Republishing my first out-of-print novel as an ebook feels like running a marathon where the finish line is so close, I can almost feel the tape breaking against my chest — but, no matter how hard I run, I can’t quite reach it. A big hold up has been the ambitious project I mentioned in my last post. (I’m creating a password-protected world online for readers who buy any of the ebooks in the Pearl Island trilogy.) That’s going well, and I think it’s going to be great, but it is time consuming.
So, I’m finally, finally to the point where I have a cleaned-up digital Word file, and my cover, of course, and I’m ready to do it. I’m itching to hop on Smashwords and hit “Upload.” But I still have some dangling details holding me back.
Questions About Smashwords, Kindle, and ISBNs
1) You can use Smashwords for everything but Kindle, right? If you follow their guidelines to qualify for the Premium Catalog, your book will be listed at B&N, Borders, iBookstore, and others. But I’ve seen some conflicting information on how to make this happen. Do you have to do a different format for each one? Or have they streamlined the process, so that one format now works on all ereaders except the Kindle?
2) Kindle royalty rate. There’s all this buzz about how the royalty rate for Kindle books is changing at the end of this month (June), but you have to meet certain requirements. One of those is pricing. I understand that the price has to be between $2.99 and $9.99, but does the Kindle price also have to be lower than what you ask for the same ebook at B&N, Borders, and iBookstore?
3) Do you have to go through Amazon to publish a Kindle version? Can someone please give me a link?
4) One more Kindle Question: Is there any reason to wait until after the royalty rate changes to publish the Kindle version? Or can I go ahead and upload it now and still qualify for the higher royalty rate later?
5) ISBN, I understand you need a new ISBN for the e-version of the OOP novel you’re republishing if you want to be listed at the major outlets. This looks easy to do with Smashwords. But what about Kindle? Do you use the same ISBN?
A Cry for Help
If you have answers to any of these questions, or questions of your own, let’s start some discussion in the comments below! Invite anyone you know who can either help or benefit by hitting the share buttons or sending them an email. Let’s get these final details nailed down so we can get to uploading.
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Do you have to do a different format for each one? Or have they streamlined the process, so that one format now works on all ereaders except the Kindle?
My answer to this, Julie, is that no, you don’t have to provide multiple formats for Smashwords. They do that for you. If your book is formatted properly (print out Smashwords’ instructions and follow them) , make sure your title page has all the information they want, and then click submit. You need to provide a blurb of no more than 400 characters, and a cover–not the original one on the print book, because that’ll be copyright by the origninal artist & publisher–and you’re good to go.
This is the copyright section of one of my books. They must all contain the same information.
Whispers On The Wind
Judy Griffith Gill
Published by JggBooks at Smashwords
© 2010 Judy Griffith Gill
If your title page does not have equivalent t wording they won’t accept it.
Now, on to ISBNs at Smashwords– They will provide them, free of charge, if you want or, you can have them buy you one at a cost of 10.00 or thereabouts. I’m not sure what, if any, advantage there is in buying one, so I went with the free one, which allows them to call themselves the publisher or record. Copyright is still mine. Without that all-important ISBN, Sony and other buyers won’t list and/or distribute your e-book.
Now, pricing– Smashwords does, I believe, use Kindle as one of the markets in which they distribute my books. For Kindle, the price must end in .99. Not .98, or .59 or anything but .99. I have no idea why. They just like it that way, so because I want Smashwords to be able to market my books through as many venues as possible, I have made all my prices $4.99. Why buck city hall?
To post your books on Kindle: Apparently it’s really easy–for everyone but me. I have three books there now, but my daughter put up two of them, and Ninc member Alexis Harrington graciously and generously put up another for me. It might be me, it might be my computer, but no matter what I do, I can’t make it happen.
As for Kindle’s royalty rate, I know nothing, but would appreciate some more info on the subject, since I do have three of my books there.
Great information, Judy! Thank you for all of this.
I’m muddling through all this, too, Julie.
I may have a bunch of misinformation, so take it with a grain of salt.
I BELIEVE if you put your books on Kindle through Smashwords, SW takes a percentage. May be wrong on that. I am doing Kindle myself. The link is dtp.amazon.com.
To format through Kindle, I used my OCR converted Word file and wow, did it come back from Kindle clean! I did nothing special to it. I’m making a few changes and then will upload again and keep my fingers crossed it works ok. Judy’s experience has me worried. I’ll let you know, but I don’t plan to put mine up until July 1 because I want to be sure to get the 70% royalty rate. I think you can probably just change over as long as you meet their guidelines for the rate (spelled out in their FAQ), but I’m trying to make it easy on myself. Kindle doesn’t require an ISBN number.
I will also do Smashwords, but they require all those machinations be done to the manuscript and I haven’t had the time to do them yet.
Good luck and keep us posted on how it goes.
Hi Julie–
So far I’ve put 10 titles on both Kindle and Smashwords. Starting out I was at something of a disadvantage because I’d long ago lost most of the files for my backlist so I had to scan them, which opens the door for a TON of work. I bought a good OCR program but the scanner picked up everything, including odd fiber flakes in the newsprint of the pages. In the right places, these were recognized as punctuation. If you don’t have to scan your books, you can skip this part. If you want more info, let me know.
As Judy said, if you follow Smashwords formatting instructions they’ll take care of the rest in terms of making your title(s) available in their premium catalog. Unlike Judy, I bought my ISBNs because I didn’t want the publisher to be listed as Smashwords; I want my own name listed. If for some unanticipated reason they should fold up their tents in the future, I don’t want to be bothered with trying to untangle my work from them.
According to everything I’ve read on Kindle, the royalty rate for all books sold there is supposed to increase from 35% to 70% as of July 1. There was some question about whether this would apply only to books that are put on their site after that date, but I haven’t seen anything in the Kindle user community to indicate that.
When it comes to royalties received through Smashwords from BN, Sony, etc., the price you set with Smashwords will probably be marked up by those other distributors. I know that my books are priced at 2.99 across the board at both Kindle and Smashwords, but when I looked myself on on BN, I saw that they were selling for $4.00+.
Be sure to post your books at both sites. You’ll want to catch all the readers you can.
Let me know if you have other questions. I’ve been doing this since last December so I’ve pretty much gotten the hang of it.
HI Julie,
https://dtp.amazon.com/mn/signin is the digital upload site for amazon. It’s easy to use. No reason to wait.
Judy answered your smashword questions. Although, as I understand it, it is apple that drives the 0.99 ending on price.
I still have no book up on kobo or sony despite several email conversations with smashwords. It is all so tedious because you have to wait 4 weeks between requests. I do have book on apple and b/n!
Amazon is great because of all those reader discussion boards. They have discussions for authors and that seems to help sales.
Alexis, you give me hope. I think if I can just get through this one time, it will all make more sense to me. I hope. But, yes, I may be asking you to demystify some of the process.
Diane, congratulations on having your file sail through the Smashwords machine! Is your book up and for sale? I wanna see it. Do you have a link?
Julie, that’s not me. I haven’t tried Smashwords yet. I’ve been working on getting the book ready for Kindle. By the way, there ARE certain requirements to receive that 70% rate, one of which is the price of your book, so be sure to check the FAQ.
Alexis, did you have to do any HTML work on your manuscript? I had Seneca Brashears do the OCR scan of my book and it came out very nearly perfect. I don’t think I’ll have to do anything with an HTML editor, but I’m still making a few changes so we’ll see. I hope not.
Diane, my big tech problem was using Word. I’ve written in WordPerfect for years and I’m not real comfortable with Word, but that’s the standard. WordPerfect will publish to HTML and I think I sent a couple of books to Kindle that way.