KDP-Only Authors Can Still Get Wide Distribution

The idea of having my novel distributed widely never occurred to me. I started my publishing career with KDP and I was comfortable with its process; I had no reason to meander from it. Then one of the many writing newsletters I receive talked about bookshop.org. Bookshop.org is but one additional avenue for an author to potentially sell books, so I took a look at the site. Naturally, I began by searching its database for my novel. Nope; wasn't there. Nope, can't be manually added. So...what was up with that? 

The site's FAQ's explain that a book must be listed on Ingram in order to land on Bookshop's shelves. Ingram, or more specifically its publishing arm, IngramSpark, ensures that a book published through them will land virtually everywhere. 

With my first two novels, I don't believe IngramSpark was even on the radar yet, but I did publish through Barnes & Noble, Kobo, and Apple Books, in addition to Amazon. Doing so was a pain and never panned out. After those experiences, I stuck with KDP exclusively. 

Now, however, I wanted more options, so I looked and looked to find out how my book, too, could be one of the "fun" ones that got invited to every party. Google told me it could be done, and easily. I just had to go back into my KDP setup screens and check the box for "expanded distribution". It was so easy, I was skeptical that it would actually work, plus KDP told me not to hold my breath; that it would take about eight weeks for it to happen. (You can read about the process in more detail here.)

Well, it happened much faster than that. I made the change to expanded distribution on June 9 and I surfed over to bookshop.org yesterday to find that my book was there. So, something worked for a change! (Bear in mind that this only works for paperbacks and hardcovers; not ebooks.)

A much bigger issue, it turns out, was getting verified with bookshop. Wow, is that a clunky process! And I've encountered my share of clunkiness. Signed up, received a confirmation email, went back to set up my store; nowhere to do it. Contacted the site; it told me I needed to be verified first. Figured out where to request verification; waited. Received another confirmation email. Now I could set up my profile. I even designed a banner in Canva, since the site has a space to add one. Added all my social media links, my bio, my profile pic; clicked "save". Nope! Gotta be verified first. I was verified! Damn you, bookshop! Asked for help again. FINALLY was able to complete the process. All for one (not lousy) book. 

Then I could choose my affiliate bookstores. I don't know any independent bookstores (sorry, bookophiles), but I started searching stores in my area, specifically ones in smaller towns, because I don't think my novel and urban living necessarily go hand in hand. I'm not exactly sure what linking to affiliate bookstores does, but it must do something. This process in itself was time consuming. I didn't want to just choose blindly, so I checked out the stores' websites. Luckily. Some have a definite agenda. Apparently, an author can link to many stores, so I'll probably take a look at a few more. I also found a submission form on one of them, so what the heck, I asked them to carry my book (I am local, after all). 

Yes, I did a lot of work for likely zero reward, but you, author, may reap benefits from both wider distribution and/or getting your book listed on bookshop. Me? Well, I did get to virtually explore a bunch of out-of-the-way bookshops.