Kindle v Smashwords
Discussion – do people have any plus or minus points in either direction? Do authors have to prepare everything twice to submit to different bodies? If time is too tight, how do we choose the best forum?
My short 64(ish) page cat books are always illustrated and I am reasonably competent using MS Publisher (2007) for graphic design, which easily leads on to creating a .pdf which my Printers are happy with. Uploading to Amazon Kindle has so far caused only a few problems mainly around the occasional loss of pictures. Admittedly I need to find time to spruce up the formatting for Kindle and resubmit a special version, subtly different from the Print one. An early readers picture book with very few words and many illustrations refused to upload correctly and lost most of the drawings – Kindle's expert response was to abandon .pdf and reformat as a Word doc.
Looking again at Smashwords – they need MS Word (2003 version) and formatted to their Style criteria, seems best for words, with images allowed as an afterthought. Their 10mb file limit restricts to only limited image inclusion.
As a UK based optimist, I see that should any revenue be gained by sales, both Amazon and Smashwords have agreements with US Inland Revenue which means they auto-deduct 30% tax that can be claimed back after applying. The procedure for registering appears laborious, although that is more the tax people's imposition.
My children's illustrated cat books, Louisa's Ginger Nuts Series, sell very poorly in print from my ebay shop, which is mainly for Moorcroft pottery and Beatrix Potter ceramics. On Amazon Kindle I am seeing quite a good take-up via the 5 free days special promotion in each 3 month KDP period, followed by buyers paying for other downloads. I have recently found that I can offer the printed books via normal Amazon and just needed to increase my normal retail price to cover their fees!
Signing up under KDP means sole rights, so the same title cannot be shown under Smashwords.
I like the fact that a book can be free for any length of time on Smashwords (not so on Kindle) and where normal pricing is used, that you can generate coupons (again not from Kindle) to offer as promotional gambits.
My next books in the same series are well underway, the best bits being the writing and illustrating, (and possibly graphic design), so when it is time for the boring, difficult bits (formatting and marketing), I wish to avoid repetitious work down the wrong avenue.
Just on Mark's point, it's not essential to offer exclusivity to Kindle UNLESS you want to join their Select programme. Which is not compulsory.
I thought about going the exclusive route for a while, but it was so much hassle trying to get other retailers to remove the book I gave up in the end.
Thanks Tony,
this all contributes most usefully to my extensive learning curve.
You are not comparing like for like, one is an eBook sales platform and another which is an eBook aggregator. The aggregator will feed into the Kindle platform so there is no need to make different files.
The situation gets more complex if you want to provide discounts or free offers for specific sales platforms.
As mentioned above 30% of whatever you earn in the US will be withheld so best to sort that out first. It's not quick or easy!!
Finally Kindle has I would guess about 80% of all eBook sales so the benefit of using Smashwords is negligible in terms of sales.