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gmw · 01-11-2014, 06:15 AM

I'm getting ready to (belatedly) publish my second novel (and soon after that, I hope, my third). Since it is something like 15 months since I chose BookBaby for my first, I thought it appropriate to review the situation, because quite a bit has changed. Here are a few of the things that have been of interest to me:

It looks like (though I have yet to go through the process to verify) Amazon may now be able to do direct deposits into Australian bank accounts, the lack of which was one of the things that turned me off going direct last time.

Amazon still require a TIN if you don't want them to deduct the full withholding tax, but - to be honest - I'm not selling so much that this poses much of a hardship, I should still be able to sort that out on my tax return at the end of the year. I imagine I can give them a TIN at some later date if I want.

BookBaby now offers a "free" option similar to Smashwords, including the 15% commission. BookBaby includes something called "Book Promo" - whose value I have reservations about, given that it is included on the free option. To get the BookBaby no-commision offering now requires $249 - and given that nothing else in that package is of particular interest to me (I upload my own epub, have my own website etc.), that is less appealing than when I could do it for $99. So, in effect, BookBaby are encouraging me to take another look at Smashwords.

I've seen people talk about "coupons" for Smashwords promos, and that seems like something I might use. And these days Smashwords supports epub upload, so it's looking more appealing to me. It does require a TIN, but talked about that above.

Kobo now has an Australian presence, so I could look at dealing with them directly. I might finally be able to resolve the formatting issue with the blurb that repeated requests through BookBaby has failed to resolve.

I've only ever sold any ebooks through Amazon (paperbooks have sold elsewhere), so I'm not particularly fussed about other stores (as long as I had something like Smashwords where people could get non-DRM epub versions). In fact I'm not sure my book ever appeared properly on the ibookstore at all (as an ebook), it always looked to me like it was coming from Amazon (but still managing to stuff up the blurb format - what is it with these people?).

So that's my deliberations so far. Does anyone here have any other thoughts they'd like to add? Maybe some other distributor options I should investigate, or issues with Smashwords epub upload ... or whatever.

01-11-2014, 06:15 AM	#1
gmw cacoethes scribendi Posts: 5,818 Karma: 137770742 Join Date: Nov 2010 Location: Australia Device: Kobo Aura One & H2Ov2, Sony PRS-650	Reviewing distributor options I'm getting ready to (belatedly) publish my second novel (and soon after that, I hope, my third). Since it is something like 15 months since I chose BookBaby for my first, I thought it appropriate to review the situation, because quite a bit has changed. Here are a few of the things that have been of interest to me: It looks like (though I have yet to go through the process to verify) Amazon may now be able to do direct deposits into Australian bank accounts, the lack of which was one of the things that turned me off going direct last time. Amazon still require a TIN if you don't want them to deduct the full withholding tax, but - to be honest - I'm not selling so much that this poses much of a hardship, I should still be able to sort that out on my tax return at the end of the year. I imagine I can give them a TIN at some later date if I want. BookBaby now offers a "free" option similar to Smashwords, including the 15% commission. BookBaby includes something called "Book Promo" - whose value I have reservations about, given that it is included on the free option. To get the BookBaby no-commision offering now requires $249 - and given that nothing else in that package is of particular interest to me (I upload my own epub, have my own website etc.), that is less appealing than when I could do it for $99. So, in effect, BookBaby are encouraging me to take another look at Smashwords. I've seen people talk about "coupons" for Smashwords promos, and that seems like something I might use. And these days Smashwords supports epub upload, so it's looking more appealing to me. It does require a TIN, but talked about that above. Kobo now has an Australian presence, so I could look at dealing with them directly. I might finally be able to resolve the formatting issue with the blurb that repeated requests through BookBaby has failed to resolve. I've only ever sold any ebooks through Amazon (paperbooks have sold elsewhere), so I'm not particularly fussed about other stores (as long as I had something like Smashwords where people could get non-DRM epub versions). In fact I'm not sure my book ever appeared properly on the ibookstore at all (as an ebook), it always looked to me like it was coming from Amazon (but still managing to stuff up the blurb format - what is it with these people?). So that's my deliberations so far. Does anyone here have any other thoughts they'd like to add? Maybe some other distributor options I should investigate, or issues with Smashwords epub upload ... or whatever.