How to Upload Your Book to DRAFT2DIGITAL | Self Publishing Tutorial

super excited to talk about draft to digital today because this is one of the places where i upload my book to sell ebook copies online and this is used to go wide it just basically means you're publishing your book outside of amazon and that includes vendors like apple and nook and kobo and libraries and you name it so we're finally going to dig into how to upload your book to draft to digital as well as point out two amazing bonus features on draft2digital which is their formatting options and their universal book link we're gonna dig into all of that and it's about time because if you saw my video recently about where i publish online why i publish to these places online then you know i talk about kdp draft2digital and ingramspark and i have a video on how to upload to kdp and all of that goodness i have a video on how to upload to ingramspark and how to figure that out but i have never done a video on how to upload to draft to digital now really quick i have done a video on how to make arcs of your book advanced reader copies and how to send them and big part of that is using draft to digital so if you have missed that i'm going to link it below that you can go watch it after this but for right now i'm going to pull up my computer screen and we're going to dig into how to actually upload your book to draft to digital spoiler it's super easy to upload a book you go to the my books page and you just simply click add new book now you might have noticed on that screen that the enchanted crown is already uploaded and it's available for pre-order in case you're curious all the links are below but we're gonna pretend that it's not and so what i'm going to do is use my uploading doc right here where i have gathered all of the information that belongs to this specific book and put it into this google doc and i did talk about that in the video on where i publish my books why and how i juggle them so go watch that video i will link it below if you want to know more but what i'm going to do is simply copy paste and this is the amazing thing about having an uploading doc is you just literally go back and forth fill in the publisher which is yourself and fill in the series name if you have one fill in the author name obviously the enchanted crown is the fourth book in the series and the last book and search terms is actually keywords so for keywords let's go over to our keywords right here for example sleeping beauty i'm just clicking command control there you go click enter and put in a keyword now be careful not to put them all in as one big keyword you're going to want to enter them one at a time like this some of these keywords are just off the top of my head i'm not sure if they're that great so i need to go in and do some keyword research but for right now i'm going to keep it pretty basic but for example this is a category so i could also make it a keyword the nice thing about keywords is on here you can grab them and move them around and you can also delete them if you need to and you can add more whenever you need to where it says bisac or however you want to pronounce that think of this as your online bookshelf so these categories need to describe your book as best as possible because this is going to tell draft to digital and then essentially tell all the other vendors where to put your book on the online shelf so if for example you write a fantasy but you put your book in dystopian it's on the wrong shelf and the readers who are going to browse that shelf are going to browse right past it because it's not the genre that they read that's not why they came here so it's very important that you get your categories right the nice thing is that if you don't know what to write in this box and most people don't you can go ahead and browse down here so for example let's go ahead and find young adult fiction and then you're going to see tons more categories so what you're going to want to do is you have big umbrella categories but you're going to want to narrow it down to what you call sub categories or sub genres as much as possible the more specific you can get the better for example i see fairy tales and folklore adaptations that's for sure going to be the enchanted crown if you click one and you're like no that's not really it you can just delete it like that if this was the jenny key this would be the perfect category i think there's also a dragon category so there's also royalty which is so cool technically yes so i might try out this category and then go browse it later so keep in mind that these are not set in stone even if your book is already published you can go back in and change this you can essentially move it to a different shelf uh but for right now i'm just going to go ahead and pick a few of them and then my goal as i do this if i was actually publishing this book right now would be to write down these categories that i'm picking and go ahead and browse them on the amazon store and see if my book actually fits into those categories or on other stores and take a look at the books around them maybe get ideas for other categories that i didn't think of to try and put my book in those so just keep in mind that a lot of this is research but you can initially put some things in just as placeholders so that's what we're gonna do since i can't remember what i actually picked it lets you pick up to five on draft to digital and then it stops you so if i was to say okay royalty actually that's very accurate for this book but legends and myths maybe not so much i'm going to delete that and i'm going to put in anthologies but i don't really know i'm just making stuff up right now not all of these are perfect for the sewing kingdom the first two definitely are and just keep in mind for draft to digital i think it's apple books only goes by the very first one so for example if i thought royalty was the best one i would want to drag that into the first place spot so that it goes into the correct category i think it's apple but for me fairy tales and folklore is for sure the number one category that i put this whole series into so i make sure that that's the top number one spot if you didn't have cover art yet and you still wanted to go through this process and start setting up your book you could since i do have a temporary cover that i made it's not the actual coverage just a temporary cover um that i made to make it so i could do pre-orders i'm going to click that and then it's going to ask me to upload it you'll notice that it says don't upload a full like a wraparound cover they only want the front cover which i'm pretty sure most of you already figured that out there's my temporary cover and if you guys have been watching some of my videos you know that i have talked about how i could do a video on how i make temporary covers this one's super basic it's not even artwork it's just something as a placeholder so i can put up pre-orders but if you want that video comment below if i get enough votes i'll push it up the list but for right now we've got our cover set up and if you didn't you could click the option that you're not ready and you just don't have a cover yet we've got our title series publisher author categories and keywords so we're going to click start ebook the next step is to put the file online this is only the fourth draft which means it's still absolutely terrible and not something i'm ever going to show you guys and you're going to want to click the release date that you know for sure you can make so don't put it on tomorrow and then be like oh shoot i don't think i can make it um they most of these companies from what i understand will be okay with you changing your date but your readers will be frustrated and it's not a reputation you want to have so it's better to set a date that's further out than you think you can do than a date that's closer than you think you can do let me rephrase that that came out kind of weird it's better to give yourself extra time than not enough time that's what i'm trying to say this says right now the book will go live in 21 hours it's letting me know at the top there so i'm going to say heck no let's go ahead and put my actual release date which is march 23rd 2021. now we're going to go back to that uploading dock and i'm going to scroll down to the blurb section i had fun including a bunch of praise for book one that i had some author friends do and i also included what you'll see here at the bottom which is the stolen kingdom reading order for the series you don't have to do these things but i find that it's helpful and i've seen other author pages have that and then this is kind of fun you can format it so say i want this first line to be big and bold i didn't mean to italicize it but it looks kind of cool so why not let's say that i also want to make it clear that there are two other main characters so there's rina and then there's nezren and i want to make it clear that this book brings all three of my main characters together in book four so kind of a fun little surprise that's what's going to happen if you didn't know um this little tagline thingy is um always bold so i'm going to make that bold i'm also going to fold all the headers so that one and then right here the stolen kingdom reading order and then if you wanted to do other fancy stuff you could i like to keep it pretty simple but you can play around with this because i love that you can format it to whatever you need it to be down at the bottom you'll see it says two options for the isbn now if you missed the last video where i talked about isbns it stands for international standard book number so it's your book's identifying number it is sort of like your book's fingerprint or dna it is specific to your book but the nice thing about draft to digital is that you do not have to pay for an isbn i think i said this slightly different in my last video where i said you don't even need an isbn but in this case it looks like they do want you to pick you'll notice that ebook and print isbns must not match because every version of the book is its own version and gets its own identifying number so we're going to go ahead and get the free draft to digital isbn if you want to know more i will link the video i did recently on where i publish and why and how like where i go into isbns a little bit and i'll also link below my video where i go more in depth on isbns and publishing companies so that was the details page now we're on the layout and this is where i really love this this is where we get into formatting if you didn't have a title page copyright page a dedication also by teasers email signups about the author about the publisher if you didn't have some of these pages draft digital helps you put them in after the fact so oh my gosh they're amazing i love this company but as you can see it will actually lay out the pages that i currently have so right now i have 39 chapters and i have a title page and a copyright page i could add in a teaser about another book like for example normally you want to make a teaser for a book coming next not a previous book but if i wanted to if this was leading into say evelyn's number i could put in a little teaser for that and it's showing me all my other books that i have on draft2digital which is awesome i've never actually used this one before let's do that for kicks because i've never done this and also by would be really fun to put i'm going to put it at both the beginning and the end of the book i'm going to have them include all my other books i have no idea what this is going to look like because normally i do all this formatting on my own before uploading the book to draft to digital but just for fun let's also add a dedication to my most amazingest youtube viewers that's all of you okay all so i'm going to save and continue okay we're going to go into the layout for the cursed hunter here because i did not want to show you the first page of the enchanted crown it's definitely not ready yet so we're going to click save and continue after you make sure that those are your chapters and this is my absolute favorite part and this you can do without ever publishing your book if you didn't want to publish on draft to digital you could still get to this stage and format your beautiful ebooks i love the formatting on draft2digital and i use this to send out arc copies advanced review copies or advanced reader copies whatever you want to call them but for today's purpose i just want to show you some of the cool options so this is my also by page that i made myself but you can also if you saw me can also buy page in there let's go to chapter one and i love love love this header it's perfect for a dragon book um but fantasy also has a lot of other cool options like a crown whatever that is this one feels very sci-fi to me this fantasy one is what i use for i think books one and two in the series for e-books this is also very classy and has a little bit more of a sci-fi vibe but it could go either way and i love that they also have romance designs here i like that coffee cup um the mystery and thriller is actually really cute i think this looks a little bit fantasy to me and so does this one this is very classy a fingerprint the all-purpose there's like super basic there's a watercolor or one in the corner um whatever that is kind of looks like an award to me this is super classy i love that i could definitely change my books to that as well or a very minimal looking one that's just kind of a line and then now notice how the formatting is here and it's all smushed together like a typical fantasy read but if you switch to the non-fiction options it's actually formatting more than just that header actually all of it is it's formatting the whole book but here you can really see how it does where it has spaces between every paragraph and the textbook one is the same way but it has the drop caps on that h there and it has just some really cool design elements to it so let's go back to the one that i like which is the dragon i'm gonna show you how it actually formats within the document as well when you have those little star star star you know like a breaking up of scenes within a chapter it will turn them into cool things like this what is another example let me show you there it is okay where the heck did it go oh look at that so anyway you can play around with this you can make your formatting really really beautiful and then once you have it formatted to your liking you could publish it which is this option at the bottom where it says i have reviewed this manuscript and i approve it for release but you don't have to publish you can also go to this right side section right here where it says download a mobi file download an epub file or download a pdf if you wanted to for example do an audio book or a print project you can make pdfs here of your novel with the beautiful formatting and it's all stylized and perfect or if you are uploading say you you don't want to use draft2digital but you do know that you need a certain type of file to upload to nook or kobo or to send an arc copy to those types of devices you can download an epub for me i download a mobi file which is how you send books to a kindle so whenever i am sending out arc copies or early reader copies to my patrons i send out moby files this is so helpful again have a video all about that go watch that if you want to know more so that was the details then the layout is right here i have it back on dragon and if you were to review it you would want to go through from front to start if you're actually publishing you would want to go through page by page and make sure okay looks good looks good looks good okay awesome and then you're gonna click i have reviewed it make sure you actually review it though and then you're gonna go ahead and have a published book that brings us to step four which is publishing this is where you can see all the stores where you can place your book and i have currently barnes and noble kobo apple tolino but then also you'll notice that amazon has its own separate category here because this is kdp and it strictly monitors how you submit it so it says don't select your amazon distribution if your book is already on amazon like you've done the kdp setup which i have so i don't select amazon i also include my book in scribd and something called 24 symbols i don't know what those are but i figure i'd rather have my book out wide and have people able to get it if they want to and there's royalties so why not i do have it set up for kobo plus so that it also distributes to belgium the netherlands and canada and then there are library services at the bottom so you can see that draft to digital does a lot for you and instead of you having to go specifically to each one of these websites individually you can do all in one and draft to digital pushes it out to all of those websites for you the library services that i currently have is overdrive bibliotheca i don't know if i'm saying that right and baker and taylor and i don't know what hoopla is again i need to do some research because some of these places i am just fully unaware of i pretty much buy books on amazon let's be real here but not everybody does so it's helpful to do your research and figure out where you want your book online when i put in my price at the top here i do believe it calculated the library price for me but you can also read here that it says to approximately do two or three times higher than your digital book so that's what it is it's two times higher and then you'll also notice that the royalties change if you change this so for example you can see the projected royalties change right there or if i maybe someday i'll make my books 4.99 instead it's like the tiniest little change look at that so 3.99 you make 2.37 cents or 4.99 you make 2.97 so yeah i'm going to keep it at 3.99 and then here is where you actually publish the book so i have published this before so right now the button says apply changes but then it brings up this little thing that says publish my book so you're going to want to select that you are the original creator right you should be and then you also want to select i confirm that i have all the rights necessary to make this content the cover image and all the other data provided by me available for marketing distribution and sale and so you do have to make sure that your cover is something that is allowed to be sold and also the interior stuff in your book hopefully you are not copyrighting anybody i think you know better than that and so once you are sure that those two things are correct you're going to click publish my book yay that's how quick it was like two seconds later uh so it says ebook success you've currently submitted the curse hunter successfully submitted it to all the retailers it's currently being published which means they're sending out that info to all of those publishers that you clicked that you wanted it to be available on you can go to the books detail page or click this little button here on the right to see what its status is and when it actually is fully uploaded to those platforms and it's available for pre-order so let's go to that page this is the books page if i scroll down it's going to show me the details for the book my current projected royalty is 2.37 my current price you can do changing prices you can see where it's published online this is really handy you could definitely screenshot this and you know put it somewhere to show people like on your website or something this is where my book is this is where it's available you can also go to download a specific type of file of the book right here which is so cool so you don't have to go all the way back to that other page that i showed you you can just come right here and download the mobi file if that's what you want or download a sample of it if that's what you want and then you can go ahead and scroll up here to see what they call the ubl which stands for universal book link and this is the second bonus feature that i absolutely love about drafted digital i'm going to click on it and show you what it looks like this is the universal book link for the cursed hunter so what it does is it takes all of the stores where the curse hunter is available technically they are e-book stores but once you click on one like say kindle you'll see that right next to the ebook is the paperback and the hardcover so really it's showing you your book everywhere it's one link one universal book link to send to your readers to put on youtube videos to put on social media to send out for interviews to send to people who like a media package or whatever you want to call it it's one link that you can give people where they can find your book on all vendors in all formats so that's the generic universal book link but that's sort of a random compilation of numbers and letters so you can actually i have to find it hold on i think it's under my account yep there it is universal book links you can scroll down here and you have a universal book link dashboard this is my dashboard for the universal book links it's just loading and so right there you can see the actual books these are all coming from draft to digital including some guides uh but over here is the actual universal book link but then right below it i have made a custom link so instead of having to remember this garbly i just have bookstore.com slash cursed thecursehunter and if your book title is unique of course if if there's another book that happens to have taken it then that could be a tricky thing you might have to add some special details or you know call it curse hunter or something like that but you can get a book link that's specific to you that's customizable you can add store links to that book and then you can see how many people click on it so this is really really helpful and cool i really love this feature the stolen kingdom has been out the longest and you can see that over the time that i've started using this universal book link it has been used 554 times so that's awesome and if you want to edit your link i believe you just click this right here so say for example if i get my books onto google play which i hope to do eventually then you're going to click here you're going to copy the link from the website that you want and paste it in here and that will be added to your universal book link this is where you can add that custom name if you wanted to name it so i added mine as the stolen kingdom and there you have it you can click copy link and you have a fantastic link it even tells you check this out 554 readers found your book via this link specifically 441 went to amazon 45 went to apple and 18 went to indigo and those are just the top three stores so there you go that's how i upload to draft digital is also how i format my ebooks and i love it and it's also how i get a universal book link so all around absolutely love draft to digital love that platform and highly recommend it i will link it below if you want to go check it out and see if it's for you don't forget to give this video a thumbs up if you liked it to help my channel and subscribe if you want more videos like this in the future i will again have all the other videos i mentioned linked below if you want to go and watch those and find out more about publishing in the indie publishing world so yeah that's all i have for you guys i hope you have an amazing day and i'll talk to you again very soon [Music] bye [Music] you

Channel: Bethany Atazadeh - YA Fantasy Author

Views: 28,514

Keywords: self publishing a book, bethany atazadeh, self publishing, authortube, authortuber, kdp publishing, how to upload to draft2digital, self publishing tutorial, draft2digital, uploading book to kdp, uploading book to ingramspark, uploading book to draft2digital, how to send arcs, how to self publish on amazon, how to self publish on apple, how to self publish on barnes and noble, how to self publish on amazon kindle, how to self publish on kobo, how to self publish, publishing a book

Id: Uz1YC6_EAC8

Length: 23min 5sec (1385 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 13 2020