Episode Summary
We let our viewers lead the conversation, asking Jim and Mark any questions they have about Draft2Digital. Get answers to questions authors like you have for D2D!
Episode Notes
Once a month we host an “Ask Us Anything” episode. Usually these episode are tied to a specific topic, like the Smashwords to D2D merger, or D2D Print, or how to work with our promotions team. This time we’d like to keep free flowing, so if you’ve got a burning question you’re dying to asks, now’s the time!
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Transcript
Kevin Tumlinson [00:00:01]:
You just tuned into the hippest way to start and grow your indie author career. Learn the ins, the outs, and all the all arounds of self publishing with the team from D2D and their industry influencing guests. You’re listening to self publishing insiders with Draft2Digital.
Jim Azevedo [00:00:26]:
We’re live. Mark, we did it. Welcome, everybody, to Self Publishing Insiders. We got my buddy, Mark Leslie, the fave, joining us today. Hey, Hey, Mark.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre [00:00:36]:
Hey. How are you doing, Jim?
Jim Azevedo [00:00:38]:
I’m good, man. I’m good. I can’t believe we’re almost at August already. It just it blows the mind.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre [00:00:44]:
Whatever happened to the summer that we were promised? It’s slipping away from us.
Jim Azevedo [00:00:49]:
Yeah. It’s it’s coming up, like, hot and heavy over here, and I’m in the San Francisco Bay area. It’s kinda walloped us with some heat, but now it’s a little bit more manageable, a little bit a little bit more livable.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre [00:01:00]:
Yeah. I won’t complain about the heat only because of the winter we get, and and stuff. So I was like, no. I’ll take it. I’m I’m good with the heat. I just take a jacket off. I’m fine.
Jim Azevedo [00:01:11]:
You’re right? Yeah. So once again, Mark, we’re here to talk about, you know, ask us anything. We’re here for you, everybody. This is your opportunity to ask us anything. If you have any burning questions about graphic digital, about publishing in general, indie publishing in general, marketing, promotions, now is that time, and we will try to answer all of those questions to the best of our ability. I see that there are some questions kind of
Mark Leslie Lefebvre [00:01:39]:
But no algebra, please. No algebra questions. Oh, god. Okay.
Jim Azevedo [00:01:42]:
Yeah. Stay away from the numbers. Yeah. I I figured I thought, you know, maybe I would kinda seed the questions here. I I do see some questions in the comment section.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre [00:01:53]:
Seed the questions like, Mark, why are you so good looking? We got questions like that. Right?
Jim Azevedo [00:01:56]:
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That that you know, as with every week, Mark, that’s what’s blowing up the comment section.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre [00:02:03]:
Alright. I’m not so nice.
Jim Azevedo [00:02:05]:
yeah. How are you so pretty?
Mark Leslie Lefebvre [00:02:06]:
Jim, why are you so amazing?
Jim Azevedo [00:02:08]:
Yeah. Yeah. That’s not gonna happen. I’ll be like, thanks, mom. Alright. So, Mark, for those people who don’t know, like, you’ve had quite a varied career in publishing. You know, you’re obviously an indie author. You have run bookstores in the past.
Jim Azevedo [00:02:27]:
You kept kick off Kobo Writing Lab too. Correct? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Very proud of that. And and now you run business development at Draft2Digital as well. So you’ve kind of you’ve you’ve got this well, established career where you’ve kind of touched different parts of the business. So I wanted to ask you, when it comes to various stages of an author’s career Okay.
Jim Azevedo [00:02:55]:
Yeah. Based on your experience in speaking with other authors and, you know, all the conferences that you do, at various stages of an author’s career career, where do you feel that author should concentrate their efforts? So, like, where should new authors concentrate their efforts? And then when they get to, say, around, you know, year 3 to 5, how does that change? And then how does that look from year 5 and beyond?
Mark Leslie Lefebvre [00:03:19]:
Is it that that’s a tough one, Jim, because it’s different for every single author. But, patience, practice, and persistence are 3 of the p’s that I’ve long prescribed for authors, meaning, it is a long, climb. There’s a lot of work involved. Practice meaning we have to continually work at the craft. Right? Getting better at the craft and working with good editors and stuff like that. But I think practice is also understanding the industry. Think about just how much the industry changes year after year after year. Whether you’re looking at self publishing or traditional publishing, so many industries pop up.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre [00:03:54]:
Days. Yeah. So constantly learning, being open to to to learning, and and and persistence, I think, is one of the key things. The traits, over the last 30 plus years that I’ve been tracking authors and paying attention, persistence is one of the key traits that’ll help them be successful. Whether you know,
Jim Azevedo [00:04:13]:
and that just means
Mark Leslie Lefebvre [00:04:14]:
and the persistence in in the practice and and being patient, because sometimes it takes a long time to to to get sales on my platforms, for example, or maybe I mean, I was on Google Play, for example. I was on Google Play for 10 years. I think I made $10 in the 1st 10 years I was on Google Play. Now Google Play made changes, dramatic changes, starting around 2018, 2019. They started to really up their game, and then my sales on on Google Play took off. But I was in Google Play in, like, 2,007, 2008, in the early days. And it took me 10 years before I got sales. I didn’t give up on Google Play, and and I think they’ve done some amazing things to the platform.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre [00:04:51]:
So that that same thing can happen to authors, no matter where they are in their career. Right? They and they could have a breakaway success with the first book that they release. It’s very rare, but it could happen. And then the second book doesn’t sell as well, and they think they’re washed up. No. I I say to you, dear author listening, watching this, don’t give up on yourself. Don’t give up on your dream. We’ve got great tools that can leverage you in different ways for different people, and, that that would be one of the most, important things that I say to authors at any stage of their careers.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre [00:05:21]:
Please don’t give up. The world needs you in your books.
Jim Azevedo [00:05:25]:
Gosh. Yes. We do. That’s excellent advice. Thank you for that, especially the patience part, because we’ve seen that. We’ve seen the panic set in. We’ve seen authors, you know, jump ship, come back, and then have to start over from scratch in the beginning. Now kind of related to that, Mark, should authors always once authors, you know, have several books under their belt and perhaps several years under their belts too Yeah.
Jim Azevedo [00:05:50]:
Should they find a way to keep putting some attention on their midlist and backlist books, or is it always about the next best things? Like, should I should I I mean, today, it seems like everyone just kinda focuses a 100% of their energy on the next book, the next book launch.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre [00:06:07]:
Well, see, again, it’s different for different authors.
Jim Azevedo [00:06:09]:
So Absolutely.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre [00:06:10]:
If you’re writing in a series, the the first book, the funnel book is often where you’re gonna get the most bang for your buck for promotions because if you’ve set them up properly, you’re gonna funnel people through that series. Right? So discounting book 1 or making a perma free book 1 and running promotions on that and just bringing as many people. Because if you’ve done your job, you’ll you’ll bring them through the series eventually, and then you make your money back. It’s if if it’s stand alone books, and and this is true no matter how you’re publishing, the best way to sell your existing book is to release a new book because Absolutely. If the new book comes out and you you’re obviously just gonna do some promotion and marketing and and stuff around your new release. Mhmm. When people discover your new release, most people, you know, out there in the world, even if you’ve sold a 1000000 copies, that’s still such a small percentage of the overall readership in the world. There’s still most people have never heard of you, so they they they discover that new book, and then they go and pick up your back list.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre [00:07:03]:
And and I do remember this from when I was working at Kobo. Some of the stats that were shared is that, yeah, when a new release comes out, whether it’s a stand alone book from 1 author or it’s part of a series, there is a slight uptick in the backlist with a new release. So, you know, that’s where persistence pays off, he says with lots of p’s.
Jim Azevedo [00:07:27]:
I’m impressed with your p pronunciations, particularly. Let’s break up some questions.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre [00:07:33]:
Yeah. We got some great questions coming in.
Jim Azevedo [00:07:36]:
We do. Hi, Bria. Bria asked, will D2D make hardcover books in the future? Can I answer? Please.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre [00:07:45]:
Can I answer? Yes. And, Bria, please email support at draftdigital.com and tell them how much you want hardcover books. Now one of the challenges is is our our our dev teams, been maxed out working on the migration from Smash Bros into Draft2Digital, And so that slowed down some of our other production, but they’re, they’re they’re still at it. They’re working really, really hard. To do hardcovers, we can’t just release it. And and, Bria, you may be one of those authors who can do your own interiors and your own covers and everything like that. But when we release a tool that Draft2Digital, we have to make it for the person who has never done it before and doesn’t know what they’re doing. We have to build templates for them.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre [00:08:23]:
We have to build a cover template to allow people to just upload a front cover and make a beautiful template so that it’s ready for our print partner as well as a beautiful interior that’s gonna be machine ready for our partner. So that will take time. I’ll I’ll even pre answer the fact that hardcover and large print editions are on the road map for the future. What I can’t tell you is when, but I can tell you, Bria, you or anyone else who who’s interested in that, please email our support team to let them know because hearsay, Jim and I saying, you know, we were talking to some Andre, and they said that they want this. That is never as effective as the actual letters that come in from our authors because it’s trackable, And and and as priorities are being measured, what should we build next
Jim Azevedo [00:09:08]:
Yeah.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre [00:09:08]:
That will help them decide that. And and, I mean, I I send an email like that once every month to draft it from my personal author account.
Jim Azevedo [00:09:15]:
Yeah. They’re like, oh, here’s our Marca again. Yeah. But all of those all of those requests are read and and filed, and we know about them, and we keep our eye on them, and we try to bubble bubble them all up.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre [00:09:27]:
Yeah. Yeah. So please please, let it let it be known, by directly emailing our support team.
Jim Azevedo [00:09:33]:
Thanks, Priya. I’m gonna bring up another question here from Guillaume. Appreciate this question, Guillaume. It’s a good one. And thanks for thanks for listening and being here again. He asked, 2 weeks ago on a D2D call, Mark mentioned about libraries. How do I make money if my ebooks, hardbooks, printbooks are in libraries?
Mark Leslie Lefebvre [00:09:54]:
Okay. So the way you make money with, ebooks and libraries, Guilm, and good to good to see you, my friend, but, is the either one of 2 methods. You’ve got the, one copy one user method, which is a digital method. Like, if a library purchases the digital copy of your book, they can loan it to 1 patron at a time forever. Or the cost per checkout model, meaning you get 1 tenth of that value, which is just just about 47, 48 percent, of of the library price. And and every time someone checks it out, you make money. Now, Guillaume, I do I’m aware of the kind of books you write, and I suspect because there’s erotica in in many of the books you write, there are many library systems that will filter out erotica and will not allow them to get into their system. So so that may be if if you haven’t seen a lot of in libraries, it may be because some of those adult categories are are being filtered out.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre [00:10:46]:
So maybe some of your other fiction may be more available. One of the ways you can check, is going to overdrive.com and searching for your titles there. Sometimes the the books show up as available of meaning libraries who use Overdrive can purchase. You’re in Europe, so I know the UK and Ireland, for example, have access to Borrowbox, which is
Jim Azevedo [00:11:06]:
one of our other partners.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre [00:11:08]:
Overdrive is available around the world, but they are very popular in North America. And so you can check different library wholesalers. Hopefully, that helps.
Jim Azevedo [00:11:18]:
Mark, your answers are great. So whenever whenever I do one of these AUAs and a mark’s not available, I just feel the sense of panic coming up because Mark just has such a wealth of knowledge. I love it.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre [00:11:30]:
And know a little bit about everything. Little bit.
Jim Azevedo [00:11:35]:
That’s why we love you. This is a great question from author h h who asks, hello. Does D2D have any marketing opportunities with your retailers? Apple, for instance. I see StreetLib has some free opportunities with Apple for its authors. Thanks. And not only is Mark the director of business development, Mark also runs Tracker Digital’s promotions team. We have a dedicated promotions team to help all of you sell more books. So And Meaghan and that
Mark Leslie Lefebvre [00:12:06]:
and that’s what Meaghan Spann does. Actually, author h h, if you look at the the the aforementioned, July 4, 2024 video, I actually show you, a bit more about what Megan does with author promotions. And and, yeah, we we do get a lot of, requests with Apple. So, so, basically, email support at draftdigital.com and ask to be put on the promotions list so, Megan can invite you. Basically, you’ll get a form that allows you to fill out, fill a little form that says, I write these kind of books in this genre, and I use you for, you know, Apple or whatever. Thank you, Jim. Thank you for that URL. That’s the form you can fill out, and then you’ll get on the list.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre [00:12:47]:
So if there is an Apple promo and you have books published to Apple that are, you know, in the genres they’re looking for, you’ll get an invite to those promos. And they are free. We do not charge for our promos. They’re all free. Megan’s full time job is to find you guys all kinds of great promo space. Because, again, we make money when you sell books. We want you to sell more books because then then we get to stay alive.
Jim Azevedo [00:13:10]:
And one thing that blows my mind about you and Megan, Mark, is that you guys, like, the authors out there, you don’t have to wait for us to come to you to tell you about a promo a promo at Apple or Kobo or any of our library partners. If you’re doing something really cool, like, maybe if you have book 2 or later coming out in your series and your series is already performing well or if you are embarking on an anthology with some of your author friends or anything like that, let us know ahead of time because maybe there’s something that’s cooking, you know, behind the scenes that you might not know about, with some of our retail partners who want to help put a spotlight on titles like that. You know, maybe maybe Apple is doing a feature on anthologies, or they’re always doing features on highly anticipated preorders. So things like that, let us know. And the neat thing about that too is Megan always says, hey. On the side of providing us too much information. Like, we wanna know what makes this so cool. So let us know and keep it detailed.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre [00:14:10]:
Exactly. You get a BookBub feature deal coming up. Let us know about it, and you can use that form to let us know those things to make it nice and easy because Megan does go through them, and she’s always looking for ideas to suggest to our retail and library partners.
Jim Azevedo [00:14:23]:
Yeah. Megan’s on it. She is on it. I’m just kinda start cycling through the the questions here. Oh, I here’s here’s another one question I just had off the top of my head. But, Mark, we before we went live, we were kind of, you know, limiting about how it’s almost August already. At what point do you feel that our authors should start considering thinking about planning for their holiday promotions? Because that’s always a a hot selling time.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre [00:14:54]:
And I know this through the the conversations Meaghan and I have with our retail partners and and and library partners too, is they like they they like to plan out 6 to 8 to 9 weeks in event, sometimes longer. I mean, right now, for example, I’ve got a fall release in October, and I’ve had a couple weeks ago, I had a librarian say, you gotta book stuff now. You wanna do something in in October, book it now. And so the you know, I would say a minimum of, 6 weeks for planning. Now I know you can do other things, but if you want to involve the retailers and their planning and and stuff like that, you wanna be at least thinking 4 to 6 plus weeks, in advance. And and the more advanced notice you have, the better. Does I hope that answers the question.
Jim Azevedo [00:15:41]:
Perfect. Perfect. Thank you. I have
Mark Leslie Lefebvre [00:15:43]:
to pop this coming up from Megan who’s watching. She said, don’t wait for an opportunity created. Exactly.
Jim Azevedo [00:15:51]:
Nice. Absolutely. Absolutely. Okay. I’m gonna bring up a question here from Linda. Linda’s joined us before. Hi, Linda. Linda asks or says, hi.
Jim Azevedo [00:16:02]:
Will Draft2Digital consider using postal service to ship off their copies to Canada Using courier costs way more than the book, so having the option would be great.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre [00:16:13]:
Oh, me too, Linda. Me too. Just just so the the folks know, coming to Canada, I think it comes in UPS or some other, some other courier. It may translate into something else when it gets to Canada. I I can’t remember. But right now, I that’s not an option. But, again, you know, if you email that, to the support team and and request that, Linda, if other Canadians are looking for it, I do I’ve heard from Canadians who are frustrated that, we can’t deliver to a post office box because only the post office can do that and couriers can’t. And that’s and that’s a huge frustration for us Canadians here.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre [00:16:49]:
So, it there may be a different cost involved, whatever. But, again, it’s it’s one of those demands, things. If if the demand is high enough that people are looking for other alternatives, then that’s something that gets prioritized by our, you know, by by our biz dev team and our development team and publisher operations and all all the moving parts that make these things happen.
Jim Azevedo [00:17:11]:
I didn’t know that. I I always learned something when I joined one of our AUAs.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre [00:17:15]:
Well, how would you know if you ever got an author copy? It was just coming however it comes to you. Because you have Americans have choice. Right? You go, and you can see all the choices. In Canadian, it’s like, nope. It you you want it or you don’t. But, again, that’s and, also, it was listening to authors that we changed the, the the proof copy. Right? We we ship the proof copy as fast as humanly possible. We actually lost money on it because we weren’t charging you as much as we were paying.
Jim Azevedo [00:17:41]:
We’re trying
Mark Leslie Lefebvre [00:17:41]:
to get the book to you as fast as possible. The author’s like, no. I want the choice. I wanna choose how it gets here even if I have to pay more. Okay. Cool. So we listened to you, and we changed it. So we do we do actually listen to you guys all the time.
Jim Azevedo [00:17:53]:
I promise. We do. We do. We definitely do. Let’s bring up this question from the lay of the rose. Hi, Leila. Appreciate your question. Leila asks, how many books in a series or backlog do you typically want to have before before something like a prima free book 1 might be worth getting people in the door versus the lack of royalties on that one book?
Mark Leslie Lefebvre [00:18:17]:
It’s it’s a tough one. Yeah. I would I would say I I used to say at least 3 because you wanna be able to to get that revenue back from spending money on pushing book 1. But, Leila, I’ll be honest with you. I don’t always follow my own advice. I didn’t write in a series until 2020, and I after, you know, 15 years of telling authors, write in a series. It’s the best way to sell a book. So I don’t always listen to my own advice, but I I’m a 7 books into a series right now, and I have yet to make book 1 perma free.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre [00:18:46]:
I drop it to free temporarily. I drop it to 99¢ temporarily, but I bring it right back up to the regular 4.99 US. And I don’t know why I’m so scared because I’ve seen it work really, really well for authors, other authors. But, you know, I I tend not to go with perma free. I tend to go with temporary free, like, for a week or 2 weeks or whatever. 99¢ for the entire month of July, for example, because it lined up with a Kobo promo and another promo I had and a BookBub deal I had and a whole bunch of other things. I’m like, ah, what the heck? Just make it, make it 99¢ for the whole month. But, yeah, I think it’s gonna vary, and it it varies the the price of of the next books in the series.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre [00:19:28]:
Because, again, what you really wanna do, and I’m not good at math, is to figure out if I had to pay $500 for this, you know, future deal somewhere, how much do I have to sell of that 99¢ book or the free book? How many downloads do I have to get where only maybe 1.4 percent are gonna translate into sales of book 2, book 3, book 4. And how many of those other books do I have to sell to make my money back? And that calculation is gonna be different for depending on what genre you write in and the price points, I think.
Jim Azevedo [00:19:59]:
Yeah. Really good comments there, Mark. It’s really interesting how you mentioned, you know, how long you keep that free book up there. Yeah. Because I’ve heard different takes from different authors too. Yeah. I’ve heard some authors say, you know, give it at least a month because it’s gotta it’s gotta gain that visibility. It’s gotta gain that traction.
Jim Azevedo [00:20:14]:
Then make sure that you’re that you’re updating the back matter in that free book or that primary book so that your readers know about book 1 and book 2 and what’s coming up. Or if you have maybe book 3 is on preorder. It hasn’t even been released yet. All of those big things come into account.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre [00:20:30]:
See Leila’s added an update here. Leila, like myself, Perma Free feels like a big step. So you’re you’re in the same boat as me. So
Jim Azevedo [00:20:40]:
Yeah. And, oh, and with that, I would just encourage any author out there to experiment, play around, and learn learn from all of those experiences about what works for you and what doesn’t work for you. Let’s see. Sorry for the delay. I’m just going through some questions here. This is an exercise to interact with your guest, go go through questions real time. It’s fun. I’m gonna become a comedian.
Jim Azevedo [00:21:07]:
I can
Mark Leslie Lefebvre [00:21:07]:
have one eye over here. What’s
Jim Azevedo [00:21:09]:
up? I’m
Mark Leslie Lefebvre [00:21:10]:
supposed to time fill while you’re checking out the questions.
Jim Azevedo [00:21:12]:
You can can you do a little dance or something like you normally do, Mark? Yeah. Kaneshi. Hi, Kaneshi. Arkaneshi, if I’m pronouncing that correctly. Hopefully, I am. She says, oh, I actually made it. Question. What format slash font size does print calculator calculator assume we used? Because it tells me, I’m guessing a 117 wordbook is over 500 pages despite it being only 400 in a 5 by 5 by 8.5 fully formatted for print.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre [00:21:46]:
That may be that’s a great question. That may be because of the templates that we’ve built in and the spacing and etcetera, etcetera. And, again, it’s a rough estimate. If you’ve already pre formatted your book and you’ve changed the spacing between the lines and the font size, etcetera, to your specifications that you’re comfortable, that should be fine. I think what happens is we typically want to always give you an estimate. Ideally, it’s higher than what you’re gonna end up paying so that you’re prepared for the worst or or a a worst case scenario rather than say, oh, we’re gonna assume it’s 300 pages, and you pay less. Because, again, you’re paying by the page count. So I hope that answers the question.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre [00:22:27]:
I don’t actually know what format or what font size it uses. It’s probably using some generic, and I I imagine if you email our support team, they can probably provide
Jim Azevedo [00:22:36]:
you with the actual.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre [00:22:38]:
Like, we’re basing it on the average, which is this, which is based on that, and it’s it’s a tough it’s really a tough one because that does. I mean, I I did that in a book recently that I was formatting myself, and I changed it from Palatino, linotype to Times New Roman. And because the even at the same 11 point font, I I I’ve got 8 extra pages, of my book because Times was a smaller font, if that makes sense.
Jim Azevedo [00:23:06]:
Yep. It does. It does to me. Okay. I think this is a follow-up question. Okay. Okay. Hey, Mark.
Jim Azevedo [00:23:21]:
Given your experience in bookstores, yeah, I heard authors saying, you know, but I wanna have my I wanna see my book at my local bookstore, my my brick and mortar bookstore. Since you’ve been a bookseller at a physical bookstore, you know, what what advice can you give authors who wanna break into a physical bookstore? I’ve I I’m assuming it’s really impossible to get into your local book, say Barnes and Noble store. But what about a smaller I would
Mark Leslie Lefebvre [00:23:50]:
say it’s not. It’s not impossible. And especially especially with the new the new, leadership of Barnes and Noble that’s putting a lot more autonomy into the hands of the booksellers. And it wasn’t that it wasn’t that way before James Dunn took over. You never know. It’s it really depends on the bookseller. The first question the first statement, I have about this is ask not what your local bookstore can do for you. Ask what you can do for your local bookstore.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre [00:24:16]:
And it sounds like I’m being smarmy when I say that, but the reality is they have a lot of expenses, they have a lot of rent to pay, and they have customers to please, and they have a particular clientele to please. Is your book actually going to sell to their customer base? Do you know what their customer base is? Do you know it’s gonna sell? How is it gonna help them pay the rent? That that’s the question you really should be thinking about before I mean, me just walking into my local bookstore that doesn’t carry horror and saying, you should carry my horror book because I’m a local author. It’s probably not gonna sell there if if they’re mostly reading literary titles. It’s that’s potentially not not gonna do well. But maybe in in a sci fi, fantasy, horror bookshop that’s maybe a little further away, they are more likely to sell my horror collection. So I think keeping that in mind and and then keeping the second thing in mind, relationships. The entire publishing industry is built upon relationships. If you have a really good relationship with your bookseller, with a local bookseller, that’s the key for almost, everything.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre [00:25:23]:
And whether it’s coming from a traditional publisher or whether you’re, you’re you’re making the books available yourself on consignment. I have, for example, a chain here in Indigo. There’s a fantastic Indigo that has amazing employees who are really supportive of local authors at the Cambridge and, Cambridge, Ontario. And and they have a whole bunch of my self published books and books from, traditional publishing as well. They’re very supportive. Now there’s a couple other indigos in the region that aren’t as enthusiastic about carrying self published titles. So I I know my limits. I know which ones are gonna work with me and which ones aren’t gonna work with me.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre [00:25:59]:
And and so, like in any relationship, you really need to, explore and see what what is it that I can do? What is it that I can bring in, to that relationship? That’s one of the first questions, to ask because even if the book is, print on demand and nonreturnable, that’s no reason why a bookseller that really, really, truly knows that your book is gonna sell, maybe has read it and loved it. As a book seller once, I ordered I ordered a nonreturnable print on demand book in quantities of 3040. And the reason I did is because I’d read the book, and it was one of the best books I’d read that year, and I wanted to hand sell it. And I knew I was gonna sell it, and I was never gonna get sucked with the stock. Yeah. So, I mean, there are rules and and walls and borders and stuff like that, but relationships and a book that can sell really, really well is it’s not gonna stop someone, from carrying it.
Jim Azevedo [00:26:52]:
And, Mark, are these shops open to authors saying, hey. You know, I I would love to do a book signing here or a book release event here, and I promise to bring you 10, 20, 30, or more people who who are all avid readers who would love
Mark Leslie Lefebvre [00:27:06]:
to hear your thoughts. For sure. I mean, if I approach a bookstore and say, I’d love to do a book launch here. You guys do all the work and bring in people. That’s not gonna, you know, wash. But if I was like, hey. I’ve got, you know, I’ve got 500 people on my newsletter, and, and 80 of them have a postal code that’s within this region. I can probably bring some people in.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre [00:27:25]:
Here’s what I’m gonna do to incite more people to come in. I’m gonna offer some free giveaways, stuff like that. I’m gonna be on local radio, talking about my event at the bookstore, so I’m gonna I’m gonna be pushing it from my end. But then the other thing, and I’ve done this with bookstores before, is if you order in my nonreturnable stock, it is you know, they’re gonna order from Ingram, and it’s gonna be nonreturnable because that’s the way it’s set up, the print on demand. If, if you’re stuck with stock, I’ll buy the remainder of stock so you’re not stuck with it. So if you order a large quantity and, you know, again, the bookseller doesn’t wanna be stuck with that stock. What can I do to help you with that? Okay. If if we don’t sell out, the book signing, I’ll I’ll buy all the remaining copies.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre [00:28:05]:
And I’ve negotiated with my book sellers. Like, I’ll I’ll buy the remaining stock, but could you get at least give me a bit of a discount because I’m buying in bulk? I’ll be I’ll be buying 20 or 30 copies maybe. That those are some of the things I’ve done in the past that have worked.
Jim Azevedo [00:28:19]:
Great point. Yeah. And authors if you’re gonna work with a bookstore out there, do your part in the promotions. Because when you do that, when the book store see you out there pounding the pavement or online, sharing your post, sharing your marketing, sharing sharing your promotions about that particular bookstore, they’re going to be more willing to work with you in the future for your future events and your future book releases as well. Reminds me of my old rock band days, Mark, but we can talk about that in some other podcast.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre [00:28:44]:
Oh, I can’t wait to. We should take you up on that, Jim.
Jim Azevedo [00:28:47]:
Man. I
Mark Leslie Lefebvre [00:28:48]:
I wanna see Jim come on playing some instruments here.
Jim Azevedo [00:28:54]:
Another question from Bria. Another good question. Is there a way to protect our books from being pirated? This is such a common question.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre [00:29:02]:
No. Next question. No. I’m sorry. I don’t mean to be cavalier about that. Well honestly, I think one of the best ways to protect your books from being pirate is not adding DRM to your books, but, because it only penalizes, honest people. People who are going to steal are going to steal. End of story.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre [00:29:24]:
We can’t change the way they are. That’s just the way they are. However and I I believe a a few years ago, we did interview people from project, Panorama Project, library study that actually showed that pirates and libraries actually helped sell more books. Yeah. I know it sounds weird, and I’m gonna I’m gonna quote Cory Doctorow on this one as, piracy is not my biggest enemy. Obscurity is.
Jim Azevedo [00:29:47]:
Obscurity is. Yeah. Yeah. That was for you.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre [00:29:49]:
But, again, sorry to be so cavalier, Bia, but, it’s really it’s really hard because even the highest technology can get hacked by some propeller head in about 3 seconds.
Jim Azevedo [00:29:59]:
Right. And I would add, Bria, that, the only way to 100% guarantee that your book will never be pirated is to never publish it. And, obviously, that’s not an option. So a couple of the things that you can do is to ensure that your book is affordable and accessible. So if your book’s affordable, it’s more likely to be purchased. Of course, indie books are priced more affordably than their traditionally published counterparts. And if your book isn’t everywhere, then, you know, pirates are gonna look for the cheapest, easiest option to get that book. So put your books everywhere.
Jim Azevedo [00:30:39]:
Make them as accessible as you possibly can and as affordable as you possibly can, and that will help protect you from those mean, nasty pirates.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre [00:30:48]:
Although I was so excited when I found one of my books on a pirate site, because it actually meant people wanted my book so bad they were willing to steal it. And I I know it sounds weird, but I actually was a little bit thrilled. Because normally normally, the average author like me never has to worry that anyone’s gonna steal my stuff. So it was kind of a it was it was it was an honor to be pirated. No. Plagiarized different, but, pirated. Yeah. Well,
Jim Azevedo [00:31:13]:
I yeah. Well, I I I get angry when I hear about some of my author friends being plagiarized.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre [00:31:19]:
Yeah.
Jim Azevedo [00:31:21]:
Here’s a good question from Beth. Hey, Beth. Beth asks, if you write in 2 pen names, do both names appear in your also by section?
Mark Leslie Lefebvre [00:31:32]:
No. You you, only 1. You have to you pick you get to pick it. If you’re talking about the automated back matter that we have, front matter, back matter, you you I believe you can pick which of your names appears there. Because I have multiple name Mark Leslie, Mark Leslie Lefebvre, and some other stuff that I published, and I can decide which also probably gets there. So but you can only pick 1, unfortunately. Beth, if you’re interested in being able to add a second also buy, please email support at draftdigital.com, and and we that goes into our feature request. And, again, based on the request that come in from our author community, that helps us drive some of those, some of those improvements to help you guys with the cool tools that you need to to make your books better.
Jim Azevedo [00:32:16]:
Mark, on your back matter, do you list out your other pen names? I mean, not and also by section, but do you also say, you know, Mark Yeah. The rights under and
Mark Leslie Lefebvre [00:32:24]:
And here’s what I did. I I have a hack. I took a Draft2Digital, created EPUB because they’re beautiful. I exported it, and then I used Sigil. And then I’ve edited that page because I have traditionally published books and books from other publishers, both traditional and indie. And I wanted all my books there, but it only shows my drafted digital books. So I I use Draft2Digital format, and I hacked my own version. And so whenever I do a new book, I I then reimport that one page.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre [00:32:51]:
So I kinda started off with the Draft2Digital School functionality. And then because I published all over the map, I added, I’ve added, you know, my, traditionally published books, for example, like, a a list of them because they’re all in a in a very similar genre. So I hope that, I mean, I I should do a video showing people how they can hack that. You know, leverage a tool, but then take it to that next step if they want to. But, again, I don’t wanna scare people saying, oh, I have to learn HTML. You don’t really.
Jim Azevedo [00:33:21]:
Here’s another question, from Jeb Empires. This is a good question. Any advice on the strategy of publishing individual short stories on Draft2Digital before combining into an anthology book?
Mark Leslie Lefebvre [00:33:36]:
I think if you’ve never published great question. If you’ve never published before, publishing a short story is a great way to test the systems and and and experiment. And I and I do that with a lot of the authors that, I work one on one with. I say, okay. Take a short story. You know? Maybe it’s been previously published and and you’ve got the rights back. Just release it. You can you can get through, you know, self pub book covers.com.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre [00:33:57]:
You can get a cheap relatively inexpensive cover, professional looking cover for that. Get that out there so you can test it out. And, that also gives people choices. So if it’s an anthology of different authors, that’s one thing, or a collection of short stories by the same author, you know, having the story available, you know, 99¢ or free for a short story, and maybe that leads them into wanting to buy the full collection or the anthology that the story is in. There’s just, you can use that as strategies. For example, one of one of the anthologies I edited, I took one of my stories that a coauthored story that was in that, and we released the short story for free. And at the very end said, hey. If you like this, there’s, you know, 12 more stories in this 13 story horror collection.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre [00:34:40]:
There’s there’s 12 more great stories, and I did that because I was giving away my own story for free in the hopes that, you know, people would buy the anthology and read the other people’s stories. So I hope that helps.
Jim Azevedo [00:34:53]:
Yeah. This is
Mark Leslie Lefebvre [00:34:53]:
Jeb, j e b.
Jim Azevedo [00:34:57]:
Yeah. Good feedback there. Keep the questions coming, everybody. We love this. I’m learning too. Jose. Jose asked. Thanks for the question, Jose.
Jim Azevedo [00:35:10]:
Is it true that we can write in several languages and sell them on draft or digital? Sell them in draft2digital. You can upload them, and we’ll distribute it for you. But how many language we do support multiple languages. I’m not sure how many.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre [00:35:24]:
We support. We do. Yeah. I mean, if you if you, I we support a lot of language. I’m not gonna give you a number, but there’s a lot of languages we support, and you can because, again, several of our partners. Right? Salino, in Germany and, Viblio in France. Obviously, primarily, the French and German language for those partners. But, yeah, because, and then through our partnership with Kobo, we distribute, get the books into all kinds of other, languages as well.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre [00:35:50]:
Smashwords is available around the globe, as well as the Smashwords store. So, yeah, unfortunately, you can publish in all those languages, but we don’t have support. I think I saw a question earlier from, like, do you have any videos in Spanish or whatever? Because we have our videos that we do and, and how to do this and how to do that. I I’m I don’t think we’ve ever done them in any other language other than English, though, unfortunately.
Jim Azevedo [00:36:14]:
Yeah. K. Thanks thanks, Mark, and thanks for the question, Jose. Circling through some others. Keep the questions coming, everybody. Here’s another one. I I love this great name. Sloper girl shabby chick.
Jim Azevedo [00:36:32]:
Welcome. Thanks for being here. She says, this may sound, like a silly question, but regarding the paperbacks in relation to a bookstore who’s carrying your book, the ISBN supplied by Draft2Digital, can it be used internationally, or should an author buy their ISBNs?
Mark Leslie Lefebvre [00:36:50]:
So if when you use the Draft2Digital purchased ISBN, because we do purchase them from Boker, when it’s published through Draft2Digital, it is available internationally. So, yes, it is available internationally. You can’t use that ISBN outside of that. You can’t take that and go publish that book anywhere else, unfortunately. It is it is we do pay for that up front, for the privilege of of publishing your book, so it’s kind of like a respect thing. Hey. It’s like it’s like I’m gonna buy you a meal, but you’re gonna eat it with someone else. That that kind of thing.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre [00:37:23]:
It’s just just it’s it’s polite. It’s the polite thing to do. But so, no, I don’t think an author has to buy ISBNs. Now when you purchase the ISBN, if you’re in a country that sells them or if you’re lucky like me in Canada where we have the right to bear ISBNs, I can get access to them thanks to the Canadian government that purchased them for from Bowker for for Canadian authors. But, you know, it’s up to you. But if I have my own ISBN, I can do whatever I want with it at any point, and I don’t have to change ISBNs or or figure out ways to leverage the free ones. I hope that helped. It’s not it wasn’t a silly question.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre [00:37:56]:
It was a great question.
Jim Azevedo [00:37:57]:
Nice question at all. And we’ll also we’ll supply the the ISBN for the ebook and the separate for the print book. Right?
Mark Leslie Lefebvre [00:38:04]:
Yeah. Okay. And the ebook and the yeah. Yeah.
Jim Azevedo [00:38:09]:
Okay. Thank you, Mark.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre [00:38:13]:
Did he
Jim Azevedo [00:38:14]:
Love all these questions.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre [00:38:16]:
I think Kanashi’s question is a good one there too because
Jim Azevedo [00:38:19]:
About the art?
Mark Leslie Lefebvre [00:38:20]:
Yeah. So yeah. Go ahead, Jim.
Jim Azevedo [00:38:23]:
Oh, okay. Kanashi asks, is the print system set up to let you have inside art so long as that’s black and white, like a full 2 page, printed piece you might see in, say, the Hunger Games?
Mark Leslie Lefebvre [00:38:38]:
Yes. Black and white interior only right now. That’s the only print option, that we offer for trade paperbacks, but, it it would it has to be inside the book. It can’t be between the cover and, like, that very, very first page that you open of the cover. That is not part of, that artwork. That is not available through Draft2Digital print, at least at this point. That could be a technology that comes in the future. But inside, and I am and I am doing this with a with a book that’s coming out in October, is I do have the full bleed, interior pages for each section of the book that’s gonna have custom art that’s in it.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre [00:39:12]:
So, yeah, that is doable. But, again, like you said, it has to be grayscale or or black and white. If it isn’t, the good news is the good thing is is if you load that as a full color image, for example, into Draft2Digital print, even if you load the PDF, we will automatically clean it to grayscale for you so that it it doesn’t get rejected by our printer.
Jim Azevedo [00:39:33]:
Thanks, Mark. I love all these questions coming in. I’m gonna try I’m trying my hardest. There’s a
Mark Leslie Lefebvre [00:39:42]:
lot of great questions coming in. Hard to keep Yeah.
Jim Azevedo [00:39:47]:
Handsome Smitty. Hi, Handsome Smitty.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre [00:39:50]:
Oh, you’re so handsome Smitty.
Jim Azevedo [00:39:53]:
What’s the publisher shown on the ISBN that you provide?
Mark Leslie Lefebvre [00:39:57]:
Okay. So, technically, the the publisher that’s registered with Boca is Draft2Digital because that’s what we had to put in there because we don’t know who that is. However, it’s whatever you put in the metadata that gets sent to the various retailers. So if you put handsome Smitty Press or whatever it is as the publisher, that’s the publisher that’s gonna show on the retailers. So so, again, the publisher shown depends on the metadata that you enter, and you’ve got the publisher and the imprint and all all that stuff, and, that’s kind of up to you.
Jim Azevedo [00:40:28]:
But sometimes Draft2Digital will show up, Mark, at the Retailer’s stores?
Mark Leslie Lefebvre [00:40:32]:
I it may be a default if you don’t enter a publisher name. I’m not sure. I’ve never done that. So
Jim Azevedo [00:40:39]:
Yeah. Yeah. It’s it’s it’s my understanding that that whole thing is sort of like a relic of the Bakker system where the publisher would show up in their in their catalog even though
Mark Leslie Lefebvre [00:40:49]:
Yeah. Yeah.
Jim Azevedo [00:40:50]:
We’re technically not your publisher. You are the publisher as a self published author. You are your pub the publisher.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre [00:40:55]:
But it is a limitation. So in the Bowker official books and print listing, Draft2Digital is listed as the publisher. We’re not trying to take that away from you. It’s just the way it’s just the way it works. We buy lots of them for you to use for free, and that’s one of the side effects. But in the metadata that we submit to our retail and library partners, the publisher name is whatever you you enter into that field.
Jim Azevedo [00:41:18]:
Okay. Excellent. Thank you. Gonna bring up this question from Diana. Thanks for the question, Diana. I’m always a bit confused as to, if I need to change the price in other countries when running a promo. For example, if the promo is for the US and Canada, do I need to manually change, the price in Canada?
Mark Leslie Lefebvre [00:41:41]:
Diana, that’s a great question. Now we have automated tools, and as as people probably know, you put in the US price, and we’ll automatically clean the prices in all the other territories for you around them. So, you know, 499 US is not 672 Canadian. It comes to 699. However, we have the system override. If you go down to 99¢, we make the assumption that you want it to be 99¢ in Canada and Australia, New Zealand, etcetera. You can always override that and change it. But if you ever are curious about what happens when you when you put in your price promo, just click on manage territorial prices, and you’ll see what we’ve set.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre [00:42:16]:
And if you want to change it, go ahead and change it. So, for example, I was in a US and Canada promo recently because of Kobo, where it was 99¢. They only required I was 99¢ in US and Canada, but I’m a global kind of thinking guy. And I was like, well, what about what about authors in Europe and the UK and Australia and New Zealand? So I I ended up going with dot 99 everywhere. But but, again, Diana, you’re in control of that. I I hope that helps. But if you’re ever confused, just click on manage territorial prices. Whatever pops up is what the system has automatically done for you to try and help you and save you time, but you can always click a little checkbox and override that.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre [00:42:54]:
So you’re always in full control.
Jim Azevedo [00:42:56]:
Excellent answer and excellent question, Diana. Thank you. Gonna circle back up here, and, Kanashi has another question, and it’s a good one. He asked, can we have our own ISBN and barcode on our cover art? Print cover art. The cover art. So it can be placed wherever we want, or we did or do we need to go with D2D’s auto applied one?
Mark Leslie Lefebvre [00:43:19]:
And this is one I’ve struggled with myself. We tried, we tried to make exceptions to that rule. Unfortunately, we need to have a machine perfect ready to go file before we send it to our print partner. When we have tried to make exceptions, in the past, the quality of the ISBN, barcode that got put on the cover is not reliable, and they’ve gotten rejected, which has caused all kinds of issues. So currently, at this time, we can’t, do that. It’s not an option even even you know, as somebody who works for the company like myself, earlier today, I was loading a file. I had to go back to my cover designer and say, could you move the text a little bit? Because the automated D2D barcode’s overlapping some words in the bottom, and and my designer had to update the cover. So, what I will suggest is I’ve suggested to other authors, can actually is please email support at drivedigital.ca, and give them reasons why you’re gonna be able to send a perfect machine ready, perfect thingy that will not get rejected by our printers, because, again, we we wanna make the tools that are useful for you.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre [00:44:27]:
And if that’s something that could be, that could be applied, we need to come up with a solution that allows people who are actually able to do it properly, do it properly, and then allow other people who who never don’t even know what an ISBN is, for example, let me take care of it for them. That’s the challenge. Right? We have to try and please all the audiences, and and that is that’s a challenge. And our dev team does an amazing job, but, again, it’s it’s a difficult one. So please email your request in, and that’ll help us with prioritizing new builds and ads and asks.
Jim Azevedo [00:44:59]:
Love it. Love it. And, gosh, we’re already at the end of time mark, and I’m, like, flowing through all the comments and questions here. And I think we’ve gotten pretty much all of them. Oh, looks like all of them. So yay us and yay everybody else for joining us here today. We sure appreciate your time. We’ve got we’ve got the end of July and all the way up through September on our SPIs on Self Publishing Insiders booked out.
Jim Azevedo [00:45:26]:
So I’m excited about a lot of our guests. It’s gonna be it’s gonna be a lot of fun in the next month and a half here. So, Mark, thanks for your time today. I know you got a lot on your plate. Yes.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre [00:45:42]:
Lots going on. Lots going on, but it is always an honor to be here. Such great questions too, and always great to hang out with you, Jim.
Jim Azevedo [00:45:48]:
Oh, so fun to hang out with you too. I appreciate it. For our viewers out there, thank you so much for joining us once again this week. If you could do us a favor and please like these episodes and share them because when you do that, it helps create more visibility so we could attract even more viewers and experts from the self publishing community out there. Also, go to book go to D2D Live and bookmark that page because if you do that, then you can see what the next episodes, what the next topics, and who the next guests are going to be for each subsequent week. And finally, if you’re just kinda new out there in the indie publishing community, welcome. And if you haven’t, why not go to Draft2Digital right now and sign up for your free account at draft2digital.com? Mark, I’m going to invite you to go backstage and hang out for the in the green room, you know, grab some some green M and M’s. Oh, I
Mark Leslie Lefebvre [00:46:43]:
I already ate all the red ones.
Jim Azevedo [00:46:45]:
Oh, good. Because I don’t I don’t like the red ones. They’re too they’re too hot and spicy for me. I like the green ones. But, hang out there for a minute. In the meantime, everybody else, thanks so much for joining us once again. We’ll see you next week, and we’re going to leave you with this 30 seconds commercial spot for Draft2Digital print. Thanks, everybody.
Kevin Tumlinson [00:47:03]:
Ebooks are great, but there’s just something about having your words in print, something you can hold in your hands, put on a shelf, sign for a reader. That’s why we created D2D print, a print on demand service that was built for you. We have free beautiful templates to give your book a pro look, and and we can even convert your ebook cover into a full wraparound cover for print. So many options for you and your books. And you can get started right now at draft2digital.com. That’s it for this week’s self publishing insiders with Draft2Digital. Be sure to subscribe to us wherever you listen to podcasts and share the show with your will be author friends, and start, build, and grow your own self publishing career right now at draft2digital.com.