Universal book links and ISBNs

I have discovered a new tool. Well, new to me. And also I have discovered a limitation to the tool. A site called Books2Read offers a way to create a "universal book link" for ebooks. That is, the site  will generate a link and when it is clicked, the link page looks like this:

Next to the Drifters cover image are icons with links to every site where the ebook is available,  In this instance, the link was generated for my newest book, Drifters, which is available at Amazon's Kindle store, and at Apple Books, B&N Nook, Kobo, Google Play, Indigo, and at Angus & Robertson, an Australian ebookstore.

I was excited to think I could slim down my website by using this tool, as it allows me to make the book title itself into a single link without my having to create a series of links for each vendor. Now, the interesting thing is, the tool works by the user giving it a link to a vendor site that sells the ebook. The tool then generates a list of the other vendors of the ebook. When I put in the Amazon Kindle link for Drifters, published this year, it generated a  link that displayed the page shown above. When I put in the Amazon Kindle link for Turnabout, which I published in 2017 under my own imprint, Cracked Mirror Press, I got this error message:

However, if I put in the Barnes & Nobles link for the same book, it worked fine and generated a link to this page, which you will notice does NOT list Amazon's Kindle store:

The same "Not an ebook" error message is generated for every other book I have published except for Drifters IF I use the Amazon Kindle link. So, what's the deal? The answer is ISBNs.

In the US, R. R. Bowker is the company that is authorized to sell (and thus to issue) ISBNs to publishers (including self-publishers).  ISBN stands for International Standard Book Number. In a way, an ISBN is like a social security number for a book. Remember that titles cannot be copyrighted. If you want to write a nonfiction book about the dust bowl in Oklahoma and call it Gone with the Wind, you go right ahead. An ISBN provides a way to track a specific book without recourse to specifying things like titles and authors that could easily be duplicated. A single book can have multiple ISBNs however, because the rules have always specified you needed one for each format. When a book came out in hardback, it had a unique ISBN (previously 10 digits but now 13). When the same book came out in trade paperback, it got another unique ISBN. Ditto for the mass market paperback. And, ISBNs are always linked to publishers. I created my own imprint, called Cracked Mirror Press, and all my books except Drifters have been published with ISBNs bought from Bowker that identiufy Cracked Mirror Press as the publisher. If you self-publish and let the platform you are using (Kindle store, Apple Books, etc) provide an ISBN, then that ISBN will identify that platform as the publisher.

When Bowker started issuing ISBNs for ebooks, the pick list for book format included the option "Electronic Book Text." There is a secondary list that allows you to specify epub or mobipocket (on which the Kindle format is based) as well a PDF and a few others. Both mobi and epub formats are created using HTML, but they have slightly different coding rules. Almost every vendor out there uses epub rules for formatting ebooks, but Amazon wanted to control the format of Kindle books, so they started with mobi and then morphed it into azw. I had always assumed that picking from the secondary menu was required; if it was in the past, it is not now. You can simply specify Electronic Book Text and let it go at that, and then apply that ISBN to all ebook versions of that book. Because Snowy Wings Publishing doesn't use the secondary list, all the ebook versions of their books can use the same ISBN, and thus the link took works for all the vendor sites.

Of course, the one thing that the universal link relies on is Books2Read always being in existence. If that site goes down, the universal link will be toast.

Amazon Exclusivity: What does it buy you?

The answer is, it depends. Mostly, in my experience it depends on your book. If you're self-publishing in the US, your biggest single market will almost certainly be the Kindle store. This is not to say that other markets should be ignored. Barnes & Noble (Nook), Apple  iBooks, Kobo, Google Play, and Smashwords sell plenty of ebooks.

Pricing and Countdown Deals

However, selling a book is not always as simple as slapping a price on it and saying "For Sale." Amazon limits the minimum price for a Kindle book sold via KDP to 99¢. It encourages you to price the book between $2.99 and $9.99 by offering the maximum royalty percentage for books in that range. If you enroll your book in the KDP Select program, it means you cannot sell it in ebook form anywhere except the Kindle store (This doesn't apply to print sales). It also means Amazon offers incentives not otherwise available.  Specifically, you can run Kindle Countdown Deals where for the limited number of days specified, the book is available at a sale price (US or UK only). As opposed to you simply lowering the price yourself (which you could do at any time) the regular price still shows up, but it will be crossed out to show the book is on a limited time sale.

Kindle Unlimited (KU)*

The other big benefit is that your book is available in the Kindle Unlimited subscription program. KU subscribers are Amazon customers who pay a monthly flat fee. This allows them to read any book they want in the KU program. There's a limit to how many they can have at once, but not how many they can read. Amazon pays the author not a flat royalty per book, but a per-page-read fee. The amount is not guaranteed, but lately for the US KU market it has been running about 0.0048¢ per "Kindle edition normalized page"**. It is usually less in the foreign KU markets, but the US is usually the biggest one anyway. 

Genre, length, and readability will affect how much money your book can make in the KU program. My experience is limited since I have had only three books in this program. The enrollment is not a marriage; you don't have to keep the book exclusive forever. When you sign up, it's for a 3-month period and then you can renew again every 3 months, if you wish. If you don't renew, your book is no longer in KU and you can't run price promotions. With Saronna's Gift, which is a science fiction romance, I made enough with KU borrows to make it worthwhile to say in for two full periods, that is, 6 months. With Turnabout, a YA science fiction novel that is in no way a romance, I never made much in the KU program so I let it expire after the first 3-month period. Note that Turnabout is also considerably shorter-- only about 80,000 words, which meant less money per KU reader.

To sum up, I would expect a book that was a page turner, a romance, and fairly long would do very well in KU. And, for what it's worth, here's my advice:

• Always start in KDP Select to see how the book does
• Set a goal for KU borrows (say a third or maybe half of what the royalties are) and drop out when you go below your goal.
• Once you're out of KDP Select, go for every market you can! 

Footnotes:

* I am aware that KDP Select also gets your book into the Kindle Owners Lending Library, but frankly, I don't think this is nearly as big a deal as KU so I didn't spend any time talking about it.

** Amazon calculates pages in its own way, but Alien Bonds was 128,000 words and Amazon said it had 658 KENP pages. That's approximately 195 words per KENP page.

Turnabout is now in other ebook stores!

I always launch new ebooks in KDP Select, which means they're only available on Amazon, but eventually, I let that enrollment expire and launch in other stores.  That has happened with my newest novel Turnabout, now available as follows:

Buy links

US Kindle store (also available in every other Kindle store)
iBooks

B&N Nook, 

Kobo

Smashwords

Google Books  

And as a paperback: Amazon, Barnes & Noble

Updated: Finally got Google Books to accept my file; or rather, their tech staff did. I have to say both B&N and Google Books could make their interface easier to use.

From the first Amazon review:

"This is a fascinating story, looking at a lot of society’s issues from a different view point, but still exploring them in a very interesting way. Buxton creates some wonderful characters to tell this story. Marjani and Esi are two that stand out amongst a cast of exceptionally well written characters that don’t just tell this story, but through their portrayals give us a true understanding of what it is like to live in this alternate universe.
Buxton has also done an interesting job of creating Makoro, building this alternate universe and timeline, and how it has evolved under such different circumstances."

And, as a bonus, I dropped the ebook price to $2.99, at least for now.

Win a Kindle copy of TURNABOUT!

I'm running another giveaway of Turnabout, but for a Kindle copy this time. There are still two copies left to win!

The giveaway runs until June 29 or until all copies are claimed.

TURNABOUT has launched!

So, Turnabout  is now available in paperback and on Kindle! I always launch first on Kindle only,as far as ebooks, because that way the book can participate in KDP Select, which allows Amazon subscribers to borrow the book. They pay a flat fee, and the author is paid based on the number of pages they read. The agreement lasts 90 days, at at the end of that time, I will decide whether to renew Kindle Select or launch on additional platforms.

Meanwhile, here's the blurb!

• Jason Miller's biggest worries were keeping up with his homework, paying for his classic jazz habit,and hiding the fact that he carried a flip phone. But then one day he finds himself teleporting from place to place, a talent he can't control. It gets worse when he lands in an alternate world, one that has many, many more women than men. It sounds great until Jason learns the downside to being a precious commodity: Having a harem is no fun when you're the one who's locked up.

Cover by Alexander Von Ness