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I Took Back My Control By Dropping These Two Platforms
As a writer, we have more power than we think
After what happened with my favorite author’s book being taken down by Amazon for silly reasons— and then subsequently having her book placed back on Kindle Unlimited, I’ve thought about taking back control as an Independent Author by dropping two major platforms.
I’ll explain why.
Platform #1 Smashwords
I’ve been with Smashwords since roughly 2014. I published a short novella on there and even published my book of poetry on there as well because at the time it was the only platform available where I could publish with no upfront costs and get distributed into big name online e-tailers like Rakuten Kobo, Barnes and Noble, and libraries.
The two major problems I had with Smashwords, is they only offer two choices for payouts: PayPal with no minimum threshold and a check if you earn $75. That is a no go for me, especially the PayPal bit which I will explain later.
The second issue is their stinking style guide which is a book — yes, a literal book telling you how to format your manuscript by excluding spaces, properly formatting indents, not placing fancy chapter headings in your eBook, and nothing larger than 14pt point font and more…
