by Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig
I thought I’d give an update on how things are going for various formats and platforms.
Wattpad
Wattpad is one of my favorite places to upload. The community there is very supportive and encouraging. If you’re one of those writers who feels as if you’re writing into a black hole, you might want to check it out.
Why am I there? Has it led to more sales? I know that it’s led to some sales, because those were self-reported by readers there. Wattpad is free for readers, so there’s no direct income. The main reason that I’m there is to broaden my reader base and expose my writing to new and younger readers.
My demographics tell me this is working.
The second highest group (represented by the purple) is age 13-18, at 27% of my readers on Wattpad.
I also wanted more international exposure for my stories. Although the US still represents the largest reader base, I’ve been able to build readership in many other countries:
More about putting your books on Wattpad in this post, here, and here.
Audio
Audio is a consistent income-generator for me each month, although the royalties aren’t as high as they were when I first started with ACX in 2013. Still, I make steady income there (I will note that I have ten books available). According to my dashboard at ACX, I’ve sold 4,461 audiobooks. I will say this: audiobook ‘readers’ are dedicated. When there is any delay at all in one of my books being available in audio, I get emails and messages on Facebook, asking about it.
It’s an incredible amount of work for a narrator/producer. I’m lucky to have found a production company and narrator that were happy to take me on with a royalty share agreement.
More on getting your books on ACX in these posts: here and here.
Overdrive (Library sales)
Although I’ve noticed a winter slump in my Overdrive sales, this is, again, a no-brainer platform for me to upload to. I upload it and then forget about it. I always have Overdrive sales and I like having my books available as digital loans to libraries (and discoverable to new readers). Although most of my sales are in the US, I’ve had Overdrive sales in Canada and the UK, as well.
More on getting your books into Overdrive here.
International sales:
I’ll start off by saying that most of my international sales do come through Amazon. A look at the last 30 days on the KDP dashboard shows sales in the UK, Germany, France, Japan, Canada, and Australia. (As I’m writing this, I had a release during this time period.)
IngramSpark (I use them for print, along with CreateSpace) also is responsible for a large chunk of my international sales. More on uploading to IngramSpark here.
And other retailers and distributors also contribute to my international sales, as I’ll explain below.
Most of my international sales come from the UK, Australia, and Canada. But it always makes me smile to see Italy, Germany, and other countries popping up on my sales map.
I use PublishDrive, Draft2Digital and StreetLib to distribute my books to international markets.
Looking at the sales results, I’m interested to see that my German sales are through PublishDrive’s distribution to Ciando.
Most of my StreetLib sales are through the Google Play Store.
Most of my Canadian and Australia sales are through Draft2Digital.
Again, although there isn’t tons of money to be made in international sales, it’s a no-brainer. I upload to my aggregators and then can forget about it…and I certainly wouldn’t turn the money down.
More about expanding into international distribution here.
Translation
Here is my one disappointment on the list, although I’m unfortunately not too surprised. I’d read about the difficulties that translations face, most notably covered in this article by Porter Anderson on the Authors Guild survey in 2017. This covers the translators’ end of things, but the authors’ end is equally bleak.
I currently have a book available in Spanish and one in Italian. Another book is being translated into Portuguese.
Although my Spanish title, La muerte teñida de rojo, was energetically promoted to my translator’s (the talented Alfredo “Freddy” Moyano-Barroso’s) Spanish-speaking base, the results have still been disappointing.
More disappointing is Babelcube’s platform. The printed books are only distributed through Amazon and the cost of purchasing them overseas is higher than if they were distributed through IngramSpark. There is no audiobook option through Babelcube.
I believe that there would be a good deal more revenue generated if there was a better revenue-sharing platform (making it easy to pay authors and translators) and if we could upload in a variety of formats and retailers.
I don’t regret having my books translated because of the celebrated ‘long-tail’ in publishing. But I feel badly for my translators who had to put in all the effort and all the risk into this royalty-sharing venture. My only cost was for the translated cover (and that was minimal).
More about uploading to Babelcube here and here.
Hardcover
I’ve sold hardcover versions of most of my self-published titles this year through IngramSpark and have more than made back my investment in time and money (for hardback covers). This means that I’ll be continuing the process this year.
I’m guessing these are libraries purchasing them, unless they are readers who prefer hardcovers for their favorite titles.
Another nice thing about the hardcover edition is that it does make the digital version look like a bargain:
More about creating hardcover editions here.
This was a long-read for my blog, but it was helpful for me to go through each format and platform and see what was working well and what wasn’t.
What formats is your book in? Do you have international reach?
Elizabeth Craig takes a look at the successes and failures of different formats and platforms: Click To TweetPhoto credit: doustpauline of > \whatwhenwhere/ on VisualHunt.com / CC BY-ND
Yeah, umm, I’m only on Amazon. Paperback and ebook. I’ve tried wide distribution through D2D, but the few sales I see there never make up for the Kindle Unlimited page reads I miss out on. And going wide distribution of the paperbacks through Createspace means I have to jack the prices up just to make a few pennies at the other stores. I’m thinking about trying to publish this next book in paperback through Amazon’s new paperback thing. I’ve heard the process there is getting better. We’ll see.
Maybe if I ever get a wider reader base, it’ll be worth my while. There’s always hope that’ll happen. =o)
I started out wide, so no real choice for me, although it worked out really well. I wouldn’t dare cut back on distribution at this point–I’m sure I’d hear from readers.
I think the thought is that, eventually, all CS books will need to be moved over to the KDP print side. But no word on when that will be (or *if* it will be). They have laid off workers at CS, but that’s only for their author services. More on that from Porter Anderson’s and Jane Friedman’s Hot Sheet:
“Amazon’s CreateSpace will no longer offer services to writers, leading to layoffs. The change so far does not affect the core CreateSpace offering of print-on-demand distribution for authors—only editorial/design services and other fee-based services. The service division will close in July. Learn more from Thad Moore in Charleston’s Post and Courier.“
Audio book sales have slumped bad since we first started putting them out and I’ve run out of options for increasing sales. Can’t seem to even give them away, either.
Publish Drive has also become frustrating because if you don’t hit the minimum of $100, you get nothing.
However, while Amazon sales have lagged a bit, sales through Nook and other devices has increased.
I do still have strong demand for my audiobooks, but I’ll agree that there has been a recent dip in sales. Still getting lots of FB comments and emails regarding when the next books will be out in audio.
I did notice an uptick in Nook and wondered about that!
Elizabeth, a royalty-share alternative to Babelcube, that offers many more options, both with format , reach and languages, is here – https://www.traduzionelibri.it/
For China, try https://fiberead.com/
For my part, having tried and been dreadfully disappointed by Babelcube (but very pleased with Fiberead – #1 on Kindle China!) my strategy now is pursuing localised trad deals country by country, format by format.
Put simply, the limitations of a trad deal cannot be worse than Babelcube has done for me, and a local publisher has a clear incentive to make the project pay off.
I’m hearing good things about Traduzione Libri, but have yet to try that option.
If you follow The New Publishing Standard at all you’ll know there is huge demand for books across the globe, and the challenge is to be available where the readers are, in formats the readers want, at prices the readers can afford.
Amazon reaches just a fraction of the global market. Wonderful it is, and easy to use. But if we aren’t tapping into the rest, we are missing an exciting opportunity.
Thanks for this, Mark! I’ll have to give it a go. I have a translated project waiting for a home right now (and I’m a little wary of becoming even more of a publisher…to the point that I have to pay my translator, myself, each month).
I haven’t been picked up on Fiberead by a translator, but I haven’t checked in too frequently there, either. I might try to put some different titles up. Thanks for the reminder. #1 on Kindle China is fantastic!!
Everyone, I get a lot of my information from Mark on his Facebook page and through The New Publishing Standard…definitely check into both.
Wow – that’s interesting. I don’t have the auditory attention span to listen to audio books, but I know some people just love them!
Auditory attention span…ha! I totally understand what you mean. I don’t either, unless I’m in the car on a trip or exercising or something like that.
Thanks, Elizabeth, for sharing how you’re doing with these platforms. I couldn’t agree more about Wattpad. I upload all my flash fiction there, and it’s a great community, as you say. It’s also, or so I’ve found, an excellent way to interact with YA readers.
It really is a great community there and I’m so glad to introduce my books (and, in some cases, the mystery genre itself) to young readers there.
Hi Elizabeth – lots of thoughts here … but I was interested to read Diane’s comment. You’ve encouraged me here to get on with things … cheers Hilary
Thanks so much for stopping by, Hilary!
Wattpad looks nice. Think I will check it out. And audio books are great, I’m consuming more and more of them, in particular because I can “read” books while soing other things; driving, walking to town, washing the dishes and so on >:)
I think you’d enjoy it…it’s fun as a reader, too.
That’s the only way I can listen to audiobooks and podcasts–as I’m doing something else simultaneously. I think I have adult ADHD, ha!
I can imagine you spend a lot of time keeping up with all these formats and distribution outlets. How much time do you still have left to write? :)
Ha! You’re right. The business end of writing (including promo) takes up 75% of my ‘writing’ day and the actual writing takes up 25%. But I get my writing done the first thing in the morning (5ish), so that way I don’t worry about how much time I’m devoting to the business.