Kobo will be introducing a new self-publishing platform called Writing Life in the next few weeks. The essence of this new platform is to allow indie authors to publish their ebooks on Kobo’s expansive ecosystem. You will be able to sell books in all the markets that Kobo supports and set your own prices in each country. One of the most exciting aspects of this program are the live metrics. In real time you can track your sales and where they originate from. This will give you a little more control to see if your advertising or marketing campaigns are working. Today we are proud to bring you a worldwide exclusive on Writing Life, giving you a sneak peak on how it functions. We will show you the Dashboard, Sales, Metrics, Learning Center, and all major facets of this new program.
There are three major aspects of Kobo Writing Life for authors: Dashboard, eBooks, and the Learning Center.
The main Dashboard gives you an indication on how your books are doing on a regional or global basis. It also gives you personalized purchase activity on a day by day basis. You can track your sales by individual country and how many sales originate from particular locations. Being able to track book sales country by country is currently one of the favorite options by authors participating in the beta program.
The Kobo Learning Center is your online destination to find guides, tutorials, and updates on Writing Life. The main page of the learning center gives you some videos that outline the service and provide some basic guidance on how to use Writing Life. There are some great books that discuss ALL self-pub options, including info on how to self-pub at KDP, B&N, and Smashwords. One book we recommend is written by global indie author M.A. Demers (available EVERYWHERE through every major e-retailer’s catalog) and is one of the best all inclusive self-pub help/advice/support books out there.
The eBooks section is the most important aspect of Writing Life and lets you check out books in Progress, Delisted/Inactive, and On Sale books. When you upload a new book, the submission process is very clean and elegant. You simply input all of the necessary fields such as Name, Title, Cover Art, Series Name, Imprint, Publishers Name, and others. Once you input all descriptions and cover art, you can upload your book in PDF, DOC, TXT or EPUB format. Writing Life will then convert the book for you and show you examples of how it looks. One factor that authors are loving so far is the optional ability to employ Digital Rights Management. You can either opt into protecting your book with encryption or make it DRM-FREE!
Once your book is uploaded into the system you can setup your book to be sold in different countries. Some authors only own the rights in specific countries and other indie authors can opt into worldwide distribution. Each country has the ability to set your own price, so you can charge a different amount in Canada than the USA. Customers are then charged in the their own local currency, which makes it easier for people to know how much they are paying.
Below are screenshots of the entire Writing Life backend and platform! This is a true worldwide exclusive and not documented anywhere else online. Let us know your thoughts or if you are intending on publishing with Kobo.
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Michael Kozlowski is the editor-in-chief at Good e-Reader and has written about audiobooks and e-readers for the past fifteen years. Newspapers and websites such as the CBC, CNET, Engadget, Huffington Post and the New York Times have picked up his articles. He Lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
