Getting your book on Apple Books, Kobo, Google Play and Barnes & Noble, and linking to each from your page

Going wide means selling your ebook in stores other than Amazon. Four of them matter in English: Apple Books, Kobo, Google Play Books and Barnes & Noble's Nook store. Each has its own publishing portal, its own terms and its own quirks, and each can also be reached through an aggregator that uploads for you. The second half of the job is making sure a reader who finds you can get to their store in one click.

Royalty rates and terms below are the published ones as of November 2026. Stores change them, so check the store's own page before you price.

Direct or through an aggregator

Publishing direct means an account with each store. You keep the full royalty the store pays and you get its promotion tools. You also keep four dashboards and four payment schedules. An aggregator such as Draft2Digital or PublishDrive takes one file and sends it everywhere, pays you in one place, and keeps a share of each sale for the service. Draft2Digital keeps about 10 per cent of the book's list price on each sale, which it states on its pricing page. A common pattern is to go direct to the stores whose tools you will use, usually Amazon and Kobo, and let an aggregator handle the rest.

Apple Books

Apple's own route is Apple Books for Authors. You need an Apple ID and a US tax form, and the portal now runs in a browser, so the old requirement for a Mac has gone. Apple pays 70 per cent of the list price on ebooks at every price point, with no delivery fee. Pre-orders are easy to set up and count towards the launch-day chart. If you use an aggregator, Apple is the store where that saves the most admin, because Apple's listing requirements are the strictest on metadata and cover size.

Kobo

Kobo Writing Life is Kobo's direct platform and many indie authors use it directly rather than through an aggregator. It pays 70 per cent on ebooks priced at $2.99 or more in the main currencies and 45 per cent below that. Its promotions tab lets you apply for Kobo's own sales and featured spots, which is the main reason to go direct. Kobo is the dominant store in Canada and strong in Australia, New Zealand and parts of Europe, and it supplies several other retailers' ebook stores.

Google Play Books

The Google Play Books Partner Centre is open to new publishers again after years of being closed to sign-ups. It pays 70 per cent of the list price. Google discounts books without asking, and sets the price it charges the reader, so set your list price with that in mind and read the pricing help page before you publish. Google Play is the default store on Android phones, which is a lot of readers who never see an Apple or Kobo app.

Barnes & Noble

Barnes & Noble Press publishes to the Nook ebook store and offers print books too. It pays 70 per cent on ebooks priced from $2.99 to $9.99 and 40 per cent outside that band. It is a US store first, and its shelf space is smaller than it was, so many authors outside the US reach it through an aggregator rather than directly.

Linking to each store from your page

Once the book is in four stores, every mention of it needs to reach the reader's own store. There are two ways to do that.

• List every link, with a buy button for each store on your book's page. Readers know which one is theirs. This is what the Indie Author Toolchest does: the Books editor has a field for each store under Also available at, and each one you fill in appears as a button on the book page.
• Use one universal link. Books2Read, from Draft2Digital, is free and gives you one link that detects the reader's country and preferred store. It is the right choice for a newsletter, a social post or the back of a paperback, where there is room for only one link.

For Amazon alone, an ASIN-based link that sends a reader to their own country's store does the same job, and it is worth doing even if you sell nowhere else.

What to check after publishing

• Open each store's page for the book from a phone and from a desktop. Apple and Google both take a day or two to show a new title.
• Check the price in each store's main currencies. Google's discounting and Kobo's currency rounding can leave a book at an odd price.
• Put every link on your author page and in your email footer before you announce the book anywhere.

If the ebook is enrolled in KDP Select, none of this applies to it until the current 90-day term ends. Our article on the exclusivity rules explains what is and is not covered, and this one helps you decide per book rather than per career.