Self-publishing is certainly not a new phenomenon in the book world, but it’s definitely been gaining some traction and has been increasing in popularity more and more over the past few years. Although the traditional publishing route is still a very valid and very solid option to strive for, some authors have found tons of success self-publishing. I actually discussed the pros and cons of self-publishing in a post before, so go and give that a read if you’re curious. Still, if you want to self-publish, you’ll have to decide through which company, so that’s why I’ve compiled a list of the top ten best self-publishing companies for today’s post.
For the most part, self-publishing can seem like a daunting task because you are not only the writer, but you are also responsible for ensuring that your book is properly formatted, is free from most grammatical issues (self-published writers are typically given less flak about this point if it’s not too insanely overdone), and you have to serve as the marketer as well.
Still, self-publishing can be made simpler and it shouldn’t be impossible. So, here are the ten best companies you can pick to self-publish your books to and reach a wide, varied audience.
TYPES OF SELF-PUBLISHING COMPANIES
Yes, there are different kinds of self-publishing companies that service different needs for self-published authors. Today, I’ll mostly be focusing on two kinds: Aggregators and retailers. There are companies that provide services for authors such as marketing, but that’s not really our focus for today.
Aggregators are essentially distributors. These companies host platforms that take your book and distribute it to several online retailers. This is really great for people who are short on time and don’t really want to publish their book to each individual platform. It also helps you reach a wide, international audience faster.
Retailers are essentially companies that sell books exclusively through their own stores when you publish with them. A very popular example of this is Amazon or Barnes & Noble. When you upload your book to these companies’ platforms, your book sales are done through their respective platforms.
HOW TO KNOW IF A SELF-PUBLISHING COMPANY IS GOOD
When you start researching self-publishing companies, you oftentimes will find yourself faced with a lot of options and choices. There are plenty of self-publishing companies out there, some obviously more trustworthy and reputationally better than others.
But how exactly can you make sure that the company you’re going with isn’t just a scam?
Well, there’s a couple of things that I personally always recommend new authors look for when it comes to this:
- Reputation: One of the most important elements to picking a company to self-publish with is their reputation. Do people know about this company? Do people trust this company? Are people likely to recommend this company, or are there too many horror stories about it?
- Publishing Policies: If the self-publishing company you are going with requires you to pay money to self-publish with them, be cautious and watch out for high, unreasonable fees! Some will require you to pay, others won’t.
- Included on the Alliance of Independent Authors List: If you see a publisher on this list as recommended or excellent, chances are they’re a good publisher. If they are not recommended or excellent, you might want to steer clear of them!
THE TOP 13 BEST SELF-PUBLISHING COMPANIES FOR AUTHORS
AMAZON KINDLE DIRECT PUBLISHING (KDP)
Arguably the most widely used and popular self-publishing platform, Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing has been a massive advantage for self-published authors since Amazon first launched Createspace, which is now KDP.
Amazon KDP allows for you to publish your book as an eBook, paperback, and hardcover, and is a giant retailer in the book market. Amazon actually started out as a bookstore, so the company has a lot of tools set up for writers and authors to get their books out there and seen. Amazon doesn’t sell Kindles for nothing, you know?
I personally have used Amazon KDP in the past and found it to be a very straight-forward process. Amazon also has some neat resources like Kindle Select or Kindle Unlimited where you can get your book out there in front of tons of people. Kindle Unlimited lets readers subscribe monthly to read books for free, but as an author, you get paid per page read, which is a neat bargain. You get readers and money!
However, Kindle Unlimited and Kindle Select require exclusivity, meaning that you can only sell your book through Amazon. For some writers, this may be a dealbreaker if your primary audience doesn’t have Amazon in their country or if you don’t want to stick to Amazon only.
However, Amazon holds a massive portion of the self-publishing market, so you can’t really go wrong with them as an option.
ROYALTY RATES
- Paperback and hardcover: 60% with 40% for expanded distribution
- eBook: 35% and 70%, depends on your pricing and preference
INGRAMSPARK
Another extremely popular service is Ingramspark, which was a go-to option for most writers until Amazon really started pumping the gas on their service and offering more opportunities for writers to get out there and grow. Still, Ingramspark is a very valid option and a very valid service.
A few years ago, Ingramspark used to cost money to publish with, but they’ve since dropped their upfront costs model and have gone with free publishing, which is a win for authors! Now you can upload print and ebooks at no cost.
Ingramspark allows you to publish hardcover books and paperback books and ebooks and then sell them across many different retailers in the US, Canada, Europe, UK, Australia, and New Zealand.
They allow for you to create books with different trim sizes, paper types and more. Additionally, they have a calculator that lets you see how much you can earn with them on each book sale. I’ll show you an example from Ingramspark below:
The benefit of IngramSpark over Amazon is that it’s not locked to Amazon and also their hardcover options are much nicer, with you being able to print dust jacket cover books and more. So, there are some benefits to IngramSpark that you can enjoy as well.
Publishing with IngramSpark is free, but you’ll still need to purchase an ISBN for each format of your book in order to make your book available for global distribution. This can be a bit costly.
RAKUTEN KOBO
Another very popular self-publishing service is Rakuten Kobo. Through Kobo Writing Life, you can upload and sell ebooks to Rakuten users, allowing people to purchase books and can net you up to 70% in royalties.
Rakuten Kobo is very easy to use and super easy to upload to. You’ll just need an epub, DOC/DOCX, MOBI or ODT file, your book cover, a description, and what category your book falls under.
It’s a super easy process and you can also include your book in Kobo Plus, which is pretty similar to Amazon Kindle Unlimited, letting users read your book for free so long as they are subscribed. You’re still getting paid though, so don’t worry.
However, there is a pretty big catch with Kobo: You don’t get paid until you’ve sold $50 worth of your books. Now, for newer authors who maybe don’t prioritize Kobo for sales, that means that until you’ve hit the $50 window, you aren’t getting paid. That money just gets held up unfortunately.
It’s something to consider and may be a dealbreaker for some on whether to use Kobo or not. It was helpful for me because I’ve had readers from countries without Amazon and they found it nice to be able to read the book through Kobo instead.
APPLE BOOKS
Apple joined the self-publishing platform game back in 2010 with their own platform that lets you upload eBooks to iBooks and net a flat 70% royalty.
Apple has a pretty good system going on with their platform because they market towards Apple users exclusively, but Apple’s devices are in nearly every household to some extent. Most people I know have at least an iPhone, if not an iPad or Mac or something else on top of that. I personally own all three of the devices I just listed.
Now, to publish to Apple Books, you do this through the Apple Store but you need a Mac to do this, otherwise you’ll have to use an aggregator like Smashwords. It is free to upload and publish your book, which is great, but readers can’t read the book in the browser. They have to use the iBooks app. There is no exclusivity though, so you can upload your book anywhere else without any issue.
For formatting, if you’re an Apple user for the most part, you can format your book in Pages and then publish to Apple Books. If you want to learn a bit more about Pages, you can check out my article on the top ten best writing software for authors.
As a self-publishing company, Apple is a pretty solid one, but I do find that Amazon does outweigh it in terms of reaching the most users and readers.
LULU
Lulu publishing is one of the older names in the publishing game and has been a go-to for many people looking to self-publish their books easily. Lulu is also a very easy and straight-forward publishing service that’s quite similar to IngramSpark in what it can do.
You basically just upload your book to Lulu and then buy your own books through the platform in case you want to maybe sell them or sign them and give them away yourself. Additionally, if you get an ISBN, you can distribute your book to Barnes and Noble, Amazon, Apple and more.
Royalties for eBooks are 90% and 80% for print books. However, Lulu does have higher printing costs and they tend to pay out less for book sales than other publishing services on this list. It can sometimes be very high. A 450 page paperback book on Lulu costs significantly more than it does to print through Amazon, so be warned about this point. Your book may be at a higher quality, but it’ll force you to drive your prices up higher to make a return.
They do offer publishing for hardcover books as well and provide dust jacket options like IngramSpark does too if that’s something that you find important. They also provide bulk ordering with discounts so long as you order more than 100 books at a time.
BARNES & NOBLE PRESS
One of the largest bookstores and one of the most well-known globally, Barnes & Noble also introduced their own self-publishing service not too long ago. B&N has an eBook publishing platform and you can set up a print book with their press service as well.
Royalties range from 55% to 70%, but this depends on what price your book is at. It’s also free to upload your book, making your life much easier
However, the service is limited to users in the following countries: United States, U.K., Canada, Australia, New Zealand, France, Italy, Germany, Spain, The Netherlands, and Belgium.
Also, I just want to mention that just because you’re publishing through Barnes & Noble press doesn’t mean that you’re actually going to have your books sold in the brick and mortar stores. Getting your books on the shelves of Barnes & Noble isn’t the easiest task, but selling through their online store is not too complicated.
Barnes & Noble Press has partnered with services to get you help with your book like cover designs and marketing. They also sometimes will include select B&N press books in their newsletters that they send to customers, so there’s a chance that your book could be seen by a ton of people!
DRAFT2DIGITAL
Draft2Digital is a bit of a different company than some of the other ones on this list as it’s an aggregator. Basically, when you upload your book through D2D, you can have it sold across multiple stores without you needing to go to each one and upload it to that individual store yourself.
D2D doesn’t charge you anything to upload to their service, but they do take a 10% cut of sales, stores get a 30% cut and you get 60% of the royalties.
Formatting is handled by D2D and is completely free and it also distributes to Amazon, meaning that your eBook or paperback book will be available there too. If you don’t want to use D2D but want their formatting done, you can still upload your manuscript to D2D and then format it there, download the formatted copy and use it wherever you want.
Another nice thing about D2D is the Universal Book Links, which lets authors get access to International Book Links in case their readers are not Amazon users or have specific stores they can get their books from.
D2D has helpful tools for authors to get their books in front of people and more, so it’s a great service with a lot of support for writers and authors.
STREETLIB
StreetLib is quite different in that it is based in Italy and focuses on distribution through countries that typically aren’t covered by most major self-publishing platforms and companies. StreetLib offers distribution to African countries, Europe and more, with the ability to publish books in languages other than English like Hindi, which is definitely an interesting option since a lot of other services don’t really have that option.
StreetLib offers the ability to publish ebooks, paperbacks, and audiobooks however, if you want to distribute to a wider audience, there is a required monthly payment and I’ve included a screenshot of the two tiers and prices below and the two ways you can pay (monthly or yearly):
BLURB
Blurb is a platform that lets you create books but it also has a self-publishing platform on top of that. They distribute books to Amazon, the Blurb bookstore, and Ingram’s book distribution platform, letting you reach a very large audience of people easily.
Blurb has a lot of design services and options that you can use to create any kind of book from a paperback to a photo book, but pretty much, you have complete control over how your book will look and where it gets sold at.
As a service, Blurb is really good for people who have pictures and photographs in their books, but it also works just as well for people who have traditional novels with words only. Blurb also lets you sell your book through your own website and they take care of the printing and shipping.
However, Blurb’s printing costs can be very high, which means that you’ll need to price higher to make a decent royalty on your book.
It’s not as popular for standard novels, but it’s still a viable option anyways.
PUBLISHDRIVE
PublishDrive is a platform that helps authors distribute their eBooks, print books, and audiobooks globally to hundreds of stores and thousands of digital libraries. It also distributes to Amazon, Google Play Books and Apple Books.
PublishDrive is great in that it can get your book in markets that are usually not serviced by major companies, such as China and India. They also have promotion services for authors to get their books in front of lots of people.
PublishDrive has as an interesting approach to collecting money on sales. Instead of taking a percentage of royalties, they have a flat fee where you pay monthly so you can calculate your profits easily. This means that if you list a book for $4, then you make the $4. However, do note that the stores that you distribute to will take a cut of sales, so technically, the $4 will not stay $4.
PublishDrive has resources for publishers, so it’s not just writers that will benefit from this service. However, with a monthly fee, it can get a bit pricey if you’re not anticipating selling too many books at first.
BOOKBABY
BookBaby is another aggregator service for authors that helps out with the self-publishing process like formatting, distributing, and providing social media promotion.
BookBaby distributes eBook and print books and has partnered with Amazon, Apple Books, Google Play and more so that your book can get in front of the eyes of tons of people.
BookBaby does a lot for writers besides just print or distribute books, but they also provide marketing solutions like advertisements through Facebook and more.
BookBaby, however, does charge for some of their services. It could net you well above $1000 USD for a package to self-publish, but they do a ton of work for you, get you ISBNs, format everything, and even market your book for you. So, it is costly, but it has a lot to offer writers at the same time.
For the most part, which service you pick depends on your needs, your goals, and your budget. Amazon still remains, in my opinion, the easiest and fastest to use and the one with the lowest learning-curve. Additionally, it’s being used by self-published authors everywhere, so it really is a great service that you should take a look at.
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