A Guide to choose the best publishing partner for Indie Authors

The decision of becoming a self-published author for your book is the best thing you have taken by long shot, whether that be from the rejections that you have faced or simply because of the convenience and control you have on publishing your work.

If you’re a writer, there are high chances that you have met rejections. However, rejection is part of the process of becoming a distinguished author. Most of the best writers in the world have detailed how they were rejected at first in many occasions through interviews. Even Harry Porter was rejected at first for around 12 times before having a mind-blowing success.

In this article, we are going to discuss the best guide for the Indie Authors about choosing your publishing partner.

Traditional publishing was the most sought by authors once because of the significant advances, widespread marketing, and earned dollars through this marketing. Most of the authors’ have had great success in this arena, but others do not enjoy this much success; they have experienced rejection.

Rejection does not necessarily mean that your writing is of low quality; there are many factors behind it. They include if the work is not trending if It is similar to other books. If your book is continuously rejected, you need to take the next step. The rejected books are nowadays easy to still bring them up through self-publishing.

Self-publishing is great for authors with an entrepreneur’s mind, and wants to have the full ownership and control of their book. An author is only asked to change some few details like title or the book cover design by traditional publishers. However, the conventional publishers should lift heavily where the marketing is concerned; it is what Indies’ authors do.

Self-publishing is the great avenue that most authors do since it brings success to savvy authors and makes their careers very successful. These perfect factors will enable you to consider self-publishing.

Table of Contents
Amazon

Amazon is the best company for self-publishing. It has the best platform in the world called Kindle Direct Publishing. It is the most significant selling company for eBooks. According to the 2015 data, 74% of the eBooks bought in the USA were from Amazon. Amazon has an estimate of 3.4 million books available. The numbers have rapidly shot over the years.

Amazon provides an avenue to the authors, whereby they can create eBooks and paperback and upload them freely. What the author receives depends on the book’s pricing. If $ 2.99 is the book’s price, the author is entitled to a 70% royalty while any amount less than that sees the author get 35% royalty. It is, however, very different for the paperbacks.

Barnes and Noble Press

Barnes and Noble Press have acted as a bookstore chain for a very long period. They shifted to digital platforms to increase their services. They build their own Indie publishing forum called the Barnes and Noble Press, formerly known as NOOK press. It also provides a free avenue for the authors to upload their books. The royalty distribution is as follows; for the book of pricing of over $ 2.99, the royalty is 65% while less than that is 40%.

IngramSpark

The Ingram Book Group owns IngramSpark is one of the biggest distributors of books in the world. It distributes eBooks and hard copy to amazon, Apple Books, and many more. Ingram spark does charge an amount for uploading your book; it is 49% to set up your book and 25% to make any changes to the already published book. The author is again required to purchase the ISBN for them to make printed copies.

Apple Books

Apple is almost everywhere globally, and you cannot miss a single apple product in a homestead such as iPhones. The widespread majority of Apple products made them establish iBook’s, a self-publishing platform. Although it is no great compared to the Amazon and Barnes and Noble Press, it still sells quite a significant number of books as having millions of downloads.

Kobo Books

This company is owned by Rakuten and is based in Canada. It deals with selling digital books, audiobooks, and e-readers and established the Kobo Writing Life, a self-publishing platform. It has a vast international audience. Kobo also provides 70 and 45 percent for all the books above and under $2.99.

Draft2Digital

This company only deals with the authors interested in self-publishing. The company will push your book to many retailers. The author’s information is in one place and provides the best royalty of 90% of the retail. The platform will only take 10% of the book’s sales.

Smashwords

Smashwords does not distribute to Amazon. So it will be challenging if you use Smashwords and want your book to be uploaded to the Amazon, it will need you to upload to the KDP first. It however, has a huge distribution tool than the Draft2Digital. On its platform, Smashwords take 15% of your book’s retail price while it takes 10% when distributing to other platforms.

StreetLib

This companies offer a multi-language dashboard that includes Hindi, Italian, English, and Spanish, and many more. It also has many stores in Europe, such as Amazon, Google Play, and many more. StreetLib will only take 10% of the prices of the books sold. If you want to print your book, it will cost you $49 and get a free ISBN

BookBaby

It is a print-on-demand self-publishing company that is great for those who are publishing their books for the first time. It offers a wide range of other services such as editing, book cover design, book formatting for digital and print books. This helps Indie authors be as successful as possible.

PublishDrive

The distribution of PublishDrive has increased immensely. They have distributed over 400 stores and 240,000 digital libraries. Their plans range from free to $ 99.99 a month.

If you are new to the Indie world, self-publishing can be a challenging task, but it is equally rewarding if done correctly. In my guide, I have discussed the opportunities that are available for an indie author while publishing the book. This will help you to take an informed decision.