For self publishing, there is no bigger name than Amazon. Its KDP (Kindle Desktop Publishing) platform allows authors to publish their books for free - and in paperback as well as kindle ebooks.
Amazon KDP is marvelous as far as its approach to book publishing goes. It is thoroughly professional in all that it does about a self published book. Thanks to its wide publicity, a great number of budding authors know how to publish free on Aamazon. In fact, many who do not see much luck in publishing through mainstream trade publishers dream of becoming an author through Amazon KDP.
Step by step handholding: It has a simple workflow starting with submitting the book's metadata (e.g. title, edition number, author name, description, etc) and ending with pricing and publishing the book. And then marketing it.
Making a cover for you: If you cannot make a cover file yourself, use its intuitive tool. It is not too simple but you get a hang of it by trying it a few times. There is a good guiding brochure too.
Formatting the book for you: It allows book manuscripts in a number of formats. However, if you are not comfortable with all the book-level formatting (e.g. margins, bleed, index, etc), it has a wizard for that too. [But Amazon KDP does not help with book editing or proofreading.]
Free book ISBN: Amazon assigns ISBN / ISIN numbers to the book, free of charge.
Book pricing: Amazon has a very straight-forward way of pricing the book and calculation of royalty. That includes selection of specific markets and differently pricing the book.
Book promotion: Amazon KDP has a marketing section through which you can place ads on Amazon, customize them and track their effectiveness. [Amazon does not take up books for special promotion like a marketing agency.]
KDP Select: Amazon has a special program called KDP Select. If you give exclusive rights of publication to Amazon for a period (in installments of 3 months), you can enroll your book in this program. Such books are offered to select clientele on kindle and you get paid when people read your book.
Author Central: You can open a page on a platform specially created for authors. You can also collaborate with other authors and learn from others when you are stuck or in promoting your book. You can also help others with advice.
The biggest advantage of KDP is that Amazon is huge. Its books marketplace is very big, and also among the ebook readers, kindle has a lion's share.
But there are other publishers and book distributors that claim to give similar (or better) services. However, most of them are either local or too small as compared to KDP and kindle. There are two strong competitors that indie authors can consider. Both of them have not only Amazon-like features but the have affiliates who provide services such as book editing and proofreading and book marketing.
There are many other big names in online publishing such as Lulu and IngramSpark but they are restrictive in their policies.
If you are interested in finding the good points about the three that I am discussing here, I am linking their pages where they describe why they are too good for self publishing. Here let me give you the reasons why you should be careful in choosing a self publishing service. What they claim is theoretically OK and they are not cheating you, but the fact is that nearly 99% of self published authors do not have a net earning of even a hundred dollars from their book sales through these platforms.
KDP vs Smashwords vs Draft to Digital
KDP provides you a big market, but there is huge competition. In each popular category, there are thousands of books by self published authors as well as authors who publish thrugh trade publishers. If your book belongs to a very narrow niche in which there are just a few books, there will not be any buyers there.
KDP promotion need not result in sales. There are authors who have made millions by publishing books on how to promote a book on KDP and earn money but the hard reality is that their tips and tricks do not work for most self published authors. If you already have some sales (through your popularity as an author or you managed to sell the book to acquaintances), things start working but not for new authors with no base.
KDP Select need not give any boost to your book. At the same time, your book becomes exclusively available on Amazon during the period of enrollment in Select. So, you cannot go for multiple platforms if you have enrolled your book on KDP Select.
Unless you enroll the ebook on KDP Select, you cannot run a price discount or promotion by giving away free book on KDP.
Smashwords and Draft to Digital are ebook platforms. Like KDP, they do hand-holding for creation of ebook. As of now, they do not offer paperback publishing.
On Smashwords and Draft to Digital, the calculation of royalty and some other specifics differ. Both have affiliation with a large number of book distributors such as Barnes & Noble, Kobo Books, Apple Books, Google Books, etc. When a book is sold through any of these distributors, the royalty gets reduced because Smashwords / D2D take their own commission too - which is not big but it is there.
Platforms for self published authors usually provide book creation services and some do marketing. Though just ebook publication may be free but all other services are paid services - and the fees are rather high.
What ebook platform should self published author choose?
It is Hobson's choice indeed. I have gone through thousands of blogs, forums and discussions on Goodreads, etc and have found that some people find other platforms even though there is no comparison with Amazon in terms of market. I think, while making the choice, one should consider all known factors. One should also feel free and adopt and discard a channel based on one's experience.
One word of caution. While the top ebook publishers do not indulge in unethical practices, many local platforms have emerged with the sole purpose of fleecing budding authors by enticing them with mouth-watering offers and putting demands when the author is in their claws. If you feel more confident in approaching a local ebook (and paperback) publishing platform, make serious inquiries before opting for that.
Should you opt for more than one platform? Yes, you can - and it has its advantages and disadvantages. But you should take care that their services should not overlap. For example, if you use D2D as well as Amazon KDP, do not sell the D2D book on Amazon (because D2D also sells to Amazon marketplace, which is different from KDP). Similarly, many ebook distributors accept books from D2D as well as Smashwords.
Another problem that can arise when you go for more than one ebook creation-distribution platform: pricing and discount deals. It becomes difficult to match prices on different platform at the same time, and that can confuse potential readers. Some distributors can also raise red flag if they find the same book priced lower on some other platform.
One can go for a book marketing agency too, but the choice is even more difficult there because they charge heavily. Despite their tall claims, not many of their clients make net profits worth a mention.
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