Thinking about self-publishing and wanted to know about the biggest retailers for your digital and print books? We break it down for you in our easy to navigate guide below.
A few years ago you had to use a distributor to get your books into all the major retailers. Now, most retailers allow authors to directly upload their books. This is great because you can also maximize on royalties this way.
When uploading an ebook or a book for print on demand we recommend uploading your book to the following retailers:
As you might already know, different retailers require different file forms for readable conversion on their devices. The file conversions for each device are as follows:
- MOBI/PRC: Amazon
- EPUB: Barnes and Noble (NookPress), Apple iBooks, Kobo (also now Sony)
- PRINT READY PDF: CreateSpace
Here’s a little more info about the filetypes for each retailers on a previous blog post.
Amazon
- Known as KDP, Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing (http://kdp.amazon.com)
- Over 60% of market (guesstimate)
- 25% of revenues on Amazon come from self-published titles in US
- Royalties: 70% if your book is between $2.99 and $9.99
- You need a PRC or MOBI file: 50MB
- Cover
- At least 1000px on longest size, JPEG or TIFF, 1.6 height-width ratio
- Don’t hardcode page numbers
- To sell your book you will need to submit tax and bank Information
Barnes and Noble
- Known as Nook Press (http://nookpress.com)
- Formerly PubIt!
- Roughly 25% of ebook market (guesstimate)
- Royalties are about 65%
- You will need to upload an EPUB File: 20MB
- Cover size
- Optimal: between 750px and 2000px in length, JPEG, 5KB to 2MB filesize
- To sell your book you will need to submit tax and bank Information
iBooks
- Apple iBookStore
- Roughly 25% of ebook market (guesstimate)
- You will need to upload an EPUB File: 2 GB
- Great for enhanced ebooks
- Royalties are 70%
- Cover size
- Minimum 1400 px along smaller side, JPEG or PNG file
- To sell your book you need to input your bank and tax information
- You need a Mac and an iTunes Connect account
- You will need to download iTunes Producer
Kobo
- Kobo Writing Life – kobowritinglife.com
- Single digits market share (guesstimate)
- Royalties are 80%
- You will need to upload an EPUB File: 200 MB
- Cover size:
- Optimal: 600px x 860px, JPEG, PNG
- To sell your book you need to input your bank and tax information
Covers
If you want to just create one cover we recommend 1600 x 2400 pixels in JPEG.
What else would you like to know? Share with us in the comments below.
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