Unveiling the Best eBook Publishing Platforms for Digital Self-publishing

Let’s dive in and explore the top eBook publishing platforms that are capable of self-publishing for digital.

In case you are interested in self-publishing your eBook, we have compiled here a list of the best self-publishing platforms, which eBook authors choose most frequently.

eBook Publishing Platforms for Digital Self-publishing

The fundamental list of service operations involves the conversion of the manuscripts in the publishing-ready format plus the distribution of eBooks via one or more eBook retailing platforms. Subsequently, these platforms also incorporate other author-centered solutions provided by them through their professional editing and cover design services accompanied by enhanced distribution and promotional assistance.

On one side it gives a chance to play with words but at the same time, it eats into your pocket. Nevertheless, self-publishing is two in one for it cuts down the cost of projects and has an advantage of streamlining content just as the author intended.

Yet, it is not smooth sailing at all. First and mostly, you should be familiar with the properties, options, and benefits of each of the platforms considering the vast number of platforms that are available on the internet. This is how you would achieve the perfect digital publishing platform, a medium that will get the work in front of your target audience without scrimping on the quality.

Self-publishing is figuring it out through eBook publishing and by selling it online you can share your content with customers across the world which is quite easy. And customers who are switching from brick-and-mortar bookstores to online bookstores place the self-publishers and traditional publishers on the same par.

There are no words that can describe the equal excitement of writing a book online and sending it to be published. On the other hand, we all know that the road to the digital environment doesn’t just include this stage, there is much more.

Consequently, if an author has any form of knowledge he or she wants to share with a wide audience, the platforms below will help them to self-publish their eBook without any big problems.

What is “self-publishing”?

Self-publisher means a publishing form of type any material of literature, like novels, dramas, plays, comics, articles, e-books, and others including prose, poetry, collections, and stories altogether, through digital means without the help of other publishing companies or presses. Self-publish your content and you will have more creative input, then you can decide whether to release the material under DRM, as well as get more royalties and other important functions for your ownership.

Thus, print advertising has been here for years, but only not to the scale of this one, which has been developed into a multi-billion-dollar industry. 85% of global eBook sales are performed through Amazon, a major platform Amazon has become, being one of the leaders, for authors who wish to self-publish their eBooks. This method has paved the way for a revolution in the publishing process, offering a platform for authors, indie publishers, and actors & actresses to showcase their talent at an economical cost and also achieve their dream of being a published author.

What is the main distinction between traditional publishing and self-publishing?

Whether you are comparing the two concepts or not, both are bound to a set of advantages. Nevertheless, authors such as several famous writers view the technique of self-publishing as a means of creative satisfaction, freedom, and greater royalties. This higher profit margin is without a doubt one of the major positives of self-publishing an eBook or any other literature product.

Finally, a rapid publication process is the other component that cannot be neglected.

Top Recommended Best eBook Digital Self-publishing Platforms.

For indie authors, indie publishing ventures that charge no or very small fees for the publishing of content are a great alternative to going through an expensive company. However, if you are clueless like I was, unsure about what type of sites they are, or unaware about what sorts of features they include, you can keep reading below.

Our list contains different online digital resources available to any beginner writer or author for free. They can use those platforms to get help with formatting their eBooks and other documents and are ready to publish them. And hence, have the tastiest-portion royalties saved for yourself.

So, let’s dig in!

1. Amazon KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing)

It is needless to say Amazon takes the first place among the free eBook publishing portals for the majority of independent authors. Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) is the Amazon self-publishing platform that all authors can take advantage of and obtain full digital rights and the creative freedom they deserve. The platform also has a broad global coverage and is significant.

KDP is an eBook-selling arm of Amazon, and it is a retail publisher that provides eBooks for Kindle devices and for any other device that has the Kindle application installed. I believe this is the one publisher that any independent author can look up to for the needed support, with about 80% of eBook sales through Amazon alone. It is slightly above 40% of all the self-published titles.

Amazon will retain exclusive distribution rights for your eBook for the first 90 days, and you can also enroll in KDP Select, a marketing scheme used to promote via discount deals.

But in case you do not like the option of discounting as a way to lure more sales, you can always re-enroll as many times as you want in the program, and participation in KDP Select will also expose your eBook to the subscribers of the Kindle Unlimited and Owners Lending Library for Amazon Prime members.

Moreover, you will be paid for pages that are read, and the number of pages read determines your compensation. For the royalties, part of KDP gives up to 70% or 35% to authors on the book’s list price while most other publishers use .EPUB format. For example, if you have already formatted an eBook in Word, you need to use free conversion software like Calibre to convert it into .MOBI.

KDP by Amazon has the best profit share of 70% and deals with various file formats such as ePUB, DOC, DOCX, MOBI, and KPF (Kindle Package Format).

Useful Read: 10 Tips to Self-Publish a Book in the Amazon KDP Platform

2. Apple Books

Apple, the creator of the Books platform for indie publishers, started this business adventure back in 2010. Unlike some other businesses, they managed to become the second-largest e-tailer for eBooks, marketing directly to more than 1.4 billion Mac users globally. Registering your materials is a free and easy task; besides, content can be uploaded in various formats like ePUB and multi-touch eBooks designed with “Pages”, Apple’s wonderful word processor.

Apple Book, formerly iBooks, is the second largest eBook retailer after Amazon, and it accounts for roughly 10% of sales in 5 top countries, which include the United States.

It offers unique privileges to authors on more than 40 country-specific eBook stores and the pricing is based on the book’s comparison with similar books in the local currency.

Apple provides a 70 percent royalty rate for the authors, allowing them to schedule free eBook promotions and discount offers at any time of their choice, and no exclusive distribution agreement. On the other hand, if you plan to publish on Apple Books, a Mac is needed, unless you go through an aggregator.

3. Kobo Writing Life by Rakuten Kobo

In 2009, Kobo – a Canadian digital publishing company with headquarters in Toronto and a global footprint- was launched. It is a subsidiary of Rakuten Group, the leading eCommerce architecture in Japan. Kobo Writing Life is a free, open-source authoring software of Kobo that is used by individuals at no cost at all and has many benefits, one of which is opportunities to highlight authors.

The word “Kobo” is an anagram of “book” and reflects the name and pomp, claiming more than 2% of total eBook sales in the top 5 combined English-language markets worldwide.

Like Kindle from Amazon, Kobo also provides an e-reading device and mobile app the user can read on other supported devices. In Canada, it is very powerful, capturing around 25% of the eBook sales market.

The Kobo eBooks are accessible across 190 countries. The Kobo eReading program is run alongside the American Booksellers Association and other Kobo member bookstores to enable access to the 5 million-title selection.

For instance, Kobo has an alliance with e-book retailers in different areas of the world and earns 45% or 70% royalties depending on the eBook’s price and supports PDF, ePUB, ePUB3, etc.

4. Blurb

In addition to allowing favorite writers to publish their book projects, Blurb provides a wide range of functions of design and adjustment. The site has an interface that comes with software that allows a simple and quick sketching of elegant graphics and covers for online books and print books too. To respond to market needs, the list of the Blurb service provision can be diversified. Thus, one can create magazines, and photo books, and track eBook sales.

Originally, the blurb serves as a tailpiece on the back or the back cover of a novel which is written either by a bookmaker or a writer and is printed on thin paper beneath the book.

For example, it enables you to upload it from publication software such as Bookwright, or PDF from Adobe InDesign and then convert it to a fixed-layout eBook at only $9.99. Besides those, you can make an eBook from any text document by converting it into reflowable text format.

And now you can add your e-book to the most populated bookstores worldwide such as Apple Store and Amazon.

The adoption of Blur’s distribution network covers the Blurb bookstore, Apple Books, Amazon, and the like with income disbursement of your entire profit to the user. Although the sharing platform must manually upload the files in PDF, JPG, and PNG formats from the user’s content documents, this factor does not play an important role because only a short amount of time passes before the files are uploaded in the required formats.

Authors can get 70% of the royalties from their published and sold books.

5. Nook Press by Barnes & Noble Press

Nook Press, an e-book publisher by Barnes & Noble, launched a competition where publishers could submit their books for free publication on their website.

Barnes & Noble has been cataloged as an outstanding and fundamental name in the international book industry for several years. Its reach is quite large on the globe. Their top-tier eBook platform Nook Press besides being easy to use, free, and fast is also one of the best self-publishing tools for most authors. Nook Press also envisions the creation of a one-stop shop that provides services such as formatting, editorial, graphic design, promotional, and marketing for its users.

Barnes and Noble Press guarantees on-demand printing of any publisher’s content to Barnes & Noble NOOK and seventeen thousand eBooks available on BarnesAndNoble.com. The writing content authors will control the price of their books, which also affects the royalty they receive.

It is a leading digital distribution platform that devices about 3% of all eBook sales, with certainly the United States taking a larger slice of the pie.

Through the Barnes & Noble paperback store, Barnes & Noble also sells the print-on-demand publishing service while paperbacks that are also published by Barnes & Noble Press can be purchased online and physical bookstores only. It has a royalty fee covering between 40% to 65% of the book price, depending on the book price. DOC, DOCX, TXT, ePUB, and HTML are among the formats that Nook Press is capable of processing.

6. Smashwords

Smashwords is an e-book aggregator and distributor partnering with most retailers to facilitate sales of e-B00ks across Apple Stores, Kobo, and Barnes & Noble. They also have significant eBook upload rules that authors can use to produce virtually any format that their multiple retail outlets require.

Smashwords, built upon an easy-to-use and speedy digital publishing platform, is bought by Draft2digital where the two platforms attract almost similar users (about a million) and 500,000+ digital content across the continent.

This arguably is the most significant aggregator site with a massive reach, as it lets you to publicize the titles you have for sale in several independent eBook retailers, such as Baker and Taylor together with OverDrive, which deals with library networks.

Smashwords is located in Los Gatos, California, and has been dedicated to providing self-publishing eBook services since its operation began start-up in 2008. An intermediary fee in the range of 10% is charged for any books sold through its retail channel, and 15% for those other partner retailers on top of the base fee of the retailer.

7. CreateSpace

CreateSpace, which is a sub-site of On-Demand Publishing, LLC that is owned by Amazon, is a self-publishing venture owned by the company. The corporation was purchased by Amazon in 2005 and Lorem Ipsum stands for books that have content that is any genre other than just placeholders.

One such area is Amazon’s publishing platform for print books, which follows individual order production rather than stack keeping, i.e. the book is being printed not earlier than an order is placed while the top-down model features stocks not being bound to customer demand and book printing in most cases before anyone extracts them from storage and decides that he/she wants to buy one.

The self-publishing platform of Amazon, CreateSpace, releases titles that are only available on the platform, except that the authors decide to enroll in the Extended Distribution option of CreateSpace which allows authors to sell their books to other retailers such as Barnes & Noble, as well as other distributors like Baker & Taylor.

Occur X enters 20% of any sales that are made directly to consumers, and 80% of sales through the Expanded Distribution program. and the commissions are deducted from the royalty, with both application of a fixed amount charge and a per-page charge being made before the listed price is charged.

8. Draft2Digital

Draft2Digital is one of the new-age self-publishers popular choices, which is a platform or website that provides services. This platform is interactive enough and has a very user-friendly interface, good customer support structure and it is possible to publish the eBook within a 24hrs.

The creative feature of Draft2Digital is definitely that it provides UBL (Universal Book Links) and authors can use these links to put their uploaded content on the inner networks. It is then linked up to the client’s or end users’ position of choice in the e-tailer. Just like other platforms named here, Draft2Digital has access to a large distribution channel of Apple Books, OverDrive, Tolino, Playster, Amazon, Scribd, print-on-demand, etc.

Similar to Draft2Digital, this publisher also distributes your eBook to Amazon and all the major eBook retailers. The company covers anything from Kindle, Nook, and Kobo, to Apple Books and more.

One of its greatest plus points is: that they will perform the formatting of your eBook at no cost. As to manufacturers, it makes for drastic savings since it charges only 10% of the regular retail price from most retailers. They do it by listing your book on Apple Books, Kobo, and other smaller bookstores for you.

It is equally good for people who are under time constraints but want the book to be downloaded everywhere. We’re compatible with DOC, DOCX, ePUB, OTF, RTF formats, and so on, while taking only 15% of your earnings. artists can withdraw as much as 60% of the royalties.

9. Gumroad

Gumroad is a very easy platform for creators to link with buyers. Through this link, it is possible to sell eBooks on either websites or social media accounts.

One of the most popular websites that artists and coders use to sell eBooks and other digital products, and it’s especially helpful for the sale of packages that include audio, visual, or extra text documents.

The charges are either 8.5% + 0.3 USD per transaction for the free version, or $10 (USD)/per month for the premium version and the charge is 3.5% + 0.3 USD per sale.

10. BookBaby

BookBaby is different from other self-publishing platforms in that it doesn’t take a cut of your sales instead of charging for a variety of services.

It distributes to other retailers in addition to selling books in-store. They offer editing, cover design, and marketing services in addition to publishing and distribution. Additionally, you can use the platform to access a variety of well-known retailers like Amazon and Apple Books by purchasing services separately or in combination.

In addition to offering a print-on-demand service where printed books generate royalties ranging from 10% to 30%, Bookbaby’s services are all paid for. While sales through bookshops earn 85% royalties, eBooks earn 100% after the retailer’s commission is deducted.

11. Lulu Press

Similar to Kobo, Lulu Press debuted in 2009. Because it offers free self-publishing, Lulu Press has been the preferred option for many writers since its founding. Along with designing, formatting, and editing tools, the platform provides support and direction to the user during the publication process.

Supporting formats like PDF and ePUB, Lulu distributes to top retailers like Amazon, iBookstore, and others and pays authors a massive 90% royalty.

12. Google Play Books

Google Play Books is among the easiest and fastest platforms for online self-publishing of books. Every Android device has this installed app, which is free to use. With Google’s incredible reach across more than 75 countries and 2.5 billion Android users, GBP is most likely the best choice for getting your content in front of as many people as possible.

The platform only accepts ePUBs and PDFs and offers 70% royalty for the majority of eBooks.

13. IngramSpark

Although IngramSpark is primarily designed for online print book sales, it is also an excellent platform for quickly and affordably selling eBooks. Featuring a vast array of distribution channels such as Booktopia, Bookmate, Apple Books, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Zola, and more, Ingramspark is an excellent digital platform for exhibiting your work to a global audience.

The platform only accepts PDF files for document uploads and pays out royalties at a rate of 70%. It also provides users with marketing and design support.

14. Kitaboo

A fantastic online publishing platform for authors that enables the integration of multimedia to create immersive and interactive eBooks. This web-based utility works with popular operating systems such as Windows, iOS, and Android.

The fact that Kitaboo has built-in DRM protection to secure all intellectual property is yet another fantastic feature. Users can also monitor the performance analytics of their content.

File formats like PDF, ePUB, ePUB3, MOBI, DOC, and others are supported by the platform. To learn more about royalties, go to the official Kitaboo website.

Which platform is the best for authors and self-publishers?

Are you debating which of the aforementioned platforms is the best? Allow us to make the task easier for you. When all the factors are taken into account, including distribution, audience reach, royalty percentage, and user-friendliness, Amazon KDP comes out on top. Among the top ebook publishers you can trust is Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing.

One of the most reliable and legitimate online publishers, it reaches the world’s largest eBook audience. The fact that 85% of eBook sales now take place on Amazon is proof of this.

Now it’s your turn!

Here is a helpful list of 14 self-publishing websites for independent and ambitious writers. Choose your platform carefully, then begin learning how to publish on it. Choose an eReader that supports ePUB or ePUB3, as the majority of them prefer this format. Online, there are numerous options for eBook conversion software.

Should you need help formatting your manuscript or turning it into an ePUB version, get in touch with a seasoned company that provides expert eBook conversion services. Please continue visiting our blog site if you have enjoyed our blog. We will discuss the factors to take into account when choosing the best self-publishing website in our upcoming blog.