Story Origin to sell ebooks direct. So that's another option. You know, I love what what Evan is doing at Story Origin. So I'm spending a lot of time talking about it because it's a really low cost platform with a lot of really great tools. But then for print books we are now using Book Vault and Shopify connected to sell and distribute your books direct that way. But there's also Ingram Share and Sell program which I've talked about here, which is a really simple way and easy to set up way to sell your print books direct as well. So there's so many options. That's really good. Thing about right now is I know I'm just dropping a ton of information on you, but if you take two things away from this, one is, you know, really thinking about what matters and knowing there isn't a right path, there's trade offs and, and two, just, you know, celebrating the fact that we are authors in a time where it has never been so easy to actually choose your adventure in this journey. Because there are so many options for us that we don't. We're not stuck in doing it one way and we're not stuck with a gatekeeper that is telling us whether we're worthy or not and telling us how much you know you're going to make. 80 cents per book sold. Yay. Go. So it's kind of exciting if you ask me. Okay, so just checking out here, you know, people are talking about. Efren said it would be fun to see my book at airport bookstores. Absolutely. And I actually haven't seen my book in an airport bookstore. But it is fun. Especially when you stumble into a store and you find your book unexpectedly. That is the best feeling. I love that. And I got sent a picture, I think it was late last year from a friend who was in a store and they stumbled upon my book which was. That's also fun. When you're friends see your book out in the wild, it's always great. And the companies know that we want to see that, which is why they charge us a lot of money for these things. And you want to make sure that if you do pay for it, you are getting exactly what you think you're getting. St. John Butler says once my book is done, I may bring it to a Barnes and Noble and put it on the shelf. You know, I've heard of a lot of authors who do that too, which, you know, I'm always keen to hear how that goes, see what else you guys are talking about. I need a spreadsheet for all of this. Yeah, there's, there is written word Media has a good table. It's Only for ebooks. And sorry, I don't have the link because I just read it sometime in the last couple weeks. So I saw the table, but they have a good table that compares the ebook platforms and what they pay you and whether you can go to them direct or you need an aggregator to access them. And Stella said, I approached the manager at my local Barnes and Noble, did a book signing, and he bought copies for the store. Yes, absolutely. That is a great strategy for getting your book listed in select stores. And in fact, way back when, how I originally got my books in widespread distribution was I did a handful of events at different stores and I pushed hard to sell those books. I had. I did radio, I paid, I had paid promotions. I did a lot of. To drive people to the stores to buy the books and then they would order. And then what I did from there is, once I knew, like 10 books that sold in a couple week period, I would contact the manager at another store and then from there they would list it. And then we got in touch with the regional buyers. But let's say it was a ton of work. And I, in the end, I, you know, all that energy and effort had I put it towards more online or speaking engagement pitching or something else. But, you know, it was fun and I've done it, and I can share the experiences with everyone. And the math, which there is a video that I did, Angela. I think it's called Do Bookstores Matter Where I break down the math for you. And I think it's really important to understand the math behind this as well. Okay, so just checking what else you guys are talking about. Let's go back to the distribution talk here. Hold on. Sorry, I lost my. I lost you guys. I lost you guys. Here we go. That's not it. Here it is. Okay, I found you guys again. Hello. Okay, so let's talk some options for distributing your books in digital and print formats. And, you know, I kind of already touched on audiobook, but, you know, if we have time, I'll come back to that. So there's direct distribution, which doesn't mean selling direct to your reader. In this case, it means going through the exact platform. And then there's aggregators. So KDP is your direct distribution to Amazon. If you go through Barnes and Noble, they have a platform that will get you onto Nook, and Kobo gets you onto Kobo. There's aggregators like Draft 2 Digital or Publish Drive, and StreetLib, I think, is the other one. I haven't used StreetLib at all. The aggregators will you upload it to one platform and then it distributes to a bunch of platforms. I like aggregators so that it's simpler. I still go to KDP for Kindle, but then I like the aggregators in order to reach everywhere else. The recommendation through Ally, which is the alliance of independent authors and they recommend you go direct to Google Play, Kobo, Apple and Barnes and Noble. And mostly because every platform has nuances with their metadata. And so if you are committed to say, doing a lot with Apple or doing a lot with Kobo, where they both have really cool programs for self publishing authors or authors in general, so it could be worth it. So if you're planning on doing a lot of promotion or pushing pretty hard to those platforms, it would be wise to go direct because you'll access a lot more promotional opportunities than you get by going through an aggregator. So there's trade offs again, which is what I say the trade off is that now you got to manage your book in all the places, which is a pain. And, and then if you make any changes, you have to make sure you're updating it in all the places and then you have more, more tax things that you have to sort out. So that's the trade off. And so if you aren't planning on doing any big special things with any one platform, I would probably just grab an aggregator because that gets you your library distribution and distribution to all those platforms and then go direct to Kindle because you're going to make a lot more money per book sold doing that. But there's options again and you're not married to any of these platforms. The only time you become, you know, married. And it's not a, it's a Hollywood marriage, somebody once said, which means, you know, it doesn't, it doesn't have to last that long. But if you go Kindle, Kindle Unlimited, you're in their program and you have to stay in there for 90 days and you cannot sell or give away your book in ebook format in any other place. So in that case, at the end of the 90 days, you can pull it out of the program and then you can, you can see other people, okay, Print book distribution. So there's lots of ways to do print book distribution. You can of course do the probably most popular method for self publishing nowadays, which is print on demand. And there's lots of play, not lots of players, but there's a handful of players in this space. You've got Amazon KDP, you have Lulu, you have IngramSpark, kind of the main ones that come to mind. But again, we use KDP and ingramspark as our two players and then we are now using Book Vault for Behind the scenes for that direct piece. I used to use Lulu and the reason I don't use Lulu anymore is just because they kept raising their prices and it just became very cost prohibitive to use them for direct, for selling one copy and direct shipping it. But they do have distribution and you can use them. And some authors use them because they have beautiful color printing. They have, they have some features that you don't get as much with Amazon and Ingram online. You can go through Barnes and Noble Press and I think you can also go through Kobo Writing Life for Print. But I believe they're using Ingram's IngramSpark underneath. So for me, if Kobo is going to use IngramSpark, the only reason that I can see, and I'm just thinking of this now, so this might not be true, but the only reason I could see going Kobo for your print books is if you have co authors because Kobo is the only platform that does co author sharing. So what that means is if you have two or three authors on your book, they're the only ones that will split distribution payments. So you are able to do it within their platform versus everybody else has to have a designated author and that author has to be responsible for distributing payments from there. Now there's also doing offset printing and, and getting fulfilled by Amazon account or you know, offset and then selling direct. There's also some who, you know, will kind of mix all of this together, which is generally what we're doing because we want the best of all the worlds and try to have, as you know, there's always trade offs because this becomes a bit more of a hassle factor. But we like to have options and not rely solely on Amazon. So it's a lot. I know, I know it's a lot. And I can see why somebody was saying they need a spreadsheet. So if anybody does create a spreadsheet and they want to share it and I could probably drop some of my notes into ChatGPT and see if, if it can produce a spreadsheet for us from there. Although I don't know if anybody else is using ChatGPT these days. But I tried to use it on Sunday and it was making me do a 20 question puzzle to access it and I, I went through it twice and I got something wrong in the puzzle both times and I gave up. So I don't know if it's still doing that or why it did that. But if that continues, I won't be using Chat GPT anymore because it was not a short puzzle. I don't know why we have to do a 20 question puzzle to access it. Okay, that was a complete tangent. So what book distribution questions do you have? I have more I can talk about, but I wanted to see if you guys have specific questions you want me to go. And while I'm waiting for you guys to ask those questions, I am going to go in and do our second giveaway and also do our first participation prize. So let's see who won this one. Where are we? All right, Damian Andrews, 501. Congratulations. I know you are international so your choice is going to be one of the books that we have. So let Angela know@teamooklaunchers.com what you'd like and she can ship it off to you. All right. Now the other one we're going to do is the giveaway tool. So we will go with this. And I won't match text, but for the final prize of the day it is the, the match text piece I'm going to put in here is no boring books. So if you want to be entered to win the final prize of the day, you have to enter hashtag no boring books in your comment. So that that will choose it from here. But for now, this is going to be everybody who has commented so far today, which there's been 16 of you commenting so far today. And our participation winner today is. Oh, Angela can't win. Oh, it wasn't Angela. Barbara Howard, congratulations and thank you for being here and commenting. All right, so Barbara, Angela has the list of prizes there. She can post it again. And I see people are already entering the hashtag no boringbooks for the final prize of the day, which you've got plenty of time. I will come back for that one. But in the meantime, congratulations and let's see what questions we have. Question one. So the recommended distribution order in most cases is ebook, print book, audiobook. I as far as when you do them, I would do them all as soon as you can. So ideally getting them all done pre launch. Audiobook, we don't generally do pre launch but we try if possible to launch it at the same time as the ebook and the print book. So when you're saying distribution order, I would say we're trying to upload ebook and print book at the same time. What we do though, because we're doing it pre sale, we like to have six to eight weeks where a book is in pre sale. So it's uploaded, it's available for sale, but you're not getting it yet unless you're in the ARC team, the advanced reader, the advanced reader copy team. But in that six to eight week pre sale period the book can be purchased and and that would be for ebook and for print. And in that case we're using IngramSpark because KDP to date does not do print pre sale. I have a feeling there's been so many glitches in the last six months and I suspect, but we don't know, I suspect that KDP is going to roll out pre sale pretty soon, which will be a welcome change because Ingram has been ripe with Ingram and KDP with this pre sale setup has been ripe with issues. But we use Ingram Spark for print pre sale and KDP for ebook presale and then once the book launches we then activate KDP for the print books as well because then it fulfills for Amazon.com and you make more money and it fulfills faster through that than sticking with ingramspark and it just gives you backups as well. Hopefully that answered your question. Kevin I just released my third book and I have done a lot of social media posting. I keep getting replies of I can make a digital trailer for your book. What is your thought of a digital trailer? It depends on your genre and the book. True crime. We've had true crime and true crime books and a trailer was a must have because somebody posted it on Reddit and that was all it took for that book to really gain massive momentum fast. Our other kinds of books. A trailer can be nice. I don't think it really helps you sell a ton of books. There's value in it. It can be beneficial on social media, it can be fun, it can feel good. But I'm not certain that it's going to help you sell a ton of books. So I wouldn't spend a ton of money on it. Okay, no other questions. So I'm going to go back over and just kind of break down a few things a little bit further. So I do have my notes and it was Audiobook. Creative Exchange is acx. That's what it stands for. That's their self serve production and distribution service and it primarily distributes audiobooks to Amazon, Audible and Apple Books, which is previously known as itunes. You can go exclusive with them and when you choose exclusivity you agree not to distribute your audiobook through any other channel than those two channels and they'll pay you 40% if you're non exclusive. And this is why a lot of our clients stay exclusive with ACX is your royalty drops down to 25% of the list price. So it is not, not lucrative, especially because they set your price, which is one of my biggest issues with acx. They set your price for. They used to be, they used to require exclusivity for longer periods of time, but they recently switched it. I think it was seven years. But they recently introduced an option for authors to exit that exclusivity after 90 days. Just like KDP, the KDP select program. The audiobook aggregators. Excuse me, the audiobook aggregators, they offer wide distribution. So find a way Voices distributes beyond Audible, you know, Kobo, Google Play, Apple Books, Scribd, you know, there's a lot, even libraries. Authors Republic as well is another option there. Findaway Voices used to have a narrator network. They don't anymore. But Authors Republic does have a narrator network. So some people looking for narrators may want to go through the Authors Republic platform for that. Now. Audiobook retail platforms, Amazon, Audible, itunes, Kobo, Apple Books, those are all ones that you can also upload directly to. Uploading to Apple Books is a pain and I haven't tried uploading, sorry, uploading to itunes was a pain. And Apple Books is a little bit of a pain too. Kobo, that's. I haven't tried to upload to Kobo. So higher royalties if you go exclusive, this is the trade off portion. Higher royalties if you go exclusive with acx. But you are really giving up access anywhere else but Audible, which, you know, honestly in the States, I don't think you're missing out on that much. Spotify has started to really come on. But then again, if you don't want to work with Findaway Voices after their terms and terms of service excitement the last couple of weeks, then you know you're skipping out on Spotify, but going exclusive with ACX or using a service like Authors Republic, which doesn't get access to Spotify. So lots of trade offs there. Just trying to see if I missed anything else when I was talking about the different platforms. No, that covered most of it. There's kind of a difference in what you get paid over the platforms as well. Google play is around 50, 52% Barnes and Noble. There's different levels, 40% or 65, Kobos, 45% or 70%. So you want to look at these things and figure out if it's worth it for you to go direct to them or if you want to use an aggregator to access them. Now, I'm going to touch on bookstore distribution really quickly and then we'll just wrap it up with any last questions you have. So going back to our original, what we were talking about was selling your book, you know, through a print. Through. Through a bookstore, Selling your print book through a physical bookstore. So not just online. When you are pitching your bookstore, you know, one thing that does work is hosting an event if they're willing to host you and telling them how you're going to sell it through. What a bookstore is looking for is professional standards. They want high production value. They want a good match for their, their shoppers. So you want to make sure that this, you're not pitching your, your fiction or your nonfiction book to a bookstore that primarily trades in fiction or, you know, some other category that is not you. But also understand that you've got some demand in this marketplace for this book. And then you have to offer a realistic profit margin which goes into the wholesale discount. If you're having them buy it from Ingram, you need to be set with a 55% discount. If it's anything less than that, they won't buy it because there's no margin in it for them. And that's why, you know, setting it up so it's easy to source. They'll either buy it direct from you or more commonly, they'll do it on consignment from you. So they'll pay you after it sells, or they need to be able to order it from their regular catalog. They're not going to buy it from Amazon. And so you have to think about this carefully. And like I said, it's a lot of work when you pitch your book to a bookstore. You know, understanding how they're going to make money and how you're going to help them sell it and even bring in more people into their store that might buy other things when they're there. Those are big wins for a bookstore. And again, that's the trade off is this is more work. So it can be fun. It's absolutely worth it, I think, to do it at least once. But you may not want to do it widespread or do a big push to sell in a bunch of bookstores just because of the, the trade offs that are there. Okay. Oh, Yellow Orange Red joined us live. So hello and welcome. Alyssa is here as well. That's great. Okay, so does Audible have an international market? Yes, it does, but I don't know which country, so you probably have to go on their Website and check it out. Just like Amazon, you know, if you're already getting international sales from Amazon, you know, you'll get all those deposits you in your account, which is always fun to see. You know, I think, I think some months I get six or seven different deposits because it's from the different markets. I don't get different deposits from acx. It is just one deposit. But you know, it is selling in markets, not just in the U.S. let's see. Should we take time to ask individual mom and pop bookstores to carry our book? Again, trade offs. I did a lot. I love indie bookstores. I did a lot in the past with indie bookstores. I have not done anything with indie bookstores myself, but some of our clients have. There are some really phenomenal indie bookstores. Like, you know, I'm calling them indie, you're calling them mom and pop. But in certain markets, like in la, there's some indie bookstores that are really hard to get into because they are, they have robust huge events in some of the other marketplaces, Portland and Austin, again, they have some really famous bookstores and some smaller ones too. You know, find a fit would be my recommendation. Find a bookstore that will, you know, cheer for you, advocate, put up posters, email their audience and you can collaborate and create something great together. That would be my approach when I'm looking for a bookstore fit. I want to find a bookstore that's going to want to create a win for all of us. So that would be my recommendation. And again, know that you're probably, you know, your typical bookstore event. You're going to be lucky to sell more than 15, 20 copies generally speaking, you know, if you have a bigger event, like we had a live stream with Sarah Westbrook and actually Efren was on that one as well and she talked about her live events and how she was selling hundreds of copies and how she did that with her live events. And one of our other clients, Linda Magoon has been doing talks about in bookstores and selling, you know, 50 books at that talk kind of thing. And so there are strategies and approaches to doing it. And it all comes down to your bigger picture goals and where the time trade off and energy trade off and the reward trade off is for you. But yeah, I would highly recommend every author find a partner bookstore they can work with because the other thing you can do with some of them is you can do signed copies through them. So, so, and they will mail them. So they have an online ordering portal. They're near, they're. They're not too far away from you. You can go in and sign a bunch of books and then sell those books through their online portal. And they're. You're selling signed books for them. So I know some authors that do that as well. It supports your local indie store. And, you know, you can help. You can sell signed copies of your book to your audience as well and not have to be the distribution outlet for that. Yes, to local bookstores. They'll buy on consignment. As Julie said, some will buy a case. I have. I'll never forget. I had a big event in Ottawa in Ottawa, Canada, and this one little independent bookstore, they bought 20. They bought a case of my books, which is 26 books, because we thought we had. We were going to have a pretty big event at their. At their store. And then a snowstorm hit and a big snowstorm. I think we ended up having three people come to the event. I don't even know how I managed to get there. It was a bit of a disaster. And so this poor store had all these books left. But, you know, I committed to them that I would sell them for them. And so I. What I did was I emailed my audience and anybody who went in and bought 10 copies and sent me the receipt. I was. I did a couple of coaching calls with them. So I made sure that they weren't stuck with the book in that case, because they had bought the book and 26. Well, they were left with 20. I think somebody had bought three. So they had 20. 21 or 20. They had at least 20 books, which is why I did the buy 10 and it took two people and they. They cleared out their. Their stock of their books. But yes. So some indie bookstores will still buy books for your event or for you, but most of the time they'll do it on consignment so they don't have to bear any upfront financial risk with your book. Okay, I'll do the last prize. It doesn't look like there's any other questions, so if you haven't already, go ahead and make sure you've typed in hashtag no boringbooks. And let me pop back over to my. Oh, I removed it. Oops. One moment, please, while I bring it back up. Oops. Not that one. Not that one. We want Share screen. There we go. Share Screen and giveaway tool. Okay, now we are going to. We don't want to draw again. I want to go back to the beginning and choose a live stream. And we're going to do. And I Saw somebody type it in like that. I don't know if it's going to let me. Might not. We'll see. Let's see how this goes. Nope. Because it's looking for both. Okay. All right. So it has to be no boring books, all one, no space. So I'll wait while you. While you type it in, in case you missed it. And here we go. Oh, there's only one entry. Hold on. Let's see what's going on here. I know I saw some of you. I'm gonna go back to you guys. I can't see you at the same time. Boring books. There's lots of entries. I don't know why it's not working. Did I type it wrong? This is an experiment, by the way. Thank you for playing along. Maybe there's an extra space at the end. Let's try this. Thirteen. That's better. Okay. There should be music that goes along with this. And congratulations, St. John Butler. All right, so Angela should have the prize list for you, as always. So go ahead and email her atteam Tam booklaunchers.com with your name, your mailing address, and your choice of prize, and she will get that off to you as well. All right, so I hope. Just a reminder, self publishandsucceed.com liveclass that is the 12 week workshop where I teach. I'd say 60, 60 to 70% of the classes, so you can work with me to get your draft written over a. We give you an extra few weeks to finish it. So it usually ends up being a 16 week period to get your book written. And we also go through the whole self publishing process. So of course we would invite you to work with book launchers after. But if you don't, you will know who to hire and how to hire them and how to get your book to the finish line. So that starts March 18th and. And then March 16th is the deep dive where we're going to talk about all things audiobook. And I hope to see you there. I think it's the 16th. We had all the dates at the beginning, so I had those right at the beginning. All right. Michael says when I sold at Barnes and Noble, I also did local press release to drive more people to the bookstore and ended up with 100 people and got on the local morning show. Congratulations. That's a pretty huge turnout. When I've done bookstore signings, I have spent more time telling people where to find the cookbook section. So congratulations. That's a great turnout. All right, everyone have a fantastic rest of your week, and I look forward to seeing you back here in two weeks. All right, Take care.