Paperbacks underway

I’m delighted to say that the paperback versions of all of my self-published books are now underway.

I’ve been umming and ahhing a lot just lately about whether to put all of my eggs in one basket or whether to scatter them about a bit.

I really, really, really do like Draft2Digital and, as an ebook publisher and distributor, they are really, really, really good.

However, they don’t do hardbacks, and while they do do paperbacks, it seems that their paperback distribution is limited to just America and Canada.

Even the author copies, they wanted a flat rate for before they’d even send me any. This is to compensate them for the short print run, but it starts at $30.

I also decided against Lulu for the paperbacks because of their ridiculously high print costs.

So, the decision that I’ve made is as follows.

  1. All of my ebooks will be published first on Draft2Digital.
  2. All of my paperbacks will be published on Kindle Direct Publishing next.
  3. Then all of my hardbacks will be published on Lulu.
  4. The portfolio print paperbacks of the ghostwritten books will also be published on Lulu.
  5. I haven’t decided yet about audio books.
  6. I’ll see if Ulverscroft will then be interested in publishing the fiction in large print before deciding where to do that myself.

Another thing that I’ve decided is that when I have four books in a series, I may make the first ebook in the series a freebie.

I needed to sort out my paperbacks because my followers are creeping closer and closer to 1,000. At the last check, there were 975, and I want to run the competition when we hit 1,000.

I did have a bit of a song and dance getting the book cover software to generate a full jacket in the right dimensions, but it seems that KDP is a lot happier at rescaling what you send them than Lulu is.

Of course, the winner may choose the ebooks. But the competition will initially be for the paperbacks, so long as any overseas winners don’t mind waiting for surface mail.

Once they’ve all been published, I might also set up a shop on my books page, with maybe discounted books for people who buy them directly from here.

Oh, it’s all go here!