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Publication date and POD/eBooks

I am a new publisher. I just managed to figure out the logistics to get two books printed through CreateSpace (print), Kindle, and Smashwords. My Kindle book appeared on the site within 24 hours of uploading it, my Smashwords books are showing up on Google, and my print books are available for ordering. This all happened so fast, I didn't have time to follow my marketing plan. I have this whole plan figured out with reviewers lined up to write Amazon reviews, letters and press release kits prepared, and a whole mapped out marketing strategy that will take three months. But all the advice I followed said this was supposed to happen before the publication date. Now my books are sitting out there available with a published date written on them of January 18, when my marketing plan wanted them to be published on March 20.

Huh. I'm going to keep on marching straight ahead, but I'm wondering if it matters that the books are going to say they are old and stale when I'm trying to introduce them as fresh and new. If I had known how fast this was going to happen, I may have held back on uploading them. But it will still take two months before they show up in the distribution channels; they will just show up there with old dates on them.

Any thoughts on how this can be handled?

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Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Dreamtime Press on January 23, 2011 at 2:33am

We did the same thing except for the ebook part. I had so much trouble solving the illustrations problems at Create Space on the first book my publishing company published that i didn't realize how fast it could go. I think you just start marching from where you are. Two months old is not that "old and stale."

Just curious about your experience with Smashwords. Did the ebook publishing go smoothly there and how many distribution channels are operational now? I'm just now looking into publishing the ebook version of our book on pm Amazon for the Kindle and on the Smashwords platform.

Permalink Reply by River Landing Press on January 23, 2011 at 2:52am

I'm still pending approval on Smashwords, after uploading a week ago. The formatting was difficult, and I still have some problems with the previews. They won't accept tables and my lists seem to have words written on top of each other. However, that does not stop the book from being published and available when I search on Google, flaws and all. It is not in the distribution channels but it is posted on the Smashwords site with a publication date. It is supposed to take up to two months to appear in the distribution databases for Nook, Kobo, etc. Meanwhile, I'm still trying to figure out the formatting issues.

Kindle was very simple, worked perfectly, and appeared on the Amazon site within 24 hours. No formatting issues with the conversion whatever.

I also am trying Calibre, which is free software, to make an ePub file. It worked and converted nicely. I just don't know what to do with it now that I have it.

Permalink Reply by Dreamtime Press on January 23, 2011 at 3:21am

I downloaded Calibre too to convert the files with, but I'm wondering where else to submit. It sounds like between Smashwords and Amazon most ebook distribution points are covered. I wish I could find a good list of ebook distributors. I hope I'm not missing some good ones.

I wonder what the formatting issues are caused by. You just upload a Word do to Smaskwords right? I wonder how an index will come out if you are having these problems with tables and lists?

Permalink Reply by River Landing Press on January 23, 2011 at 3:38am

There is a long style guide that forces you to take a lot of the formatting marks out of Word before you upload. I think it says you can't have an index. I had to take out 40 footnotes because it wouldn't do them either.

Permalink Reply by Dreamtime Press on February 1, 2011 at 9:19am

Where do you go to upload a book to Amazon for Kindle? Amazon is getting too big to navigate. This discussion makes me wonder if smashwords is the way to go to get an ebook distributed.

Permalink Reply by River Landing Press on February 1, 2011 at 11:43am

Kindle editions are a different format from everything else. You can do Kindle AND Smashwords.

kdp.amazon.com/

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