I was going to share with you about what prompted me to stop with the Select program and start spreading my books over the other channels so here goes…

As I mentioned in an earlier blog, 99cents is the new free. Used to be that the readers would flock to any free book and have a download frenzy. Not so much anymore. I imagine there are still those who search out these gems, but I also know that most book fanatics are willing to pay for their enjoyment. I guess they’ve figured that a dollar or two for a book is less than a cup of coffee, lasts longer and in many cases gives you a lot more bang for your buck—especially those with hot sex….haha!

– financially doing very well – okay – extremely well.

– now able to reach the lists like New York Times and the others because their books were available on the other platforms.

– satisfying many of the readers who owned e-readers other than Kindles.

– reaching a larger audience – not everyone shops at Amazon.

– Amazon absolutely – they are the biggest book seller by far and have made a lot of writers very wealthy. They’re wonderful to work with, easy to upload on to and accessible if you run into any problems.

– Apple itunes (ibooks) is the next one you want to get your work on. If you’re not a Mac owner, you’ll need to find someone else to upload for you. Two ways are open for doing that. You can hire a person like AmyAtwell who will charge you a onetime fee of $30 a book and will set it up for you (her advice about this company is invaluable) and then she’ll hand over the controls. Or, you can go through a distributor like Smashwords or D2D and they will take their 15% (or whatever they charge) on every sale from then on. Personally, I chose Amy and am very satisfied that I made the right choice for me.

– Barnes & Noblewould be next on my list. Unfortunately, being a Canadian, I had no choice but to go through a supplier like Smashwords or D2D. For the Vegas Series, I chose to use Smashwords because I wanted to put the first book Partners free. Recently, D2D has changed their policy and will do the same for you. I will probably use D2D to get access to B&N for the rest of my books because it’s so damn easy to use!! On the other hand, Smashwords has a lot of features one can’t ignore. (more about them later)

– Kobo is important for us Canadians because it’s connected to Chapters which is like our Barnes and Nobles stores. It also makes eBooks available for the Canadian library system. And… my sister and her family have their e-readers – so I promised one day to make it easy for them to be able to buy my books…hey – some things are kinda important??

– Google Playwill be making its …ahem…play for attention soon. Google is working very hard to take over some of the Facebook market and I have no doubt they’re taking steps to challenge Amazon in the book selling department also. Let’s face it, for their search engine capability alone you want to be connected with them.

– Smashwords this love/hate publisher is also one you don’t want to ignore. They have a huge number of smaller channels they are now distributing to. The latest e-mail from Mark Coker (the company’s owner) has explained the newest features they’ve added and they’re not to be ignored. I think one of their best features is Mark himself. He’s a very hard worker, innovative and incredibly smart.

So – I guess the biggest hurdle in spreading your work is getting the accounts set up on these various places. I ran into a hurdle with nearly every one and had to struggle my way through. I’ll try and remember the difficulties I ran into and do up a blog explaining how I got out of  them because I now have accounts at all of the above….finalllyyy!

What’s left is to get 24 of my books uploaded to each place and formatted in the file they request.

Don’tcha just love this business!??