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Going direct vs. through Smashwords
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Lisa
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Nov 23, 2013 08:35AM
Hi guys, I'd love to get your advice on this. I published my book through Smashwords almost two months ago. It's still not available on Kobo even though Smashwords has told me that it's been sent to them. It's so easy to upload your files through Kobo Writing Life, so what is the benefit of using Smashwords for Kobo? Would I have to get another ISBN number if I forego Smashwords for Kobo?
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Lisa, where are you located? There is an issue with Kobo books in the UK.
Sharon wrote: "Lisa, where are you located? There is an issue with Kobo books in the UK."I'm in California, USA. Mainly interested in Kobo Canada.
Kobo will give you it's own ISBN. Just go to Kobo Writing Life and upload your doc, they will turn it into e-pub. They say it takes them 24 to 72 hours to make it live, but sometimes it's longer. And the issue in the UK is solved, no erotica "of certain kinds" on Kobo like on Apple and Amazon...
Hi, I am also frustrated withe the Smashwords-Kobo thing. My book is supposed to have entered pre-orders "right away," but it just got to iBooks over 1 week after its submission and it took almost that long for nook. It's STILL not on Kobo, and it's been 9 days. WTF? Smashwords say they can't check on it until it's been 2 weeks. That is ridiculous, IMHO. It's electronic, for pity's sake! What takes so long???? Best to you.
I'm wondering if this might be a Kobo rather than a Smashwords issue. My newest book was approved for the premium catalog about three weeks ago but hasn't yet shown up on Kobo either, although Smashwords indicates it was distributed to them. I code my books as containing adult content, and I know Kobo had some major issue recently about banning erotica that resulted in non-erotica books being removed from their site. Maybe Kobo is attempting to review all new books or at least those marked as containing adult content before they go live. Who knows. I might eventually try the direct upload too.
Sally wrote: "Hi, I am also frustrated withe the Smashwords-Kobo thing. My book is supposed to have entered pre-orders "right away," but it just got to iBooks over 1 week after its submission and it took almost ..."I had my book on preorder to all channels and it only showed up on Apple after three weeks so I just released since the editing was finished sooner than expected.
It can take a while. I have one published start of this month, not made it to b&n yet either. On the other hand if you don't go via a publisher like smashwords, you end up with dribbles of sales in umpteen different accounts. I'm already on Amazon directly, I don't really want to spend time managing every other channel as well. I'd never get any writing done :-)
Barbara wrote: "Kobo will give you it's own ISBN. Just go to Kobo Writing Life and upload your doc, they will turn it into e-pub. They say it takes them 24 to 72 hours to make it live, but sometimes it's longer. A..."I already have a designed ePub file and uploaded it to Writing for Life Kobo. Doesn't look like they assigned it an ISBN.
L.L. wrote: "It can take a while. I have one published start of this month, not made it to b&n yet either. On the other hand if you don't go via a publisher like smashwords, you end up with dribbles of sales in..."I see what you mean about managing the different channels, but I've been waiting for Smashwords to get my epub file live on Kobo for eight weeks. I uploaded it to Kobo myself and it was live within 24 hours.
Lisa wrote: "Barbara wrote: "Kobo will give you it's own ISBN. Just go to Kobo Writing Life and upload your doc, they will turn it into e-pub. They say it takes them 24 to 72 hours to make it live, but sometime..."They do, it starts with 123 and shows up on the shopping page... ;) http://store.kobobooks.com/en-US/eboo... (see "product info" - yesterday it gave no results not even going there from KWL, so now it's effectively live)
Thanks. I'll check that out.
Marla wrote: "I'm wondering if this might be a Kobo rather than a Smashwords issue. My newest book was approved for the premium catalog about three weeks ago but hasn't yet shown up on Kobo either, although Smas..."Marla,
My book has a lot of sexual content, and Kobo made it live via Writing for Life within 48 hours. I had been waiting four weeks with Smashwords and it still wasn't live on Kobo.
Has anyone else seen the new flag Smashwords have added to their dashboards? It lets you know whther there is a problem with one of the sites they're distributing too... which should help to clarify matters when authors are seeing long delays loading their books but don't know why.Apparently one of my stories was rejected by Apple back in September and its now got a red flag alongside it with an error message.
Its a bit annoying that I wasn't told that at the time, but at least I can fix it now. It should be straightforward since it relates to having a hyperlink to my other stories on smashwords at the back.
L.L. wrote: "Has anyone else seen the new flag Smashwords have added to their dashboards? It lets you know whther there is a problem with one of the sites they're distributing too... which should help to clarif..."I had the same issue with one of my Books on Apple IBooks. I have links leading back to my author website. Apple objected because there were links on that page to my paperback editions on Amazon. Apple complained about a competing website. In my view it was an odd compliant because Apple doesn’t sell paperbacks and it wasn’t a direct link to Amazon.
The odd thing was the same link is in all my Ebooks and the others were not objected to.
Apple may have just changed policies and are now more fickle than ever. I have no proof of this, just stating it as a possiblity.I'm pretty sure I saw in Smashwords's formatting style document that they recommend not using external links at all.
Each site is different. Smashwords has sent your book to them, but they haven't uploaded it to their site. *shrugs*
I'm having the same problem with Kobo and B&N. The book isn't marked adult, but they're both still taking their time in getting it listed.
M.L. wrote: "I'm having the same problem with Kobo and B&N. The book isn't marked adult, but they're both still taking their time in getting it listed."Go direct. Kobo has become faster than Amazon to make the titles live (uploaded one this morning, it's already live on Kobo and still publishing on Amazon... I'll wait until it's live on both to put it on Smashwords)! ;)
