E-nough e-formatting!

I do rather envy Jane Austen, you know.  When she was writing “P&P” and all the others, she simply sat in a sunny room in Hampshire and filled pages of parchment with lovely curly writing, then sent it off to London and someone turned it into books.  For me (note how I subtly compare myself to Jane Austen…), once the story is finished, the work is only half-done.

I do love self-publishing, as you know, for the many opportunities it offers, but it really is blooming hard work.  You may think that there is only one “Canary”, but I know otherwise: there is the paperback, then the Kindle version, the Smashwords version, the Kobo version, the iBook version and the plain PDF.  Each is subtly different (in formatting, not in words), and each has to be carefully prepared, checked and uploaded, with each publication route asking for different interior and cover files, and for slightly different information about book category, pricing structure, distribution rights and so on.  As my late nan used to say (alongside “a dulage of rain”), it’s a mindfield out there.

On the plus side, it’s all done – hurrah!  Now I’m just waiting for the various e-formats to appear on their sites in time for the Big Launch on Friday – although the Kindle one is already available (thanks to reader Graham for spotting it – too exciting!).

And the results of the Smashwords promo are…

A little while ago I told you that I was participating in a Smashwords promo called “eBook Week”, where publishers of ebooks could be listed in the special “eBook Week” catalogue in exchange for offering a discount on the price of their book for that week.  Having literally nothing to lose – I have never managed to sell a single copy of “Fatal Forgery” through Smashwords – I signed up.

A bit of background: Smashwords is (in its own words) “the world’s largest distributor of indie ebooks”.  Writers like me (we’re known as indie publishers) can simply upload our books to Smashwords in as many formats as we like, and then Smashwords distributes them to the appropriate sales channels.  I went for the whole lot, formatting “FF” so that it could be sent to (wait for it) Sony, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Apple, Diesel, Page Foundry, Baker & Taylor, Flipkart, Oyster and Scribd.  As part of the deal, you allow potential buyers on all those channels to download a sample of the book, a bit like Amazon’s “Look Inside” feature.  Since I signed on with Smashwords in June 2013, my sample has been downloaded 38 times, and the book bought not once.

(Things have not been helped in the UK by WHSmith.  They have a Kobo shop on their website, and when they were told that some Kobo books are x-rated, they removed all self-published books from their Kobo shop.  I have been in touch with them several times, asking when non-naughty self-published books will be allowed back in, and apparently – I kid you not – they are reading them one by one to check.  So don’t hold your breath.)

So how has the Smashwords “eBook Week” promo worked out for me?  How many books have I sold?  None.  How many sample downloads have there been?  None.  Well, I did promise I would report back.  I just wish the news were better.

Trying a Smashwords promo

As regular readers will know, I have tried to get “Fatal Forgery” published in as many formats as possible.  I did the print-on-demand paperback and Kindle versions myself, and then turned to Smashwords to create several more.  It’s not been a huge success – in fact, not a single copy has sold through Smashwords.  But this week I had an email from them advertising their “e-Book Week”, and I’m giving it a go.

In essence, I offer a discount on the price of my e-book sold through Smashwords (several formats on offer).  I have chosen to offer a 25% discount.  They then list my book (along with doubtless hundreds more) in their “eBook Week Catalogue” – you can see my catalogue listing here.  If you buy during this week and use the special code at checkout, you get 25% off the normal price.  I have no idea how successful this will be – it rather depends on the Smashwords promotional efforts, and the number of other books in the catalogue.  But I have maths A-level, and I know that 75% of something is better than 100% of nothing, so it’s worth a bash.  I’ll let you know.

My plan for world domination

I mentioned a little while ago that I was distributing “Fatal Forgery” through Smashwords, and I can give you a little update.  I uploaded my e-book file to Smashwords on 6 October, and on 15 October (after one nudge from me, and a very friendly return email from Smashwords) “Fatal Forgery” appeared in the Smashwords Premium Catalog.  This means that it had been checked for basic errors (lack of ISBN, peculiar styles, etc.), had been converted in the various e-book file formats, and could be automatically distributed to all the sellers that I had selected – and of course I chose the whole lot.

As of today:

• It has been distributed to iBooks and can be seen here (that clever link automatically goes to your local iBooks store – fiendish!)
• It is now available as a Nook book and can be seen here
• It is on sale in Barnes & Noble (as a Nook book) – you can see it here
• It has been sent to Kobo, but is not yet appearing in their bookstore
• Likewise, it has been sent to the Sony eBookstore but has not yet appeared.

No sales so far through any of these channels, but it can only help – I’ll keep you posted.

Book cannot live by Kindle alone

As was predicted, it turns out that perhaps the most difficult part of self-publishing is not the writing or the formatting (although both nearly tipped me over the edge more than once), but rather the marketing.  Which is just a fancy word for selling the blasted thing.  You have heard me moan about this before.  As has my husband, so when I started again today he said (although rather more kindly, as he knows who provides the dinner in this house), “Stop whinging and do something about it”.  Point taken.  So I went back through various self-publishing blogs and fora that have been helpful in the past (particularly Catherine, Caffeinated), looking for tricks that I might have missed.  And indeed there was a glaring hole in my efforts: I had carefully published “Fatal Forgery” for Kindle, via Amazon, but ignored all the other e-book platforms.  Thankfully the majority of these can be accessed using one uploading service, and so this afternoon was devoted to reformatting my book for submission to Smashwords.

I’m not big on the detail, but I do know that when I Kindle-ified my book, it was turned into a format that can be downloaded (shock horror) to Kindles.  However, Kindles are not the only fruit, and this is what Smashwords promises me: “Smashwords will distribute your books via multiple online channels, including but not limited to the Smashwords.com web site, major online retailers (Apple iBookstore, Barnes & Noble, Sony, Kobo, Baker & Taylor (operates Blio, a popular e-reading app, and also operates Axis360 which distributes ebooks to public libraries), the Diesel eBook Store, mobile phone appvendors (Aldiko on Android; Kobo on all mobile platforms) and other online venues.”  I say: there are platforms there that I haven’t even heard of, so that must be good.  It took a couple of hours to format the file to Smashwords’ standards and to set up my profile, plus the usual hell that is filling in a US tax form so that they don’t take 110% of my earnings at the outset, but all done now.  The sparkly new “Fatal Forgery” is awaiting final review, which I am told takes about a week, and then I shall enjoy the idea of Sam appearing on a Nook near you.