All-in-One e-Formater?

spentastico · Feb 7, 2012

I've been doing some serious thinking and researching regarding this self-publishing deal since I've been rejected by agents over 100 times now over the past year despite query rewrites, editing, blabbity bloo. But I don't want to make this thread a critique of my work or technique, per say. We can save that for another thread.

Right now I'm just in the planning stages. I've been checking into Creatspace, Lulu, Smashwords, DogEar (which I don't think I'll use), and other online self-publishing systems on top of perusing these threads here a bunch. I see that one site can format your book into this e-reader's format, and another site will format it into another e-reader format, and so on.

I'm of the mind that I want to hit every distribution outlet available, despite how annoying their upload/format system might be. Is there one site/service that will format and distribute a novel to and in every e-reading format currently available? I'd just like to get that portion of the project completed in one fell swoop.

J. Tanner · Feb 7, 2012

Most people go the direct route with Kindle and format a separate version for all the other sites through Smashwords for a 10% royalty paid to Smashwords. Both services are free up front. (I use this method myself.)

The only service I've noticed that comes pretty close to that in a single service is BookBaby. They catch all three major sites (Amazon, B&N, Apple) and several others. This service however has a substantial upfront cost in exchange for a zero royalty. Pricing starts at $99 if I recall and there could be additional fees for reuploading which isn't an uncommon task in my experience.

spentastico · Feb 7, 2012

I just checked out bookbaby.com from the top stickied thread! It does look pretty all-in-one, and I really wouldn't mind slapping down $99 (plus extra since I'm looking at close to 300 pages) just to get that all done at once.

I'll do some searching on here to see if anyone has had good/bad experiences with this site. From the outset, it seems to be what I'm looking for. Now to check the street rep...

J. Tanner · Feb 7, 2012

The base pricing isn't too bad for a novel considering zero royalty (on top of the store cut) but the fees are on the high side. Fee if you need to fix an error, or add a link to a new book in the back or want to try a new cover. Fee if you want to update metadata (and there can be some experimentation in this area to find a blurb, keywords, and categories that work best for you.) Fee for an ISBN.

That can add up and it's all free for formatting twice instead of once by going the other way. Most prefer the flexibility, and being direct on Amazon but if you're pretty sure you'll have all the details sorted out close to perfectly upon first upload I suppose it could work out.

spentastico · Feb 7, 2012

Hmmm... good points. I suppose it wouldn't be too terribly awful to do it twice as opposed to once.

So to reach all of the eBook options, I'd just need to do the Kindle directly (that's Pubit, right?) then Smashwords does the rest, huh?

Then... marketing. :partyguy:

J. Tanner · Feb 7, 2012

Amazon is KDP (Kindle Desktop Publishing).

Smashwords can upload to Pubit! which is for Barnes & Noble.

Marketing is a whole 'nother bag of worms.

Writing more seems to be the most generally effective form of marketing. (Lots of people seem to hit critical mass when they have 6-10 books out.) Spamming social networking seems to be the least effective. In between you can have widely varying results on all sorts of different tactics.

JFBookman · Feb 8, 2012

Both Smashwords and Bookbaby offer excellent services, although as other posters have said, Smashwords costs less up front. On the other hand, authors who just want to hand the job over to someone else and get on all the major ebook platforms seem to appreciate Bookbaby. If you're short on cash, use Smashwords and upload your own files to Kindle Direct Publishing.

In my day job I send clients to both services and have received almost all good feedback on both.

Hope that helps.

merrihiatt · Feb 8, 2012

If you format your book according to Smashwords' FREE Style Guide, you'll only need to change a couple of things to submit a similar document to Amazon KDP. Now that I have put together several e-books, the formatting only takes about 10-20 minutes for an e-book or paperback. It's mostly tweaking and conversion and looking for any problems (an accidental tab or too many paragraph returns).

BookFormatterJen · Feb 9, 2012

Smashwords format your manuscript and output your book as an epub and mobi file. They also distribute your book to publishers who accepts these type of files. However they don't do print. If you want your book in print, CreateSpace is the way to go.

If you know formatting, you can just do it all by yourself for both POD and ebook and just opened an account to PubIt for the epub, KDP for the mobi file and CreateSpace or Lulu for the POD. My service does have a 3-file package (POD, epub and Kindle format)

Thanks,

Jeny

flipdingo · Feb 12, 2012

I use Scrivener

I'm on a mac, but there is a PC flavor of Scrivener available.

It is quite easy to push out a mobi, epub, html and many text versions of a story with this program. One nice thing about it is the workflow that leads to easy creation of a document with proper formatting and an active table of contents.

For a one stop from a raw text file, use the meatgrinder at SW...

All-in-One e-Formater?

Writing! Writing! Writing!

BookFormatterJen