A short YouTube video (Dec 2018) by Julie Broad encouraging self-published authors to distribute ebooks beyond Amazon Kindle — highlighting Kobo (and its Walmart partnership), Apple Books’ renewed investment and visible audiobook placement, and Google Play’s value for Google Search indexing. The speaker argues wider distribution reduces Amazon’s dominance and makes independent publishing more attractive versus traditional deals.
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It can seem like Amazon is the only company that matters for ebook authors, but Kindle is definitely not the only ebook distributor out there. Stick around. I've got some cool ideas for you to expand the reach of your book. Hey, I'm Julie the Book Broad award winning author and founder of this fantastic company that cares about authors and their success so much. This company is called Book Launchers and you can check us out@book launchers.com now before we dive in, make sure you subscribe to the channel and turn those notifications on so we can hang out in the comments when a video comes out. There are also prizes for commenting on the day a video is released. You can win some cool Book launcher swag. Okay, let's get to it. Kindle is not the only place to sell ebooks and in 2019 I think we're in for an exciting ride as self published authors and I'm here to encourage you to upload your books far and wide and not go exclusive with Kindle, which I previously talked about right here. Kobo has been a giant in Canada and Australia for a while. I get it if you're American author. Marketing to Americans Kobo wasn't really relevant until 2018, but please pay attention my friend. Walmart and Kobo partnered up and they're positioning themselves to battle Amazon over ebooks. They have some glitches to figure out in their distribution model, but I think it's really exciting they're stepping up together. More options means less dominance by Amazon over the author community. Even more exciting is that Apple has stepped up their book game. In late 2018, Apple invested in their app, Goodbye Ibooks and hello Apple Books. They've invested in making reading an enjoyable experience on their app, and they've integrated suggestions into the Reading now and the bookstore. Just like Amazon's also Bought feature, which as I'm recording this right now, there's evidence that they also bought may go away. So Apple may be dominating in this space. The even more exciting part is that the Audiobooks tab is not a sub tab anymore. It has its own highly visible spot on the Books app. So they're going to have trending recommendations and charts. And this matters because you can't buy books through the Kindle app on the iPhone. Amazon doesn't want to pay Apple for those purchases, so you have to go to a browser or a desktop. That means you have to leave the app to make a purchase. You can buy books through the Apple Books app, a key point so buyers are more likely to finish reading a book and then buy the recommended ones to read next. They can't do that on the Kindle app on your iPhone, and Apple has a bunch of podcast listener data. Imagine if they start cross promoting. The power and possibility for podcasters and podcast interviewees is monumental. If Apple can start promoting books to people who have just listened to a podcast with an author now maybe Google Play is less user friendly. Well, there's no maybe about it. Google Play is less user friendly and so far seems less useful from an attracting reader's perspective. But I would still upload to Google Play because, well, it's Google. Can you believe as authors we can be found really easily on Amazon and Google, two of the giant search engines? So it's been reported by multiple authors in forums and articles and some of our own personal experience with Once your ebooks are available on Google Play, Google Search indexes your book title and author name even more prominently. This can be especially important if you're not ranking for your book title or your name when somebody searches for it on Google right now. So maybe you're not going to sell books with Google Play, but it's a shortcut to get Google Search indexing and that's worth a lot in your business and for your author brand. It's such an exciting world right now as everything in the book publishing world evolves with these giant companies investing in books Barnes and Barnes and Nobles Barnes and Nobles Barnes and Novels Barnes and Nobles Future uncertain We could see the end of traditional book publishers stronghold over bookstore distribution and the door opening to so many new possibilities for authors. I personally see fewer and fewer benefits in the traditional book publishing deals and more and more reasons to go independent and self publish. What do you think? What do you think of Kindle, Kobo, Apple Books, and Google Play for your ebook? Tell me in the comments below and please let me know you like this content by smashing that thumbs up button. By the way, have you seen the video I filmed on the seven things you need to do to create a great book selling page on Amazon? Even though Kindle's not the only game in town, your Amazon page is a top place to sell books. So here's what you need to do.
