Book formats
When you publish, you choose from a variety of formats, with e-book, print, and audiobook being the three most common formats. E-book is the simplest of the formats. Many distributors can accept and convert a clean Microsoft Word file, so you don't even need to create the .EPUB or similar format yourself. But having a clean file is key. This means you need to use "styles" so that a chapter title is the "Heading 1" style and the content is the "Normal" style. Without styles, the conversion software won't know the difference between chapter headings and the body of the chapter. If you're not comfortable with Word styles, you may want to consider hiring a formatter.
Print is slightly more complicated in that distributors require a PDF format that displays the novel exactly how it should look in print. Many distributors offer free Word templates to help make formatting easier. As with e-books, hire a formatter if you're not comfortable with styles, margins, and page sizes.
Producing an audiobook is the most challenging of the formats, as you either need to work with an audiobook performer to narrate your book, or you need a sound booth to produce a professional-sounding product. There are fewer retailers for audiobooks, but the number is growing every year.
Book retailers and aggregators
Once you choose the format(s), you then choose how best to distribute the novel. There are three types of vendors who distribute your book. Retailers are stores that sell books, such as Amazon or Barnes & Noble. Aggregators distribute your book—whether that's e-book, print, or audiobook—to a range of retailers. Distributors are a subset of aggregators that, for a small percentage fee, focus on distributing print books to retailers and libraries; though "distributor" is also used as a generic term to refer to all retailers and aggregators. Many aggregators fulfill the role of distributor as well, so it can be confusing. For simplicity's sake, we'll focus on retailers and aggregators as book distributors as a whole.
For e-books, the biggest decision is whether you want to have your book available only through a single retailer—i.e. Amazon via its Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) "Select"—or have your book available through multiple retailers, i.e. "wide." Going wide means your book could be available via Kobo, Google Play, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, and more. These retailers have self-publishing portals to make it easy for you to publish your book to their store.
Amazon KDP Select includes access to the popular Kindle Unlimited (KU) subscription library, which can be a significant portion of e-book revenue. However, KDP Select requires exclusivity for ninety days. First-time publishers often first release their e-book to Amazon only via KDP Select for simplicity, but the Amazon vs. wide decision is a personal decision.
If you choose to go wide, you may consider an aggregator to simplify the publishing process. These online self-publishing sites help you build your e-book, and they then make it available to many retailers, libraries, and subscription services for a small percentage fee. Using an aggregator, you only have to upload your book once rather than uploading it to every separate retailer. Smashwords and Draft2Digital are the two largest aggregators, with IngramSpark, BookBaby, and others filling in a significant portion of the remaining market.
Many retailers and aggregators offer the ability to sell both e-book and print, making it easier for the writer to publish multiple formats. Several offer audiobook services, such as Draft2Digital's interface with Findaway Voices.
Metadata
Understanding your book's metadata will help you pull together all the information retailers and aggregators ask for. Metadata refers to any details that help identify your book in the ocean of books. Think of metadata as terms a customer may search for in looking for a book to buy. The most common metadata include your book's title, subtitle, ISBN, description, genre/categories, keywords, age/grade demographic, format, release date, and retail price.
You'll need much of this information if you hire a cover designer. For example, the book description will be listed on the back of the print cover. Other metadata, such as the genre and reader demographic, can assist the cover designer in ensuring your book's cover conveys the right message to your target audience.
Note that ISBNs (International Standard Book Numbers) are used on print books in the United States. You do not need an ISBN for either e-books or audiobooks. Many retailers and aggregators offer a free ISBN, but if you use their ISBN, they will be listed as the publisher on record. This means that if you set up your print book on Amazon KDP and use their provided ISBN, Amazon will be listed as the publisher even when the book is sold to bookstores or libraries. If you do not want this, you must buy your ISBNs through Bowker, which is the only provider of ISBNs in the United States. I buy my own ISBNs so that my personal imprint (Waypoint Books) is listed as the publisher and to ensure I own all aspects of that book. Publishing is a business, and I believe that the more pieces of the business I control the better.
A perk of self-publishing is that you can change the retail price of your book any time. Some writers will launch their book at a temporarily reduced price; other writers launch at full price. Your launch pricing depends on your launch marketing strategy, which I need to add to this Tidy Guide as a Part Four (sometime!)
YOU ARE READING
The Tidy Guide to Writing, Editing, and Publishing Your Novel
Non-FictionDo you dream of writing a novel, but not sure where to start? Have you been working on a book for ages but feel stuck? Despite all your best efforts, do you feel overwhelmed? Here's a clutter-free guide for planning and writing your novel right the...
