Updates on Platforms and Formats

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?

Photo credit: doustpauline of > \whatwhenwhere/ on VisualHunt.com / CC BY-ND