Laurie Boris

There comes a time in every self-published author’s life where you’re faced with that big decision: what filter do you use on your headshot to make you look fifteen years younger, or should you just spring for the Botox already? Kidding. Mostly.

No. No Botox here. Not yet, anyway. I’m talking about the decision to keep your book exclusive to 800-lb publishing gorilla Amazon (some free goodies but limited distribution and some folks would rather try to talk the gorilla into getting Botox than hit that buy-with-one-click button) or choosing to “go wide” (readable on oodles of book-reading device or platforms but sometimes lower royalties and let’s face it, less popularity than Amazon).

I had that big conversation with myself, crunching numbers and researching hyaluronic acid treatments, and in the end, decided it’s time to share Boychik with the world. In the golden age of ebook publishing (the early 2010s), to publish a book far and wide, we’d just run it through Smashwords, using their system we lovingly called “the meatgrinder.”

Now that not-so-newcomer Draft2Digital has bought Smashwords (in what has been a very bumpy transition so far), we have another way to prepare and publish our work. D2D has a user-friendly interface, as opposed to Smashwords, who defiantly own their “1995 called and they want their portal back” vibe. You can actually preview what your book will look like, if there are errors you are alerted in plain English instead of Smashword’s cryptic rejections, and you get emails telling you which outlet your book has been uploaded to and accepted in. That last one is a small thing, granted, but that’s kind of fun. I don’t know what the heck some of those outlets are (Palace Marketplace, anyone?), but it’s still cool to see the progress. You can also gain access to the sites libraries shop in.

Also, Draft2Digital’s companion site, Books2Read, gives you one easy link that displays everywhere the book is being sold, which I think is one of their best features. Options are good. Making it easy for readers is also good.

There are drawbacks, of course. D2D doesn’t display any books I have exclusive to Amazon. Meh, I can live with that.

In other news that I probably should have started with, later this summer, Boychik will be available as an audio book. I’m thrilled with the voice of the narrator who is working with me, and I can’t wait to share it—with Brooklyn accents and everything.

Meanwhile, I’m almost done with the first draft of a sequel to Boychik, wherein boychiks become mensch-iks. But not in that Yiddish boy-band kind of way.

Have a nice day, and as always, thank you for reading.