The Digital Reader

Some time back, Dymocks, an Australian bookseller,announced that they were going to launch their own self-pub service.  That service is going to be up and running in about another 8 hours, and it’s called D Publishing Network.

And yes, it does fleece authors. In fact, it might actually be a worse deal that the Book Country service I told you about a few weeks back. That program charged both a extortionate conversion fee and a commission. I’m not sure that Dymocks charges a commission on copies sold but their conversion charges are just as ridiculous.

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Editor’s Note: This is the 3rd post in a new series called Self-Pub Spotlight. This series is intended to find the warts of the competing self-pub services so authors can make an informed decision. The first 2 posts (Liibook, BookCountry) were written before I realized that this was a series.

If you’re in digital publishing or even just follow the news, you’ve probably heard of Bookbaby. It launched back in January 2011, and it is a new service which was started by CDbaby, a respected name in the indie music scene. Bookbaby offers a number of services ranging from a basic conversion, cover design, author’s websites, and commission free distribution to major ebookstores (Kindle, Nook, iBooks).

But this post isn’t intended to pitch the service; I want to show you the warts.

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I came across another self publishing service last week, and while I don’t think it will become one of the giants in this niche it’s still worth a look.

LiiBook has been open for close to a year now. It was launched by Federico Roma, a 30-year-old native of Argentina. As you can probably guess from the founder, the site does lean heavily towards Spanish language content. But it does also have a fair amount of works in English, too.

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