Indie Book Collective discussion

Can anyone give me advice about Google Books? I have had three of my ebooks listed with them for a year, but it's the most confusing platform I've encountered. I just got an email from Google telling me that I needed to manually make my ebooks available for individual countries, and put in the price. I did that, and the prices showed up yesterday, but today they're gone. Also, when I search for the listing in the Google Play store my ebooks show up, but it says "Ebook not available". I have no idea what I'm doing wrong, and when I search Google for answers so far I haven't found anything. Can anyone offer some advice?

John

John,

Google Play Books was, by far, the most frustrating self-publishing platform that I encountered with my first title, Employment of the Month. I understand why, about halfway through the process, so many others had abandoned their efforts before getting their books digitally shelved with The Google.

My advice is to be tenacious and, when you complete one of their assigned tasks, to let them know in your subsequent correspondence. What I found was that I had to walk them through their own processes. For example, I was repeatedly asked for the ISBN for my physical book, but I had to explain to them (over-and-over) that Employment of the Month was a digital-only title. As a tech giant, I thought that they might be as easy to navigate as Amazon's KDP, but it was the exact opposite of my expectations.

It is, however, possible: https://play.google.com/store/books/d...

Let me know if this helps (or if I can offer additional assistance) and break a leg!

Yours in Digital Publishing,
FAXBoy
https://twitter.com/FAXED

FAXBoy:

Thank you! I am glad somebody else has had a similar experience. I thought I was doing something wrong, but now I see it's just Google. Apparently it just takes longer with them, unlike Amazon or Smashwords where you can publish in ten minutes. I finally see that my latest ebook, "Rose Of Skibbereen" is listed under my titles, but it says, "Processing". When it gets listed as Live I'm going to have to go in and change the price, because this book is a bit higher price than the others I have listed. Speaking of price, do you have any idea why they would have my books listed for less than what I specified? I just checked on Google Play and my "13 Horror Stories" is listed for $2.51 in the US, which is less than the $2.99 I have it listed for on Amazon and Smashwords. I did not put that price down when I filled out the form on Google Books.

John

FAXBoy wrote: "John,

Google Play Books was, by far, the most frustrating self-publishing platform that I encountered with my first title, Employment of the Month. I understand why, about halfway through the proc..."

John McDonnell

John,

I was really surprised by how difficult Google made the initial start-up process, but believe that once you get (them) up to speed, it's clear sailing for subsequent titles.

RE: Pricing: Google and Amazon just dropped the price of Employment of the Month from $3.99USD to $3.03USD without notice. This is also something that I'd read about and another major complaint about The Google (as I think that Amazon just followed their lead -- I could be wrong, though, so don't quote me on this). Some indie authors, I know, have opted not to distribute via Google Play Books for this very reason.

In international markets, I've noticed fluctuation in pricing with both Apple and Kobo that seem more (logically) pegged to day-to-day differences in the values of various foreign currencies. I find it all fascinating and am thrilled, regardless of the aforementioned discounting, to be earning in multiple currencies from digital sales all over the world!

Nonfictionaly Yours,
FAXBoy

FAXBoy:

If Google is going to drop my prices without notice, that would make me hesitate to list with them. I have about a dozen fiction ebooks on Amazon, but so far I've only put five of them on Google. I know that Amazon will automatically match the lowest price they find on a book, which means that if Google drops my price Amazon will also. How can Google do that without telling the author? The most frustrating thing is that I don't see any email address or forum to express my complaints to Google. I don't understand why such a leading edge tech company makes it so difficult for authors.

John

"I don't understand why such a leading edge tech company makes it so difficult for authors."

I don't know, either, except to posit that their attentions are scattered elsewhere (meaning that they do a helluva lot of other things besides providing a platform for independent authors to distribute their books via Google Play).

All of the troubleshooting that I did for my first title was handled via GMail (with a revolving cast of reps replying to my queries) and the dashboard of The Google Books Partner Program: http://www.google.com/googlebooks/par...
[But, again, I still had to walk them through the steps of many of their own processes.]