Blog 60 ImageIn my last two posts under the category How To Self-Publish, I’ve given an overview of distributing a self-published book and discussed direct sales of eBooks by website or social media. This post is about the distribution channel most self-published writers use to sell their books: eBook retailers.

With an eBook retailer, a self-published writer uploads files of her book and cover to an online platform that sells thousands of traditionally and other self-published books. The platform gives readers a secure payment environment and simple downloading of the writer’s book to an e-reader, tablet or other device. The writer and retailer share the purchase price. Per book, the writer usually gets much more than if a traditional publisher was selling her book.

The concept came to the fore in 2007 when Amazon began selling Kindle devices to download books and other written materials. Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) was set up so that self-published books could also be downloaded.

Since then:

Self-published writers, then, have a variety of eBook retailers to choose from and must imagine readers accessing their content in different ways. Unfortunately, the eBook retailer marketplace is fragmented, and the details and mechanics of the various platforms require tenacity to master.

A detailed comparison of eBook retailers is beyond the scope of this post. An excellent resource is Ape: Author, Publisher, Entrepreneur – How to Publish a Book by Kawasaki and Welch. Instead, I’m going to outline the considerations I found important in choosing between eBook retailers. Maybe they’ll make the choice easier for other self-published fiction writers.

Other considerations will be more important to different writers and the considerations will change over time. Every self-published writer will have to spend some time researching the eBook retailer options when she publishes and periodically after.

Right now, simple is better for me. We’ll see what I decide when the next book is ready.

Copyright © 2015 Peter Fritze

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