To āgo wideā or āpublish wideā is to distribute and sell books via multiple platforms, uploading directly to platforms such as Kobo or Apple Books or uploading to multiples sites via an aggregator like Draft2Digital, PublishDrive, or StreetLib. Or, most often, both.
As a guiding principle, and recognizing that there are time constraints and other factors at play, ALLi advises authors to go wideāto make their writing available wherever people might find and enjoy it, through as many different retailers, regions, and formats as possible, given their personal limitations of time, money, and other resources.
The principle is that the more retailers, regions, and formats a book is in, the stronger its foundation for consistent, long-term income. This means valuing the principle of non-exclusivity, espoused in Chapter 3.
Exclusivity can sometimes encourage a distributor to help with promotion of the bookāthough not always directly or on demand. If a book is available exclusively through a specific vendor, and it shows signs of doing well (lots of readers picking it up, reviewing it, etc.), authors may get a friendly and helpful boost from that vendor. They may find their book listed in a promotional email or placed in a prominent position on a results page. These sorts of perks may happen anyway, if the book really is doing well, whether authors are wide or exclusive.
In addition to the dangers of exclusivity outlined in Chapter 3, itās worth noting that, from a business perspective, Amazon is the most competitive store. Since the time Amazon Advertising was launched, it is also the one that costs the most to get visibility. While non-Amazon retailers are smaller, it can be much easier to establish a foothold there.
The more outlets an author has, the less dependent they are on any one. ALLi has many, many members who publish wide to just as much success as Amazon-exclusive authors. All of these wide publishers have one thing in common. They understand that being wide is a long-term strategy, and they are committed to it. Building a presence and garnering sales on Apple Books, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Google Play, and IngramSpark takes time.
Going wide is also more human centred. While Amazon runs on algorithms, the best visibility spots on the other retailers are curated by humans. Only Google Play could be considered as predominantly algorithmic, and there too the best visibility spots there are hand-curated.
Widely published books have a much higher chance than Kindle Unlimited books of being accepted for BookBub featured deals and other promotion services. A single featured deal will skyrocket your sales on all retailers, which will likely get the attention of the merchandising teams, who may in turn feature your book in their promos, thus driving even more sales. This is how presence is built on non-Amazon retailers.
ALLi Recommendations for Publishing Wide
To avail of the best financial return on the widest possible distribution, ALLi recommends that, time permitting, you upload directly to the e-book Big FiveāAmazonās KDP, Apple Books, Barnes & Nobleās Nook, Google Play, and Kobo Writing Lifeāand use one or more e-book aggregators to cover the rest of the world.
If you use those five for your e-books, together with Amazon KDPP and IngramSpark for print as described above, and ACX and Findaway Voices or similar for audio, you have covered the channels that account for 97% of e-book, p-book, and a-book sales around the western world and maximized your income from them.
The benefits of uploading directly to the big retailers include faster payments, up-to-date sales figures (important for measuring the effectiveness of marketing), more direct control of metadata (particularly categories and keywords which are important for discoverability), and the ability to manipulate pricing quickly and easily (important for promotion).
And, of course, aggregators like PublishDrive, Smashwords, Draft2Digital, and Streetlib take their payment on top of that which is paid to the publishing platforms.
āTime permittingā is a key condition for indie authors though. As writers, especially if we have day jobs and other commitments, our writing time must be protected. The drawback to going direct to all five e-book retailers is that each one has different dashboards and requirements so it can be time-consuming, especially if you have a lot of titles.
And not everyone ...
