— Mark Paxson
My journey through new publishing platforms has produced a winner. To recap … I’ve used KDP (and the old CreateSpace) for everything I’ve published until now. But I wanted to give expanded distribution a try and get away from Amazon’s dominance.
Because Draft2Digital (D2D) is completely free to set up, while IngramSpark (IS) charges a fee for set up (unless they’re running a special, which they are this summer), I started with D2D. The e-book set up went remarkably easy, but it does over at KDP as well. For whatever reason, it is easy to accept a Word version of a manuscript, a PDF for the cover, and produce an e-book.
The advantage of D2D over Smashwords, is that D2D does all of the necessary formatting to be able to publish it in all of the different e-book formats. Just upload a Word document and it’s basically done. My e-book is now available on seven different e-book platforms with three more to come.
Which brings me to the paperback. Just as with KDP, it simply is not as easy to upload a manuscript and get to a suitable document for either D2D or IS.
When I went to the print book page for my book, D2D disclosed that their print book platform is in beta and that you have to send an email asking to be included. I’m not thrilled with a beta project, but sent the email anyway.
While waiting for a response, I started the paperback process over at IS. I did all the account set up stuff and arrived at a page that said my account setup was 100% complete and I could start the book process. So, I did, but it wouldn’t let me upload anything because my account set-up wasn’t complete! I tried it a couple of times without success so I sent an email to customer service. They responded and asked if I was sure the account setup page said 100% complete. I assured them it did and was told my issue required a higher level of customer support. So, I waited.
While I waited I got the email from D2D that I could do my paperback there. Ignoring my qualms about the beta aspect of it, I went over to D2D and started their process. I was able to get to the point of uploading the interior. And well…
D2D allows you to upload in several different formats. I started with Word. When I was able to review it on their digital viewer, there were a number of problems, including the page numbering was screwed up and they had monkeyed with the paging of the front matter, leaving the first page of the story on the left-hand page. There are some editing tools they have to address these kinds of problems, but none of those tools worked to change anything.
I tried uploading the PDF instead, thinking that a PDF is pretty much frozen in place, so the issues that cropped up with the Word version shouldn’t be there. Nope. Exact same issues.
So … another email to customer service with D2D.
And I waited. I sent an email to IS asking when I would hear something. I got no response for four days. Meanwhile, D2D got back to me and encouraged me to try the editing tools, which I already had tried. And while I waited, I finally heard back from IS that my account issue had been resolved.
So … with D2D blocked, I went back to IS. I uploaded the interior. I got an error message that there were embedded fonts that needed to be unembedded. I have no idea how to do that, even looking at Google. I sent it to my sister who unembedded them. I uploaded it again and got an error message that all fonts have to be embedded. Sigh. I mean, really … sighin’ sigh.
Back to D2D … I had an two day conversation with several writers on Twitter. Each of whom have used D2D and/or IS. Yesterday, I decided to strip out all of the page and section breaks from the Word document and put them back in only where they were really needed. I converted that new version to PDF and uploaded to D2D and … bingo!!! It went through. The page numbering is correct. The first page of the story is on the righthand page.
But now I needed my cover re-sized. I just got that new cover and uploaded it today. Everything was accepted and the proof copy is on its way to me.
Why does this have to be so hard? What publishing horror stories do you have? What do you do to try to avoid this pitfalls?
Oh, and one other thing. At the same price point, my royalty on the paperback from D2D is $1.00 more than from IS.
Writers Supporting Writers 
Good for you, Mark, that you struggled through all that and came out at the proof copy stage. And for documenting the process here. It sounds a lot like what I’ve gone through publishing a print book with KDP; I was hoping D2D’s beta process would be painless.
I think the print process is so hard because Word was never intended to produce printed books by converting Word docs to PDFs and then subjecting those to more processing. With the section breaks, headers, footers, page numbers, and fonts, the documents get complicated, so something is bound to be messed up.
BTW, you said your fix was to strip out the page and section breaks and replace them only where needed. How did you decide where that was? I find adding section breaks for purposes of “professionally correct” page number placement to be one of the more challenging parts of print formatting.
I think I’ll repost this in order to get more responses.
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Yes, there seem to be things that Word does to a document that makes transforming it into a printable book manuscript extremely difficult.
As for what I did … to be honest, I don’t remember exactly what I did, but it had to do with page breaks and section breaks. The biggest issue is that the only place I needed a section break was in connection with the first page of the story to reflect the need to start with the numbering for the text. (I’ve given up on having headers with my name and the book title.)
I put the section break where I thought it made the most sense to do that and … it worked. that’s the only way I can describe what I did. 😉
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A “simpler is better” approach makes sense!
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I have to say that I’ve not had many problems with paperback books with Amazon. I convert my LibreOffice office document, (produced in the correct size for the paperback) to a PDF. I do the wraparound cover in Gimp, save it as a JPEG . I then create a LibreOffice page the size I need for the cover and import the image on to it, before converting it to a PDF as well.
Wider distribution is nice, but I think that you will have to work for those sales, as bookshops are not going to stock books from unknown authors (with no returns) unless you approach them and sell your book to them. And I gather that most bookshops get their books from IngramSpark (with a return option). In any event, good luck Mark. Looking forward to finding out how the journey progresses.
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Yes … wider distribution may not mean much for me, particularly with the paperback, but at least the e-book is widely available across other e-book platforms.
Will see what local book stores say if I show up with copies to put on their shelves. 😉
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This process sounds incredibly frustrating. Thanks for sharing your experience.
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Life and publishing seem to get more and more complicated every day…
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If I ever get around to publishing another book, I’m sticking with Amazon and Smashwords (or maybe D2D after the merge is complete), because after doing 22 books, I have those two down-pat and at the age of 82, I’m not very interested in learning new technical stuff.
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Yes. One of my problems is that doing this once every year or two means I forget lessons learned.
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Thanks for sharing your experience. I think I’ll stick with Amazon for now for my paperbacks until the glitches get worked out. I haven’t tried D2D for my ebooks yet since I have no problems with my current process, but it was nice to know that it went smoothly. 🙂
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The ebook process seems easy regardless of the platform used (except for Smashwords, which makes me wonder why SW’s is so complicated). As stated, I just wanted wider distribution than KDP provides.
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On the page View Book page…
You’ll see at the bottom the Download Digital File:
There’s a dropdown where you can select various Print-on-Demand sizes.
I go for the 6×9″ paperback and then that becomes the PDF I upload to TheBookPatch.com for physical copies.
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Reading of such complications, what chance has a 90 year-old Author ?! BUT before the image of a bent, little old, arthritic? bordering on senile (not!) woman, fades, bear with me. Having worked for the editors of an established publishing house (Kaye & Ward Ltd., UK) when young, I gained an insight into a fascinating world. Having moved on and ran a small hotel with my husband, the years passed and we sold it. Then – I was commissioned to write a book about? Running a small hotel…by factual publishers Kogan Page Ltd., London. Fulfilling a desire to become a writer, magic was, surely, at play! My very modest career took off from that point. ‘KP’ were amazing to work with. All costs and aspects were covered, the book went to a second reprint, with a request for a second book, and some ‘in house’ work…Poetry, short stories and more, eclectic books, followed. I won a few, prestigious prizes, and have just finished my 10th book The Dobrowski Portrait, but finding a mainstream publisher, is proving very difficult. Trouble is, I am not in the least technically minded. I write an unpaid, weekly column for the Costa Blanca newspaper and Chair a writing group Writers’ Ink, but saved funds are fast diminishing…Please don’t tell me to take up crochet! Many thanks for any advice.
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I’d say to find a fellow writer who can help out with the tech aspects of publishing. A number of years ago, I assisted an older writer in publishing a couple of her novels. She was the leader of a writing group I was in and I was happy to help her.
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