Amazon, Smashwords or Lulu

[Raymond Creed]

Next year I hope to release my novella ‘The Exit Machine’ as an e. book on Kindle and other related applications. With regard to converting word files into e. friendly formats Market research has suggested that Amazon and Smashwords offer the best facilities. What I would like to know is: -
1) What facilities can Amazon offer that Smashwords doesn’t?
2) What facilities can Smashwords offer that Amazon can’t?
3) Are there any better converters then that provided by Amazon or Smashwords? If so, what are they? (Sigil is one which has come to my attention.)

Contributors are encouraged to share their experience of these facilities.

So far my own experience with both sets of technology indicates that they are at a primitive stage of development and I have found converting word documents into electronic format has been a nightmare. (So have two ‘small press’ publishers of poetry I’ve been acquainted with.) Especially absent was any capacity to adapt the tables and footnotes of my academic work without creating a mess (unless conversion is restricted to PDF documents). The same also applied to poetical material written in stanzas. Am I right in assuming that the technology associated with electronic publishing can only cope with simple fiction format? (If so, I will have to focus on this area.)

I've also found on other forums that participants start falling out among themselves on which one is best. it's all very confusing

Constructive and detailed answers will be welcome. There is no need to resort to verbal fisticuffs.

[mikeedwards]

Smashwords releases your book to many retailers including Amazon if you allow them to. You can opt out of any of the retailers they use. They were having some type of problem with Amazon and there was a big delay when I published a book there last year. So I opted out for Amazon and went direct to Amazon and let SW do the rest.

Amazon is about 2,000 times the size of SW though. That is from SW.

We have people who will help you with formatting for a reasonable fee. If you want their names just email writer-support@faithwriters.com and askfor the list of members who format ebooks.

God Bless, Mike

[KennAllan]

Hiya.

Well, I've published eBooks with both Amazon and Smashwords; however, I fear once you've finished reading this you may be as perplexed as when you began.

Let's begin with the actual process of formatting/creating an eBook. Smashwords is MUCH easier than Amazon. In order to get the drop-down directory and "tic marks" to work on a Kindle, you have to make three different files. Even though I found good documentation, it took me much longer to figure out the Amazon process. The Smashwords "meatgrinder" (that's what they call their compiler) does the work automatically. In addition, I found it much easier to format my manuscript for Amazon directly from the HTML file; of course, this requires some basic HTML knowledge. Smashwords works quite nicely with only a MS-Word (.doc) document.

Now, keep in mind I did virtually no promoting of my books when reading the following.

Most eBooks on the planet are sold by Amazon.com; however, books sold on Amazon.com can ONLY be used on a Kindle, Fire, or whatever they choose to call their next eReader. Amazon also hits you with an exclusivity agreement if you want to be paid a higher rate. On the other hand, Smashword eBooks can be used on just about any eReader out there, INCLUDING Kindle. They also distribute your eBooks to outlets such as Apple, Barnes & Noble, Sony, Kobo, and others. Okay, here it is - I have sold a TON more books on Smashwords than Amazon.

I've not heard of Sigil, but I Googled it and it appears to be a pretty cool EPUB eBook compiler. However, once you've created the book what are you going to do with it? It would be fine if you have a way of selling from your own website, but that usually requires tons of money, celebrity status, or both.

I hope this helped. If you decide to use Smashwords, I have tools and documents on my website to help with the task. If you decide to use Amazon, I used Mobipocket Creator, a free program available online.

Good luck!

- Kenn

[mikeedwards]

On a side note.

With FaithWriters we need to read quite a bit. I am just finishing up reading the entries for the Books Project. I do not care to read a book on my laptop so I send it to my Kindle. Your Kindle has an email address under home, menu, settings and scroll to part that says send to Kindle email. There you will see your email address for your Kindle.

This is in home, settings and then my account on Kindle Fire.

Then I just take a writer's manuscript that has been emailed to me and send it to my Kindle address as a regular word doc attachment. I list the title in the subject line. Then in a matter of just a few minutes it usually is on my kindle. It is usually very readable too even though it is not formatted for Kindle. Sometimes the text size is weird, to small or big. But 95% of the time it works for me.

[Laurie]

I have used all three. Lulu was the most maddening! But your questions center more around Amazon and Smashwords.

I didn't publish poetry, photos, footnotes, tables, etc., so I found the formatting process to be pretty doable. I went through both style guides and made notes of the pertinent formatting points in my own language and that helped. For both, I just used Word documents.

As far as sales, I haven't sold many at either place, but I've sold more at Amazon than on Smashwords. I plan to publish another ebook next year, and I think I'll publish at both places again. Even though I haven't sold as many at Smashwords, I like that they publish it in different formats and distribute the ebook to other outlets. I also like that I can make coupon codes at Smashwords so I can offer a discount or even a free download. And it's just nice to give people the choice between the two places. The thing I don't like at Smashwords is that I can only see sales to other outlets at the end of the quarter in their quarterly report and not as they happen. If I'm missing something here, I hope someone will enlighten me.

[Sparrow]

I would recommend using all three of those simultaneously, actually. I use Smashwords for general e-books and then opt out of having them send it to Barnes & Noble and Amazon, and then I submit the e-book separately to those two places.

Then for the print copy I use Lulu or CreateSpace and opt out of having them make it into an ebook if possible, since theirs isn't good quality. But their paperback books are great quality. Right now CreateSpace is quite a bit cheaper than Lulu, so I've switched to them. They have a few less binding options, but still have the basic ones.

[Raymond Creed]

There's a lot here and at least unlike elsewhere you're not almost coming to blows arguing which one is the best. The mature tone of this thread is heartening so keep the contributions coming. I will scrutinize them in more depth when I have time.

God bless!

[Sparrow]

Yes, FaithWriters is a great place. People almost always stay friendly and helpful. It's an encouraging home.

[Raymond Creed]

All very helpful answers which will take me days to review. But how possible would it be to format academic books with footnotes, tables and quoted poetry in stanzas or is that still beyond the scope of e.book publication? My impression is that this area can only produce novels. Beyond that everything gets to be a mess.

[Sparrow]

Tables and poetry in stanzas is definitely possible with e-books. You would have to play with the sizing of the tables though, to make sure the font was easily readable on the readers since that's something the individual reader won't be able to re-size like they can the regular text. In one of my last jobs I formatted a paperback book with footnotes. Someone else did the e-book version but I didn't hear that it was a problem, so I'm thinking they work fine, too. Likely the note wouldn't be on the same page as the reference, but it would be close.

[Raymond Creed]

Thank you for all contributions. I will through them all very carefully and make relevant decisions on my new years retreat.

[Laurie]

Can you use end notes instead of footnotes? I realize doing so only addresses one of the problems you've encountered, but it's just an idea.

[exchangedlife]

Lulu is an unnecessary expense. Smashwords will get you into more avenues, but their meat grinder strips so much of the formatting that it looks ugly.

My recommendation is to go with Amazon. I have published several books - including books that have photographs and other visuals. Formatting with Amazon has the best results by far.

I've found that the number of sales through retailers other than amazon are so insignificant that it isn't worth the bother. My first book sold about 2500 ebooks. Of those, all but 10 were through Amazon. Losing 10 sales isn't a big enough deal to uglify my books with the meat grinder. Smashwords strips most formatting because they are making it available for all formats - instead of having to reformat for each one. So they keep it as simple as possible on their end. Though getting a book 'grinder-ready' is a pain.

Another big advantage to using Amazon is their promotional options. If you agree to sell exclusively through Amazon, you can enroll in KDP select. This allows you to do free promotionals and allow lending. Amazon encourages authors to allow lending by investing money in the author pool. In the past it has been 600,000, but this cycle they are doing $750k. Authors get a portion of this based on how many times their book has been borrowed. In the past, it has been around $2.50 per loan - which is more than the royalties for the average sale.

I recommend giving up the 10 sales you would get via B&N, Kobo, and Apple, and go with Amazon's KDP select. If you need formatting help, there are several who will do this for a fee - including your's truly

[Laurie]

Eddie, regarding selling exclusively through Amazon, that's for the first 90 days, isn't it? I like the perks with that (and it's great to read about loans bringing in about 2.50 each), but I also like being able to make coupons for my ebook at Smashwords (for example, so I can offer a free copy, in a variety of formats, to someone who signs up for the counseling I offer). So could a person publish with Amazon and after 90 days or more publish with Smashwords?

Congrats on selling 2500 books!

I'm glad you chimed in. We've given the original poster in this thread a lot to think about. And I think some of the rest of us are learning, too.

[Sparrow]

I just heard last night at my critique group that KDP Select has changed so much that it really isn't helpful for self publishers at all anymore. The perks are weighted heavily toward traditional publishers now.

Eddie, you say Lulu is an unnecessary expense. What expense do you mean? You can publish through them at no upfront costs to the author, and it is nice to be able to offer a paperback version to your readers who prefer that over e-books. CreateSpace offers it even cheaper for the buyers/readers right now, so I've been using both them and Smashwords and submitting straight to Kindle and Nook.