Mark McClelland's Blog - Posts Tagged "google-play"

I'm in the midst of publishing on Google Play. I found it slightly confusing at first, until I found their Beginner's Guide. When I started signing up for the Google Books Partner Program, I thought I was in the wrong place; Google Books is for making book content searchable, but I want to sell my book, not make its content freely available. Then I discovered that you can limit access by a given user to 20% of your book's content, and that you have to participate in this search/preview program in order to sell through Google Play. This is really just their way of providing something similar to Amazon's "Look Inside!" feature.

My self-publishing and distribution saga is still in its very early stages. I managed to navigate the murky, sloppy waters of distribution through Google Play, but I'm still waiting for my description of the book to show up. Google tells me it could be "weeks" before my text makes it to the actual listing.

In happier news, Kobo was a breeze, an absolute delight by comparison. Based on my experience thus far, I strongly recommend them as a venue for publishing an eBook. (But I'm glad I started on Lulu, where the documentation and community support are the best I've seen so far.)

For more on where to find Upload, and on the details of getting it out there, check out uploadthenovel.com.