The Untamed Page

The Truth about Going Wide

for first time authors

“Going wide”... an expression that isn’t particular common outside of football and publishing channels, that you will come ​to know as you figure out how to publish. But what does that really mean?

Going wide, is a term for distributing books through multiple vendors to gain a broader audience or through the use of a ​single distributor like Ingram Sparks or Draft2Digital, which have pre-existing relationships with stores (online and ​physical), that will sell your books. And while this sounds like a fantastic idea, for first time authors, is it really?

I started my own adventure with Amazon’s KDP program. It allows you to publish in both print and ebook and have control ​of your own destiny. The interface is simple and there are programs to enroll your ebook into that help it get seen, which ​for a first time author is really important. Because no one (outside of friends and family) will pay to read your book without ​a couple of reviews first.

B&N Press purports to have a similar program for advertising their ebooks that fall within a certain price window, but ONLY ​if you publish through them. (Back to this in just a moment.)

The KDP programs for your ebook require a 3-month enrollment in the program in which you can’t sell your ebook on any ​other platform. The flip side of this is that you have a few options through KDP to list your book for free or discounted and ​then Amazon promotes it for you as part of those programs.

Don’t underestimate the power of Amazon’s programs to get your book seen as a first time author!!

I watched the stats on KDP ebb and flow as the programs started and stopped, but at least someone was downloading ​them to be read, and I could see actual income (albeit not a lot) from the promotions. But after the first 3 months, I began ​to worry. Was I missing out? Should I have gone wide and was missing other opportunities for the same thing with Nook, ​Apple Press, etc.

So I pulled my ebook from the KDP programs and went my own way. Surely those other platforms would have something ​similar, they all claim they can help me market. Boy was I wrong.

I uploaded my books to a variety of sites, all recommended by other successful indie publishers, who claimed it gave them ​ultimate control over their books. I excited looked for the marketing programs that would help my book get seen, but ​where were they?

I tried going direct for the ebook to multiple other vendors, and using a distributor for my print book, just so I could test ​my options, but low and behold, there was nothing better to find. There wasn’t anything like what KDP offered with their ​Select program for ebooks to been seen in the sea of millions of other authors. And I had lost my chance to go back to ​KDP’s Select since I had violated their exclusivity clause for ebooks. So great...now what?

Well, the internet says, you could always run advertisements. Paid advertisements, with no guarantee that they will ​translate into actual book sales, because (please see note above), you need reviews first.

This vicious cycle of needing reviews to get people to purchase your book is problematic at best, disastrous at worse. But ​think about how you shop? Do you like buying something without a review? So that leads me back to the this.

Use KDP to your advantage when you are first starting out to advertise your ebook for free. It will take longer than 3 ​months, but you can always push your print book out to other distributors.

Now this is the important part about B&N Press. They will only publish a book that has never been on their system before. ​So if you want to test Ingram Sparks (who distrbutes to B&N) and then shift to B&N, that is not going to happen without ​completely reassigning your ISBN number, which is $100 down the drain. You might ask why would I try to do this? And for ​that answer, please read the follow story, coming soon, about print quality and Ingram Sparks. Buyer beware!