I’m shifting all my books that are currently distributed via Smashwords to direct listings with retailers before I’m forcibly migrated to D2D. (Yay for consolidation and eliminating competitive alternatives.) There will be minor disruptions in availability during this process.
My entire backlist is already direct with Amazon and Google Play, so no disruption to those channels. This mainly affects Kobo, B&N, and Apple.
I have to remove old listings before I can press the button for the new listings. I’ll handle my end as efficiently as possible, but there will inevitably be some gap between disappearing and reappearing, as well as getting updated links in place.
Rather than risk a catastrophic failure by nuking my entire catalog everywhere all at once, I’m working in batches by store. I’ll update this post with availability warnings and resolutions as they roll in.
Kobo—COMPLETED
February 16: 8 a.m. Requested removal from Kobo / 12 p.m. Old listings removed; submitted new listings direct with Kobo (24-72 hours for review and approval) / February 20: 2 p.m. New listings are up; links updated on this site and Books2Read
Most of my sales at this point come from Kobo, so it’s exhilarating to have almost nothing there now! Initiating this process the Friday before a Canadian holiday was my bad. I thoroughly support companies that (at least appear to) give employees time off to live. I last had such an employer in 1994.
B&N—COMPLETED
February 18: 4 a.m. Requested removal from B&N / 6 a.m. Old listings removed; submitted new listings direct with B&N (up to 72 hours for review and approval) / 9 a.m. New listings are up; links updated on this site and Books2Read
B&N has a really nice back-end interface and category choices that seem intended to get books to people who want them. Maybe without one-size-fits-all distributor fields, sales will improve there? Also eyeballing their paper book options after this went so smoothly.
Apple—COMPLETED
February 19: 7 a.m. Requested removal from Apple / 8 a.m. Old listings removed; submitted new listings direct with Apple (in review) / 9.a.m. New listings are up; links updated on this site and Books2Read
Lol, I forgot all about “welcome back to account management, and good luck finding the completely separate site where you have to upload the books before they can be managed because it’s not linked anywhere here, that would be silly.”
These changes will not affect previously purchased books. The files in your purchase history don’t get yanked even if I completely remove a book from sale. The new listings will no longer flag “you’ve already bought this book,” though, so watch out for duplicates. And if you left a review at an affected store, it won’t transfer to the new listing. (I say this just as a heads-up if you notice an old review “disappeared.” I am absolutely not asking anyone to re-perform that labor.)
Sorry for any inconvenience. I tried to leave things alone, but I have seen the future and this action is inevitable. Better to clean house while things are relatively calm than wait until the situation becomes urgent.
In conclusion, this was no fun… and only 4 of 47 books are done! My motivation to never be in this situation again is such that future books will be direct from day one.
There are a lot of perfectly valid reasons to take a one-and-done approach, but if you are able to envision any future in which you will regret eschewing the many-baskets approach, I strongly encourage acting as though that future is inevitable and familiarizing yourself with the extra steps before you have dozens of books to migrate, days of sales interruptions, and hundreds of broken links.