Indie authors choose one of two paths for publishing: exclusive with KDP in KU or what they call “wide,” meaning world-wide through other distributors. This is for e-books, as the exclusivity requirements for KDP’s Kindle Select or Kindle Unlimited apply to e-books only. Both are viable options, and authors can make a lot of money with both. Choose the one that fits with what you want and that best fits your marketing strategy.

I was in KU for the first few years of my publishing career and then went wide. I’ve heard of others who are wide and then go into KU, and still others have a hybrid approach, so you are not making a permanent decision. Do be aware that many readers are only KU or on other platforms, and others do both, so if you are marketing to KU readers, they may not follow you wide and vice versa.

Kindle Direct Publishing

KDP has revolutionized the publishing industry. Prior to Amazon’s KDP, you could indie publish in a few ways, but Amazon provided a means to connect the potential reader with the indie author through the Kindle. This remains the single most popular platform for readers and authors, at least in the US, which is a massive market. It is also one of the easiest platforms to use.

It’s important to note that although you’ve written one book, you have at least two products if you do both an e-book and print. The distributors treat them separately, though they are linked on your dashboard and on the product pages that the reader sees.

Ebook

Your e-book is more like a webpage than a book in function. You can upload a mobi file, which is Amazon’s proprietary format, or an ePub, which other e-book retailers accept as well.

You can choose between a 35 percent and a 70 percent royalty rate, which is not as simple as it sounds. The 70 percent royalty rate comes with some restrictions. Your price must be between $2.99 and $9.99, the list price of the print book must be at least 20 percent more than the e-book, and it must be available in all geographies for which you have rights. This usually means all, unless you’ve sold or given those rights to someone else. They will also charge you a delivery fee, which can be significant if you have a lot of images. You will need to do the math to see which percentage makes the most economic sense for your book. Amazon has a calculator that does the math for you as you upload your book. This is my preferred method.

If you are not also in Kindle Select, you will not be eligible for the 70 percent royalty for sales in Brazil, Japan, Mexico, and India. Your royalty rate in those countries will be 35 percent. You should consider this if those are your primary markets.

There are a few requirements for books in the 35 percent royalty rate. The maximum price is $200, and the minimum depends on the size of the file delivered. Link to details: https://kdp.amazon.com/en_US/help/topic/G200634560.

Kindle Select is the author facing name of Kindle Unlimited, the exclusive subscription available through Amazon. For a monthly fee, readers can read any title enrolled in the program for “free”. KDP pays authors based on the number of pages read. They calculate payment in some mysterious way that changes and announce the new rate each month. Over the last four years, this payment has ranged from $.004 to $.0053.

If you enroll in Kindle Select, you can have a maximum of 10 percent of the material available digitally in any other form anywhere else. This does not include print or audio. You can have print and audio versions of your book available outside of Amazon, but not the ebook. You can have a short exerpt of your book on your website, for example, but typically not 2-3 chapters.

Print

KDP Print is the print-on-demand arm of Amazon’s indie author platform. This was formerly called Create Space, which merged with KDP Print in 2018. You now have one dashboard for both e-book and print, and the function is largely the same.

Print on demand (POD) means that KDP prints your book only if and when someone purchases it. This could be you purchasing author copies or a reader purchasing on Amazon. This differs from the traditional method of printing hundreds or thousands of copies, storing them, and shipping them to bookstores. Because of the nature of the process, POD tends to have a larger tolerance or wiggle room to allow for your design. Traditional off-set printing is more accurate, but the tradeoff is a large upfront expense and boxes of books stashed in the garage or under the bed. Some authors do sell enough on their own to do offset printings of their books, so this isn’t a complete either/or choice as long as you have your own ISBN. (See Chapter 8 for more information on ISBNs.)

Paperback is the only format available through KDP Print, currently, although additional formats are rumored to be in beta at the time of this writing. Royalties for books sold on Amazon marketplaces are 60 percent less the cost to print the book. Royalties for expanded distribution are 40 percent less the cost to print the book. When you upload your book, KDP has calculators that will show you what your royalty will be in the various areas. I also recommend that you research expected prices within your genre and categories, but we’ll discuss that in a later chapter.

KDP offers quite a wide range of trim sizes, the term that refers to the width and height of the book. You can find all of them at this link: https://kdp.amazon.com/en_US/help/topic/G201834180.

Ingram Spark

Ingram Spark (IS) is the indie author branch of Lightning Source, an international company that has been serving the publishing industry for fifty years. By printing through IS, an indie author can access the same distribution network as traditional publishers. IS also provides the ability to do hardcover books by POD.

With a similar process to KDP’s, IS is often the next step for new authors after KDP. If you are planning on adding IS in the future, I recommend choosing a trim size that you can use in both places. Many, but not all, are the same on both platforms.

IS is not recommended for e-books, although they offer that as an option. Their expertise and platform are best for print books.

If you first publish with KDP and then wish to add IS, open an account with IS and then ask them to transfer your title. They will assist you in the current process. Currently it consistes of filling out a form, and then they import all your files. Do not create a title for the book, they will do so for you.

Going Wide with eBooks

Distributors

You can go with multiple places for wide distribution of your books. You can target many world-wide marketplaces through aggregators such as Draft2Digital, Publish Drive, Streetlib, and Smashwords. You can go directly to Google Play, Barnes & Noble, Apple, and Kobo. These are the four largest marketplaces outside of Amazon as of this writing. The markets the aggregators serve change, so I won’t go into that here. You’ll want to research current agreements and information when you’re ready to make that decision.

You’ll want to consider how many places you want to upload to. If you choose many, I recommend using some kind of form or check sheet so that you can keep the places organized. (See the Upload Checklist for an example based on what I've used.)

If you are not going direct, then the aggregator will take a cut of the royalties you receive from the platforms where they push your book. You may prefer that slight cut to uploading manually yourself to many places.

All of these platforms will allow preorders except for KDP print. If you’re doing a preorder, then you will need to go back and upload your KDP print files once the book is live.

I do not use Draft2Digital, because when I went wide, PublishDrive distributed everywhere they do plus many others. However, PD has changed how they pay their royalties, so I would encourage you to go with D2D instead as PD is no longer user-friendly for beginner authors.

Also, when I went wide, Google Play was difficult to manage direct as was Apple. I understand this has changed recently, but I have not pulled my books from PD to go direct as of yet. I’ll probably do that shortly. Although you can change later, part of my problem is the number of books that I have written—nearly thirty!—that I must move, so it takes more time now than if I had started there.

Most people first use D2D when going wide. You’ll hit all the major retailers that way, and they’re a great company to work with from all I’ve heard.

Audio

The audio book format is growing in popularity among readers and profitability for authors. Amazon also has an exclusive platform that you can go through, or you can release on other platforms without exclusivity contracts.

Audio is on my list of things to do, but I haven’t released audiobooks yet, so I will leave this subject to those with more experience than I. I recommend Audio for Authors by Bradley Charbonneau (https://books2read.com/u/bzg5Jq) and Audio for Authors by Joanna Penn (https://books2read.com/u/4A7ZGo).

KU vs wide

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