“Reject the tyranny of picked. Pick yourself.” ― Seth Godin, Poke the Box
Ebooks have unquestionably been the reason so many indie authors have been able to break into publishing. This is a quick overview of the online retailers one can choose from to publish and distribute one’s ebooks.
And remember the importance of distribution? We’ll talk about that more later.
Remember what I wrote about print-on-demand (or POD) publishing?
It doesn’t take a genius to realize why ebooks became so popular (and how Amazon built an empire, based on authors’ years of rejections getting screwed by publishers and others frustrations with matters like distribution and marketing) among authors who decided to bypass the traditional publishing route. It’s relatively cheap (depending on your tolerance for bad covers and poor editing) and it’s easy as can be.
But when it comes to print books, you need to know a few things.
Okay, we’ve covered ISBNs and why you should care about them.
Once you’ve decided to set up your own publishing imprint, if it’s as small as my own (one person), you’ll definitely want to use print-on-demand publishing. I’m assuming you want to publish in print, as well as other formats. Once upon a time, those other formats you rely on now were considered too incidental to worry about, which just goes to show you how things changed awfully fast for people entrenched closely involved in traditional publishing.
We previously covered setting up a publishing imprint. Let’s back up a moment and talk about ISBNs.