- Are you thinking about self-publishing on Amazon,
or have you ever wondered what are other places
to publish a book away from Amazon?
Then you'll wanna hear more
about an aggregate publishing platform
in this video about the PublishDrive review.
Stay tuned.
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Welcome to Self-Publishing with Dale,
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Late in 2017, the indie author community was all abuzz
about an aggregate publisher
closing its doors in early 2018.
That publisher was formerly known as Pronoun Publishing.
They had many great features about them,
but one of them that I enjoyed the most
was having access to
the then-inaccessible Google Play Books.
Desperate to find other options in January of 2018,
I was searching around, and I had a couple of viewers
that recommended a new aggregate publisher
called PublishDrive.
To my surprise, they had a very simple interface
that actually got it to where I could migrate my books
from Pronoun Publishing over to Publish Drive
with the click of a button.
I was really happy, and it saved me tons of time.
But what, exactly, is PublishDrive,
and what, exactly, is an aggregate publisher?
Believe it or not, Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing
is not the only self-publishing platform in the game today.
In fact, there are many of distribution avenues out there.
If you try to publish to each and every single one of them,
you're gonna nickel and dime your time.
Enter the aggregate publisher.
Aggregate publishers really help it to where
you can feed out your publication
to numerous other platforms.
This is where PublishDrive comes into play.
Similar to the other self-publishing platforms out there,
it's free to upload and free to use.
All you need is an EPUB for your interior files
and a JPEG for your book cover.
Now, don't worry, if you get lost,
they do have a Help Desk and they're super-responsive,
I can assure you on that.
And not to worry, at an additional cost,
they actually do offer formatting and editing services,
so that way, you have your book fully polished
before it hits the marketplaces.
And boy, does PublishDrive have a ton
of different marketplaces and reach
that you can either opt into or opt out of.
And these distributors include
Amazon, Apple iBooks, Google Play, Kobo,
Barnes & Noble, Scribd, OverDrive, Dangdang,
CNPeReading in China, Playster, Odilo in Spain,
Bookmate, Gardners, Mackin, Perlego, Ciando,
24symbols, E-sentral in Southeast Asia,
Ekonyv and Multimediaplaza.com, who are both in Hungary,
BookShout, Tolino in Germany,
e-letoltes in Hungary, as well,
TookBook in the Croatian ebook market,
and Elefant.ro with limited availability
at the time of this recording.
And it should be noted that each one
of these distribution avenues
have a wide array of storefronts online today.
What exactly are the pros and cons of using PublishDrive?
Well, here we go, let's start it out with the pros.
One, easy to use Dashboard with a simple user interface.
I really enjoy their Dashboard
for its simple and easy-to-use interface.
Everything is exactly where you expect it to be,
and when in doubt, there is always the Help option
at the very top-right corner of the window.
If you're a visual person, you're gonna appreciate
the graphs and charts that cover
the platforms, regions, and categories
of your books as well as the sales.
Two, responsive support.
All right, this right here should probably
get an extra pro on it
because they are super-responsive.
And it's not just on their actual platform itself.
Going out to social media, they have an exemplary team.
In fact, Zsofia from PublishDrive
runs an excellent Facebook group,
and I highly recommend that you check it out.
Three, attention to detail for the indie author.
I haven't been with PublishDrive for too long,
but as soon as I joined their platform,
there was one thing I could sense right out of the gate,
and they're very indie author-centric.
They're constantly trying to tweak and improve their models,
and even when you have issues, concerns, or questions,
their support really bends over backwards
to make sure that you're taken care of.
This means a lot to me.
And especially when you're dealing
with aggregate publishing because you're going out
to numerous platforms,
so you need to make double sure
that all of your eggs are accounted for
and all the ducks are in a row.
But I have to tell you, it's not all sunshine and roses,
and I do have to talk about the cons
of publishing on PublishDrive.
One, native ads for ebooks.
All right, so this isn't so much
an issue with PublishDrive as it is
with aggregate publishing altogether.
I don't know of any aggregate publisher out there
that you're able to set up native ads.
For instance, if you wanna run
Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing ads,
you're gonna have to actually upload your book
to Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing
to use the Amazon advertising platform.
Same thing goes if you wanna advertise
over on Apple iBooks.
You need to natively upload it there.
This is one of the sacrifices
that you're gonna have to take
if you're gonna use aggregate publishing.
However, in PublishDrive's defense,
they actually have some great resources
on advertising and other avenues to drive traffic
to the different stores
that your book is available through.
Kudos, PublishDrive.
Two, slow delisting process.
I've delisted or unpublished some books before,
however, one thing I'd noticed is, it is really slow.
That is one of the sacrifices that you have to make
when you're publishing to numerous different platforms.
So be aware that if you utilize
their wide array of distribution avenues,
that if you go to delist or unpublish your book
to say, go exclusive to Amazon KDP,
the problem lies in having to wait
for each one of those avenues to clear up.
But the good news is, PublishDrive has your back
in that they will let you know
on a side panel of the Dashboard
when they have been delisted or unpublished
on each one of the sites.
I ran into a bit of an issue with one of my books
where I was concerned that it was not unpublished
for about a month.
Reached out to PublishDrive.
They were actually able to confirm
that it was delisted on that site,
so I was able to take this book
back to an exclusive reach
in the KDP Select Program off of PublishDrive.
Three, ebook conversion fees.
PublishDrive's really, really cool about this
in that they offer at least one conversion free of charge,
so that right there is gonna be really good
if you are a newbie self-publisher.
However, if you're not new to this game,
you need to be prepared to either pay
for their formatting services
or get your book formatted elsewhere into the EPUB format
so you're able to upload it to this platform.
Do I find this a negative?
Not necessarily.
There are so many services that are dirt cheap out there,
and if their track record's any indication
of what they're able to deliver
through their formatting services,
I have a feeling PublishDrive's formatting services
is probably just as good, if not better.
Overall, my thoughts about
the aggregate distributor PublishDrive
is that they are awesome.
I'm really looking forward to seeing
what they can bring to the indie author community
and what else they have in store for us.
(soft, smooth music) So, in the meantime,
if you wanna check out more about PublishDrive,
make sure you go through my referral link
of selfpublishingwithdale.com/publishdrive.
If you enjoyed today's video,
make sure that you share it with somebody else
who would enjoy it, too.
'Til later, it's been Self-Publishing with Dale,
and I'll see you soon.