google is the world’s leading search engine, as you probably already know. A lesser-known part of Google is its own online bookstore, Google Play Books, which is integrated into the larger Google Play store.
If you’re one of the 2.5 billion people who own an android device, you’ll know what we’re talking about. Google Play is the place to download or buy apps, games, music, movies, and, well, books to use on your Android devices.
You are reading: Publishing books on google play
and that’s exactly why google play books is such an important place for any author today: it allows you to easily reach the billions of people in the world who own android devices.
a brief history of google play books
That said, google play wasn’t always a good place for independent authors. Until early 2020, you couldn’t put your books on the google play books store without first going through an “approval period” and (sometimes) a waiting list.
more than that, the lucky authors who managed to get into the store would often see their titles automatically discounted by google play, without warning. This move would cause Amazon (and other retailers) to price match, often without the author realizing it in the first place.
of course, many independent authors found solutions to avoid such a discount. They used complicated formulas to figure out how the automatic discount worked and raised the price of their book on Google Play to compensate. however, in general, the clumsiness of the system outweighed its benefits for most authors.
Enter 2020. The year will likely be remembered for other grim things, but it also marks the moment that Google Play Books finally opened its doors, in a big way, to independent authors.
It’s now easier than ever to create a new publisher account. There are no more approval periods: you can simply create your account, configure your book and upload it to the store, with just a few clicks.
The days of the generalized automatic discount are over. Beginning in October 2020, Google Play Books will “unilaterally follow the list price you provide for an eBook in sales to customers in the United States and Canada,” regardless of the price of the eBook.
note: obviously google play still reserves the right to “price match” your book if they see a lower price available elsewhere, just like most other retailers.
Ultimately, this means that (unless you are exclusive to amazon via kdp select) there is no longer any reason not to have your books on google play. on the contrary, you have everything to Win: Google Play even offers better royalties than Amazon (70% vs. 35%) and no shipping, on books priced less than $2.99 or more than $9.99.
so let’s see exactly how you can achieve that!
how to publish your book on google play in 7 easy steps
as we mentioned, google play has eliminated its indeterminate “approval periods” and waiting lists to create new publisher accounts. but here’s what might excite you too: they’ve also redesigned their entire publishing system and made it easier than ever to publish to google play books.
As with any other publishing platform, it all starts with:
step 1: create your google play partner account
Google Play now has a simple landing page for authors looking to publish their books on the platform: g.co/play/publish. Just click on “Get Started” and fill in your details to create your account.
Note that you will need an associated google account. if you use gmail, you are gold. if not, you will have to create a google account.
step 2: enter your financial information
simple: you want google play to be able to pay you your royalties. so the first thing you’ll need to do is enter your tax and payment information and link your bank account.
Note: Google may take up to 12 days to review and activate your account. To avoid disappointment, be sure to set up your reservation at least two weeks in advance.
step 3: create your first book
then click “add your first book” in the control panel. the decision you will now face is:
- if you want to publish your ebook and make it available for sale on google play, or
- if you just want to preview it on google books.
It’s worth noting this distinction because Google Books is often confused with Google Play — and they are actually pretty different. Google Play is, as we mentioned, an online store, while Google Books is not. Instead, it’s one of the world’s biggest online index of full-text books, as Google has digitized millions of print and electronic books to make them “searchable” and indexable on search engines. More about that initiative here.
if you publish on google play, your book will automatically get a preview page on google books, so only select “preview only on google books” if you don’t want to publish and sell your book on the store from google play. (eg if you are on kdp select but still want your book to be indexed in the google book library, choosing that option would not violate the terms of kdp select).
once you click on “sell ebook on google play” you will be asked to select your book’s “id” ie isbn number. if you have an isbn, you can enter it. if it doesn’t, just select the “get a book id from google” option; it’s free.
Step 4: Fill in the metadata for your books
the metadata process in google play books is divided into four steps:
- about the book
- genres
- contributors
- settings
Let’s go through them in order.
about the bookif you’ve already published your book elsewhere, then this part should be pretty quick! you can simply paste your title, subtitle, book description, series title, etc.
If this is your first time publishing your book and you haven’t written a description (or summary) yet, be sure to read our post on how to write a book summary. As you’ll soon see, Google Play Store search works in a way that places special importance on titles, subtitles, and descriptions, so you may want to optimize them specifically for Google Play.
If you want your book to be published immediately, leave the “sell date” field blank. if you’re posting a pre-order, be sure to fill it in with your book’s release date.
one last thing about the “about book” page: google gives you the opportunity to “add a related book” at the bottom. this is a great opportunity to tie your book in with others, even if they’re not in the series (ie an anthology, box set, or another series in the same universe).
See Also: Susan Isaacs Books In Publication & Chronological Order – Book Series
genresthis is where google play is very different from other stores. First, it doesn’t limit you in the number of genre categories you can select. In addition, it allows you to select any category from the bisac (north america) or bic (uk and australia) systems:
so you should spend a good amount of time making sure you find and select all the categories that are relevant to your book. Categories play an important role in Google’s search algorithms, so it’s time well spent.
contributorsThe next page is pretty straightforward: this is where you enter your author name and bio. You can also add other contributors to your book, such as editors, illustrators, translators, ghostwriters, etc.
Preview SettingsHere’s another place where Google gives you more control than its peers. you can select how many book readers will be able to preview using google play’s “look inside” feature (note though that 20% is the minimum):
You can also choose the amount of text they can copy and paste (or set it to 0%), as well as turn drm encryption on or off.
if one of your goals is to optimize your book’s presence in google book search (the index we mentioned in step 3), be sure to click “show advanced settings” and fill in those fields.
step 5: upload your book and cover files
This part should be pretty straightforward. you just need to have your files handy, specifically:
- your cover image
- your epub or pdf
- your back cover image (optional)
For more information on Google Play specifications and expected file types, please read this support article.
now one really cool thing about google play is that once your files have been processed and accepted, you can add “content reviewers” simply by entering their email addresses. doing this will basically grant you early access to your book for free, which makes it a great way to share copies of the arc with beta readers or reviewers.
This is something you can do even after you’ve finished this setup, and while there are some requirements for content reviewers (for example, they must have a google account), most people should meet them. you can learn more about this handy feature here.
step 6: set the price of your book
google play books gives you the opportunity to set different prices for different regions and in different currencies. To make sure your book is attractively priced in each currency, you should definitely take advantage of this feature.
for example, the following settings will make your book priced at £0.99 in the UK & ireland, €0.99 in the eurozone and $0.99 in the rest of the world.
Note that “additional settings” allows you to make these prices temporary, which can be useful if you want to offer promotional prices at launch.
step 7: review and publish
You’re almost there! all that’s left to do is make sure you’ve entered everything correctly, swallow that fear and anticipation, and hit that magical “publish” button.
This is also a good time to go back to step 5 (your files should already be processed) and add your “content reviewers” right before publishing.
six tips to increase google play sales
Of course, publishing the book is the easy part. getting it sold, now, that’s another story. so we decided to reach out to the google play books team itself, as well as two best-selling authors on the google play store, to get some marketing advice directly from them.
Please note that most of these tips are exclusive to the Google Play platform and may not be a suitable marketing plan for all retailers.
Instead, our goal is to help you understand how the Google Play Store and its algorithms work, so that you can take advantage of its specificities to increase your sales on that platform.
1. don’t go in and out of exclusivity
This is the first thing we were told by both the Google Play Books team and the authors we consulted (and this advice can be applied to pretty much any non-Amazon retailer). If you constantly opt in and out of kdp select, and pick up and pick up your books from big box retailers, you are seriously hurting your chances of getting sales at these big box retailers.
note: if you don’t know what we mean by “exclusive” and “wide”, you should read this article on kdp select.
but it goes even deeper in the case of google play. In the words of the google play books team:
“almost all google play book merchandising is based on an algorithm. as a result, each reader sees a different custom library. if books are removed from the store, the algorithm’s learning about those titles is interrupted and the possibility of those titles being recommended is eliminated. more time in the store and more lifetime sales translate into higher visibility.”
2. take advantage of metadata intelligently
If you’re familiar with other publishing platforms, you’ve probably spotted the one thing that seems to be missing from the google play process: keywords.
See Also: Ten Inspirational Books for Women over 60 | Sixty and Me
at no time does google play ask you for meta keywords to describe your book. On the other hand, Google Play allows you to select as many categories as you want. so you should take advantage of categories to replace keywords you would use in other stores.
For example, let’s say you use the keywords “vampire”, “19th century”, and “gas lamp” on amazon. you can make your book appear for these keywords on google play by selecting the following bisac categories:
- young adult fiction / vampires
- young adult fiction / historical / usa / 19th century
- fiction / fantasy / gas lamp
Of course, this won’t always be possible, as some niche keywords won’t have an associated category. as an example, “weird west” (or “western fantasy”) is a reasonably popular keyword that doesn’t have a dedicated bisac category.
In such cases, you have two options:
- If you absolutely want your book to rank first for that keyword, try working it into your subtitle :p. “a weird western fantasy adventure”; or
- if you want the book to appear in the search, but you don’t want to include your subtitle, you can include it in the book description.
If you work with keywords in your book description, make sure you do it naturally. in other words, don’t dump keywords! this could hurt the conversion of your book page more than increase its visibility.
3. run a discount promotion
This is, naturally, a tip that will work for any book in any store. but it tends to be even more effective on google play (a less crowded store than amazon).
first, google makes it very easy to schedule a price promotion in advance through the “promotions” section of the partner center. If you take advantage of that, instead of just manually lowering a book’s list price in the metadata, you’ll trigger a strikethrough of its title’s list prices in the store.
More importantly, discounted books tend to get extra visibility on the google play store, as the store’s home page (customized for each reader based on their previous activity) tends to feature several specific sections for discount books. here is an example:
in the words of the google play team:
“when a publisher offers a discount on their book on google play books, the book becomes eligible for additional in-store merch and customer notifications. this does not mean that all books will receive all promotions, but this discount Significantly increases the chance of the book receiving further promotion in the storefront.
These discount promotions are powered by our algorithm and may include:
-
appearance in a collection featuring discounted titles, including collections of relevant genres
in-app notifications and targeted emails to customers who have wishlisted or tried that title”
4. take advantage of google play promotional codes
In addition to running a discount promotion, you can also use Google Play’s “promotion codes” feature to offer a special exclusive offer to some of your readers.
There are three types of promotional codes you can generate for Google Play:
- free allows customers to redeem the book at no cost.
- percentage discount (ebooks only) allows customers to receive a percentage discount off the list price of the book.
- the fixed price promotion allows customers to purchase the book for a lower fixed price.
Now, the free codes obviously won’t earn you any money if you redeem them. but for percentage off and fixed price promo codes, the author will get the usual 70% royalty on the final price of the eBook (after discount). So, if you run a flat-price promo code campaign where readers can get the eBook for $0.50, you’ll earn $0.35 when they redeem the promo code.
more importantly, promo codes redeemed on google play have a direct impact on the ranking algorithms. As confirmed to me by the google play team via email:
“Percentage and fixed price promotional code redemptions are sales as the customer purchases the book. they are treated like any other book sale in our store, which always affects our algorithm. free promotional code redemptions are treated the same as free downloads in our store. they have little impact on our algorithm.”
this makes google play promo codes extremely attractive and a great tool to increase your store sales.
5. use a free serial launcher
Speaking of sections that tend to stand out on homepages, here’s one you won’t find in any other store:
Spoiler alert: It presents a huge opportunity for the authors of the series. In the words of Charlotte Byrd, one of the authors we consulted for this post:
“The only thing I did recently that I’ve never done before was take 3 of my first in the series for free. i got a bookbub, which i have never received before, i decided to make 2 other starters in the series free along with it during this difficult time. As a result, I have seen my sales increase significantly (not only as a result of the bookbub, even before the promotion took place). I have read very well and having the first free book, I see that several of my books in the catalog appear in the google play lists and stay there. That’s another thing I really like about google play: the books stick much better to the charts than they do on other platforms.”
another advantage of using free books as “loss leaders” for a series? Free downloads actually count towards Google Play’s charts and algorithms, giving them much more visibility than on Amazon.
6. sign up for the google play affiliate program
Want to earn an extra 7% commission on ebooks and audiobooks sold on google play? Simply sign up for the Google Play Books Affiliate Program. It’s free to join and is currently available to active members. If your google play books partner account is eligible, you will find a link to the affiliate registration form on your partner center home page.
This isn’t just a way to earn a few extra bucks, it’s great for advertising too! If you run Facebook ads targeting Google Play readers (yes, that’s possible), you can use affiliate links to your books and know exactly how many sales your ads are generating.
If you follow all the steps in this post and take advantage of these Google Play specific marketing tips, you should be well on your way to turning your Google Play sales into a solid source of income. The redesign of Google Play Books shows that Google is finally giving book sales some real importance, which means it could be ready to grow big enough to be a real challenger to Amazon. arriving early (right now!) could be a smart move for your writing career.
See Also: Why are English schools not using textbooks? By Professor Barnaby Lenon – School of Education
