Free Full Book! Get Your Book Selling Wide by USA Today Bestselling Author Monica Leonelle

Chapter 1: What Is Selling Wide? I sometimes wonder if books are the least important part of an author's business. It's a bizarre thought, but when I look at how the publishing industry is changing, it seems like it is about to explode with possibility in areas that seemingly have nothing to do with books at all. My name is Monica Leonelle, And I believe that independent authorship is changing. Because of rapidly evolving global market forces and trends, authors are being asked now more than ever to look at their publishing businesses as entrepreneurs rather than writers. There is a wide world of publishing out there, with many untapped sources of income. But in order to access new opportunities to tell and sell your stories, you have to be willing to distribute your work widely. You have to be willing to get your book selling wide. And not just wide, but you may even have to commit to selling aggressively wide. It's not as scary as it seems, and if I'm being honest, it doesn't even mean leaving exclusivity programs, including the most popular one, Amazon's KDP Select. Curious as to what I mean? Let's dive in. What is selling wide? When people talk about being a wide author, they almost always mean something very specific, which is that being wide is being at all ebook retailers rather than exclusive to Amazon's KDP Select program, which includes distribution to a reader program called Kindle Unlimited. The reason the focus of going wide often narrows in specifically on ebooks is because of Amazon's near monopoly of ebooks in English-language markets. Furthermore, for a lot of exclusive authors, their income also comes primarily from ebooks, about 95% by many authors' estimations. If you believe your book's value is almost entirely in ebook format, and you know that Amazon holds almost the entire ebook market, then it makes sense that you might think KDP Select is the biggest, or possibly the only real game in town. I take a slightly different stance on what going wide means, in that exclusivity is getting far more complicated across all formats. This points to the curious idea that while authors tend to undervalue their intellectual property, these rights seem to have a lot of value to companies. Companies can gain money or market force by either exploiting those rights exclusively or keeping authors from exploiting those rights elsewhere, usually with competitors. KDP Select is by far the biggest publishing industry program using exclusivity to gain leverage in specific markets, but it's far from the only one. Amazon has several other large programs, including ACX for audiobooks and Kindle Vella for serials, both of which try to use significant exclusivity to gain market share. Additionally, there are other exclusivity writer programs that attract independent authors, many of which we will dive into in this book. Why does any retailer want exclusivity? While Amazon is currently the book retailer holding exclusive agreements on digital intellectual property at the moment, I continue to remind myself of one thing: the issue isn't Amazon, its exclusivity. Let's face it, if Google or Apple or even Facebook were able to use exclusivity to conquer the ebook market or any other area of publishing as Amazon did, they would do it in a heartbeat. There's no question that big tech companies can use exclusivity to sell an all-you-can-eat buffet subscription to their users, even if it means that creators will get paid less per borrow or per stream. And this shift in how creators get paid is not specific to publishing; it has touched every area of content creation. It's a business model that is ideal for both companies and consumers, and that works to help consolidate industries and build a loyal user base. It's not going to go away. I want to be clear: I don't say any of this with resentment. Instead, I want to point out that business models are business models. The reason exclusivity is extremely valuable to every big tech and media company is because it gets them users. Big numbers matter in big tech. That's how stock share increases and valuations and acquisitions happen. Exclusivity drives subscription numbers, and subscription numbers and market share drive business as a whole. Likewise, the reason why subscriptions are extremely valuable to consumers is because they are able to save the consumer a lot of money. In publishing, readers who have high consumption or who develop high consumption need an affordable way to consume. Those who read a lot of books or listen to a ton of audiobooks prefer a subscription to buying audiobooks individually. The business model is a win for platforms and consumers, but is it a win for creators? Why do authors dislike exclusivity? Exclusivity keeps authors and other types of creators from exploiting their intellectual property to the fullest extent. For authors, intellectual property is extremely valuable, and thus exclusivity in any one format —to any one company, is also extremely valuable and should be treated as such. Every author, regardless of how popular they are, or how quality their work is, is sitting on a gold mine of intellectual property. This gold mine expands as you magnetize readers and increase your catalog. But exclusivity is getting more complicated for independent authors. Exclusivity to platforms has been a prominent force in the publishing industry over the last decade, but independent authors are now starting to see exclusivity in format and language as well. This is a response to trends in digital and global reading habits. Amazon may have won the ebook market in most of the major English-language markets like the US, the UK, and Australia, but what happens when readers shift away from ebook to audiobooks and fiction apps? What happens when the growth in publishing shifts away from English-language markets, and to other languages in other territories? Well, when this happens, the Big Tech game of trying to dominate the market space and kill all competitor versions begins anew, hence why new ways to be exclusive are cropping up for independent authors. As of 2021, digital reading is shifting to other formats and languages, spurring new writer programs for authors that come with both opportunities and opportunity costs to consider carefully. The biggest issue with exclusivity is that so much of your power as an independent author and content creator in general is tied up in your intellectual property, your copyright, your rights. The way so many midlist authors are able to make a living at writing their stories is by exploiting their rights and spreading out their income across many small revenue streams. If you tie up your rights through exclusivity, you cut off many small income streams that could have added up to something big if you had nurtured them instead. How Global E-Commerce Plays a Factor in Publishing Trends. Amazon can reach 13% of the global e-commerce market. Kobo, via Rakuten, their partnership with Walmart, and partnerships with other international retailers, can reach 2-3% of the global e-commerce market. Apple holds 1% of the market, and Google holds less as its focus has historically been outside of e-commerce. That said, both Apple and Google also have the entire cell phone market globally between iPhone and Android devices, and more and more purchases are happening on phones. These four companies are in a battle for market share of global e-commerce, and while Amazon has a significant lead globally, there is no winner-takes-all. There is still plenty of space for massive success for any of these companies. To increase market share, you need a growing user base that spends more money. There are several major ways that e-commerce companies grow their user base and improve buying habits. Selling low-cost, high-demand goods like books or home products. Building a payments platform— Rakuten, Apple, and Google Play have this. Creating and growing loyalty programs via credit cards, points, or other rewards. Getting engagement on devices like phones, tablets, e-readers, in-home, and in-car devices. All retailers are playing in the devices space, but Apple and Google are leading the charge with iPhone and Android. Currently, Amazon is cutting into market share across many of these areas, which is why books are so important to all 4 of these companies. Audiobooks, for example, is a growing space largely because they are hitting 3 of these needs. They are low cost and high demand, which means they are an easy entry point and way to get more users. They are largely sold by subscription model, hitting the loyalty/reward need, and not just by Audible. Kobo also offers a subscription program, Google offers a points program on all digital purchases through its Google Play Points program, and several other smaller players like Scribd also offer subscriptions. They are ideal entry points on phone devices, and with e-commerce shifting to device purchases, Apple and Google can grow their digital bookstores more readily than they could in years past. Other device markets, like in-home devices, are heating up, which is why Amazon, Apple, and Google are also attempting to get devices into homes. Where once people did chores, drove, or jogged in silence or to music, they are now picking up audiobooks to help entertain and pass the time. This means that these 4 companies will be investing heavily in audiobooks over the coming years. And you can see this across other areas of publishing as well, specifically translations and fiction apps, which we will discuss more throughout this book. New entrants and startups to these spaces can shake things up. Continuing the audiobook example, while each of these 4 companies would love to win more audiobook market share, none of these 4 companies is the top streaming service. That honor goes to Spotify, which has arguably the best audio search engine on the planet. The next largest service is Apple, with 8% of the market share, and Google and Amazon are somewhere in the top 10. Knowing this, it's no surprise that Spotify has entered the audiobook space by hiring a number of top executives to specifically focus on audiobooks, and put out a selection of public domain titles to test the waters. Did Spotify start out intending to get into the publishing business? Not really. But the market has forced them to enter, as audiobooks are eating away at market share for their other streaming businesses, like music and podcasts. If they don't enter, other platforms like Apple and Amazon will convert Spotify's user base to their own platforms, cutting into their music streaming business. Spotify isn't alone in the streaming battles. Tons of companies are trying to stake their claim in audiobooks, which is why Amazon only holds about 40-50% of the pie in the US language markets right now, despite having a significant first-mover advantage in audiobooks and building their Audible membership program for years. Many of these startups make up a small portion of the market, but they are big enough thorns that they still hold a lot of value to Big Tech. In the coming years, the subscription and streaming startups that venture into audiobooks will likely go under, or be bought up by the major companies. This is fairly common too. As this happens, the list of audiobook market players will firm up, and we'll have a better idea of who really won the audiobook wars, along with how to best exploit our audiobook rights as independent authors. Betting on a Platform with Exclusivity. The process of consolidating a niche market like audiobooks or fiction apps down to a few major players is volatile and unpredictable, and even investors who study big tech for a living often don't get it right. As authors, we are not equipped to be betting our careers on any particular company, and exclusivity is just that— a bet that a company will be able to gain significant market share in various markets. For the past decade, independent authors have become increasingly at the mercy of market forces in the global e-commerce space. Independent publishing is not really about publishing anymore, but about Big Tech. And Big Tech is always battling it out for market share, users, e-commerce revenue, or ad revenue. It uses books as one of its battlefields, and right now in May of 2021, those battlefields are audiobooks, serialized fiction apps, and global markets. This makes your subsidiary rights around audiobooks, serials, and translations far more valuable than they have been in the past, which is why each of these 3 are among the 5 major book rights that I've dedicated a chapter to in this book. This value, however, has an expiration date. In the next decade, these spaces will be consolidated and the winners will be named, both in big tech and amongst independent authors, and the only thing you'll be asking yourself is, "Did I pay attention and make moves to position myself well for these changes or did I miss the boat?" Going wide is about rejecting exclusivity when it forces you to make a big bet. Like many other wide authors, I am not a betting person. I really just want to write books for the rest of my life, and not worry about market share or acquisitions. I studied business in graduate school, earned an MBA from one of the top U.S. schools, and worked at the executive level in the tech startup space for years, yet still I care much more about having a long career as an author than I do about who wins these battles. In the end, I do not want to be exclusive with any one company because if they fail, it has consequences to my immediate income in the short term and to my author career in the long term. If you're considering self-publishing or independently publishing a book, or if you've been in the publishing industry for a while, you've most likely come across this hot topic of debate about whether to put your book into KDP Select or not. Agreeing to participate in this program, which makes your book exclusive to Kindle Unlimited for 90 days, means that you can't post or distribute more than 10% of your book anywhere else, not even on your own website. In exchange for this exclusivity, your book is enrolled in Amazon's Unlimited Reading subscription program, and you get paid additional royalties for page reads. You also gain visibility in Amazon's store, as any borrow counts as a sale in your sales rank. When you look at a program like KDP Select, you'll see that it is forcing authors to make a big bet in many ways. KDP Select authors cannot be at any of the other retailers in ebook, and as I stated, audiobooks are helping these retailers regain market share in English language markets. In global markets, any of these retailers have the chance to significantly increase their global market share of ebook readers,, and several of these companies are positioned to do exactly that. KDP Select also prohibits authors from moving into short-form and serialized fiction, which will be eating away at ebook market share as a whole, as it has already begun to do globally. Amazon could capture all the ebook market share in every country in the world, but if digital reading shifts significantly to fiction apps or audiobooks, Well, that market share isn't going to be worth quite as much. I want to be clear, this is not an argument against participating in KDP Select. As I said, going wide is about rejecting exclusivity when it forces you to make a big bet. This is instead an argument for paying attention to wide platforms so that you can mitigate your risk. For example, if you had half your catalog in KDP Select and half out on fiction apps and at other retailers, then you move several of your eggs out of your KDP Select basket. Largely a good thing. Your intellectual property is too valuable to make big bets with. That's why to me, going wide and being a wide author is adopting a specific mindset. My intellectual property is valuable, and I'm going to be smart about hanging onto my rights and exploiting them for my highest benefit. It's about rejecting exclusivity as your entire business strategy, and only using it when you can give up less and get more. It's about exploiting as many rights as you can, and finding readers in areas of publishing where you are not exclusive, in order to balance out any exclusive deals you do make. It's about building multiple income streams, and securing the longevity of your career, so that when the big tech companies battle for market share across formats and languages and territories, you as the little guy don't end up a casualty in their wars. Going wide is simply understanding that your work has real dollar value in all formats, languages, and markets, and making smart decisions about where to go next as the industry rapidly evolves. Why Authors Choose Exclusivity with KDP Select. As stated before, Amazon is the biggest retailer in many major English-language markets, holding 80% or more of the market share in ebooks in the US, the UK, Australia, and New Zealand. Kobo Books, for example, is a major competitor in Canada. Additionally, Apple Books and Google Play Books are available in South Africa and growing a readership through their storefronts, while at the time of this writing, Amazon is not aside from its sales through Amazon.com. Amazon's KDP Select program offers many promotional tools for authors to get discovered by Amazon readers in the markets, including free days, Kindle Countdown deals, and a sales rank boost from borrows. Sales rank determines a significant portion of the on-site visibility at Amazon, which feeds also bots, a set of algorithms that determines what customers have also bought if they've purchased a specific book. And also, bots determine a portion of visibility and personalized notifications over email and push notifications within the Kindle app. KDP Select authors are highly incentivized with much better visibility across Amazon's storefront than their wide author counterparts. They also get additional income through page reads, and it is easier to gain traction in small niche categories like Paranormal Reverse Harem Prison Academy, which simply wouldn't do as well or find as hungry of readers on wider platforms, at least not yet. Why Authors Choose to Go Wide. Authors who go wide appear on all retailers including Amazon, but are not allowed to participate in Amazon's KDP Select promotional tools. Nor given a borrower boost in sales rank. While authors lose visibility at Amazon, they gain visibility on other retailers where there is far less competition and much more long-tail consistency in marketing. Wide authors enjoy: more room between releases without seeing massive drops in their sales, less time sensitivity around promotion outside of launches, multiple streams of income that grow organically and consistently over time. It's also important to be wide if you intend to create translations of your work or post your work to various fiction apps. Much of the growth in publishing is currently happening in subsidiary rights like audiobooks, serials, and translations. Finally, there are some not-so-niche opportunities that come along once in a while, like retailer Kobo's partnership with Walmart, which brought Kobo reading devices into Walmart stores and extended ebooks to a new and major market in the US in both English and Spanish. Walmart accounts for about 1% of global ecommerce compared to Amazon's 13%, which makes it a major player. It also owns nearly the entire ecommerce market in India, thanks to a majority shareholder ownership of India internet conglomerate Flipkart. It can pay to be wide when these deals happen, as Kobo factored in loyalty to their platform when deciding which ebooks and authors they were going to push through Walmart's extended reach into these countries. The Real Question in Publishing. As a result of the Kindle Unlimited program, independent authors sometimes divide themselves into two camps in terms of publishing: marketing, sales, and business strategies. Kindle Unlimited means keeping your ebooks exclusive to Amazon, while going wide means publishing your ebooks to other platforms like Apple Books, Barnes Noble, Google Play Books, Kobo, and more. There is often debate over which path, KDP Select (KU vs. wide), is better for the independent author in a variety of scenarios. Overall. When an author is first starting out. When an author has a big catalog. Based on what an author writes. And so on. But the one thing I rarely see discussed in the KU vs. wide debate is that the conversation is actually a little outdated and a relic of a time when independent authors could still only make money from their ebooks. Over the last several years, a lot of those options have cracked wide open. Now, whether you are exclusive in ebooks or not means zilch about how you find readers for your audiobooks, print books, and translations. And those markets are growing rapidly for independent authors. Although lots of independent authors make the majority of their money through KDP Select, that doesn't mean they don't have a wide mindset or can't work right now to find readers outside of those avenues. I see KDP Select authors, sometimes called KU authors, growing their following and readership in print, audiobook, and elsewhere all the time. Independent authors have so many options beyond ebooks. While print and audiobook used to be an afterthought for many authors, there are now tools and software to make the process of creating and growing these other formats easier. You can also build your author business and make serious money with translations, fiction apps, games, ancillary products, and licensing subsidiary rights. And to me, that's what Get Your Book Selling Wide is actually about. In this book, we will cover how to go wide as an independent author across the 5 major rights: ebook, print, audiobook, serials, and translations. You'll find a chapter dedicated to each topic. Chapter 3: eBooks. What each of the Big Five eBook retailers wants and how they've optimized for that. How independent authors are beginning to sell direct, and how wide authors market their eBooks. Chapter 4: Print. The many places where print books are sold, where print sales are heating up, and where they're slowing down. And how you as independent author can increase your print sales, even if you tried before and it didn't work. The market has shifted significantly in the last several years. Chapter 5: Audiobooks. The different formats that you can create, which retailers are pushing audiobooks and which aren't, and how most audiobooks are being sold right now. Chapter 6: Serialized fiction and fiction apps. What market forces are driving the renaissance of serialized fiction and other short-form fiction? How wide authors are currently using fiction apps? And a glossary of the types of short-form fiction and various apps that are housing them. Chapter 7: Translations. Why the translations market is heating up, where the major growth is happening, why creating your own translations may be worth it, and how to get into various markets with your translations. This book is meant to be an overview of each of these topics and provides a state of the industry on these areas of publishing for independent authors. Who are you? My name is Monica Leonelle, and I have been independently publishing since 2009. I write young adult fantasy under Solo Storm and romance under other pen names, with about 40 books total in my catalog, 25 of which are fiction. My urban fantasy novella, The Last Daughter, hit the USA Today bestseller list in 2017 as part of a boxed set. I've also written over 15 nonfiction books about writing, editing, publishing, marketing, and business. You can learn more about my work at theworldneedsyourbook.com. That's not much of an introduction, I know, but I also know that many of you are here to learn the secrets to selling wide, not to hear my life story. I've shared some of my story around going wide, along with how the majority of independent authors deal with going wide in the next section, but feel free to skip past it if you want to get to the meat of the content right away. Who this book is for. As publishing gets more complex, the independent author community needs to learn more about the many subsidiary rights we should be exploiting. This book is ideal for you if you are a wide author or a KU/KDP Select author, as we've established the market is shifting beyond ebooks. Learning how to publish or a seasoned publisher or author. In the independent author community, or in a tangential community like serialized fiction, comics, narration, or film and television. Have a huge popular catalog or a tiny catalog. The latter author can make a living on fewer titles at the moment through proper rights management. Write fiction or nonfiction. My catalog is nearly 50/50 on this., and this book can get you up to speed for both. The publishing world is such a large space right now, and it's easy to get behind, even when you've been publishing for a long time. I've tried to make this book useful to authors at all stages in their journey, from starting out having never published a book, to publishing industry veteran. Getting Things Wrong Sometimes. This book and the series of books that it's attached to, covers an ambitious spread of topics in intense detail. I'm extremely passionate about all things publishing and love researching, using, and digging into each retailer, platform, and company in the publishing business, but I'm also only one person writing the majority of these books. I have my amazing co-author Russell Nohelty to bounce ideas off of for several of these books, which definitely helps. Still, I realized early on in this project that no matter how much I covered my bases through studying and testing all of this stuff,, I would still miss things. For example, I had no idea that Barnes Noble has a separate Nook audiobooks web storefront and app, which is why they don't sell audiobooks direct from their main online store. Despite having sold about 10,000 audiobooks over the years, I still thought of Barnes Noble as a print and ebook retailer, because all of my audiobooks happened to be signed into the ACX exclusivity program, entering in 2015, to 2017 when I hadn't yet decided to be aggressively wide. I hadn't distributed an audiobook beyond Apple, Amazon, and Audible, so I just didn't know. I've found that there are dozens of these instances of just not knowing. I consider myself a person well-versed in the publishing industry through sheer experience. I have been publishing since 2009, have about 40 titles in my catalog, and publish ebooks, print books, audiobooks, and translations across both fiction and nonfiction in multiple genres and niches. I've been wide for years, and been in KU for years across parts of my catalog as well. Still, there is plenty I just don't know. I have done everything humanly possible to get these books right, but there may still be gaps in my knowledge or places where I misstate something. This is where you come in. Please feel free to reach out to me with corrections if I've gotten something wrong within these pages or in subsequent books. I want to make these books the best resource they can be, so I won't be offended. You can email me at team@theworldneedsyourbook.com or through my personal email, igniterstv@gmail.com. I'll be sure to incorporate those updates into the next version of the book. Additionally, the publishing industry is evolving rapidly, and things are changing all the time on every platform. As I've been working on this series for the last 6 months, several new developments have taken place, from new startups joining the publishing space, to various retailers getting new dashboards and features, to fiction apps changing their payment schemes, to new major social networks launching, to the biggest one of all. Amazon launching an entirely new platform to compete in the serialized fiction space. Phew. It's a lot to take in, and even more to keep updated. I've been at nonfiction for years and expect to be issuing new editions of each of the books in this series regularly, but please keep in mind the publishing date on each book, as this series will likely age quickly. Additionally, if you want to follow industry news as it's happening, make sure you join my Substack newsletter, Aggressively Wide. Aggressivelywide.substack.com. TheWorldNeedsYourBook.com/substack. An overview of publishing. The last thing I want to address before we move on to getting your book selling wide is that this book is not able to give a truly deep dive into the mechanics and algorithms of each of the platforms listed. If I were to attempt that, this book would likely be around 2,000 pages long, not a joke. This is why I created a series of books, because each of the major platforms in the publishing world requires 100+ pages to explain all the little intricacies properly. If you are interested in these intricacies, I encourage you to check out each platform's respective book. For example, if you want to know more about Apple Books, the book "Get Your Book Selling on Apple Books" is going to dive deep into that retailer and give you the 10 to 12 major ways that independent authors can get visible on the platform and sell more ebooks. While this book will talk quite a bit about marketing and selling in different formats and languages, it's also meant to be an overview of what's possible and profitable in publishing right now. In the next chapter, I'll be sharing a little about my personal story, why I decided to be aggressively wide, even when I have small pockets of my catalog still in exclusivity—aggressively wide is a mindset, not a cage—and how I've transitioned and seen other authors transition to being wide with their work. Additional Resources. Sign up for my industry newsletter. The best place to keep up with this conversation is to join my industry Substack newsletter, Aggressively Wide. theworldneedsyourbook.com/substack. Subscribe to my podcast. I post new 20-minute episodes about publishing, going wide, serialized fiction, industry trends, and so much more on YouTube and my podcast feed. theworldneedsyourbook.com/podcast. Theworldneedsyourbook.com/youtube. Follow me on Medium. I post regular articles about the publishing industry if you prefer to read about new developments. www.theworldneedsyourbook.com/medium. Check out the rest of the series. The Book Sales Supercharged series focuses on each retailer, format, and platform, diving deep into everything you need to know to succeed in that particular space. You can find all the information about the series, plus grab the entire set of books in a bundle, directly from my website, at a significant discount to purchasing each individually at retailers. theworldneedsyourbook.com/wide Chapter 2. Why I am aggressively wide. I've been in the independent author industry for about 12 years, and I have had accounts at each of the Big Five retailers since the beginning, as KDP Select didn't exist when I first started. I always preferred wide for fiction even when KDP Select became an option, but when I looked into it for nonfiction, the other platforms didn't seem to have much of the readership. So I joined KDP Select on my nonfiction books in about 2015, and because they made more money, I put some fiction in there over the next few years as well. In 2018, I left KU for good and decided to never go back, no matter what I was offered, no matter what new promotions they rolled out. I was seeing people I knew personally get their Amazon accounts shut down, and I felt terrified of that happening to me. I also felt a sense of relief getting out. I could post my work. Anywhere. As an entrepreneur who came into writing through blogging and content marketing, this was a dream come true for me. Over those years when much of my catalog was in KDP Select, I found myself getting casual about promoting on other platforms. I had done relatively well going wide in fiction, especially at Apple Books with a steamy billionaire romance serial in 2014 to 2016, reaching 4 figures a month for the series. During my time away from a wide focus, my catalog still sold in those places, but sales about halved over time. Although I left KU for good in 2018, I didn't move my once exclusive content to the wide retailers right away. I had a lot of resistance to going wide, especially in nonfiction. It wasn't until early 2020 that I got serious about getting my books wide in all formats. This corresponded to me looking at my entire catalog across all platforms and all pen names and deciding to redo it all—new covers, new blurbs, newly edited content, and in some cases new ISBNs and new listings on retailers. It's 2021, and with 40 titles to manage, I'm nowhere near finished. I've gotten through about a quarter of my catalog so far, and hope to make significant progress toward completion in the next year. I'm also writing new books all the time, including this one, and trying to do things right with each of them from the beginning, which in itself is a lot of work. This has given me the unique perspective of both being a longtime career author, with tons of knowledge and history at all of the platforms and in many formats and languages, while also being a new author under specific pen names or with specific books at each of the retailers. I had a lot of new stuff to learn, a lot of old stuff to revisit, and a lot of detailed work to do on my catalog at each of the retailers. I'm still learning, of course, but along the way I found myself developing a real passion for talking about wide retailers and going wide in general. Hence why I'm now writing this series. How I Finally Broke Through My Resistance to Going Wide. Throughout this process, I've taken note of why I had so much resistance to being aggressively wide, having my content in as many formats as possible and with all retailers, and have also collected reasons that I've heard from other authors who feel tied to exclusivity. Here are some of the reasons I wasn't aggressively wide for a long time. Number 1, exclusivity is far more profitable. My experience of KDP Select is that it can be very profitable in the short term, especially if you are writing in a niche or genre that is naturally more popular or aligned to tropes and hot topics. The visibility you gain in the store and the addition of page reads can make your books more profitable as well. But I've also found that for most authors, if you have a solid-sized catalog, evergreen content, and a strong permafree strategy, you can usually make a living with a handful of daily sales on each book at each platform. Widebooks are often priced higher as well, which can make up for lost page reads. What I've seen is that the more profitable choice is really going to depend on your content. If you write similarly to what's trending in traditional publishing, you'll likely do better as a wide author, as competition can be high in those niches on Amazon. If you write to niche sub-genres like paranormal prison academy, you'll probably find a stronger audience through KDP Select with Kindle Unlimited readers. Number 2: I needed to be special or chosen to succeed on other platforms. For years, I was told by mentors and author friends who were further ahead than me that all visibility at wide retailers is merchandised, which basically means that you had to be hand-picked to get any traction in those places. This stressed me out and activated my perfectionist tendencies around having a perfect catalog. I didn't want to be rejected or told I wasn't good enough, So I put off pursuing merchandising until I felt good about my catalog. I also felt like I had to know someone through some serendipitous circumstance. Though I did meet representatives from all the retailers over the years at conferences, I still felt weird about reaching out to them, believing that certainly they had better things to do than talk to me. In truth, only 3 of the Big 5 retailers are merchandised: Barnes Noble, Kobo, and Apple Books, and it's not scary to get accepted into any of their promotions. For Barnes Noble and Kobo Books, you can email their main support email to get access to their promotions tabs. For Apple Books, you can easily get into their promotions through their team email, or you can work indirectly with them through Draft2Digital's regular promotion submissions. Number 3: I needed a representative at every store to get traction. While reps used to play a more important role in getting authors set up in their retail stores, that one-to-one interaction has tampered down in recent years. Google Play Books and Amazon are almost entirely algorithm-driven, and while these companies do have representatives, you're not missing out on anything big by not having your own rep. You can have massive success at both of these retailers, as the promotional tools are deployed for everyone who wants them already. At the other 3 stores that are more heavily merchandised, you don't need a representative— Barnes Noble and Kobo have promotions tabs that you can submit your books through, while Apple Books has emails and forms, which are not publicly shared, but which you can usually access through Draft2Digital. Number 4: Finding success on various stores was magic. When authors can't see a step-by-step playbook to do something, it feels a lot like any success is magic rather than something that can be controlled. For a long time, I believed this about the wide retailers, but what I've found is that every single one has algorithms and optimizations that can improve your sales there. Growing on each of the Big Five retailers is a systematic effort, and the playbook is available to anyone. In my opinion, you want to take time—a month or so per retailer is my recommendation—to optimize your catalog for each platform. It's also worth keeping up with trends on every platform once you've got your content optimized. Things change on the Big Five retailers, but if you reevaluate this for each platform once a year, you are probably going to be fairly up to date. Number 5: I could spray and pray and get good results. A lot of authors try taking their books wide and get nothing. Still more authors go halfway in on going wide in ebook and hit 2 figures a month per platform. But some people go all in on each platform and hit 3 figures a month per platform within a few months., then they repeat the same promotional efforts consistently for years, and hit 4-5 figures a month per platform. While independent authors often lump non-Amazon retailers together as wide retailers, the truth is that each retailer has its own personality, and some retailers have very little in common with each other at all. Google Play Books and Kobo Books, for example, are nearly at the opposite ends of the spectrum in terms of their philosophies toward bookselling and working with authors. The bottom line, when it comes to going wide, is that each retailer represents another stream of income. If you just stick your books up and hope for the best—I've been guilty of this in the past—then your streams of income are probably not going to grow the way you want or hope. Streams of income need to be nurtured to grow, so take a month to nurture your catalog on each retailer, This is when you'll start to see more results. Number 6: I had to write my books a specific way to get results. Wide independent books look different, settling somewhere between independently published and traditionally published. This is because most of the other retailers promote a lot of traditionally published books, so wide books that do well need to look a lot more like traditionally published books in terms of pricing, cover, description, and more. This doesn't mean, however, that your reverse harem paranormal prison academy can't do well on wide retailers. I've had success with taking old books written to trend and changing the packaging to make the book look much more like a traditionally published book. You just have to think of your books in a broader sense, as the wide readers are not as trope-driven the way Kindle Unlimited readers might be. I would take a reverse harem angel paranormal prison academy book and rebrand it as an angel urban fantasy or paranormal romance, depending on whether the book was more fantasy or romance focused, with multiple love interests. In fact, there are already lots of reverse harem books like that in traditional publishing. The tropes are just not highlighted so specifically in the marketing. Wide readers are broader readers. Number 7: Being a wide author was a lot of unenjoyable work. Don't get me wrong, having more streams of income to nurture and grow is going to be more work than focusing on one platform. What I found, however, is that I love the work of being a wide author. I get to experiment, I feel more financially secure, and I have more freedom over how I use my content. I get to play with my content on lots of new apps and platforms, and it's fun to learn more about algorithms and visibility for each of the different retailers. I also like that I'm in alignment with my principles and core values of not limiting my work to one small corner of the publishing industry. The thing I love most about being wide is that it's far more like nonfiction where every writer is truly an entrepreneur and business builder. This is a comfort zone for me because it offers a serving of security that I like. There is so much opportunity to forge your own path that your desire to become an author is guaranteed if you work at it. Number 8: Going wide would scatter my attention too much. I've heard in every entrepreneur circle I've ever been in that Success requires focus. Going wide, on the other hand, is truly an ocean of opportunity. You can go anywhere and forge your own path. You can be everywhere and blow up in popularity anywhere. There are countless successful independent authors out there that are making their living in ways we don't even know about. By being wide, you'll be able to see more of the opportunity, and you will come across more of the people who are genuinely making millions not in exclusivity with any one retailer. The big truth is that yes, success requires focus, and going wide requires focus on one platform at a time. Once you get everything set up, I don't recommend trying to grow your print and your audio and your ebook on every platform all at once. Choose one format plus platform and optimize your catalog there, then move on to the next one. If you did 12 of these per year, you'd have a tidy income at each retailer by the end of the year, and that income would likely continue into the next year. Number 9: The opportunities of wide are not for everyone. I hear a lot of people, especially authors who depend heavily on KDP Select, say things like, "It's getting harder and harder to be an author," And, not everyone is going to make it. Only X percentage of authors who try really hard can make a living at this. I have to disagree. KDP Select is naturally a competitive environment, mired in ranking and hierarchy. The bestseller lists are literally leaderboards where in order to win, move up in visibility, everyone around you has to lose. When you are stuck in a competitive environment, it's easy to believe that success is scarce. It's also easy to believe that if you've achieved it, you're better than others, while if you didn't achieve it, you're not cut out for this business. Neither is true. As I said before, going wide is truly an ocean of opportunity. This is a good thing, as it means that you can build your author career on your terms and forge your own path to success. Pulling together a profitable catalog of ebooks, print books, audiobooks, serialized fiction, translations, and more according to your unique skill sets, interests, and passions. I genuinely believe that being an independent author for a living has never been a better profession, and that it's only getting better and better for everyone who wants to do it. When you focus too closely on one relatively small section of publishing for too long, You become a fish who lives in a fishbowl. It happened often in traditional publishing, and I see it happening in areas of independent publishing as well. Fish who live in fishbowls cannot really understand the vastness of the ocean, and you'll find authors, even very successful ones, who live in fishbowls still. Number 10: I could always leave exclusivity if I needed to. When I have made decisions to be exclusive, especially in audiobooks, I've always thought to myself, well, I'm not doing this anyway, and worst case scenario, I have to wait out a contract, start later than everyone else who moved faster, or write something new that I hold all the rights to. And while this sounds reasonable and smart, in truth, any type of exclusivity is an opportunity cost that's difficult to value. Lots of authors look at exclusivity in KDP Select as 90 days, or only for certain projects, or are half in, half out. And it's true, the amount of time you are committing to is only 90 days. That said, 90 days often turns into years and years. For me, I made a choice to be in KDP Select with a specific series of books that ended up doing pretty well. I left them in for about 3 years before pulling them out. Then I intended to redo the books, right before I took a semi-unplanned 2-year break from publishing. I lost 5 years of the books being on wide platforms, and who knows what might have happened if I had committed to getting them out of exclusivity sooner. Most of the Big Five retailers outside of Amazon give more credence to author history and book history. Additionally, other retailers are gaining ground in ebook because of boosted audiobook sales, which brings users over to buy ebooks too. Why I'm Personally Aggressively Wide. Outside of some old contracts and a few experimental projects, I have zero intention of ever going back to my old ways of thinking. My old ways included: Focusing mostly on ebook sales. Jumping in and out of KDP Select, based on the whims of the marketplace. Signing away my rights in less popular formats for long periods of time because I wasn't going to exploit them anyway. Every single time, those rights have become way more valuable over time. This industry changes quickly. Seeing exploiting subsidiary rights as a "nice to have" or bonus money, rather than as a high priority project. Looking at my short-term income over the longevity of my career. Throwing things together but not nurturing them—the 2 years where I took off from publishing was a little unexpected, and boy do I wish I had my catalog in order through those years. There are so many reasons I love my new choice—to be aggressively wide in as many formats and languages as possible. Number 1: Experimentation. It's always good to do things that work, especially when it comes to reliably paying your bills. I also enjoy the experiments though—using technology to try something a little different, and seeing how readers respond. I want to try everything and have so much passion around finding and interacting with readers in new and different ways. Number 2: Security. Security means different things to different people, and some people likely view exclusivity as secure. There's no right answer. You can also make a bunch of money through exclusive programs and invest it wisely, the ultimate choice if your main priority is financial security. Personally, I want to be secure in my writing career. Money is important, but it's not truly what drives me. I ultimately want to be in as many places as an author and have the greatest chance of breaking out. In truth, I would love to write television someday, so I want to be discoverable everywhere. 3. Direct Sales. One of the most basic questions of business is, "How can we bypass the middleman and go direct?" Authors have spent the last decade not asking this question, but they are starting to. This is an area that most successful authors are considering and trying to build. You would rarely be able to go completely direct, and distribution and retail partners add a ton of value to your business. But you should have an understanding of how to sell directly to your readers, as it provides you stronger cash flow, better data, and a deeper sense of security. Authors have been avoiding this, but that can't last. Keep listening, I share why in subsequent chapters. 4. Longevity. I believe that the secret to a long author career is to be everywhere, and find readers on every retailer and in every format. The more spread out your portfolio is, the better. I've seen my work take off over and over again in surprising places and ways, usually when I least expect it. Number 5: Money. I truthfully believe that there is more money to be made in being wide than there is in being exclusive. There are a few examples of people who are doing it in the independent fiction author space. There are also thousands of examples in the independent nonfiction space. Most of the people who are doing this have an aggressively wide mindset, even when a portion of their catalog is in KDP Select. How Independent Authors Go Wide in eBook. If you are an established author, you may be nodding your head at much of this, but still wondering, "How can I consider going wide when I make so much or all of my money in the KDP Select program?" When you've established yourself and have something that works, there's a great risk to switching things up. If KDP Select is not working that well for you, it's easy to make the jump to wide, but if KDP Select is working out? Why mess with a good thing? Here are some of the ways that independent authors go wide. Number 1: Starting wide. Some authors start wide right out of the gate. In fact, some authors that have been around for a while have simply stayed wide and never enrolled in KDP Select to begin with. You can also start wide with a new pen name or a new series. There will be a learning curve, but at the same time, you'll be set up for the long term of your career right from the beginning, which is nice. Number 2: Moving wide cold turkey. Some people do what I did and move wide cold turkey just by letting their KDP Select contracts expire on all their books. Personally, I went into my dashboard and unenrolled every book. Within a few months, I was free to go wide with my content. If you don't want to wait, you can also email Amazon, as they will usually let you out of your contracts early. Even though I personally did this, I can't recommend it for anyone with a solid presence on Amazon. Wide sales take a longer time to get started, and if you are new to the wide retailers, there's a fairly steep learning curve at each one. Who has a good chance of succeeding at going wide? There are a few indicators that your content might do well. Regular BookBub International Featured Deals (International BBFDs). If you can get BookBub Featured Deals on a book with consistency, then that will likely continue if you take that same book or series wide. Only when you're wide, you'll get the US included because you've left the KDP Select program. Since BookBub Featured Deals are a great way to get sales going wide, This is a good indicator you'll make solid sales wide. Strong audiobook sales. Many of the wide retailers push audiobooks, and if you are in KDP Select, then your presence at these retailers is likely through your audiobook catalog. This indicates that you already have a readership that you can start to convert to ebook sales as well. Relatively low page reads and payouts compared to sales. If you are not making much in page reads, you're likely not going to miss much income as you transition out of KDP Select. Strong ability to rack up pre-orders. KU readers don't pre-order, so if you have thousands of pre-orders, you are probably safe to try going wide. Number 3: Partial Catalog Wide. If you've already established yourself as an author on Amazon, You may be interested in only taking a portion of your catalog wide to help you learn each platform. Typically, authors choose lower-performing series, especially if they are performing poorly in page reads, translations, a smaller pen name if they have several, or books from their catalog that are in a popular wide genre, which has usually cooled down with Kindle Unlimited readers. Number 4: Exclusive, then wide. Several popular authors who have made the move to wide put their new releases in KDP Select for a term or two before releasing them on wide retailers and staying wide. I believe this is one of the best ways to do it if you have a readership in Kindle Unlimited and want to satisfy them even after you move most of your catalog to wide retailers. The downside to this method is that to take advantage of pre-order visibility at wide retailers, you'll have to wait until your Kindle Unlimited run is over. Between the exclusivity time period and the pre-order period, your wide readers may be waiting a long time to receive your books. Something you can do to tamper this is to offer your book to your email list ahead of publication. Put the book in Kindle Unlimited for one term, and then place the book wide for anyone who didn't buy it the first time. This could be a way to get direct sales from wide readers as well. Number 5: Wide, then exclusive. A few authors use the strategy of posting their book wide for a month or so, in order to take advantage of long pre-orders at all the retailers. This is a smart strategy when so many of the wide retailers focus heavily on pushing your book during launch week and the few subsequent weeks. It's also ideal for you if you tend to rack up many pre-orders and either want the sales over borrows and page reads for those, or know you can hit the USA Today bestseller list by starting wide for the launch week. The downside to this method is that delisting your books on wide platforms means that you have to start from scratch if you ever go back. It's also hard to maintain your readership at wide retailers when you only have a single book up in your catalog. Even if you receive promotions and visibility, readers don't have anywhere to go besides the single book. New readers can't buy your other books, so you don't get a cumulative effect around marketing that comes with having a large catalog. Authors sometimes sell their book directly through their website or through Patreon before they release the book into KDP Select. This can be a way for diehard fans on other platforms to keep reading your books right when they come out. Number 6: First in Series Wide. With this option, authors put their first book permanently free on all retailers while putting the rest of the books in the series in KU. This straddling of the line is largely considered shenanigans in the independent author world, but some authors still do it, which implies there are benefits. First, you can use that content everywhere, including your website and email list, to draw readers in, then direct them to purchase the rest on Amazon. You can maintain an author presence at wide retailers with these ebooks, and that effort can be bolstered by audiobook sales. You can also still apply for US BookBubs and use that system to advertise heavily and get more sales on Amazon. The downsides are that it annoys Kindle Unlimited readers who expect to find the first book in the series in KU, and it also annoys the wide readers who download the first book in your series then can't find the rest at their preferred retailer. Furthermore, Amazon's algorithms work heavily against permafree books, so you may see better results with a 99-cent series starter in Kindle Unlimited. I rarely think that first in series wide with the rest of the series in KDP Select is a good idea. For each series, be in or be out. The half and half is a compromise with no solid winners, and it creates a lot of ill will among multiple reader groups. It's a personal choice, and your choice matters. One of the biggest messages I want to stress is that authors have choices these days. You can decide to stay in KDP Select with most or all of your books, but still take an aggressively wide mindset in other formats. You can decide to stay out of KDP Select and work to break out on other retailers and fiction apps. You can do translations of your KDP Select books and build your author name outside of Amazon, through promoting those versions of your book. Here's the important piece of this: your choice matters. When you decide to work on your print sales and get your books selling at as many retailers as possible, that matters. When you invest in translation so you can reach language markets that are served by Apple Books, Google Play Books, and Kobo, that matters. When you take one low-performing series out of KDP Select and onto wide retailers that matters. Every small step you take to be aggressively wide is a new potential stream of income that expands your readership and diversifies your revenue sources. It all adds up and puts you in a better position to remain a career author for the rest of your life. Is it too overwhelming to be aggressively wide? Before I end this chapter, I wanted to address an elephant in the room that I also had to contend with when I was getting clear on what being aggressively wide meant for me and my catalog. What about the sheer overwhelm of things that we as independent authors have to do to get our books in front of readers? Many of us have left our 9-to-5s so that we can do what we love as a 5-to-9. We're overwhelmed with just creating and promoting our ebooks and getting our content into a few other key formats like print and audiobook. This overwhelm can also lead to burnout, which is one of a creative's worst fears. To me, the key to avoiding overwhelm is to focus on one aspect of expanding your catalog at a time. Perhaps for you right now, that means writing more books. For those with many books, maybe it means getting your entire catalog into audiobook, or getting your best-performing series into German language markets. You know your most important next move best. Trust yourself. Yes, if you try to exploit all your rights at once, you'll get overwhelmed. But once you exploit the right, the work is done. You have created an evergreen product that has the potential to continue making you money for decades to come. That's exciting! Nurture this small seed that you've planted in your catalog, as it can grow year over year. The second thing you can do is simply hang onto your rights, and forego a smaller payout now for a long-term payout when you have time to exploit the right. The publishing industry is changing so rapidly that your intellectual property is actually appreciating in value. You can tell that this is happening when major companies like Google, Amazon, and Apple develop tools to help authors exploit these rights smarter, better, or faster. This has happened to me personally, in both audiobooks and translations. Within a few years of signing away my rights, it happens without fail. Someone has created the tools and technology to make exploiting the right easy, Or someone has built a community of trained professionals who can help you exploit the right at the level of traditional publishing. Or someone has built a platform that solves distribution and delivery problems that made it impossible to exploit the right myself in the past. Choose the easiest rights to exploit now, and sit on the other rights until someone comes along and makes it easy for you. Again, I repeat, and I'll likely be beating this drum for the remainder of this series, your intellectual property has massive value to big tech companies. They will build tools to help you exploit your rights, because it helps them gain market share and beat out their competition across multiple verticals. Additional Resources. Join the Wide for the Win Facebook group. This is by far the best place to get advice on how to move your books wide. You can learn all about the different retailers and distributors that help you go wide,, as well as how people are making the transition. There's also the Tree of Knowledge, which has pinned posts that answer tons of questions about going wide. If you have a specific question after searching the group, I encourage you to post it and get answers for your specific situation. facebook.com/group/wideforthewin. Get coaching from publishing experts Erin Wright and Mark Lefebvre. These two stars of the publishing industry can offer one-on-one advice about going wide, personalized to your catalog and needs. Erin is especially great at helping you set up a wide book launch, and Mark is well-versed in how to optimize sales on multiple wide platforms, as he has worked for retailers and distributors in the industry for years and years. You can learn more about their coaching services in the Wide for the Win Facebook group. Facebook.com/group/widethewin. Check out the rest of the series. The Book Sales Supercharged series focuses on each retailer, format, and platform, diving deep into everything you need to know to succeed in that particular space. You can find all the information about the series, plus grab the entire set of books in a bundle, directly from my website, at a significant discount to purchasing each individually at retailers. TheWorldNeedsYourBook.com/wide. Chapter 3: eBooks. Now that we have discussed the wide versus KU debate from several different angles, we're ready to get serious about diving into each of the major formats that independent authors are currently using to make money without a publishing contract. I'm starting with a chapter on ebooks, since they are the dominant format that most independent authors are selling in right now, but remember, going wide is about far more than just ebooks. I also want to give an overview of each of the big 5 ebook retailers. This overview is not specific to ebooks, however; all 5 of these retailers also sell audiobooks and translations, 2 of them sell print books, and 1 of them has a fiction app. Although the wide versus KU debate often divides the retailers into wide retailers versus Amazon, the truth is that each retailer has a different and unique business model, and each wants different things from the independent authors they work with. Likewise, each retailer has their own set of promotional tools, best practices, marketing strategies, and visibility algorithms that drive more sales on their stores. When creating the Book Sales Supercharge series, I thought it would be especially important to give each of the ebook retailers their own separate book. As such, I don't go into detail on all the mechanisms of each site in this chapter. It would make the chapter literally 600+ pages long, but rather give an overview that can help you understand the state of the industry for independent authors at the time of this writing in May of 2023. 2021. Apple Books. Apple has stated many times that their business strategy is to make the iPhone the best product of its kind on the market. All roads lead to the iPhone as far as Apple is concerned. So when it comes to the Apple Books store, I look at what independent authors can provide to Apple, as well as where Apple sees themselves fitting into the publishing landscape today through the lens of the iPhone. Clearly, every ebook retailer wants to gain market share in the publishing space, but when you look at how Apple Books has evolved over the years, it seems hard to ignore that they see themselves as a place where visual and image-heavy books can prevail. This makes sense. Apple has always been a sleek company that attracted visual creatives and builds products and apps that are ideal for visual artists. When their now-defunct software iBooks Author debuted in 2012, it hoped to attract creators of layout-heavy books, like textbooks, cookbooks, and children's books. These books can now be created in Pages. Creating one of these books was time-consuming, and it was difficult to control the end result in digital format perfectly. The book was also only designed to be consumed on Apple products, and at the time, Amazon held about 60% of most English-language markets. In contrast, Amazon is not a font or image-friendly ebook retailer. They charge you fees based on file size, which means you lose money on every book if you include a ton of images. Even if you get images into your books, Amazon optimizes them to the point of not looking great. Amazon's Kindle is a pioneer of e-ink, which means that many of their reading devices are in black and white, and can have the backlighting switched off, neither of which is good for displaying beautiful images. Amazon also allows users to change text size and font, so they don't always support your own formatting unless you upload a PDF or fixed EPUB. This isn't a huge issue if you write novels, but if you create anything with images and graphics, you are most likely sticking largely to print for sales. Although they've folded iBooks Author into their Pages software, Apple Books doesn't appear to have changed much around their desire to have beautiful visual books on their platform. This won't mean much to most independent authors, but it may mean a lot to children's book authors, comic creators, graphic novelists, nonfiction authors, and those who think, wait, I still hold my rights for all this stuff. It will also mean a lot to those who are watching the Webtoon space exploding in Japan and South Korea. And those who are watching the recent acquisitions of Wattpad, Radish, and Tapas acquisitions. Wattpad was acquired by South Korean internet conglomerate Naver, while Radish and Tapas were acquired by competing South Korean company Kakao. Both companies have a heavy investment in webtoons. Apple Books is in an interesting position if digital reading does drift more into the visual side. As they genuinely have the tools to support visual and interactive books through their Pages app. The other upside? Since these books will be optimized for Apple products like iPhone and iPad, authors may create exclusive content just for the Apple Books store. That said, when all the short-form digital reading is in apps anyway, Apple is getting a cut either way, regardless of whether the content is then uploaded to its Apple Books store. Aside from visual content, what else does Apple Books want from independent authors? Number 1: Creative brand awareness. Apple Books will reject you for promotions if you don't have Apple Books retail links listed on your website. They also like when you tweet at them for your new release, or post an Apple-specific image, your book cover on an iPad for example, on Instagram. Apple wants you to understand that they are sleek, and they want you to look sleek and well-designed too. They also want acknowledgement. As a company, they are not used to being a minor player in any space, and Apple has always had the tendency to wait out competitive challenges and launch themselves back to the top with something new and shiny when the timing is right. Don't treat them insignificantly. Goo them to your side instead. Number 2: Premium, well-designed content. Apple Books wants a solid, professional-looking catalog, and the details matter. Apple Books sells a lot of traditionally published and mainstream books still. To compete, you want to look more like a traditionally published book across pricing, cover, description, and interior. Your book doesn't have to look exactly like a traditionally published book, but it must be slick and creative. Check out Apple Books' Instagram for their aesthetic, and try to mimic it to the best of your ability. Number 3: New releases. Sometimes people will tell you that Apple Books likes pre-orders. While that's true to an extent, what they actually like is new releases., and having a preorder helps you get promotion on your new release. They market new releases heavily everywhere in their store, much like a traditional book retailer. Number 4: Exclusivity. While every retailer wants exclusivity on some level, Apple Books in particular wants authors to use their visual tools and create books that are largely optimized viewable only on Apple products. If I were creating any visual book, I would make an effort to make a special version for Apple Books readers using their tools, specifically Pages. Number 5: Fan-personing over Apple Books. It's not just branding; it's getting curious about them as a retailer. Knowing how their promotions work. Using their coupons. Meeting them in person. Caring about their goals. They built their brand on fanboys and fangirls, and they are accustomed as a company to being the cool kid. Get to know this retailer personally. Amazon. Amazon is by far the largest e-commerce company in the world by revenue, and has the goal of making customers happy. Amazon is data-driven to a point, —with the ethos that the data tells them what their customers want. This is very different from the other big tech companies in this chapter. Apple's ethos as a tastemaker and trendsetter is that they tell the customer what they want, while Google has a somewhat distant relationship from the customer, caring more about the customer's data than the customer, at least in the moment. What does Amazon want from authors? Number 1: Exclusivity. Amazon offers two bestseller lists: one that prioritizes traditional publishing dubbed by David Goran as the Popularity List, and one that prioritizes exclusive KDP Select authors called the Amazon Bestseller List. Exclusivity through the Kindle Unlimited program helped Amazon win nearly all the market share in ebook Sometimes authors try to make the argument that Amazon will end this reader program, or that Amazon will soon allow authors to set their price to zero, or a myriad of other things. It all ignores the fact that exclusivity is where Amazon's hold over the market lies. They are not going to give that up unless it's pried from their cold, dead hands, so no, KDP Select won't be ending anytime soon. And Amazon will never add any of the features that conflict with their promotional incentives for authors in KDP Select. It's not going to happen. But does it matter? Amazon has tried to consolidate the market in other formats like audiobook, using the same playbook it used for ebooks. With the launch of Kindle Vella, it appears to also be trying that in the serialized fiction space. Number 2: Experimentation. Amazon is an idea company; they like to launch new programs and try new things. They've launched more writer programs than any other retailer, and have genuinely focused over the years to build a community of authors around their products and services. Number 3: One-Stop Shop. Amazon has always prioritized convenience; 2-day shipping is a great example. And they have always attracted customers who also prioritize their time and attention. Part of valuing convenience is Amazon's desire to be a one-stop shop to everyone in the world. They try to be that to their readers, but they also try to be that to their authors. Amazon would like you to upload your ebook, print, hardcover, and audiobook through their websites, for example. They would like you to stay exclusive with them because they can provide you the most readers. They would like you to ship your ancillary products to Amazon through Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA). They would like to serve all indie creators, and it wouldn't surprise me if they get into print on demand for other books besides novels. Their programs are set up to be synchronous and help you sell more if you are participating in their ecosystem. And the truth is, it works. Number 4: Monetization. At Amazon, you are often both the business partner and the customer. It's no secret in big tech that you want to be the platform that's connecting people. Authors came in as business partners, but now we are customers, specifically of Amazon's ad platform. Amazon cares a lot about authors and has spent the last decade trying to help authors with tools and programs that could connect them to more readers. They have invested a ton into the publishing industry as a whole, and they've also changed it for the better in many ways. But Amazon is still a big tech company, and the reality is that they are always going to choose business models that have a tendency to squeeze the creator at both ends: sales of books as the business partner and cost of visibility as the customer. Kobo. Kobo partners with both brick-and-mortar and online bookstore retailers from all over the world like Walmart, Fnac, and Booktopia. I've looked into almost all of these strategic partnerships, and the most common one is that Kobo approaches a major retail bookstore chain, usually the Barnes Noble of that country, to use an American reference, and offers them a way to get into ebooks. The retail store can sell their Kobo reading device line and offer Kobo's extensive library to their readers in the inevitable cannibalization of print by ebooks. Kobo gets storefront visibility at some of the biggest retail bookstore chains, while the store gets an object for ebook readers to buy, as well as a place to direct its ebook readers. Kobo sometimes gets forgotten as a big tech player because in truth, it is and always has been a book industry company above all else. It's a Canadian company that loves books and builds very nice e-reader devices. But Kobo actually has a really solid foothold in global e-commerce, with its parent company Rakuten holding significant market share of global e-commerce and its strategic partner Walmart holding a significant portion of US print readership through its big-box retailer storefronts. As well as a massive foothold in India e-commerce through Flipkart. Authors sometimes assume that Kobo can't or won't take off somewhere, but they have some very interesting partnerships that can't be discounted. What does Kobo want from authors? Number 1: Loyalty and a relationship. Kobo is a Canadian company with Canadian employees who value relationships and kindness. They absolutely reward authors who have been with them for a while and have helped or are helping them grow. They are passionate book lovers and readers, and they really do want to get to know you more than any other retailer. If you love them back, they are happy to work with you, partner with you, and create special promotions for you because they genuinely want to see you succeed as an author. Number 2: Bundles. Kobo doesn't just love its authors, but also loves its readers. It nurtures readers through loyalty programs, and giving discounts on lots of higher-priced content like bundles. Kobo particularly likes bundles, because they sell particularly well at Kobo. Many of the promotions that Kobo runs require boxed sets to participate with, so it's important to figure out what boxed sets make the most sense for your catalog if you haven't already. Number 3: Translations. Kobo is well-connected to book retailers globally, perhaps the most well-connected. Barnes Noble is US-only, and while Google and Apple each serve 50+ countries, there's a big difference between opening an online store in a country and partnering with the biggest retailer names in publishing in a country. Kobo creates strategic partnerships, which means their ebook catalog is their ultimate currency. The number of titles in the catalog is a huge selling point for Kobo, but beyond that, the number of titles in the languages of the country is probably an important number too when negotiating these deals. Kobo would like to keep feeding those international catalogs, and one of the best ways to do that is to encourage and support translations. Kobo also has a European representative who can help you get merchandised at online retailers like Fnac, which is popular in France, Spain, Portugal, and more. Number 4: A love of publishing. Kobo still has great love for traditional publishing. They are focused on new releases, similar to traditional brick-and-mortar stores in the past. For Kobo, pre-orders matter, a Tuesday release date matters, and they heavily merchandise their storefront for book releases launches. They are also the company that to me, is particularly innovative in the book space. Although they are owned by a big tech conglomerate, they don't function much like one. Instead of playing these e-commerce wars overtly, like several of the other retailers do, Kobo seems particularly focused on making incremental improvements to their platform that are focused on publishing specifically. For example, they were among the first to get rid of the ceiling on 70% royalties, to allow direct audiobook uploads, and to offer reading subscriptions to countries where Amazon isn't present yet. Perhaps it's because Kobo is partnered with many of the biggest bookstores across the world, and thus has to work with what those companies are most comfortable with, and the way things were always done. To me, Kobo is a passionate bookseller that will always look for unique partnerships in pockets of publishing that Amazon hasn't yet reached. Google Play Books. Google is a data-driven company that is far more interested in organizing information than anything else. Amazon is interested in using innovation to drive products. Google is interested in using innovation to drive artificial intelligence. As such, Google wants to feed its software all of your books in multiple formats like print, audiobook, and ebook, and likely multiple languages through translations. The technology is here for Google to take your ebook and translate it into all of these other formats, But thankfully, copyright law is still strong in the United States and other major English-language territories, at least for now. Copyright law is likely the only reason why Google can't move on creating these formats on their own to feed their search engine. And if you think I'm being slightly dramatic and that will never happen, note that Google has already tried to do this with print books through the Google Books project. And had to be legally stopped. To me, Google Play Books is likely the least interested in books from a reader perspective, and more interested from a data perspective. They are not passionate book lovers like the Kobo folks, nor are they trying to make their readers ridiculously happy like Amazon. I imagine there are fascinating AI applications for much of our book data, though it's hard to know what those might be, until Google reveals its hand a bit more. If for Apple all roads lead to iPhone, Google's corollary is probably search. For years, Google held all the power in driving search traffic to your e-commerce website, but that power is shifting more recently. E-commerce is an important part of search, and Google's market share is getting chipped away at by Amazon's own powerful search engine for their website and apps. It'll be interesting to see e-commerce search changes in the next 5 years. Given all of this, what does Google Play Books want from authors? Number 1: Good metadata. The Google Play Books store is driven almost entirely by algorithms. They use metadata input, along with several other things, to determine where to show your book in their stores. Google, as a company, is particularly interested in organizing the world's offline data through scanning books. Google Books started as a scanning project that got Google in trouble for copyright infringement. Some of the metadata that can really help you get eyes on your books is the categories section—more is better at the moment—along with the description section, where you can list keywords you would normally target through advertising like other authors' names, other books in your genre, and other search terms you'd like to dominate, like urban fantasy novel. Number 2: Mentions across the web. Google Play Books acquired Oyster, a reader subscription company, back in 2015. They acquired the company for two reasons: their software developers and their algorithmic crawling of the web to best determine popularity around books. The three founders of Oyster all worked on Google Play Books for 2 to 3 years after Oyster was acquired, presumably implementing their search algorithms for the store. Many people question if Google Play Books works similarly to Google Search. The answer is not exactly, as they are completely different products built separately from the ground up. Google also sees web indexing differently than book indexing. As it ultimately sees books as the world's offline data. That said, Oyster was doing several things that aligned to how Google has built their search algorithm. I go into far more detail about this on Get Your Book Selling on Google Play Books, but the gist of it is that it's likely that mentions of a book across search aid in discoverability within the store. I haven't tested this much, but I will say that when I put two nonfiction books on Permafree at the beginning of the year, My book that has 80 podcast episodes mentioning it did significantly better than my book that is actually popular and selling well but has fewer mentions across the web. It's possible that search engine optimization (SEO) is going to become more important for authors who want to do well in this particular store. Number 3: Audiobooks. Like Apple Books, Google Play Books started investing in their store again when audiobooks started growing. It could be coincidence, but I think not, as they are trying to get AI-read audiobooks into their stores, as well as trying to make direct upload for audiobooks available to their authors. Readers are already reading ebooks via text-to-speech technology more and more, so this will be a welcome change to the industry, especially as Google is respecting copyright law and not trying to cut creators out of the deal. Number 4: Engagement. Google has Android, the most popular operating system for smartphones. Worldwide, they hold between 80 to 85% of the market, with Apple holding the other 15%. There are no other competitors worldwide. As you can imagine, mobile engagement is extremely important to them. They have a fairly new loyalty program called Play Points, which they've tested and have seen massive success with in other countries, specifically South Korea and Japan. They recently rolled it out to the US and will be pushing it to major Western European countries as well. For independent authors, this means that our books and audiobooks are a valuable point of engagement to Google. Currently, people can get your ebook or audiobook for free through Google Play Points signups and credits. Google pays for the credit usage at full value still, so you can increase your sales at Google simply by letting people know about the program through your newsletter, social media, website, and other platforms. Barnes Noble. Barnes Noble has an unparalleled brand as a book retailer in the United States. To some extent, however, the company is still in survival mode, and trying to save itself. There's some good news. Barnes Noble has recently been acquired by Elliott Advisors, the company that also acquired Waterstones, a UK book retailer, a few years ago. With the acquisition, Barnes Noble received new CEO James Daunt, who is responsible for the Waterstones turnaround. Daunt has made clear that he intends to bring back the Nook in a big way to their 600+ brick-and-mortar stores across the United States. Additionally, the company appears to be investing in independent authors and their Barnes Noble Press platform. They've recently launched new promotion tools, and they are building an ad platform for their website, currently in private beta. What does Barnes Noble want from authors? Number 1: Sales popularity. Barnes Noble has merchandising opportunities, but even if you land a promotion, they will list the books in popularity order. If you are already selling on Barnes Noble, you will be on the first or second page of the promotion, which is great. If you are not selling, you may end up at the end of the promotion, which doesn't help your sales all that much. One thing that authors do when they get a Barnes Noble promotion is run a stack of ads in the days or week beforehand. This gets their visibility on Barnes Noble high and sets them up nicely for Barnes Noble's promotion days. Another strategy you can take is to apply for Barnes Noble promos shortly after you've had a run with a BookBub or another several email sites. It's hard to say if this would give you better consideration, but if you get a promotion, you will already have the recent boost of your last promotion. 2. Free Books. Barnes Noble doesn't necessarily love free books by themselves, but it does love making sales. In terms of read-through, every free book given away at Barnes Noble is worth about 5 times a download at Amazon. Barnes Noble has a strong brand in the largest English-speaking territory in the world. Their readership is loyal and not particularly overwhelmed by options. 3. Print Books. Barnes Noble has long been a print format retailer that jumped into ebooks and audiobooks. They've prioritized print books in their author dashboard, something none of the other Big Five retailers besides Amazon has done, and Barnes Noble did it first. There is another reason to upload your print books—to be visible there. Barnes Noble has changed the structure of their business and given store managers purchase power for what they want to sell. Independent authors now have a much better shot at ending up in a bookstore because they can run an outreach to Barnes Noble store managers and get their titles considered for local or regional merchandising. Number 4: Children's, middle-grade, and young adult books, manga, magazines. Similar to Apple Books, it seems like Barnes Noble is trying to promote books in areas where Amazon is weak in ebook format. Specifically, visual storytelling products and timely, digestible content. Unlike Apple Books, which skews to a younger demographic due to its fan-person culture, Barnes Noble has a strong foothold in several of these areas of publishing because of their stores. Barnes Noble has a segment of college and university-branded bookstores, where young people are searching for visual content, like comics and magazines. This is important because it demonstrates that Barnes Noble is seeing the short-form fiction renaissance that is taking place on fiction apps and in graphic format through webnovels, webcomics, and webtoons. Ebook Distributors. When you can't go direct with a retailer, you can usually get into their storefront as an individual author through a distributor. There are 5 major distributors for ebooks by independent authors. Draft2Digital (D2D). D2D is by far the most popular one in the independent author community, and for good reason. They have a nice interface and incredible customer support. They are also very present in the community and are really great at helping independent authors get visibility at harder-to-get-noticed stores like Apple Books. Smashwords: I have a special place in my heart for Smashwords, as it was the first distributor in this space and a company that literally helped me to make my dreams come true as an author. Smashwords has its own storefront where people can buy your books, and several retail partners worth checking out. PublishDrive (PD). PD is a Hungarian company and the largest distributor, reaching 400+ stores in print, ebook, and audiobook. They have an unusual payment model which repels many independent authors, but they can reach so many markets that it may be something to consider if you are building a catalog of translations. Streetlib SL. SL is an Italian company and another great place to list your books at if you are going international or trying to get into libraries. They reach many of the same retailers that PublishDrive can reach. IngramSpark. Ingram is one of the largest print distributors in the US. When they brought print on demand to independent authors, they also offered a way to distribute your ebooks. The biggest issue with, is, is that you can't check and uncheck specific retailers. You have to go all in on IngramSpark and eBook, and could not go direct with any retailer, not even Amazon. I don't recommend this for authors, but perhaps your situation warrants it. Do your own research. With these 5 distributors, you don't have to choose just one. Many authors are listed at several or even all of these distributors, as they each reach specific niche markets that none of the others is distributing to. You can create your list of distributors with priority and check yes for all the retailers from distributor number 1, then all the retailers minus the ones you already have from distributor number 2, and so on. The most important thing is to only distribute once to a specific platform. As retailers don't appreciate multiple listings with them. Selling your ebooks direct. In the nonfiction space, everyone sells directly from their websites. This is a good thing because it means that fiction authors can do the same without having to build any new tools specific to this industry. We have the tools already, as well as the playbook for how to sell your books directly is right there on the internet. You can also read my book, Get Your Book Selling on Your Website, for a detailed look at how to sell your fiction directly. There are many reasons to sell direct. You get cash flowing right away, which means you can scale quickly with ads. You cut out the middleman and either keep or pass through to your customers that portion that would normally go to retailer fees. You can create cool bundles that are not available at storefronts, like a print-audio-ebook combination. Right now, authors are usually trying to decide between two options when it comes to selling directly from their websites: Payhip, a platform where you can get an ebook storefront, but which handles all the delivery and tax compliance for you. BookFunnel plus WooCommerce or Shopify. BookFunnel is a delivery service for ebooks, while WooCommerce and Shopify are the two leading shop software products. WooCommerce is ideal if you want to run your store from your website, giving you full control over it, while Shopify is ideal if you want to pay monthly fees for a sleek shop on Shopify's platform. I probably wouldn't consider any others, besides these two options. If you use a setup like Dropbox for delivery and PayPal for payments, your system will not be powerful enough to handle taxes, discounts, bundling, and so much more. How wide authors market their ebooks. There are so many groups and communities dedicated to marketing your book while it's in KDP Select. If your ebooks are wide, you will undoubtedly run across lots of well-meaning advice that is billed as for all authors, when really it's only appropriate to KDP Select authors. For example, you might hear that rapid release works, or that short pre-orders work, or that writing to certain trends work, or that having a certain cover style works, but those things are tailored to the KDP Select program. Usually, what works on wide retailers is the opposite of what works on KDP Select, as Amazon tends to favor its own program in terms of visibility and sales rankings. This is a book about going wide, and that includes in the ebook format. These are some of the general ways that wide authors use to find new readers. If you want to do a deep dive into each retailer, all of them have visibility levers that are just as interesting as Amazon's. I highly recommend picking up the series books for each of the retailers, plus the book for selling directly on your website. Number 1: First in series permafree. Most personalized visibility on the ebook retailer platforms, specifically personalized emails and push notifications, will default to showing books in the same series or showing books by the same author first. This means that while in general permafree is good, a first in series permafree is better because if someone downloads your book 0 or book 1 for free,, they will be shown the next book in your series not long after. Many of the retailers also have in-app or in-store display of the next several books in your series. This can appear to the side of your main listing, below your main listing, or within the app in your library where the first book is downloaded. Several retailers also have an "end of book experience," which basically just means that when you finish a book, you will be directed to another specific action. This action is often to direct the reader to buy the next book in the series by making it obvious, prominent, and attractive. All of the retailers have specific pages dedicated to helping readers find for free. Each retailer has a different system for getting added to this free page, though it's usually through the promotions tabs or through contacting a representative or their support team. Wide retailers tend to be more friendly toward free books and encourage them. Amazon has a free bestseller list for every category, but it prefers to push its Kindle Unlimited program, where books can feel like they are free because they are part of a subscription. Amazon also de-weighs free books in sales rank, as it should, a free sale is not the same as a paid sale. Unfortunately though, sales rank drives much of the visibility on Amazon, so free books don't stand much of a chance. This means that a permafree book on Amazon is far less likely to show up prominently in Also Boughts, the Kindle reading app, search results, and presumably in other personalized visibility like emails and push notifications. You can get to these perma-free lists here. Apple Books, Kobo, Barnes Noble via Draft2Digital, which is the easiest way if you don't have an Apple Books representative. draft2digital.wafuu.com/form/draft2digital-free-first-in-series. Kobo Books, under the promotions tab, apply for one of the free page lists. Once accepted, schedule a permanent price change or a freebie sale under your book's pricing page. This will keep you on Kobo's free page as long as your book is free. Number 2: Big and relatively cheap visibility on Permafree. Giving away a free book can be a lot of work. It can also seem strange to pay to give away a free book of yours, even if it might result in further read-through and purchases. I instead think of my perma-frees as loss leaders, which are a commonality in most businesses, including Walmart, your local gym, and a 5-star hotel. Spending money to give away a free book makes you a smart and savvy businessperson. Never forget that. The best places to get cheaper downloads is through email lists, particularly BookBub Featured Deals (BBFD), which will give you the highest number of downloads in the shortest period of time. BookBub is not the only email list; there are dozens of smaller ones that serve most fiction niches. There are also plenty of lists that are focused on a small niche or genre, such as Discover Sci-Fi and I Love Vampire Novels. Some authors try to use advertising to drive traffic to their perma-freeze, but this can get pricey quickly due to high cost per click. CPC. You can create some effect through CPC ads, but they usually work better to bolster a running promotion, like the launch of a new book, rather than to create a burst of downloads on a regular basis. Finally, the best price can sometimes be free. Authors also do newsletter swaps where they each post about the other's freebie in their newsletter, which can be another good way to promote your freebie. You can find these opportunities in the independent author community through your network, but if you are struggling to get started with setting up newsletter swaps, I encourage you to get into the Facebook group that specializes in it. Wide Newsletter Swaps Facebook Group, facebook.com/groups/791442171751855. Number 3: Pre-orders. Pre-orders work particularly well on retailers that are heavily merchandised, which are Kobo, Apple Books, and to some extent Barnes Noble. Kobo and Apple Books run their promotions like traditional book retailers, in that they push new releases the most in their store apps and websites. Barnes Noble does this in their retail stores, and also does this to some extent in their online store. Though most of the spaces seem to go to traditionally published authors. When it comes to preorders on wide retailers, I like to say the best preorder to have is one that's going out this week. The second best is one that's going out as far out as allowed, usually up to 1 year on most retailers. Apple Books specifically sorts some of their visibility lists in reverse preorder date, meaning that if it's mid-May of 2021, the books that are publishing in mid-May of 2022 are the first to show up. As such, some of the most successful authors always have a book in the series that's set for preorder a year out. You can let retailers know about your upcoming new releases as well, as this can help them plan for merchandising opportunities. Kobo Preorders: theworldneedsyourbook.com/kobo-preorders-form Draft2Digital Preorders: draft2digital.wafuu.com/form/draft2digital-preorder-info. Number 4: Merchandising. Many of the retailers have merchandising for their online storefronts, which means that someone hand-selects your book for various promotions that they show their readers, usually on the homepage of their store or via email and notification. Promotions and promotion pushes. Kobo and Barnes Noble handle this through a promotions tab that you request via email, just their basic support emails listed on their respective websites, while Apple Books handles it through forms and email or through third-party distributors like Draft2Digital. Neither Google Play Books nor Amazon does much merchandising for independent authors. The merchandising options at the three that do it are all slightly different. Kobo has free lists for all the major genres and also does #ownvoices, holiday-themed promotions, boxed set promotions, VIP promotions to their loyalty program, and special promotions by territory, for example, a promotion that only goes out to their Australia/New Zealand readers. They also have daily and double-daily deals, which are featured books in their newsletter, Barnes Noble has fewer promotions, and they tend to be for free or discounted books. There's also a separate promotion for discounted romance books that you can apply for. Apple Books does a lot of promotions that are focused on holiday themes. They value having a diverse spread of books across multiple genres that all fit the theme. I highly recommend going through Draft2Digital to reach Apple Books on at least one of your series, This will get you access to D2D's promo submissions forms, where you can submit your book for consideration without an Apple Books representative. Number 5: Metadata. Metadata is the data you fill out when you upload your book that helps the retailer understand what your book is about and where they should place it within their digital store. It's important on all retailers, but especially Google Play Books and Amazon. Where visibility is almost entirely driven by algorithms. Each retailer has metadata that they really care about because they use it to make decisions about where to put the book in their store. For example, categories are really important on Apple Books, while series data is really important on Kobo. Having your metadata optimized on each listing and at each retailer is an important part of selling. It will affect your visibility in each retailer's store, and the difference between an optimized product listing and one that is not can create double or triple the sales. You also want to stay up to date on new dashboard features at each retailer and re-optimize your metadata once a year, as not only do things change, but changing things up in your backend can help you reach a new audience. Number 6: Boxed sets and anthologies. One of the best joint promotions you can join is a boxed set or anthology. For these, you join up with other authors in your genre and provide a title in the boxed set or anthology according to the specifications. Then the group of you work together to get that in front of readers at all of the retailers, including getting the set merchandised where possible and using pooled advertising dollars to get book downloads. The value of participating in these efforts is that many readers in the genre download these sets to find new authors they love. Most authors also contribute content that leads to a key series in their back catalog. Because these sets often get high downloads and read-through, they are a great way to find the die-hard readers of the genre, as well as to promote the start of a new series. Additionally, most of the retailers like boxed sets, so if you can create one for your series, it'll probably do well and they may be more willing to push it to their readers. Readers like the deal bundling, and they like the revenue on the single larger purchase. All of the retailers aside from Amazon let you publish boxed sets at whatever price you want, with no ceiling on your royalties—you get 70% even when priced over $9.99. There are so many authors setting up boxed sets and anthologies to participate in. So if you are a part of the independent author community, you'll likely find yourself invited to one at some point. You can also find boxed set and anthology opportunities in two places on Facebook. Margot's Group for Authors Boxed Sets, facebook.com/group/2503316186646612. Wide Anthology, Boxed Sets, and Shared Worlds Brands Collaboration Group, facebook.com/groups/188642269649938. Number 7: Group List Builders. Lots of authors use joint promos like BookFunnel or viral giveaways to pool resources in order to build an email list. These email lists are with permission distributed to all authors involved, helping each author find new readers. While some people think that list builders tend to attract freebie seekers or non-buyers, I tend to think of them in terms of the 10 stages of audience. Someone who signs up to your email list from the back of your book is likely a customer and fan, thus they will have a high conversion rate to your next book. Someone who signs up to a list builder is really just a prospect or slightly warmed lead at best. It's my job to get that reader to follow through on reading my freebies and then direct them to a paid book. When I participate in list builders, I receive the list and immediately run a Facebook ad to it just for additional visibility before I start sending emails. I also use the emails for lookalike audiences as those readers are definitely in my genre., and if you give that information to Facebook, they can find many, many more of those readers for you. Number 8: Bestseller Runs. With a focus on long pre-orders, and a readership building at each of the retailers, wide authors are well positioned for bestseller runs to try to hit the USA Today and Wall Street Journal lists. While you can do it on your own with a single title, many people start by joining a boxed set list run. In a boxed set list run, you work with about 20 other authors to get an omnibus or anthology to the USA Today Bestseller list. Each author contributes a story and pools their readerships and ad money to get the level of sales needed for a list rank for launch week. Some authors argue that the bestseller status or earning your letters doesn't matter for sales. I disagree, and have seen significant sales gains by being a USA Today bestseller, plus I learned a ton about large-scale marketing and advertising through the group that was innumerably helpful in my career going forward. There is sometimes debate about what counts as a USA Today bestseller, or whether single title ranking is more legitimate than a boxed set ranking, or whether a book on full preorder price versus 99 cents is better. And so on. At the end of the day, the most respectful thing is to use the list's rules for how they determine who has earned their bestseller status. 9. Being Everywhere. Wide authors seem to be in more places in general. This is partially because they are allowed to be and don't have a 10% limit on the work they can share, but I believe it's also partly a distribution mindset. Wide authors seem to believe they can find a new reader anywhere, on any platform, and are usually willing to give away a free book as a way of planting a seed for someone to discover their work. Successful wide authors tend to be on a lot of platforms, even experimental ones, be in lots of boxed sets, anthologies, and book funnel email list builders, and do a ton of cross-promotion with other wide authors. Wide authors are passionate about distribution specifically. They find particular joy in finding readers in many places through promotions and evergreen content marketing, which creates a long-term security on both the marketing side and the financial side. Number 10: Being in every format. One of the major visibility factors on several retailers is the connection between ebook, print, and audiobook formats. You could have part of your catalog in Kindle Unlimited, but still be visible with those series in print or audiobook on other retailers, especially if you are also visible in ebook on those platforms. Readers do buy the same book in multiple formats, and they do buy different formats for different titles. Additionally, if you get promotion on one format like ebook, The overflow of traffic will create sales on your print and audiobook formats for that title as the higher visibility brings more people in who prefer other formats. More recently, fiction apps have sprouted up everywhere, each with their own requirements. Many romance authors are currently making a chunk of their wide income from these apps. The interesting thing is that this is not a new format to exploit. If you sign a traditional publishing contract, they split out print, audiobook, ebook, and serialization excerpts as 4 separate formats. The latter was usually used for book excerpts reprinted in magazines or anthology works, but it covers a scenario like fiction apps also. Additional Resources. GetMyBook: Get your book selling on Apple Books. Apple Books is a fun retailer because they have an air of mystery while also being playful, fun, and innovative. I'll also share how to get merchandised at Apple Books, what key metadata optimizations help people find your books, and important aspects of the Apple Books app that will help readers discover your content. Find the format and retailer you want at: theworldneedsyourbook.com/gybs-apple-books Get my book, get your book selling on Amazon. Amazon is the king of experimentation and has many fascinating writer programs that have led us to here. It's a retailer that I love and have a lot of gratitude for. I'll share the 5 things not to do as a wide author on Amazon, which authors you should be targeting for marketing and promotions on Amazon, and how to do it What ways you may need to change your book packaging if moving from KU to wide. And the Amazon ad strategies I've found to keep sales strong and consistent on the platform. Plus the 5 things to do to keep other authors from killing your visibility at Amazon. Find the format and retailer you want at: theworldneedsyourbook.com/gybs-amazon. Get my book, Get Your Book Selling on Kobo. This book is unusual in that we get to explore a very global picture of the publishing industry, particularly from a print and brick-and-mortar perspective. I'll share how Kobo's visibility algorithms work, what we know, what we don't, the breakdown of the different partnerships Kobo has in countries Kobo serves, and important Kobo-specific details around pre-orders, metadata, and pricing. Especially international pricing. Find the format and retailer you want at theworldneedsyourbook.com/gybs-kobo. Get my book, get your book selling on Google Play Books. Google Play Books re-entered the market in a bigger way in 2020, and there is so much to question around their timing and what they hope to do in the future. I'm going to share everything we know about the Google Play Books algorithm. How to optimize your book metadata in detail, why search engine optimization probably matters more than we realize on Google Play Books, and my thoughts on Google's advertising platform and how it may become more important and more useful to independent authors in the future. Find the format and retailer you want at theworldneedsyourbook.com/gybs-google-play-books. Get my book, get your book selling on Barnes Noble. As a US-only storefront, it's hard to see how Barnes Noble fits into the global state of the publishing industry. I'll talk about Barnes Noble's current business trajectory, and how this may affect print, ebook, and audiobook, how to optimize Barnes Noble's underutilized print-on-demand arm, and what is likely coming at Barnes Noble. Find the format and retailer you want at theworldneedsyourbook.com/gybs-barnes-noble. Get My Book: Get Your Book Selling on Your Website. This book talks about selling ebooks, print, and audiobooks through your website, including how to set up your website, how to deal with taxes, how to get buyers to your website, and more. I have found direct sales to be lucrative and plan to invest more time into driving traffic through Facebook ads. There's so much to learn from nonfiction authors in this space. Find the format and retailer you want at theworldneedsyourbook.com/gybs-website. Chapter 4: Print Books. In some ways, going straight from the ebook chapter into the print chapter is a bit like traveling from Earth to another planet. The two products, ebook and print, are so vastly different in terms of distribution that it can feel like a whole different ball game with different players and different strategies. In many ways, it is a completely different but still incredibly important game for independent authors. In years past, it was common knowledge that independent authors didn't and couldn't make much money selling their books in print. That is changing with improvement and advancement in technology and tools that can serve the industry. A change that is largely driven by independent nonfiction authors and the entrepreneurship space in general. While many Kindle Unlimited (KU) authors say that print is less than 5% of their sales, I know that wide authors tend to make a greater percentage from print, and there are some KU authors that are doing well in print too. 2. People are buying print books online these days. You can sell your print books via IngramSpark, gets you into catalogs for bookstores plus Target, Amazon, Barnes Noble to the US, Kickstarter, conventions and conferences, libraries, specialty stores, from your website directly and more. Shifting to a print mindset. Independent authors often see their print sales as a bonus add-on, rather than a main event that's worthy of their attention. But most of us need to take a cue from the nonfiction world and get our books selling in print. When I talk to independent authors about how to increase their print sales, here are the things that often seem to be holding them back. Number 1: The print format doesn't sell for independent authors. If you believe that independent authors don't sell in print, You may want to talk to my co-author Russell Nohalty, who has a 6-figure business that is built on selling print books. Yes, he sells fiction. No, he doesn't have a 7-figure ebook business that is overflowing to print book sales. In other words, he's not doing those volumes because he's a unicorn outlier already. He is also far from the only person I know who has a 6-figure business selling mostly in print. There is a whole larger community of entrepreneurs for which selling print books is as straightforward as selling ebooks. They are making bank, largely because they are serving a massively underserved niche of people who want offbeat physical products. They are turning down publishing deals—the publishers are copying them, actually—because they can make far more money without a publisher. And they are creating deliciously weird, niche books that you can't imagine would sell 10,000+ copies each, but that are. Some of the successful print products they are creating include short fiction anthologies, high-end illustrated novels, card decks, tarot decks, children's books, graphic novels, coloring books, planners, and more. But you don't even have to create an ancillary product to start making bank in print. Russell has also run Kickstarter campaigns of just novels, see his summer fantasy/science fiction novel Slate Project, and raised nearly $10,000 on that project alone. Now, these results are not from his first campaign, of course, they are from his long-term investment in building his print fiction business. Just like most independent authors are selling lots of ebooks, not on their first entry into the space, but from their long-term investment in building their ebook fiction businesses. Print is really no different. Number 2: The print format doesn't sell in fiction. I speak to many fiction authors who say their print books just don't sell that well. When we dig into their business a bit more, we find that what they usually really mean is that they've posted their print book files to Amazon and, maybe, IngramSpark, and they are not getting a ton of automatic overflow sales from their ebooks. Every once in a while, they additionally mean that they've put some Amazon Sponsored Product ads on their print books, and those have performed somewhere between mediocre and poor—more on that in a bit. This has led me to believe that the biggest reason why fiction authors believe independent fiction books don't sell well is because they haven't really embraced all the ways that authors are selling print books these days. It's the equivalent of putting up an ebook on your website and wondering why you aren't getting many sales. Online print-on-demand (POD) is truly a small though growing portion of print book sales right now, even with a global pandemic that has shifted a lot of purchasing to online retailers. The bulk of print book sales are still happening in-store, through stores, or on other platforms. Don't get me wrong, you can absolutely sell a lot of print books through online POD channels. Established midlist independent authors can get upwards of 1,000 preorders on their new release listed through IngramSpark. But it's usually because they've put effort into growing that channel. We talk about online POD later in this chapter. Still, many of the independent authors who are selling well in print are still on the nonfiction side, largely because independent fiction authors are focused heavily on the ebook format. We can do better if we want to, and there is so much to learn from nonfiction authors, especially about getting our books selling in print. Personally, I feel that fiction authors should always be taking cues from nonfiction authors about the types of products they are creating and the marketing and distribution they are using. Nonfiction is a far more competitive space than fiction, and what works in nonfiction usually works significantly better in fiction, because no one else is doing it yet. Other fiction authors agree with me, and for several authors, their percentage of sales outside of ebooks is growing quickly as they embrace wide distribution channels and fan-driven platforms like Kickstarter and Patreon. Selling fiction in print is possible and becoming a more important part of building an independent author career, so it's time to start paying attention. Number 3: I make lower royalties on my print books. Many authors try to keep their print price low, usually trying to match what they see in the traditional publishing space. One price I see frequently is $8.99 on a 300+ page book. Doing the math on printing costs, and factoring in that a retailer like Amazon takes 40% of the royalty, then deducts the printing costs from the remainder, this typically leaves less than a dollar profit on a print book sale. I'm not a big fan of low profits, not just because they are low, but because they are impossible to grow. You can't put ads on a print book that only makes you 94 cents. There's just no leeway in that math. That's why I'm of the belief that you cannot price your books like a traditionally published book, which is much cheaper to make because they use offset printing. Just as independent authors have to make pricing decisions on ebooks that are different from traditional publishing, they also have to make pricing decisions on print books. But the difference is that instead of pricing lower, they actually need to price higher. And while some authors do the math to make at least $2 on their print books, I do the math to make closer to $5 to $7 on print books. Crazy, right? Here's the truth: this is a mindset issue more than it's an issue of people not buying at that price. People love to buy at this price and would probably be just as happy to buy even higher. Part of being an independent author is being special and different and undiscovered. You'll be surprised at how many people value that. On one of Russell's Kickstarters, for example, people paid $25 for a single novel, domestic S&H included. They paid $38 for a graphic novel and $100 for 4 novels plus special thanks. I used to list my books at $8.99 to $10.99 as well, until my MBA kicked in and reminded me that it made no sense to actively be in a business vertical with zero or negative profit. I now sell my print books at $12.99 for 100+ pages, $14.99 for 200+ pages, and $18.99 for 300+ pages.. And guess what? I actually sell about the same or more than I did before. The benefit to pricing higher is that you leave room for retailer discounting. Amazon drops prices on your print books but still pays you royalties based on the full price. I have this happening right now on one of my paperbacks listed at $14.99. My readers are only paying $12.99 right now, but I'm still earning my usual royalty per book of about $4.50. I can also afford all sorts of additional business expenses, like advertising and returns, which is actually helping me invest more in growing my print sales. On my nonfiction pen names, I'm even in the process of putting out ancillary products, like workbooks, planners, proper box sets, and decks, which have higher margins. I'm also moving into large print and hardcovers, even for my nonfiction work. If you take away anything from this chapter, it should be this: print books from independent authors are special treasures. Readers already know this, and you can make your work even more special for them to own with fan-driven digital extras, like bonus scenes, graphics, additional stories, poster printables, and more. 4. I don't want to deal with returns. In the book industry, unlike any other industry, bookstores are able to return merchandise and get full credit on the destroyed paperbacks. That leaves authors holding the bag as they have to pay for the printing of the books either way. And yes, your credit card will be debited at least once a year for your print returns. Within the independent author community, there are 3 camps on returns. Low discount, no returns. When I first started publishing in 2009, everyone told me to list with Ingram, through Lightning Source at the time, at a 20% retailer discount with no returns. For reference, the industry standard is 55% with returns. The thinking behind this was that no retail bookstore would touch a self-published book anyway, So the discount was there for bulk sales and other special retail opportunities. In 2021, bookstores are happy to buy independently published books by established authors, so I don't think the low discount makes any sense. If you are not listed with the industry standard retail discount, bookstores will not be able to afford to buy your book, and thus won't. They sometimes won't even order the book, if there's a person requesting it in store and asking them to order it. Industry Standard Discount, No Returns. Most independent authors list their books with an industry standard discount of 55% and do not allow returns. This helps the author mitigate risk pretty well, but also hinders them from finding a place on bookshelves. Bookstores will usually do a special purchase for an in-store customer who wants to buy the book, but they often won't stock the book in the store. Again, they can't afford it. Industry standard discount, return and destroy. When I look at established authors who are running their numbers regularly and trying to grow in many places, I find that most of them allow for returns. Usually they have selected their home country for return and ship while selecting return and destroy for other areas due to shipping costs. They mitigate risk around returns by accepting that a certain percentage will happen. They then set aside money for the known cost, similar to how you set aside money for taxes. They also know their numbers. They know their book sales well, and they know their read-through rate. Of the three options, my recommendation is usually to list with the industry-standard retailer discount with no returns. Returns, until your business is stable and you know your book's numbers or you know you have the profits from elsewhere (ebooks, audiobooks) to cover disaster-level costs, usually $500 or less. Most retailers are buying a handful of copies to display, and most have readers who have requested the books. Once you know your numbers and feel confident in your book's ability to sell, you can move to returns allowed. Which will likely help you sell even more books and have a stronger presence in bookstores. Bookstore owners and managers are passionate about books and ultimately want to sell more books. They don't care if you are independently published if your books will sell, and they are likely hand-selling these books for you. Let's talk about the scary disaster-level costs I mentioned. In 2021, there are truly not many disasters. You will see more returns when you have book signings or try to provide endcap displays to retailers because those bookstores ordered larger quantities in correspondence to the promotional effort. Other than that, it's usually not an issue. You can also mitigate costs on returns by receiving a portion of them that makes sense for your locality and selling the books yourself. You can sign those copies and ship them to Amazon through your Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) account if you know your print books are selling decently there and won't be there for too long; they charge a small storage fee. You can also sell them directly through your website if you have a store and keep stock. You can also use them in giveaways, at signings, and more if you do those things. Keep in mind, they have probably been shipped a few times and it may not be worth it. I'm also of the belief that reusing returns for your campaigns can be a bit like looking in your kitchen pantry to scrounge together the ingredients for a 3-tier wedding cake. You sometimes have a stronger result if you design your campaign and order exactly what you need for it. So this is your permission slip to select "destroy" if you don't want to be bothered with it. Number 5: Print is too much of a headache for me. I talk a lot about my ideas for this industry, and I regularly get pushback from authors asking, "What writer even wants to do all of those things?" I hear from so many authors that they can't be bothered with print. I don't want to get into design, graphics, commissioning artwork. I don't want to sell from my website. I don't want to do special editions. I don't want to get into consumables and printables. I don't want to run Kickstarters. I don't want to go to conventions. I don't want to deal with shipping. I get it. I really do. And I'm genuinely not here to convince you otherwise, but rather to share the options and what other independent authors are doing. The reason I talk and write about this stuff is because while fiction businesses are fairly simple right now—selling digital products through third parties and not having to deal with taxes, territories, and so much more is about as easy as it gets—they likely can't and won't remain that way in perpetuity. I have a foot in both the fiction and nonfiction worlds, and I've only seen the business models get more complex in nonfiction. Further, I've seen that fiction follows about 5 to 7 years behind nonfiction across all sorts of things, from business models to marketing strategies to product mixes. I call this the novelist's dilemma, and while I won't go into the concept in this book, I talk about it a lot in two of my other books, Novelist MBA and the one I've co-authored with Russell Nohalty, Get Your Book Selling with Cross Promotion. I'm also a big believer that every person who is called to be a fiction author can make it happen. Having more ways to make money from fiction gives every writer a chance to forge their own path based on their personal skill sets and interests. In other words, we can all win. You may have resistance to many aspects of going wide or being aggressively wide, and that's okay. Pay far closer attention to the places that do sound interesting to explore for you, because that's likely where the gold is for you. You have lots of choices and your choice matters. That's the beauty of being aggressively wide—you get to do it on your own terms. How to Get Your Print Books to Readers. Outside of traditional publishing, there are several ways to get your books printed. Print on demand is an option that lets your printer create one copy of your book quickly, based on demand—someone ordering it. This means you don't have to front any costs, and you just collect royalties, similar to your ebooks. Offset printing is when you buy books in bulk, usually at least 750 but often far more, at a significant discount. You are responsible for selling and distributing those books, And they cannot be sent out individually, unless you get a distributor like Printful, warehouse and fulfillment services, or Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA). Print sales and distribution are complicated by shipping costs. It's not easy to ship books overseas, and you want to find ways to sell books in 3 major English-speaking regions: the US, Canada, the UK and Europe, and Australia, New Zealand. Most independent authors start with print-on-demand, at least as they are growing their businesses. Here's where you can get your books printed and distributed: 1. Print retailers and distributors: Print on demand. Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) Print: You can access this through the KDP dashboard and set up trade paperbacks and case laminate hardcovers; the latter is still in private beta in the US. But will likely roll out to all authors soon. KDP Print uses Ingram POD to create its books. Barnes Noble Print: You can access this through your Barnes Noble Press account and set up trade paperbacks and hardcovers, both case laminate and with a dust jacket. You can also do pre-orders, which Amazon doesn't currently allow at the time of this writing. Since many independent authors forgo Barnes Noble Print, and let IngramSpark distribute to them instead. There's an ISBN issue if you try to publish the same title ISBN to both platforms. You can also just do your preorder through IngramSpark. Barnes Noble Press uses IngramPOD to create its books. Ingram via IngramSpark. This is the place that most independent authors list their books, as they have a self-publishing platform that makes it easy. Most places that you want to be in trade paperback have the ability to order your book through IngramSpark. That said, there are other distributors that major segments of the market prefer. Likewise, different global territories have different distributors due to shipping costs, so if it's important to have a print edition easily available in another country, you may want to explore distributors beyond IngramSpark. Number 2: Ordering a print run. Offset printing. If you are interested in working with other distributors, you may want to be set up for offset printing and have inventory that you also sell through conferences, Kickstarters, and your website. These distributors will receive orders from their accounts and expect you to send the number of books they request immediately, so it's ideal to have them in stock already in your warehouse. Your garage or office possibly. Here are some interesting distributors that may be worth checking into, depending on where you want to sell your books. Baker and Taylor: This distributor is where you want to be to reach more libraries, as this is the main distributor they order from. If you plan to do a serious outreach to libraries in the United States and/or internationally,, they seem to prefer ordering from this distributor over Ingram. B&T also has an offset printer Bookmasters, which offers more flexibility over your hardcovers. You can get your offset print run shipped to you as well, of course, though B&T will happily warehouse it for you. American West Books. This is a distributor to use to get into museums and gift shops, if your book is appropriate for that. You can also get into places like Whole Foods, Costco, Sam's Club, REI, and other major retail and grocery chains. Alibris: This distributor helps you list your print books at online retailers like eBay, Books-A-Million, and more. ReaderLink: This distributor handles almost all the distribution for mass-market books across big-box retailers like Walmart, Sam's Club, Costco, Target, and more. There are tons of other distributors, and each country has its preferred distributors. For example, Canadian libraries prefer to purchase from a distributor called Library Services Center. Print Formats. Once you start working with print retailers and distributors, you'll notice that they give you a lot of options. There are 4 main types of print books that you can create of your novels. #1 Trade Paperbacks. These are the default books that independent authors will publish, as they sell well online, in independent bookstores, and in the book section at big-box retailers in the US. Much of the paperback market in traditional publishing has shifted to trade paperback as well, as mass-market paperback shelf space has shrunk over the last 5 to 10 years. 2. Hardcover Case Laminate. Though this is a fairly unpopular choice in most traditionally published fiction, it is becoming a choice for independently published fiction thanks to Amazon launching Well-Done Case Laminate hardcovers through Kindle Direct Publishing. This program is still in private beta at the time of this writing but should be available to all authors in the near future. The positives are that you can usually adapt your trade paperback files to this style of hardcover easily, compared to hardcovers with a dust jacket. That said, I think many authors will continue to try to look like traditionally published books. Number 3: Hardcover Cloth with Dust Jacket. These books have a separate dust jacket that wraps around the book, and usually includes the book description on the front fold,, and the author picture and biography on the back fold. This style of hardcover is what readers expect in most fiction genres, and it's the hardcover preference among independently published authors, especially those in fantasy genres. The downside to these is that the two sources for printing, IngramSpark and Barnes Noble, have limited options for the hardcover cloth under the jacket, and some authors don't like the plain blue cloth that has become a signature for the print-on-demand version of these books. Number 4: Mass market paperbacks. These are smaller books like the ones you see at grocery stores and big box retailers. They have small trim sizes, cheaper pages and printing, no graphics or images, and are designed to be an impulse buy. In the US, you may still see these books in Sam's Club, Walmart, Costco, Target, but there are fewer shelves of them., as this has largely been replaced by a full section of trade paperback books. There's not a reason to create these as an independently published author, because for the most part, we are niche stories for niche buyers. The only interesting thing about mass market paperbacks is that the bigger traditional publishers are publishing fewer of them, and the distribution happens through a company called ReaderLink. There could be an opportunity to strike a deal for top independently published authors, 10,000+ sold on a new release, but I don't know of anyone currently who is doing something like this. Starter Print Book Options. Most independent authors start with a trade paperback and then choose one of the hardcover options, depending on their genre and ability to create or commission new art for the hardcover wrap. I've also seen authors create special edition hardcovers in color, as well as alternative art hardcovers, which usually requires getting a case laminate for the book and printing a wrap separately, then assembling the books and either selling them directly or shipping them to a warehouse like Amazon's FBA for dropshipping. You can also get your books printed outside of print on demand through offset printing. Where you'll likely have to front the money for at least 750 copies, but where you will have far more options for printing. Unless you have a specific promotion to sell that many books, I recommend going with print-on-demand over an offset print for most titles in your catalog. Specialty Print Books. In addition to your main print book options, there are also other special editions and ancillary products that may be worth considering, depending on your catalog. Large print paperback: These are books that are specially formatted with large font, no hyphenation, no justification, and several other specifications that allow people struggling with their eyesight to easily read your book in print. There's a surprisingly large market for books like these, and Amazon even offers a checkbox to specify large print editions in their KDP dashboard. Hardcover Special Edition. These books are nice hardcovers, often with special content inside, possibly with more elaborate formatting or illustrations, and sometimes even with interior color. You have to have a larger audience to sell these and make a profit, but they could be fun just to make for yourself and your greatest fans. I've seen independent authors who run hardcover special editions through POD, at a $50 sale price. Workbooks, coloring books, and planners—ancillary products in the consumables space—are exciting because you often don't need a ton of additional text content, and you can sell them at a significantly higher price than trade paperbacks. You can also sell the digital version of your consumable in PDF through Etsy, where printables are big business. Graphic Novels: One of the biggest growth areas in traditional publishing is graphic novels. A younger generation has started to consume these, thanks in part to the growth of webcomics and webtoons that are marketed toward the same demographic. Graphic novels are also considered ideal for reluctant readers. Decks with Companion Guides: Tarot, oracle, and game decks are considered books and can be assigned an ISBN. There aren't a ton of deck print-on-demand companies, but you can order small print runs of 50 decks and package your deck yourself, then send it to a distribution warehouse. There are so many types of decks, from fully illustrated ones to simple ones with compelling quotes on them. As a deck collector who has over 100 decks, I understand the passion for decks on a personal level. People love cards that can be part of their daily routine, and are often willing to pay between $45 to $75 for an independently published deck. All the Places You Can Sell Your Print Book. When it comes to selling your print book, there are 3 paths. Working in print on demand. This is the easiest way that independent authors can get started with selling print books with no upfront investment and no inventory. Working with a brick-and-mortar retailer, usually through a distributor or several. This requires two pieces of marketing: a one-sheet and a marketing sheet. The one-sheet explains who you are and why they should work with you, while the marketing sheet explains your specific title and why they should buy it from you. Selling the books directly to your customers. This is easy if you have a fan base. And is usually done through a direct sales website, a table at an event, a speaking opportunity, or a major promotion like a Kickstarter project. I highly recommend starting with print on demand and only entering the other two options when you are confident that your print book sells. Additionally, you'll want to research each distribution channel you decide to focus on. Like going wide in the ebook format, You want to learn each distribution and sales channel one at a time. Here's a little more about each of the distribution channels. Number 1: Online sales through print-on-demand. Most independent authors selling well in print are doing so on online retailers Amazon and Barnes Noble. They are also available for sales and stocking at the 40 retailers across the major English-language territories that IngramSpark serves. Number 2: Retail store sales. While it's not impossible to get into retail stores with a 100% store credit on returns, this is something an independent author needs to treat delicately. If you're writing in a popular genre that you would see at a Walmart or Target, it may make sense to give this a try. Just be aware of the potential risk on returns. ReadersLink and American West Books are distributors to start with. It may also help to set up a small press publishing company if you haven't already. Outside of these distributors, it is possible to work with Barnes Noble directly, especially as a local author. Barnes Noble has changed how they buy books in 2021, putting more power into the managers' hands to operate more like an independent bookstore. 3. Small and Specialty Store Sales. You can usually get your books into independent stores through a relationship with the store owner and a consignment agreement. You can do the same for other small stores that are not book-specific but may still be interested in selling your books. For example, there may be local gift shops, coffee shops, bakeries, boutique hotels, and more that would be willing to stock your book. Especially if there's a tie-in. You can also try to set up book signings or speaking events at any of these stores to help drive purchases and traffic. Number 4: Selling direct. There are so many ways that authors can sell their books directly to readers, including packaging books for Fulfillment by Amazon, creating a Kickstarter campaign, booking a table booth at a conference, Offering direct bulk sales to corporations or nonprofits, selling from a website, reaching out to book clubs, working with conference organizers for swag bag inclusion or back-of-the-room sales, and so many more options. Basically, if you're willing to hustle, you can create your own opportunities. I talk about each of these options and how they work in Get Your Book Selling in Print. Number 5: Libraries. If you're willing to do the work, you can get your print books into libraries using the appropriate distributors and the marketing materials with an outreach to librarians. You can also offer to do a reading at the library, as libraries are always trying to find more programming. If you are targeting libraries all over the country, you can set up readings in any city you are traveling to in order to save the costs of dedicated travel. Number 6: Schools. Schools have interesting opportunities in that they often assign books to read over the summer or for a class. They also sometimes purchase bulk orders of that book outright for all their students. There are nearly 27,000 high schools in the U.S., and about 4 times as many elementary schools. When you look globally at the English language markets, you could outreach to even more schools. This will work best for young adult, middle grade, or children's books, but it's a good opportunity to not only sell books but to get young readers to continue your book or series after their assigned reading. Number 7: Volume bulk sales. You can buy your book in an offset printing run and create outreach campaigns to corporations, schools, specialty retailers, and so many more book buying segments. How Wide Authors Market Their Print Books. There is so much to talk about around print, which is why there's a separate book that dives deeper into it. Every major distribution channel or market segment has its own set of marketing efforts that will work. While we can't go into that level of detail in this chapter, here are some of the ways that independent authors currently market their print books. Number 1: Get the retailer discounts right. It's really important to get your retailer discounts correct in IngramSpark, and you may want to test these over time. Consider your genre and whether your books are mainstream enough to sell in traditional retail stores. Consider where you are at in your career and if you can financially afford to take on the risk of print. These retailer discounts will determine how well you sell in print and whether bookstores are willing to stock your books. Number 2: Create marketing materials to show you are serious. You need a one-sheet and marketing sheet as described earlier, but I also recommend having prominent pages on your website for bulk sales. Distributors you are listed with, and how people can buy directly from you. You can put a PDF of your marketing materials in the same place, so people who are visiting your website can download them. Number 3: Nurture relationships with multi-book buyers. Book publishing is very much a business that relies on contacts. You can build contacts through networking with people who need or want books like yours, librarians, bookstore owners and managers, specialty shop owners, teachers and professors, corporate executives, conference coordinators, and book club hosts. Your goal: be personable and visible and take the serendipitous approach. Get to know people on a personal level. Once your relationships are nurtured, you can make an ask if you know it makes sense to work together. If you want to take your relationship building offline, there are association conferences in every region. I once landed a speaking gig with a regional chapter of the Independent College Bookstore Association, for example. All 150 people attending ran a college bookstore in California. At the time, I did not have a catalog that made sense for this audience when I spoke to them, but now I have a bunch of books that are perfect how-tos for NaNoWriMo, which is popular among college students. I should probably try to speak at their conference again. Number 4: Gentle Outreach. It's okay to run an outreach campaign online as well. If you want to sell your books to conferences for their swag bags, for example, write a nice message to 100 conference organizers in your niche and ask if they would do an informational interview interview with you about how they put together their swag bags. You can ask them what they are looking for, and what they never include and why. Get to know what they need. Test out your pitch on them. If you're a fiction writer, substitute librarians, or teachers and professors for conference organizers, it's the same concept applied to a different niche. 5. Pre-orders. Most retailers order at least 6 months in advance, so you want to get your long pre-orders up. You can list pre-orders for a year in advance, so take advantage of this. Additionally, you don't want to just leave those pre-orders up, though of course that's a start. It also helps to accumulate print pre-orders from your readers to show retailers that the book can sell if they place an order. It can also help to send marketing materials to retailers in your focus during this pre-order period. 6. Traditional Means of Creating Buzz. If you are trying to reach traditional distribution channels, it helps to steal a page from traditional publishers. You can try some of their usual promotion and marketing tactics like: getting reputable reviews in a trade publication, getting publicity on television, radio, and elsewhere, sending out advanced reader copies in print. These are all things that cost a lot of upfront and may feel like a long-term investment rather than immediate return on investment, ROI. Print sales move very slow, so you have to decide if you want to commit to growing them slowly as well. And set your expectations accordingly. Number 7: Cost-per-click advertising. Amazon currently allows you to advertise your print book through Amazon Marketing Services (AMS). Barnes Noble is likely launching advertising for their online stores, though I don't have information on whether that is for ebooks, print books, or both. Pierre-Alex Genty has had massive success with Facebook ads sent directly to his website, selling 7 figures of his poetry books and doing fulfillment on his own. I could also see using Facebook ads to get your book visible to an easily targeted group, like librarians for example, in what would probably feel like a fairly organic way to them. You could also easily target book buyers in a certain city with addresses of the nearest Barnes Noble store where they can request or preorder your book. Again, these efforts are likely going to cost upfront, and you won't see an immediate return. Number 8: Your author platform. You can use your current author platform to direct more people to your print books. Your email list, blog, website, and even your books all have value here, even if you built your current business on selling ebooks. As an avid reader, I still buy books in ebook, print, and audiobook formats. So does my husband. There are lots of readers out there like us, so don't assume your ebook readers don't want print, especially if you can offer them something cool, like a special edition or bonus material. If you want to know what they're interested in, ask. Number 9: Special direct sales. You don't need to be with a distributor to get into retailers. If you want to work with a smaller retailer, many of them would accept your books on consignment, which is not much different than getting returns. You can also sell directly to corporations, small businesses, customers through your website and Kickstarter, and so many more places. To me, it helps to think about where I would like to be selling my books, and then reverse engineer that to figure out distribution channels and/or direct promotions to customers. Additional Resources. Get my book, Get Your Book Selling in Print, co-authored with Russell Nolte. I'll be diving deeper into all of the different ways you can sell print books, including exactly how to pursue distribution and sales in those channels and everything I've learned about marketing my books this way. Find the format and retailer you want at TheWorldNeedsYourBook.com/GYBS-Print. Get My Book: Get Your Book Selling on Your Website. This book talks about selling ebooks, print, and audiobooks through your website, including how to set up your website, how to deal with taxes, how to get buyers to your website, and more. I have found direct sales to be lucrative and plan to invest more time into driving traffic through Facebook ads. There's so much to learn from nonfiction authors in this space. Find the format and retailer you want at theworldneedsyourbook.com/gybs-website. Get my book, Get Your Book Selling with Kickstarter, co-authored with Russell Nohalty. Russell Nohalty is a leading expert on selling fiction, graphic novels, and more through Kickstarter. The book shares how to budget your campaign, how to find fans and backers, how to deal with fulfillment, and so much more. Find the format and retailer you want at theworldneedsyourbook.com/gybs-kickstarter. Get my book, Get Your Book Selling with Cross Promotion, co-authored with Russell Nohalty. This book goes through how to view your catalog in terms of bundles, and how to sell your higher-priced bundles to improve your revenue and profit per customer. It also talks about different ways you can bundle your work, including running boxed set and anthology group promotions. And finally, it talks about how you can extend your product funnel on a single book. For example, I have a nonfiction book that will also do well in workbook, deck, and sub-niches, similar to the Chicken Soup for the Soul book series, e.g., Chicken Soup for Pet Lovers. A lot of these common tactics used in nonfiction can apply to fiction too. Find the format and retailer you want at: theworldneedsyourbook.com/gybs-cross-promotion. Chapter 5: Audiobooks. Audiobooks are probably the most interesting place an independent author can focus at the moment. Because it's fairly easy to create and distribute audiobooks, and the market is growing rapidly globally as well as in English-language territories. Furthermore, the audiobook space is not dominated by any one player, which means that creators are getting paid more for their content. While Amazon is trying to capture the audiobook space using exclusivity and a membership model, They still only hold about 40-50% of the audiobook market in the United States. Additionally, several others among the Big Five retailers are trying to make direct uploading a reality on their respective platforms. Kobo already allows this with Apple Books and Google Play likely not far behind. There are distribution companies that can help you get your audiobook to places where you can't, currently upload directly. Findaway Voices is the most popular one within the independent author community. You can also sell your audiobooks in their storefront, and BookFunnel can help you sell audiobooks directly from your website. Another big market force in the audiobook space is subscription-based services, where authors are paid based on a streaming model. The growth of audiobook consumption in Europe is driven heavily by subscriptions, while the growth in the U.S. is still largely driven by readers paying for individual titles, though programs like Amazon's Audible membership do offer significant discounts on audiobooks through their use of credits. I expect that subscription-based streaming services will eventually gain traction in the U.S. as well,, as once again, it's a business model that is ideal for both the platform retailer and the consumer. What I find the most interesting about audiobooks is their readiness for devices in all spaces of our lives, from our phones to our cars to our homes. Reading via text requires that the person stops what they are doing and looks, concentrates, digests. Reading via listening is largely about multitasking., as you can listen to audiobooks while doing other things: chores, working out, driving, taking care of children, drawing or physically creating something, and more. These two formats may not necessarily have two different audiences, but rather two different use cases. Reading via text may be more of a form of relaxation in the future, while reading via listening seems to be at least in part a productivity or on-the-go hack. Will the predicted shift to further integration of devices in our lives make audiobooks the best way to prepare for the future of publishing? Audiobook Formats. Part of the answer to the question of where audiobooks fit in the future of publishing is in the way they are created. Publishing expert Joanna Penn, suggests 3 types of audiobook rights in the future: AI-read, which uses software like Amazon Polly or Takia to create a recording of the book; narrator-read, which uses a person or a few to read the book out loud in a recording and is the publishing industry standard for how to create audiobooks; cast-performed audio theater, which is a larger production that might be reserved for books from the most popular franchises only, as they will be expensive to make and likely appeal more to bigger fans over the general population. To my knowledge, there is no magic rights fairy godmother that waves her magic wand and says, "Now there are 3 audiobook rights." Traditional publishing has not adopted these terms in their contracts, and most companies that you work with to license your audiobook rights will include a clause that grants them all known and yet-to-be-invented audiobook rights. It's the author's job to negotiate the contract based on what they want to do, and how they see the future of audiobooks shaping up. So if you want to keep these rights separate, either hang on to all of your audiobook rights, or negotiate these terms and their definitions into your publishing contracts. Another challenge that will likely be solved in the next year or two, is that no audiobook retailers currently accept AI-read audiobooks to their stores. At the moment, you can only distribute these audiobooks for free or sell them directly via your website. However, there are market indicators that this will change soon. Google is likely creating a tool that will allow authors to easily create and sell AI-read audiobooks via Google Play Books. Findaway Voices, a popular audiobook distributor in the independent author community, is working on partnerships with companies that create higher-quality AI-read audiobooks. The technology is here, and readers are using text-to-speech technology to read ebooks out loud to themselves anyway. Would they happily listen to a well-done AI-read audiobook that cost them relatively little compared to a narrated audiobook? How to Create an Audiobook. There are several ways independent authors create audiobooks of their work without licensing their rights to a traditional publisher. Some of those ways are: Number 1: Hire a narrator. You can hire a freelance narrator or go through matchmaker companies like Amazon's ACX or Findaway Voices. Narrators are usually hired by the finished hour of your audiobook, But ACX facilitates a royalty split contract as well for authors who do not want to pay for their audiobooks upfront. Most authors skip the royalty share and pay narrators outright for the creation of their books, as authors get higher royalties and have more control over the distribution and marketing of their audiobooks. Number 2: Narrate the book yourself. If you are trying to save money, and don't mind the technical challenges of recording and mastering audio files for your audiobook, you can narrate your book yourself. This can make sense for nonfiction authors especially, but if you are a fiction author with acting training, then you may want to try your hand at this. If the technical side of things is a challenge for you, you can always hire a freelance audio engineer to master your final files. Or you could rent out a studio space and work directly with your audio engineer as you record the book. Number 3: Use software. Some authors are experimenting with AI-read audiobooks. If you don't mind the technical learning curve, Amazon Polly is free to use, and you can create a lexicon to control pronunciation and expression in the narration. Lexicons are not intuitive to build. You need to understand linguistics, so if you don't have training in that, there may be a lot of guessing involved. And Amazon Polly is not designed to be user-friendly, but rather for software engineers to interface with it. Make sure you are willing to venture into this endeavor from a technical standpoint, and if not, there are software programs like Takia, that can provide a basic interface to the Amazon Polly voices. AI-read books are not accepted at any retailer at the time of this writing, but could be used for free promotion on a podcast, or could be sold directly to readers from your website. How to Get Your Audiobooks to Readers. All of the Big Five retailers sell audiobooks, in addition to ebooks. Here's how to get into the various stores, plus dozens more with your audiobooks. Number 1: Audiobook retailers. There are two places where independent authors can upload their audiobooks directly: Amazon through ACX, which distributes to Audible, Amazon, and Apple Books, and Kobo, which makes it easy in the same dashboard used to upload ebooks. You can still sell your books on Google Play Books and Barnes Noble, but you need a distributor. There are some interesting things about the way each of the Big Five retailers has incorporated audiobooks into their larger strategy. Google Play Books and Apple Books in particular seem to have renewed their interest in independent authors as of 2019-2020. I believe this is in big part because the audiobook space is gaining in sales, market share, and readership. Around that time, Apple Books began investing in building relationships with independent authors through a new website called Apple Books for Authors. Google also seemed to invest in independent authors with their platform again open for direct distribution signups and incremental improvements around their reporting dashboard promotional pricing page, and other areas of their backend. Both retailers heavily promote their audiobook titles, with Apple Books specifically showing readers a row of audiobooks by the author on every ebook product page, and Google Play Books pushing audiobook titles for the points you can earn within their Play Rewards program. Amazon also integrates its audiobooks with ebooks and print, specifically on its main retail website. It offers a technology called Whispersync, which lets readers switch between ebook and audiobook without losing their place. It also has discounts when you buy the ebook or audiobook, and it's the only bundling of these two formats that I know of. Kobo has a similar program to Amazon's Audible, with a monthly membership which gives you one credit a month to spend on any audiobook you want. They've undercut Amazon's program by about 33% at the time of this writing, in May of 2021. The downside to their program, however, is that their selection is significantly diminished due to Amazon's ACX exclusivity program, which gives authors double the royalties from Amazon, Audible, and iTunes sales over what they would get if they published everywhere. Barnes Noble doesn't seem to have integrated audiobooks into their main retailer website, but has a separate storefront to purchase audiobooks from them, and a separate app to listen to those audiobooks. Number 2: Audiobook Distributors. Most independent authors have to use a distributor for their audiobooks, and some use one even in places that they can go directly, Findaway Voices is a popular one among independent authors and can get your books into around 40 different retailers, including the retailers with direct upload tools for independent authors, as well as the other two Big Five retailers, Google Play Books and Barnes Noble through their separate retailer site called Nook Audiobooks. Findaway's other retailers include libraries, storefronts that are specific to other languages, and subscription services that have a streaming model. In addition to being a distributor, Findaway Voices also helps authors find narrators and handles the money, contracts, and more as the relationship. Other distributors include Audio Republic and Audiobooks Unleashed, neither of which I've used. Findaway Voices is a well-known and trusted company within the independent author community. But the other options may be worth looking into, if they distribute to places that Findaway Voices doesn't. Number 3: Traditional Publishers of Audiobooks. There are also several companies that work specifically with independent authors, like Podium and Tantor. These companies tend to target fairly successful independent authors with vast catalogs, and also snap up audiobook rights in other areas, like serialized fiction. You can try to approach these companies through querying, but in my experience, they are both looking for very specific things in the audiobooks they produce. Podium likes proven addictive serialization and long series that they can turn into massive bundles. The latter makes sense, as Audible operates on credits,, and a large bundle will look like a sweet deal to an Audible member. They also seem to enjoy discovering popular fiction on the web that hasn't gone mainstream but still has a massive audience. They work specifically with independent authors and are on the cutting edge of the publishing industry, working with writers beyond the author community. They have several lit RPG and serialized fiction stories that are popular on fiction apps in their portfolio and seem to be producing content that traditional publishers are not paying attention to. Tantr focuses on romance and paranormal fiction and also works with traditional publishers to produce audiobooks. They have tapped into the independent author community and have been scooping up audiobook rights on series that are most likely to appeal to women. A downside to working with a traditional publisher is that in most cases, your royalty per audiobook will be too small to invest advertising dollars into increasing your sales. Because audiobooks sell more when your ebooks are already selling, authors find that as they ramp up their ebook sales, they are in many ways also paying for the overflow of sales that goes to audiobooks. Before signing a traditional publishing deal, it's worth asking yourself if you could keep a higher royalty share that you could then invest into advertising that builds your audiobook readership and sells more books. Number 4: Audiobook Subscriptions. One difference between audiobooks and ebooks is that ebooks have always been a fairly affordable option to readers, while audiobooks, when purchased individually, can get expensive quickly. Readers are flocking to memberships, especially when they are heavy consumers. We've talked about both Amazon's and Kobo's audiobook subscriptions, but there are several others in the space, including Scribd, Audiobooks, Libro.fm, BookBeat, Blinkist, and more. Audiobook subscribers are also attracted to library services like OverDrive, Libby, and Hoopla. Which let you rent audiobooks on your library's dime. Outside of the US, many markets are embracing audiobook subscription services wholeheartedly. In many European countries, audiobook subscription services make up the bulk of the consumption and growth of audiobook sales. I expect this to continue, and a big puzzle piece of translations is how to create audiobooks in other languages. Number 5: Selling audiobooks directly to readers. There are several ways to sell audiobooks directly to readers, but the most common way is to set up a retail store on your website using WooCommerce or Shopify and to deliver your audiobooks through BookFunnel, a company that handles digital file delivery without the tech support headaches. BookFunnel has an audiobook app that readers can use to access their downloaded audiobooks. Another way to sell your audiobooks is through a private feed using a company like Storyboard, Spreaker, Podbean, Transistor, or Apple Podcasts. This could be hooked into your Patreon account as an additional benefit tier, or could be a separate subscription that you set up. Apple Podcasts also recently launched the ability to create paid podcasts, and it'll be interesting to see how creators use it. If you hope to sell your audiobooks directly, I encourage you to remember what audiobook readers are looking for. They like subscriptions because audiobooks are otherwise expensive for those who read many audiobooks a month. They also like a deal, so a discounted audiobook bundle of a series could entice them to buy directly from you. Finally, consider bundling across formats, especially in ebook and print. You can use your audiobook as an upsell to get a little more revenue out of each purchase. How wide authors market their audiobooks. As audiobooks heat up, more and more tools are popping up to help authors and publishers sell audiobooks more efficiently. Here are some of the best ways to sell audiobooks. Number 1: Promote the books in other formats. Amazon links your audiobook, ebook, and print versions on their product pages. They also offer an automated bundling pricing that works much like an upsell, where people who purchase one of the digital formats of your book can get other digital formats at a significant discount. Your audiobook then becomes an add-on when your ebook sells. Apple Books also closely cross-markets audiobooks and ebooks, making audiobooks by the author one of the top carousels on their ebook product pages. If you already launch your ebook and print book simultaneously, you might consider also getting your audiobook ready ahead of time for launch. Audiobooks are no longer an afterthought, and your best bet to sell a ton of audiobooks is when you are launching it at the same time as your ebook. Sometimes you'll hear that launching the audiobook separately provides renewed interest in the print and ebook version, but most successful independent authors agree that this is simply not the case. Your audiobook will sell more if you launch it at the same time as your print and ebook versions. If you miss this timeframe, then it may make sense to launch the audiobook in conjunction with other major pushes of the print and ebook versions. Such as when you land a BookBub feature deal. The BookBub ad combined with your other stacked promotions will drive visibility at retailers, which will then encourage more purchases of all the formats you offer. Number 2: Hire a popular or celebrity narrator in your genre. Audiobook readers follow their favorite narrators to the next project. This is true for hiring a celebrity author, and for hiring popular narrators in your genre. While your narrator will almost never do as much as you to promote your book, they do accumulate a following that can be a built-in marketing boost, if your book is similar to books they've narrated in the past. Number 3: Audiobook promotion sites. The most popular audiobook promotion site is Chirp. Owned by BookBub, that sends out featured emails for temporarily discounted and free audiobooks. AudiobookBoom is a site that specializes in free audiobooks. There are other sites that have similar promotions to their email lists, and more are popping up all the time. Number 4: Samples. As in other formats, readers like to sample something before they buy it. You can post the first several chapters or even the entire book on a YouTube channel or a podcast feed. I go through Buzzsprout and love it. You can also upload your content to sites like SoundCloud and Authors Direct, owned by Findaway. My podcast distributor Buzzsprout also has a simple tool for creating snippet players of your podcast or audio episode that can then be posted on Facebook, Instagram, and other popular social media sites. Number 5: Blog/Podcast Tour. Podcast listeners like to consume audio content and definitely buy audiobooks. There are plenty of audiobook-focused review bloggers and podcasters, so you can reach out to them and ask them to review your book. You can also be a guest on a podcast, which works especially well in nonfiction,, but could work in fiction too if you got in front of the right audience. Number 6: Cost-Per-Click Advertising. On Amazon, you're able to advertise your audiobooks through sponsored product ads in Amazon Marketing Services (AMS). You can also advertise on social media sites where it makes sense for you, and keeping in mind that if you are on a royalty share or with a traditional publisher,, it likely doesn't make financial sense to drive readers to your audiobooks through cost-per-click (CPC) advertising. Number 7: Using your author platform. If you have built your readership on ebook or print sales, it's a good idea to send those same readers to your audiobook. Lots of readers like to get a book in multiple formats, especially in ebook, print, and audiobook. You can send out a newsletter, post on social media, and otherwise use your platform to drive traffic to your audiobook product pages. Number 8: Create audiobook box sets/bundles. In English-language markets, audiobook boxed sets do well because Audible is the dominant platform, and it's a significant bargain to spend a credit, purchased at roughly $15, rather than purchase the boxed set outright for its individual list price, which can be anywhere from $30 to $50. Audiobook readers are somewhat price-sensitive because audiobooks are traditionally so expensive. In truth, it's not just box set deals that will do well for audiobooks; audiobook readers like all sorts of deals that help them save money. Additional Resources. Get my book, Get Your Book Selling in Audiobook. I'll be diving deeper into the different markets for audiobook, how to create and sell AI-read audiobooks, why devices are bringing audiobooks to the forefront of publishing, how to follow the market trends for audiobooks, and some of the important distinctions between audiobooks and ebooks that may make you want to write with audiobooks in mind. Find the format and retailer you want at theworldneedsyourbook.com/gybs-audiobook. Chapter 6: Serialized Fiction and Fiction Apps. Serialized fiction is seeing a renaissance in both English-language markets and globally in other markets. It differs from novels in that it's far more episodic, organic, and addictive,, and the beats are far from set as they might be in a structured novel that plays to specific tropes. Furthermore, serialized fiction has many communities of writers, overlapping with independent self-published authors, television screenwriters, fan fiction writers, and serial writers. In the US and other major English-language markets, independent authors have limited experience with serialized fiction and fiction apps. We are catching up to countries that have stronger and more mature markets for short-form, episodic storytelling, specifically China, Thailand, Japan, South Korea, and other countries located physically near to these countries, where various styles of storytelling have spread in popularity. The readership for serialized fiction and the user base for fiction apps is currently female and young, with most readers aged 25 and under and the majority of the readership under 18. In English-language territories, fiction apps like Kindle Vella are trying to expand the readership to an older audience. As of the time of this writing in May 2021, the bulk of the independent author community is still underestimating the value of serialized fiction and its place in the future of publishing. It's understandable, as English-language markets for serialized fiction have yet to reach maturation or spell out big dollars for a significant portion of independent authors. I believe this will change in the coming years, as short-form fiction business models emerge and consumption accelerates. The Factors Driving Short-Form Fiction Consumption. Globally, there are several factors that are driving readers to consume more short-form fiction. Device usage and screen time is increasing. The gaming industry has popularized interactive and visual storytelling, which is seeping into the text format. Censorship laws in many countries, and specifically in several Asian countries, are far stricter for print media than they are for digital or web-based media. Social media has created demand for creative, short-form storytelling across nonfiction and fiction. Readers are busier, and more reading is happening in the in-betweens rather than in one multi-hour sitting, which is ideal for a novel. Along the same lines, the move to multitasking with shorter audio and podcasts especially at home, during exercise, and in the car has increased demand for short-form content. In the film industry, episodic television binging popularized by Netflix is the new "going to the movies" of 15-20 years ago thanks to streaming and subscription-based services. In traditional publishing, graphic novels are heating up and being marketed to a younger generation. Particularly reluctant readers. These trends are not specific to any particular culture or country, as web and device trends are driving global lifestyle changes toward instant and short-form consumption as a whole. Big Tech, specifically Amazon, the usual first mover in publishing, sees tremendous value in short-form fiction. Amazon has a long history with trying to get its extensive writing community to write short-form fiction, and trying to bring short-form fiction to its English-language user base in the US, the UK, and more. Its latest entry, Kindle Vella, is built on many failed writer programs of the past. Kindle Vella is hitting the US market as English-language-focused companies like Wattpad and Radish see acquisitions from Asian countries that have popularized short-form storytelling across multiple textual and visual mediums. Here's a look at what Amazon has attempted in the past, and how it has failed forward into launching big with Kindle Vella. Number 1: Kindle Serials. Kindle Serials was a limited program that ran from 2012 to 2014, and allowed for Amazon-supported collaborations with successful serialized fiction authors who were doing well on their platform. Authors had to be invited into this collaboration, and if I recall, very few were— fewer than 100 serials were published via this program. The program started in beta, and Amazon hoped to roll out the program to their entire author base. I had a few author friends in the program and recall several conversations with them about how at the time Amazon ultimately didn't understand how serialized fiction readers consumed content. For example, there was no mechanism to bring readers from episode to episode, nor to link readers who had read Season 1 to Season 2. The reader experience was more or less based on how readers consumed ebooks, so it's not a surprise that the beta program didn't get the results expected or that Amazon didn't roll it out to all authors. Kindle Vella promises to be very different, as the reader experience—the payment and delivery system, specifically—is modeled after successful serialized fiction apps that have already proven viability in the marketplace. Number 2: Kindle Worlds. Kindle Worlds was another limited program that ran from 2013 to 2018., and allowed for authors to officially write in other authors' universes. Universes were limited and invite-only. Both authors of the world and authors who wrote in the worlds received a cut of the profits, along with Amazon taking their share. While fanfiction and serialized fiction are two different beasts, they are also intertwined in that much of fanfiction is written like serialized fiction., and the demographics of who is writing and consuming this content is females between the ages of 13 and 25. Indeed, sites like Wattpad offer both fanfiction and original serialized fiction. It's impossible to discuss the roots of Kindle Vella without pointing to one of its longest-running, and arguably most successful, predecessor writer programs. Why did this project get shut down? The general sentiment from the author community is that Kindle Worlds support was never great and that Amazon started losing interest in Kindle Worlds in 2016 and 2017, about a year or two before officially shutting it down. It's possible that executive leadership changed over, as several writer programs were killed during this time period. The abruptness of the notification is telling., and it's likely that support problems, improvement costs, and competing priorities forced Amazon to end the program. As many in the independent author community seem to be making solid money, with some even building businesses around creating fan fiction novels, my take on the situation is that resources were limited and profits were not enough. There were many improvements Amazon would have needed to make to scale the program,, and perhaps it wasn't viable. Kindle Vella appears to have been built from the ground up for scalability. Furthermore, rights issues limited Amazon's stake in Kindle Worlds' properties to low-cost books; much of the money in these large properties were likely to be in television, film, and other subsidiary rights, which the world creators retained full stake in. Much of serialized fiction competitor Radish's business model, is to collect data on what works, build in-house writer teams to create original content, and build popular franchises that can make the bulk of their money in licensing deals. Kindle Vella won't have the same rights issues as Kindle Worlds did and can offer Amazon data, whether they end up licensing content from creators or having their in-house teams build profitable properties from scratch. Number 3: Kindle Scout. Kindle Scout was effectively "the voice for authors." Bright-eyed hopefuls could rack up votes on their fiction samples and win a contract with Amazon's publishing arm Kindle Press, also discontinued. In total, Kindle Scout picked around 300 winners during its run from 2014 to 2018. While Amazon did not provide an explanation for killing the program, It was likely shut down at least in part for a variety of reasons, from support costs to changed leadership to shifting company priorities. My take on why the program was shut down is because it simply didn't produce results around being better at predicting which books would sell and which wouldn't. In this way, it honestly wasn't much different from The Voice, American Idol, and many other competitions, where the winner is far from guaranteed to have a successful career. Yet unlike The Voice, Amazon couldn't make money from the process of voting through a high-ratings television show plus further branding. Number 4: Write On by Kindle. Write On was billed as a story lab where authors could get feedback on their work as they published. It quickly became known as Wattpad for Amazon. It's no surprise as to why this program ended, because very few authors seem to be using it. I had personally either not heard of or not remembered this program until I was researching this article, and Amazon stated that "we were not able to grow it in the way that we had wished." These 4 programs indicate interest and experimentation with new forms of selling fiction. From what I can tell, many of the best parts of these programs have now been incorporated into Kindle Vella. And that is the larger reason as to why Kindle Vella is unlikely to go the way of these others. This program is not being launched as an invite-only private beta, nor is it being launched as a side experiment. Amazon appears to have learned from these former programs, figured out how to scale from the beginning, and is launching big with Kindle Vella. And whereas Amazon was ahead of the curve with many of these other programs, Amazon is actually behind the curve with Kindle Vella, and needs to succeed with it to maintain its dominance over the English-speaking book world for a number of reasons. Number 5: Kindle Vella. With all of these failed programs, it's reasonable to ask whether readers even want serialized fiction. This is a question at the center of Kindle Vella, as it's fair to assume, It will only stay around if it can make Amazon significant money. And contrary to many independent authors' beliefs, the answer to this question of whether readers like serialized fiction is a resounding "yes." Amazon tends to be ahead of the curve in the United States, and their out-of-the-blue entrance into this space—they landed the trademark in January 2021—also indicates that they believe readers want serialized fiction. Presumably, with all their now-shuttered experimental writers' programs, they have some data on this. Market Forces That Predict Short-Form Fiction as a Serious Big-Tech Battleground. In the United States where I live, independent authors are used to Amazon being way ahead of the curve on new publishing trends. For example, Amazon moved on its direct publishing platform for ebooks 3 whole years before any other big tech companies, specifically Apple and Google, opened their doors. Amazon is not the tastemaker in this instance, however; instead, they are trend follower. I suspect we'll see major growth in serialized fiction over the next 5 years, and it will shake up the independent author space significantly. Especially those who sell mostly in ebook. Number 1: The marketplace is driven by companies outside of the US. The ebook revolution started in the US, where Amazon had a strong foothold already. Before Amazon, the Big Six traditional publishers plus two chain retailers, Barnes Noble and the now-closed Borders, held much of the power in terms of what got printed and distributed and what didn't. The marketplace for serialized fiction, however, is being heavily driven by Asian countries, where it has a proven business model and readers willing to spend money and use the apps. Serialized fiction is specifically popular in China, South Korea, India, and Japan, which all have massive internet companies like Alibaba, Jingdong, Rakuten, Gmarket, and Flipkart that rival Amazon's resources in their respective countries. Amazon does not have as strong of a foothold in this region, though it's a top 5 player in many of these markets, because there are dozens of big tech companies that still hold the majority of the e-commerce space there. There is a lot of money in this space, and a lot of companies that want to hold onto their e-commerce market share, and see books and digital content as a way to do that. The market for serialized fiction in English-language markets is following a trend started elsewhere. That means most English-speaking independent authors currently live in countries that are in their infancy of seeing what readers want out of this and what these apps can do financially in the future. I've seen several independent authors argue that it only matters what readers want. The truth is that these companies outside of the US already know what readers want, and have a proven, repeatable, and translatable business model to create engagement on their apps. It's not dependent on culture or localized preferences. TikTok is a great example outside of the publishing space of how savvy these companies are regarding mobile app engagement and virality. Number 2: We're seeing big acquisitions in the space. The two largest North American-based companies for serialized fiction are Wattpad and Radish. Wattpad recently sold to a South Korean company called Naver for $600 million. Radish is closing a deal for $440 million with Naver's rival Kakao, after recently raising $63.2 million. The third largest company in North America for short-form fiction is Tapas, which specializes in webtoons, comics optimized for web and devices. A few days before this book launched, it was announced that Kakao is also buying Tapas for $590 million. The Kakao deals are already approved and close in June of 2021. To be clear, these are massive acquisitions by any standard, but especially in the publishing world. So what's going on? Both Naver and Kakao are online giants in South Korea, each with their own portfolios of mobile messaging apps, webtoons, search engines, community forums, e-commerce, financial services, and more. Both companies are interested in getting their webtoons, graphic novels, and other fiction properties to English speakers, and bringing English works to their massive user base in South Korea, Japan, and beyond. They also want to find the next major franchise that can be turned into television, movies, merchandise, and more. If two companies from South Korea want to purchase the two largest English-language serialized fiction platforms, you can assume that other major internet companies from other countries will follow suit. These apps are critical to their growth plans, as digital content is one of the top 5 ways you can build your e-commerce user base. Companies don't usually invest $300 to $600 million in things that they don't see as major opportunities to grow. The tech world here in the US has largely ignored both book publishing and fiction apps, but you can bet that will change with many well-resourced companies wanting to get in on what is essentially an empty playfield. There are many companies with money to throw around, and very few platforms that are even competing in this space. But it won't and can't stay that way for much longer, especially with Amazon Vella entering the space. Number 3: The English language world is the next frontier. Many of the companies that dominate the serialized fiction space right now are in Asia. These companies have proven a lucrative business model there and are now moving into English language territories a bit like there's a gold rush. While copyright law is very different in some of these countries, these companies are learning quickly, and investing in figuring out how to get English-speaking authors onto their apps. This means that the English-speaking world is playing catch-up in many ways, in that we don't already have many homegrown companies competing in this space. This is a nascent market space, and Kindle Vella is a fairly late entrant So while they're likely to have an advantage due to their extensive author network, it's still anyone's game, and the Asian companies playing in this space are formidable in their own right. I believe these companies are moving into the space regardless of whether the US, Canada, and other countries meet them in competition. They have the full playbook of how to convert users into readers on their app. This is a gold rush period for companies that have the tech, staff, and support to move now, and honestly, it's all quiet on the Western front in terms of competition. Number 4: Companies are moving toward their own currencies. The abstraction away from dollars and pounds and to coins or other forms of currency is a solid proposition for large tech companies, and many see it as a clear way to grow engagement with their user base. It's a bit like dropping your users into a foreign country with a wallet full of foreign currency and no conversion calculator. Without familiarity and a long history of reference points, most people struggle to truly understand the cost of what they are buying, which results in buying much more or buying the same good at a higher price than they would normally spend. Tech companies have been moving toward their own currencies for the last decade. But with the success of cryptocurrency, as well as the proliferation of in-app purchases across the gaming industry, it seems like people are finally accepting and engaging with this style of buying across all sectors and not just games. Psychologically, this is a good way for companies to increase spending among those in their user base, especially if they fuel purchasing with free coins or deal packages of coins. Many of these serialized fiction companies are making more because readers can't totally tell how much they are spending on a story and can't use the reference point of a book to ground them. Serialized fiction stories done right are totally different beasts than novels. Younger readers seem to care far less about this math than older readers, which suggests that buying habits themselves are changing. And serialized fiction apps are hardly the first to get in on the coins trend. In-app purchases were popularized primarily through mobile games, and companies like Facebook and Google have their own platform currencies to spur engagement. Number 5: E-commerce is moving toward devices. Furthermore, big tech companies are also moving to even more frictionless purchasing. Through in-home and in-car devices that are largely commanded through voice recognition software. What's better than abstracted currency? No talk of currency at all. In an ideal world, when you ask a device like Amazon's Alexa to play an audiobook, she doesn't ask, "Would you like to purchase it from Apple Books for $21.99?" She uses your setup preferences to buy the book from your preferred store with the credit card information you already entered. That is, if she can't find the book as part of one of your monthly subscriptions to streaming services. Serialized fiction is perfectly set up for this, as it's easily bingeable over a morning commute, similar to podcasts and Netflix. It's easy to see how the habit's consumption of television translates to more fluid storytelling in long-form fiction as well. And it's clear that the real power of this content in the long term is going to be having it in an audio version that people can listen to when they are engaged in tasks that don't allow for reading. Types of short-form fiction and English-focused apps that specialize in them. You may be interested in fiction apps because you've heard of Kindle Vella, Wattpad, and Radish. But the marketplace of fiction apps is far vaster than these 3 platforms, all of which specialize in serialized fiction. There are many other types of short-form storytelling, and fiction apps are popping up around each of the different types. Independent authors should pay close attention to the popularity of these fiction apps, because there is tremendous opportunity to make real money in these places. Here are some of the short-form storytelling types, as well as some of the platforms that specialize in them: Number 1: Serialized fiction. Serialized fiction is episodic in nature, with each episode being around 1,500 to 3,000 words. Episodes make up seasons, which can range from 10 episodes all the way up to 60, 70, or 80 episodes. Stories can have many seasons, with some of the most popular stories seeing 8 seasons and up. Fiction apps that cater to this genre include Radish, Kindle Vella, Kiss, and more. Number 2: Web Novels. Web novels are slightly different from serialized fiction, though the two terms are often used interchangeably. Serialized fiction is a specific style of storytelling with an episodic structure, while a web novel is usually far more like a traditional novel in terms of structure. Web novels are serialized to the internet, usually for free, as they are being created, with the full intention of turning them into paid novels for sale at traditional retailers later. A small subset of web novels is light novels, which is a term that describes web novels that have been picked up by a Japanese publisher. Royal Road, Tapas, Scribblehub are popular places to publish a web novel. Authors also create their own spaces, like a website where they sell directly to fans through PayPal and Patreon. Number 3: Interactive Novels and Stories. Interactive stories are specifically stories that follow a "choose your own adventure" format. Readers can make choices within the story to follow different storylines and reach different endings. As many of these stories are written in real-time, fan interaction can also dictate the different storylines that are possible to follow. Some apps even allow readers to solve puzzles, particularly in the crime and thriller genre. Fiction apps that cater to this genre include Choices, Episode, Device 6, Zori, and more. Number 4: Chat Stories. Chat stories, sometimes called message-based or social stories, are a fairly new style of short-form content that is based on text messaging. These stories are told entirely in a style of people texting or messaging back and forth. Some apps additionally do fade-out messaging where the texts disappear over time, mirroring real messaging apps like WhatsApp and making these stories feel even more ephemeral and urgent. Fiction apps that cater to this genre include Hooked, Cliffhanger, Tap by Wattpad, and Lure. Number 5: Transmedia stories. Transmedia stories, sometimes called multiplatform stories, are those that are told across multiple platforms. This isn't the same as being translated to multiple formats. A transmedia story may have a YouTube channel, a blog, and a Twitter chat story that all produce different pieces of content that contribute to the story. There is usually one platform that has the main story, while other pieces of the story on other platforms add to and expand the world. Many transmedia stories blend some of these other styles of storytelling and are an important area for independent authors to keep their eye on. Film and television are using transmedia storytelling more and more, as a marketing tool before a major release, or as a fan engagement tool during the off-season, when there are no new releases or episodes. Transmedia stories are told across social media, websites, and apps. Number 6: Webcomics. Webcomics are comics for the web, They are longer than comic strips and tell stories in chapters. They expand to other genres beyond the superhero genre, which is what traditional comics are most known for. Although there is more variety and a large community of independent creators, webcomics are styled much like their print counterparts, with two-page layouts, traditional paneling, and black and white imagery that is suited to print. This can make them hard to read and sell on ebook retailers, though several retailers, specifically Apple Books and Barnes Noble, appear to be pushing webcomics in their apps. Manga is a subset of webcomics that originated in Japan and uses a specific style of drawing characters and scenes, which has many sub-styles. These comics are read back to front, right to left in the Japanese style. Fiction apps that cater to this genre include Tapas, Webcomics, and more. Number 7: Webtoons. Webtoons are a recent addition to the comic storytelling space. Originating in South Korea, these comics are made for digital consumption, particularly on devices through apps. They read up to down for maximum scrollability, and are released in sections called episodes, similar to serialized fiction. Structurally, the storytelling is also far more organic than traditional, with seasons and cliffhangers that don't follow convention. Visually, there is less paneling, colored drawings, usually in the manga style, and more white blank space, as these comics are not designed to ever see print. Fiction apps that cater to this genre include Webtoon, Tapas, Tappytoon, and more. Number 8: Graphic novels. Graphic novels are long-form comics that follow traditional storytelling structure and are most like a graphically represented novel. Most comics, whether in print or digital, are told in serialized format and are ultimately a section of a story. A graphic novel is a complete story. Fiction apps that cater to this genre include Marvel Unlimited, DC Comics, Comixology, Madefire, and more. Number 9: Interactive Story Games. Interactive story games, like transmedia stories, combine several of these storytelling types. I included them in the list because some of them are reaching out to independent authors more and more to license the gaming rights to their stories. When this happens, The story is often rewritten and computer-animated for the mobile game format. These games often combine the best of gaming, choose-your-own-adventure, and webtoons. The stories are popular and plentiful if you search the Android or Apple App Store. If you'd like some examples, you can look into Device 6, Emily Is Away, Florence Gone Home, and so many more. How Wide Authors Market Their Short-Form Fiction. Although short-form fiction is taking off in English-language markets, it's not exactly easy to market your offerings as an independent author. Many fiction apps are a closed ecosystem of sorts, in that you need to gain visibility within the app itself to see traction. Here are some ways that authors are seeing their books explode on these apps. Number 1: In-app promotions. By far the best way to gain visibility for your stories is through the app itself. Companies like Radish have in-app promotions that you can apply for. Additionally, they push stories that are doing well on their platform already. This, however, isn't exactly a chicken and egg problem, as these apps are a data miner's dream., with lots of public data about readership and visibility posted for all to see. Fiction apps are extremely trope-driven, and you can easily see which tropes are most popular on which apps. Writing to those tropes, or packaging your book in a way that satisfies those tropes, will help your stories get recognized and merchandised through these promotions. Depending on the app, there are voting mechanisms comment sections, and even a way to go live to interact with fans. Use the promotional tools of the app to get your story visible. As we've said throughout this book, you don't want to throw your content up on various platforms without a concerted effort to get it started with finding readers in the app. Number 2: In-app metadata. Many fiction apps have metadata to fill out,, including episode titles, tags, and summaries. Authors fill these sections with tropes, as several apps post this metadata to the web, where it can come up in search. For example, when I type in "best Radish stories about wolves," there are several specific stories that come up on the site radishfiction.com. While these summaries are posted on individual pages, there is no way to get to them through the top-level site. So the only way a reader might find them is by searching the internet for specific keywords and phrases. In-app search is also driven by tags and tropes, so getting these sections right can increase your visibility in the app search too. Number 2: Exclusive Stories. Most apps love exclusive content that is not posted anywhere else and are happy to work with you in getting your exclusive content onto their site. In most cases, the payout for this content is not great, but if you can tie your exclusive content to the rest of your catalog published through the app, then you can often gain a lot of marketing through cross-promotion. Apps are far more likely to promote their exclusive content within the app, so you have to think of this as an experiment and loss leader to get your catalog in front of the app's readers. Number 3: Social media groups and forums. Each of the major apps seems to have at least a few communities that connect over social media. These are often readers who are trying to find interesting stories on the app. You can join these communities and explore what readers are looking for, as well as where else they might be hanging out. Number 4: Social media. That caters to the readership. Because the reader demographics of these fiction apps is pretty specific, you can often find a social media channel or a few that likely have some of the readers. TikTok is a great example of a place where young females hang out, and the demographics are similar to several fiction apps like Radish and Wattpad. You may want to start a social media channel and talk about your short-form fiction there. You can also talk about your books, so either way you are building something for your brand. The younger generations where fiction app reading is prevalent are also highly skilled at switching between storefronts and platforms. Whereas in an older generation, you might need to provide clear instructions and links, for younger readers, you can simply mention the title of your story and what app it's on. And many of them will take action to find and sample your story. This is ideal for social media, where linking is often suppressed in visibility algorithms anyway. Number 5: Dedicated websites. Although I have not seen many dedicated websites in the independent author community, the comics community on Webtoons, webcomics, and graphic novel apps are well-versed in dedicated websites to house their stories. Many of them started serializing their work on the web, so they see fiction apps as another place to make money and get discovered, rather than a different format for their main work. A dedicated website is useful because you accumulate new fans for your true serialized work. It's also a good place to experiment with fan-based funding like Kickstarter and Patreon. My co-author Russell Nohulty is an expert in this space, with both comics and novels in his catalog. He uses crowdfunding to sell his books, comics, graphic novels, and anthologies, and is well-versed in running 5-figure campaigns consistently. Check out our co-authored books in the Book Sales Supercharged series if you are interested in how comic creators sell serialized fiction., as there's a lot that we as independent authors can learn from this community. Number 6: Author platform. Although most independent authors agree that it's challenging to get their book readers to join a fiction app like Radish, or even to read serialized fiction in general, many authors still make their presence on these fiction apps known to their current audience. I encourage you to treat these fiction apps as something totally different that requires its own landing pages and content marketing. These platforms will become more well-known as the English language market matures, so having a page on your site called "Best Radish Wolf Stories" or "Serialized Fiction About Wolves" is probably easy to compete on in web search. The sooner you post these pages, the better you will position yourself for the future. What should independent authors pay attention to Regarding fiction apps, this is an emerging market in English-language markets, where much of this content is posted online and for free. Will readers pay? There is evidence that they will, as the fiction app space is burgeoning. If you take away anything from this chapter, it should be around rights and intellectual property. For example, for most independent authors, it was not cost-efficient to move into graphic novels or anything similar, as commissioning the artwork would have cost a fortune. There were not enough readers to make it worthwhile, and even most traditionally published books don't end up becoming graphic novels. With the advent of new storytelling styles and fiction apps that understand how to generate revenue from these storytelling styles, there may be new opportunities to license your intellectual property or exploit it yourself. By building a team that can create content in multiple formats. For example, the surging popularity of webtoons and webcomics may open up the opportunity and create a stronger marketplace for paid illustration, especially when you consider using the illustrations for special edition hardcovers, print comics, and more of your stories. For the skeptics out there, there was once a time when authors did not think they should produce audiobooks or translations of their work either. And now there are authors who make over half of their yearly royalties from audiobooks or translations. The industry changes rapidly, and independent authors like my friend Russell Nohulty, who has also co-authored several books in the Book Sales Supercharged series, are already teaching authors how to commission artwork and sell cool graphic novels and comics on Kickstarter and at conferences. The other thing to pay attention to is payments concerns. Will companies build their catalogs, pay authors with a percentage of coins, effectively a separate currency that has to be translated into government currency like dollars and pounds, and then once they have enough content, cut their rates or turn their store into a subscription model? The answer is yes. Remember, these companies are not publishing companies. They are big tech companies. What do big tech companies want? They want to build a loyal and engaged user base, and they use things like subscriptions, exclusivity, and more to make customers happy. What do consumers want? They want lots of digital content to binge-read (or not) at the lowest possible price. As a creator, your job is to pay attention, and know the value of your intellectual property. Don't expect Big Tech to do the right thing or be the good guys, or stop trying to pay creators in visibility, streams, and coins. The business model is the business model. Likewise, don't expect at least some consumers not to pay as little as possible. The platform will serve its user base before serving its authors. You are not the priority customer. And finally, don't expect independent authors to move as a unit. The pay will drop to the lowest amount possible while still retaining a big catalog of titles, so the reader has enough selection to make it worth sticking around. Savvy authors will pull out when the pay drops too low, but not everyone will. If enough drop out, the company will adjust again and work to attract authors back to them in the numbers needed to have a big catalog of titles again. But if not enough drop out, you may see changes in the industry around reader expectations of what something should cost. As a creator, what you can do is work within the business model until it breaks down, and be everywhere to mitigate the risk. Don't bet your career on anyone but yourself, and you'll do just fine. Additional Resources. Get the book, Get Your Book Selling on Fiction Apps. This book goes deeper into several of the English language platforms that are recruiting independent authors, as well as how you can better succeed at them. TheWorldNeedsYourBook.com/GYBS-Fiction-Apps. Join the Facebook group Writing and Selling on Fiction Apps. This author-only group was started by Ember Casey and has a ton of specific information about dozens of different fiction apps, from the ones mentioned in this chapter and many others that I didn't have time to cover. There is also a ton of information about protecting your intellectual property, as this space is still an emerging market and hasn't come up through English-language traditional publishing. Many fiction apps are moving into the English language market from other countries, and the copyright laws can be vastly different. You want to make sure you know what you are signing away, as you study the actual contracts for these opportunities. I'm an admin of the group and love learning more about fiction apps, so pop on by to chat with me there. Facebook.com/group/2042480162718205. Learn more and try out Kindle Vella. If you are interested specifically in Kindle Vella, there are several Facebook groups that I frequent that are specific to this platform, including Kindle Vella Authors and Kindle Vella Support Group. Chapter 7: Translations. One of the most exciting subsidiary rights you can exploit is your translation rights. These rights are valuable and can be extremely lucrative because you can create translations for dozens of languages and countries. You can also take any of your other subsidiary rights, for example, a graphic novel, and translate those into dozens of languages too. Translations are a multiplier on your back catalog, and while several years ago you needed to find a publisher or a company to create a translation for you, We, as independent authors, can now do this ourselves, and many of us are, and making major bank at it. If you are considering investing in translations, you likely want to explore all the major ebook retailers because in several countries, Amazon is not the dominant place to buy ebooks. Amazon only holds one-third of the international ebook market. The rest is held by: internet conglomerates from other countries who already have a strong foothold and user base within their countries; device-optimized fiction apps that are popular reading devices in China, Japan, South Korea, and surrounding countries; Google Play Books and Apple Books, which both have storefronts across 50+ countries; Kobo Books, owned by Japanese internet conglomerate Rakuten, which has partnered with all the rest of the largest bookstores and e-commerce retailers globally: Waterstones, Fnac, Walmart, Rakuten Ichiba, Bol, and more. Countries outside of English-language markets are seeing huge growth in digital reading, and are hungry for content in both English and their native languages. Many of these markets haven't reached the same maturation, saturation, of English language markets, which means there's a lot of opportunity to establish your readership in these places. The languages that are growth areas in translation, at the time of this writing, are: Languages spoken in European countries like German, French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Norwegian, Swedish, and Dutch. The European language markets are growing right now, in both ebook and audiobook. This is where most independent authors seem to be playing at this time. Languages spoken in Asian countries, like Chinese, Korean, and Japanese. This is partly driven by the sheer number of language speakers in these countries, but it is also driven by censorship laws and the emergence of fiction apps as a preferred choice for digital reading. That said, I would not start with these languages without professional help. As they don't use the modern Latin alphabet. Languages spoken by large populations, like Arabic and Russian. I don't know many independent authors who are doing these translations, and it's likely too early and/or cost-prohibitive for most independent authors. Challenges with translations. Translations are full of possibility but also come with their own headaches. Some of the things that authors report experiencing are: Number 1: Overwhelm. Every book in your catalog can be translated to many languages in many formats, including print, ebook, audiobook, and serials. You can also take derivative works like graphic novels, workbooks, coloring books, decks, and more, and translate those into many languages. If you are good at math, you'll note that even if you only tried to get your back catalog into a single non-English-speaking market, you'll end up with many new products to sell. This can be overwhelming, and it's hard to know what language would be the right one for you to start with. This can also change depending on how many series you have and what genre you write. Number 2: Rights Management. Rights and intellectual property laws are different all over the world. You need to know who owns what if you are working with a translator, and if you are trying to exploit your content in a country with censorship laws, you may not be able to publish certain stories. In some countries, the translator actually owns the rights to your book, while others have different rules. Rights management can be a major challenge to tackle on your own., depending on your content and what language you are trying to translate it to. Number 3: Expenses. Translation is not cheap. When working with a translator, a traditional novel between $75,000 to $90,000 can run up to $4,000 per translation for one language. Most authors have seen good results by getting 3 to 5 books translated at once before they launch. Which adds up quickly. There are ways to get more affordable translations, including using artificial intelligence software like DeepL and Google Translate. These tools can create a draft of your translations that you then hire a native-speaking editor to clean up. Still, you will likely be investing real money into each language you want to translate your work into. Number 4: Marketing. At the time of this writing, there are not many companies that can support your marketing efforts in other languages. In English-language markets, we have advertising platforms, email lists like BookBub, and so much more to spread the word about our books. In other markets, you'll be relying on more organic ways of getting discovered, such as a free first in series or visibility mechanisms at retailers around long pre-orders. Additionally, it's not exactly easy to market anything in another language, especially if you don't speak it or are not familiar with it. And translations for all of your marketing materials can get expensive and don't translate well into some media you might want to create, such as audio or video. 5. Time to market. You likely won't be able to exploit all your translation rights at once—you probably have multiple books and possibly even multiple series, and you will need to invest money and time into the effort to get it right in a single language. If you intend to use retailer mechanisms to gain visibility for your foray into the language, you may be trying to bank several books at once to release on long pre-order periods. During this time, the market can always change. New competitors can enter, trends can die, or the market can shift. Creating translations tends to be a longer publishing game, so make sure what you're translating is likely to be popular for the next several years. How to choose your language. If translations are something you want to pursue, you may be wondering how to choose and prioritize various languages. I've put together a list to help myself prioritize languages throughout my catalog, which includes spirituality, writing how-to, young adult, urban fantasy, and several heat levels and styles of romance. Here's what I encourage you to look at. Number 1: Where are you already selling books in the English language? This can give you a good indication of where your books might be best received in the next few years. Google Play Books and Kobo seem particularly good at helping you figure this out quickly in their dashboards. If you don't have much data on this from multiple retailers, you can also dig around your topic on the internet to see whether it's heating up. For my spirituality books, Spanish is a major language to translate to, despite many Spanish-language markets being primarily print book readers still. Remember, you're not just translating for ebook, and it's easy enough to get print and audiobooks started as well, since the translation is the most expensive part of the process. Number 2: How many speakers does the language have? The languages with the largest number of speakers, not necessarily native but overall, are English, Chinese, Hindi, Spanish, French, Arabic, Bengali, Russian, Portuguese, and Indonesian. Please note, however, that this list doesn't correspond to the ebook markets that are heating up in other languages. German, for example, is considered among independent authors to be a top-priority language for translation. Especially if you write in major categories like contemporary romance or thrillers. Likewise, a language like Spanish has a high number of speakers all over the world, but the top market for Spanish ebooks is actually the United States. Spanish is a second language in the US and other major countries that speak it as their official or primary language, like Spain, Mexico, Asia, and much of South America, are still in the early adoption stages of ebooks and audiobooks, though this is changing rapidly. Remember that even if a particular market is not consuming much content, there are other speakers all over the world that may be willing to buy your books in their country. Keep in mind that immature markets are a temporary problem. Those markets will hop into digital reading through ebooks audiobooks, and fiction apps eventually, and maybe it makes sense for your books to be there and ready when they do. Number 3: Which retailers serve the marketplaces that sell your language? There's no point in translating into a specific language if you can't also reach the major markets for that language as an independent author. For each language you choose, make sure you look at which ebook and audiobook retailers support distribution to the largest markets. Markets. In eBooks, Google Play Books and Apple Books serve the most major languages with 50+ countries, while Kobo and Amazon serve about 20 countries each. For further eBook distribution, PublishDrive offers a ton of global markets, including distribution for Chinese markets, which are notoriously challenging for independent authors to distribute to due to censorship laws. In audiobook, distributors like Findaway, Audible, and Google Play can get you into many countries, while subscription services like Storytel are expanding rapidly in Europe and South America. You can learn more about what languages are supported: Amazon Supported Languages: kdp.amazon.com/en_us/help/topic/g200673300 Google Play Books supported countries: support.google.com/books/partner/table/6052428?hl=en. Apple Books supported countries: support.apple.com/en-us/ht204411-middle-east. Number 4: Is the ebook market mature in the countries you are targeting? And if so, is the content you're translating in demand and on trend in that country? For example, if you write zombie fiction, that may not be popular when translated into Italian or Spanish. It's worth it to do a little research into what is popular and on trend in every language you are considering. Number 5: Is there competition from traditional publishers in the language? This can be a good thing or a bad thing. You at least know there is a market for your work, but now you have to get into advertising and other efforts to stand out. Again, do your research and look for languages that are underserved in your genre or niche. Number 6: Are you able to get a good translation in your language? Are you able to market in that language? Some languages are going to be harder to do translations on than others. For example, it's far easier for me to translate to Spanish than it is to translate to Japanese, even though I have taken years of language courses in both. I highly recommend focusing on one language at a time and sticking with it for every title in your back catalog that would be profitable. I also encourage you to get on language learning apps like Duolingo Babel, and Rosetta Stone. This has helped me tremendously in managing the translation creation process and considering marketing opportunities for the books. Ways to translate your books. Now that you've chosen your first language, there are several ways to start your first translation project. Number 1, get a traditional publishing deal. I have worked with a few small traditional publishing presses in other countries to get my work translated. In every case, I've experienced the same thing. The publisher approached me. I received an advance of anywhere between $1,000 and $1,300. I sometimes received a few copies of the books. I never earned out and rarely received accounting, and I often didn't hear from the publisher again after the first year the translated book was out. This may not be your experience, but I wanted to share it to give you an idea of what translation deals might come to you organically. All of my deals have been extremely low effort for me and have made me a small advance. That said, my rights are tied up, and I really don't have any control over how my book looks, where it appears, or whether the publisher will take other books in the series. Go into any contract with eyes wide open and knowing what to look for. With translations, you want to know who owns the rights to the translation and what formats the publisher intends to exploit. As translation is the largest expense, it's likely that your publisher will at least want the ebook and print book rights. Number 2: Hire or partner with a translator. Companies like First Edition Translations, Espresso Translations, and Reedsy help to match you with translation services. Prices can vary, as can languages served. You'll additionally need to figure out rights management and who owns the translated version of the book. This is considered the best way to get a solid translation that won't accumulate bad reviews. You can also hire a freelance translator on a site like Upwork or Fiverr, but I can't say I recommend this. If you're going to pay a translator, you might as well find a vetted one through working with a translation services company. Number 3: Use a royalty share platform. You can also try BabbelCube, which is a platform that helps to matchmake authors and translators, and handles all the challenges of a royalty share while taking their fee off the top. Babelcube offers 15 different languages, including the most prominent ones in Europe: German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, and French. Other companies like Babelcube include FiberAid, which specializes in Chinese translations, and TechTime Books Translation, which offers 40 to 50 language translations at time of this writing. I have not used either of these companies, so please do your research. I have nearly 10 books on Babbel Cube, and for me, there are many major problems with the setup. I can't afford to advertise the books because my royalty cut is low, so they've languished on all retailers. I have made some money over the years, but I'll likely be asking for my rights back to better exploit these markets in the future. Overall, I wouldn't recommend using these services unless you really want a set-it-and-forget-it solution, as you lose a lot of publishing and marketing control with having the books published through Babelcube. If you know the wide retailer platforms, you can likely do better publishing them directly or through a distributor. Additionally, audiobooks of translated works are heating up, and you likely can't create an audiobook from your translator's work, nor would you want to, as there would be no easy way to do the royalty splits. Number 4: Use software. Joanna Penn introduced me to a few automated software solutions, including DeepL, which provides a more informal and friendlier translation than Google Translate. DeepL has a small monthly subscription fee with no commitments, while Google Translate is completely free, just Google it. There are many opinions in the independent author community that you absolutely should not use a software solution to get a first draft of your translation, but I think it's worth an experiment. You can and should get an editor to smooth out your story, and you can also employ native-speaking beta readers to catch anything that misses the editor's process. The most important thing I can stress about using software is that it's a tool to speed up the translation process, not a substitute for working with translators, editors, and beta readers. Creating translations with the help of software is not free or cheap. Consider how much effort you put into making your English-language books sparkle. Your translated books are going to need at least the same amount of post-draft effort., but likely more. Number 5: Piece together a translation. None of these options is mutually exclusive, and you can combine them if it makes sense. For example, if you are working in a language where the translator could by law own your rights, you may want to create the first draft using software, then employ a translator to do heavy editing and rewriting on your translation. This way, you are the originator of the document and still hold all the rights. Marketing your translations. It's not enough to create your translated books. You also have to help them reach readers. Here are some ways you can market your translated books. Number 1: Use what works for other wide books. In general, What works on wide retailers in ebook will work for translations. The key thing to remember here is that these markets are not as mature as the English language markets. There are not as many marketing and promotion tools available, which can feel frustrating to independent authors. For me, I see the positives of it in that the simple things that used to work 5 to 8 years ago on the English language markets are going to work very well in other language markets. Here are a few things that make a lot of sense to set up: Long pre-orders once you have 3 to 5 books in the series ready in that language. Retailer pages like your author page set up in the translation language where possible. Perma-frees, ebooks that are series starters and always free at retailers. So that readers can sample your work. An email opt-in page and autoresponder. A lead or reader magnet that encourages signups. Links to the next book in the front and back matter of your book. A Facebook group or other social media account for your translations readers to follow to stay updated. A website for your catalog in that language. Or at the least, a corner of your English-language website where you can update your translation's readers. Get the basics in place for each market you enter, because they matter and are likely to pay off quickly. Number 2: Align covers, descriptions, and pricing to the market. I highly recommend looking for relevant books in your translation language on each of the wide retailers in both ebook and audiobook. You can look at traditionally and independently published books. It's not unusual for books to have different covers, pricing, and highlighted tropes in other countries and languages, so don't be surprised if you find relevant translated books with covers that would not personally make you pick up the book. Get advice on how to package your book for each market, or study relevant books in the language, country, and genre to get a better sense of how to better align your packaging to the translated market. Number 3: Get traction on deal sites. There are not many places to promote your books in most languages, but you should check out your specific language. Some book deal sites that operate in English are just starting to move into building lists for other languages. If the language you've chosen is popular,, it may be worth looking into. Additionally, most of the major European languages have one email list deal site that you can find with an internet search of "language book deals email list." I pulled up the search of this for German, and found an entire website dedicated to helping independent authors move into the German market here: IndiesgoGerman.com. I then found a list of email deal sites that include XTME, Bookergen, BookDeals, Best Book Finder, BookFans, eBook Rabatt, eBooks Unlimited, eBook Watcher, TallBooChangeBot, LessaDeals, and several more: indiesgogerman.com/german-ebook-marketing-1. As you look into each of these, keep in mind that they are not BookBub and may not produce the results for what they are charging for advertising. Number 4: Cost-Per-Click Advertising. There are currently a small number of ways that you can advertise your books through cost-per-click (CPC) advertising. Most social media advertising platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter will have robust targeting, so you can target specific countries, just like you might do in the US. Additionally, Amazon has opened both its Kindle Unlimited program and its advertising platform to its Germany storefront users. You can go exclusive on Amazon Germany, which may help you create visibility. You can also start display advertising on your series there. Number 5: Keep up with rapidly evolving markets. There are lots of changes happening in every language market right now, so I encourage you to stay in touch with other independent authors to stay up to date on new tools, platforms, and trends in your translation languages. Here are some ways to do so: Get my book, Get Your Book Selling in Translation. I have a chapter on every major translation language that independent authors are pursuing, and I update this book regularly. Find independent authors experts in the language market you are pursuing. Just as someone like me is talking about independent publishing through theworldneedsyourbook.com for English-speaking authors, there are also people all over the world who are supporting independent authors in their native language. For example, there are German independent publishing experts who are teaching German authors how to publish in German. Use Google Translate to get the gist of the advice they are sharing. As it applies to your translation too. Join a group. Wide for the Win has several offshoot Facebook groups, and you can join them to connect with other independent authors who are also doing translations in that language. They are a good place to connect. What should independent authors pay attention to regarding translations? One of the things I worry about is around how improving technologies like text-to-speech and web translation will affect authors trying to exploit their translation rights. For example, lots of readers buy books and have their device read those books out loud. It's important to think about how you can get a paid version of these versions of your story, like AI-read audiobooks and AI-generated translations, in a convenient distribution method for your reader. With the technology already here, The reader is going to use it either way. How can authors exploit their own rights to encourage readers to pay, instead of use a workaround? I believe that every author should be thinking about how to use these technologies to quickly get versions of their books to their audience. For most authors though, that's not possible if you are paying the upfront costs or working with a professional translator on every book. Another thing to pay attention to is that in many other language markets, ebook and print are not the dominant format. In Sweden, for example, audiobooks make up 50% of the book market, and most readers access audiobooks through the subscription service Storytel. If you are going to spend a ton of money on translations, remember that there is an additional cost to produce books in each format, and that certain formats may be more important in certain languages than other formats are. Additional resources. Get my book, Get Your Book Selling in Translation. I have a chapter on every major translation language that independent authors are pursuing, and I update this book regularly. Find the format and retailer you want at theworldneedsyourbook.com/gybs-translation. Chapter 8: Next Steps. Thank you so much for picking up this book and learning more about how you as an author can go wide in multiple formats at multiple retailers. I hope it's been enlightening and given you a solid overview of all the ways that writers can make money from their stories, plus all the new ways that are coming to English language territories with every month and year that passes. There are so many areas of publishing that this book couldn't cover, especially around licensing or optioning other subsidiary rights, including performance rights, film, television, and theater, merchandising, book club editions, corporate bulk sales, and more. When you start to dig into subsidiary rights, there are so many to exploit. And more are being invented all the time. And the good news is that where once authors had to sit around waiting for people who wanted to exploit these rights to come to them, now authors have choices and can decide to exploit them themselves. If you are able to find an audience for your derivative and related works, which is easier than ever through ad targeting on Facebook, Amazon, BookBub, and many other platforms,, you can deliver the goods and collect that majority of the profits. You are in full control. All you have to do is decide what parts of your intellectual property you are most interested in pursuing, and get started. What Next? This book is just an introduction to the world of wide, and it's designed to help you decide if the wide mindset is right for you. Hopefully by now, you have some idea of whether this is something that makes sense for your author career. Please send your questions and suggestions to my team at team@theworldneedsyourbook.com. I'd love to help you out! The Book Sales Supercharge Series. Additionally, if you want to dig into the many retailers, formats, and other platforms I've mentioned in this book, I encourage you to continue the series. There are so many great books that go deep on these topics. I have learned so much writing this series, and these are definitely the books I wish I had when I was starting out with publishing and starting out at wide retailers. I have been in the industry since 2009 and have made all the mistakes that these books help you avoid. But more importantly, the books are infused with fun, insight, and passion in the hopes that you'll see the possibilities for yourself, your stories, and your long-term career. Having a writing career has been my personal dream since I was about 9 years old, but I truly never believed I would be so lucky to do this work every day. If you're anything like me, you also struggle to believe in your dreams. I can tell you, though, from personal experience that they are possible, and I believe possible for anyone. More possibilities equals more paths to success for everyone. Forge yours. Get the books. You won't regret it. The series is available at all retailers. We are aggressively wide over here, but if you want the best deal, there are also large bundles of the book on my website. To learn more, go to theworldneedsyourbook.com/shop. If you want to just learn more about the series, You can also go to my website, which lists all the books in the series, plus links to everywhere they are available to be purchased. To learn more, go to theworldneedsyourbook.com/wide. The Productive Novelist Books. In addition to my Book Sales Supercharge series, I also have books that are strategy-focused on things like craft, book marketing, and more. The Productive Novelist series is 14 books spanning all topics related to writing, editing, publishing, and marketing your books. There are also several advanced books in this series for those who intend to make writing a career and want to build their businesses for longevity. The content in this series has been tested by thousands of authors when it was originally published as the Growth Hacking For Storytellers series. We've since updated all the content and added several chapters to the newer editions. To learn more and see what we have to offer, go to theworldneedsyourbook.com/shop. The Productive Novelist Channel, Podcast, and Blog. I share tons of free content on my YouTube channel, podcast, and blog. Some people like to get right to the solution with a course or a book, while others like to receive a drip, drip, drip week to week through my YouTube channel or podcast feed. Please connect with me on my channels. I would love for you to subscribe. Podcast: theworldneedsyourbook.com/podcast. YouTube: theworldneedsyourbook.com/youtube. Blog: theworldneedsyourbook.com/blog. Wide newsletter: theworldneedsyourbook.com/substack. Your feedback, please. My goal for writing this book is to help fiction authors write the best stories they possibly can and work on their craft. There are two ways to leave feedback. Reviews. If you love this book, we can always use an honest review on our public retailer pages, where other people looking for the books can see what real people think of them. Choose your retailer and leave a review here: theworldneedsyourbook.com/reviewbss1 Feedback Form. If you have anything you'd like to share privately, please feel free to fill out our feedback form here. Theworldneedsyourbook.com/feedback. All answers are private unless you say we can use the responses publicly in our marketing materials. Heartfelt Thanks and Love. Lastly, I want to say thank you so much for listening to this book. I am fully aware that there are many, many people in the world who are trying to profit by stealing away your time, and distracting you from your goals. As such, I hope your time with me has been entertaining, educational, and productive. Spread the word. Can you think of two people who could use this book in their lives? Perhaps you know someone who has been dreaming big about their book but is unsure how to navigate the publishing industry. Or maybe you know an author who is struggling to sell their books and needs or wants to make a change and try something new? Maybe you know someone who has been thinking about going wide, but has concerns about making the jump? If so, I would love it if you could connect them to this book, so they too can learn the ins and outs of going wide. I genuinely believe that everyone has a way forward on their dreams of being a writer or author, and making a living at telling stories. There are so many ways to turn writing into a career, and this book and series provides a playbook for getting started. Thanks again for listening. Be the igniter. Acknowledgments. I have 3 major goals for this book and the series Book Sales Supercharged. Goal number 1 is that the series extends and builds upon the work that the people who have been doing this for a long time who, far longer than me, have laid as a foundation for independent authors everywhere. There are far too many people to name them all, but a few people come to my mind specifically. Mark Lefebvre, who founded Kobo Writing Life, one of the Big Five ebook retailers, wrote the book Wide for the Win with Aaron Wright, and has been beating the go-wide drum tirelessly for the last decade plus online and on stage. If you could only listen to one person about going wide, Mark is your person. His publishing industry experience is diverse, and he has genuinely dedicated his career to helping authors get their books wide and income diversified. He's also written an entire book series called Stark Book Solutions on various non-trending areas of publishing that I recommend to everyone. Please buy them and read them. You'll learn a ton. Mark Coker, who founded Smashwords in 2008, and helped all of us fledgling independent authors reach retailers beyond Amazon back when it was the Wild West. This man doesn't get nearly enough credit for the ways in which he influenced this industry, but far fewer writers would have careers today if it weren't for Smashwords. Dan Wood, who has been at Draft2Digital since 2015 or so, and has pounded the pavement at conferences for years, spreading the word about wide retailers and providing what feels like infinite support to multiple thousands of authors. I've always deeply admired Dan's style of putting the individual author first, regardless of the publishing path they've chosen. Damon Courtney, who founded BookFunnel and made it possible to email ebooks and later sell them directly to readers with significantly fewer headaches and support issues. In 2015, Damon sat in a room of 24 authors and listened to us complain about sending digital ARCs. When he said, as a software developer, this sounds like a problem I could solve, I didn't think much of it until 6 months later when he came back to our group and said, Hey, so I built that thing I said I was going to build. That thing was the first iteration of BookFunnel, and Damon hasn't stopped since. Damon is constantly listening to the independent author community and building extremely useful solutions that empower authors to actually be independent. I'm honored to have been in the room where it happened. I have infinite gratitude for what Damon has done for authors everywhere. Dean Wesley Smith and Christine Catherine Rush, who come from a traditional publishing background and have been educating independent authors on intellectual property and rights grabs for the last decade. Read their books. Attend their workshops. They have achieved massive success as midlist career authors with their incredible business savvy on not just being wide, but being everywhere. Erin Wright and Susie O'Connell, who founded the Facebook group Wide for the Win. This is by far the best and most helpful author group on the internet, you should join it for that reason alone. But beyond that, Wide for the Win is a big idea that Erin and Susie have quietly planted and continued to water for the last several years. Wide for the Win is the first group that created room for conversations beyond how to succeed in KDP Select. And, even when people have fought them tooth and nail on it, they've held their ground to keep KDP Select out of the conversations in their group. It turned out that once authors were given a safe space, they were able to share a wealth of legit boss knowledge about how to go wide. This series would not exist without the Wide for the Win group. The books are an extension of the idea that widelings, though still a minority in the independent author community get to take up space in the publishing industry. Thanks to Erin and Susie, we're now going to take up space on digital and physical bookshelves that have long been filled with hundreds of books about how to succeed at Amazon. My book series with Russell is still among the first on many of these platforms and topics, but it won't be the last. Everyone listening to this, don't forget to keep contributing to this conversation. Your voice matters, and your choice to go wide matters too. The two other goals for this series need far less explanation. Goal number 2 is to show authors that they have options and empower authors to build their careers on their terms, forging their own paths based on their interests and skill sets. Goal number 3 is to change the independent publishing industry in a positive way that breaks the wheel on all exclusivity and rights grabs, hopefully putting more money in authors' pockets where I believe it belongs. You've listened to the book, so you know I believe we as a community are worth far more to Big Tech than they'd like us to believe. Keep building and exploiting your intellectual property. It's the secret to having a long career writing what you love. Finally, massive acknowledgement to my co-author Russell Nohelty,, who has been doing the wide work in print and hand-selling his books for years through a variety of methods. Russell is a savvy marketer, successful entrepreneur of multiple businesses, and genuine complete creative (his perfectly named brand) across visual and text mediums as well as fiction and nonfiction. He's the perfect co-author for this project, and I'm so grateful that he agreed to do these books with me. To end this section, I'll repeat: your choice to go wide matters, regardless of if you are wide in all formats or at all retailers. Those who forge the path make it easier for others to follow behind them. So take back your power over your career and build it to last, on your terms. Be the igniter. About the Author. Monica Leonelle was born in Germany. And spent her childhood jet-setting around the world with her American parents. Her travels include most of the United States and Europe, as well as Guam, Japan, South Korea, Australia, and the Philippines. She is a USA Today bestselling author, best known for her young adult urban fantasy and paranormal romance series, Waters Dark and Deep, writing as Solo Storm. She also teaches writing, publishing, business, and marketing at theworldneedsyourbook.com. Her two nonfiction series, The Productive Novelist and Book and Business Coaching, have helped thousands of business owners and aspiring writers write faster, become better storytellers, and find their way to success. Before becoming an independent author, Monica led digital marketing efforts at Inc. 100 companies like Hanson's Natural and Braintree. Monica is a lifetime member of Sigma Pi Sigma Honor fraternity and was a 2007 Chicago Business Fellow, graduating with an MBA from the Chicago Booth School of Business at 25 years old. She holds a Bachelor of Science in computer science with a minor in physics from Truman State University. She's been an avid blogger of marketing and business trends since 2007. Her ideas have been featured in Adage, Forbes Inc., LinkedIn Voices, The Huffington Post, The Amex Open Forum, Gigohm, Mashable, Social Media Today, Newsweek, and the Christian Science Monitor. In 2009, she was named one of the top 25 tweeters in the city of Chicago by Chicago Now, a subsidiary of the Chicago Tribune. Visit theworldneedsyourbook.com for email updates and additional resources. We hope you have enjoyed this unabridged production of Get Your Book Selling Wide: Book Sales Supercharged Book 1. Text copyright 2020 by Monica Leonelle. Production copyright 2022 by Monica Leonelle. All rights reserved.