Publishing Sites

There are a lot of ways to publish. You can go with one of the big traditional publishers, a small publishing house, or do it yourself. If you do it yourself, you have a number of options. The important thing is to make sure you’re going to a legitimate site. There are some vanity publishers that use names similar to indie publishing sites, but charge money for a number of things. The sites below do not charge for listing a book, and if there are costs (other than ordering books) I will mention them.

KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing)

This is one of the biggest, as this is Amazon’s publishing service. It is free to use, and currently they allow an author to list eBooks, paperbacks, and hardcovers. You can also create series so books in a series are listed on a single page, and make a title (or titles) related to a series, but not part of it, including boxsets. You can use Amazon’s free ISBN for physical copies, or your own, and if you’re creating an eBook, you can enroll it in Kindle Unlimited. (See below.)

Kindle Unlimited

Kindle Unlimited (KU) is a subscription service where readers can pay a monthly fee and download any book currently enrolled in the program and read it for free. For authors (which may know it as KDP Select), there are a couple of things you need to know. 

  1. Once you enroll, your book is locked into KU for 3 months. It will stay enrolled for each successive 3 months unless you uncheck the ‘automatically renew’ box.
  2. While your book is enrolled in KU, it CANNOT be available anywhere else, either for free or for sale. So it will only be available on Amazon’s site.
  3. While your book is enrolled in KU, it can either be read through that service or purchased outright like any other eBook.
  4. You are paid for pages read each month. This only counts for the FIRST read through of each reader. If they read it a second time, you won’t receive payment for it. The amount you are paid for each page read varies by month, as they use total pages read and the total number of subscriptions to calculate it.
  5. If you are not enrolled in KU and have your eBook available elsewhere, and later decide to enroll in KU, make 100% sure that your book is no longer available anywhere else BEFORE enrolling in KU.

Ingram Spark

This is another publishing/print on demand service, and an important one. You can list eBooks, paperbacks, and hardcovers, and you either enable them for distribution (allowing them to be sold through various retailers like Amazon, Barnes & Noble, etc.) or instead choose to be the only person who can purchase copies. There are several retailers who will not list a book (on their website or in their physical stores) unless it is listed through Ingram Spark.

As a note, you will have the option to provide an ISBN that you have already purchased, or receive a free ISBN through Ingram Spark. If you choose the latter, Ingram will be listed as the publisher. If you use your own, you can use your imprint to be listed as the publisher. (Mine, for example, are all published through Arcane Crow Publishing.)

Bowker

While not technically a publishing service/site, it is one that’s helpful for those wanting to publish. If you’re in the US, this is where you buy your ISBNs. Technically, you can use free ISBNs from several sites (like KDP or Ingram) but if you want your name/publishing imprint to be listed as the publisher, you’ll need to use your own ISBN. You can buy as little as 1 ISBN, but the more you buy at once, the cheaper they get per ISBN. And I mean by a lot. 1 ISBN is (currently) $125. If you buy 10, it’s $295, or $29.50 per ISBN, and if you buy 100, they’re $575 and $5.75 per ISBN. For those bad at math, it means that if you intend to use more than 10 ISBNs, it’s actually cheaper to buy 100. (Two sets of 10 ISBNs=590, as opposed to 100 for $575.)

As a note, an ISBN can be used for ONE title and ONE format. So if you have the same book in both paperback and hardback, you will need 2 ISBNs. If you have a paperback and a special edition paperback, they are also two different ISBNs.

Draft 2 Digital

This is another publishing site like Ingram Spark or KDP. It isn’t one I’ve used, but it is used by many indie authors.