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Print On Demand Book Sizing

Amazon KDP Print offers a fixed set of trim sizes for both paperback and hardcover. Picking the right one affects not just how your book looks on a shelf, but your printing cost and royalty margin.

Selling Your Book On Lulu

Lulu is a self-publishing platform supporting both print-on-demand and ebooks. Opening an account and uploading a book is straightforward.

Selling Your Book Directly Without Using An Aggregator

Aggregators like Draft2Digital or Smashwords distribute your book to multiple retailers automatically, but they take a cut and put a layer between you and your reader. Selling directly means more control and a bigger share of each sale — at the cost of having to drive your own traffic. Here are the two main ways to do it.

Selling Your eBooks on Tradebit

Tradebit is a digital marketplace where you can sell ebooks directly, with a tiered commission structure that improves as your sales volume grows.

Platforms For Advertising Your Book

Beyond retailer ads, there are dedicated platforms built specifically to put your book in front of readers actively looking for something new. Here are established, reputable options.

Pursue Paid Book Reviews

A professional, independent review can lend real credibility to an author without an existing track record — useful for pitching libraries, seeking press coverage, or entering literary award submissions. Paid reviews aren’t the right fit for every goal, though, so it’s worth understanding what each service actually offers.

Goodreads

Goodreads is one of the largest concentrations of active readers online, and — since it’s owned by Amazon — activity there can feed directly into your book’s broader discoverability.

Selling Your eBooks On XinXii

XinXii is a Berlin-based self-publishing and distribution platform that lets independent authors sell eBooks and audiobooks directly through their own XinXii author page, with optional distribution to major retailers like Amazon, Kobo, Apple Books, and Casa del Libro.

Selling Your eBooks On Smashwords

Smashwords remains one of the largest independent ebook storefronts, but the way you get your book there has changed. As of 2026, you no longer publish directly through Smashwords — instead, you publish through Draft2Digital, which now owns and operates Smashwords, and select the Smashwords store as one of your distribution destinations.

Breakdown Of Where Aggreggators / Retailers Ship Their eBooks

Before you publish anywhere, keep this rule in mind: don’t list the same book through two different aggregators that ship to the same retailer — most retailers won’t accept the same title twice, and it creates confusion about which listing is the “real” one. Know where each distributor actually sends your book before you sign up for more than one.

What Is An ePub File?

EPUB is the standard file format for ebooks, used by nearly every major retailer and reading app — Apple Books, Kobo, Google Play Books, and (since 2025) Amazon KDP as well. The name comes from “electronic publication.”

The Future Of eBooks Versus Traditional Printing

Back in the early 2010s, a common prediction in publishing circles was that ebooks would rapidly overtake print, driven by falling reading costs, instant delivery, and the rise of self-publishing. More than a decade on, the data tells a more interesting story than a simple takeover.

Selling Your eBook On Pothi

Pothi.com is a self-publishing platform focused on the Indian market, letting authors sell ebooks and print-on-demand books with no upfront cost. Setting up an account and publishing is straightforward, but there’s one formatting requirement that trips people up.

How To Edit .MOBI Format Documents

Important update: Amazon officially stopped accepting MOBI files for new Kindle eBook uploads on March 18, 2025, completing a phase-out that began in 2021. If you’re formatting a new book for KDP, you don’t need a MOBI file at all — Amazon now requires EPUB, DOCX, or KPF, and converts it internally to their current KFX format.

What Is A Mobi File

MOBI is an ebook file format originally created by Mobipocket in the early 2000s and later adopted by Amazon as the native format for Kindle devices. For years, it was the standard format authors needed to publish on Kindle.

What Is A PDF File?

PDF (Portable Document Format) is a file format that preserves a document’s exact layout — fonts, images, spacing, page breaks — so it looks identical no matter what device, operating system, or software opens it. That’s the entire point of the format: what you see is exactly what everyone else sees.

Finding Free Fonts And Typography For Your Book Covers

The right typography can make or break a book cover — it’s often the first thing a reader registers before they even process the title. Here are trusted sources for free fonts, plus one thing worth checking before you use any of them commercially.

Smashwords Uploading Errors

One of the most common errors when uploading to Smashwords is a corrupted image — and it’s usually not actually corrupted, just mislabeled.

How Do I Quickly Resize My Book Cover

Most ebook aggregators require a book cover of at least 1600 x 2400 pixels. If your cover file is a different size, here’s how to resize it using tools you likely already have — no downloads needed.

Buying and Downloading Images From Depositphotos.com

Depositphotos is a paid stock photo library with a large catalog and clear licensing, making it a solid option when a free stock site doesn’t have what you need. Here’s how to find, buy, and download an image.

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