Pubbing on GooglePlay and Kobo? Listen up.

If you're going to go wide with your book, you want to pub EVERYWHERE, right? Well ... just be aware of what you are getting into. While iBooks and Barnes and Noble are relatively hassle-free, GooglePlay and Kobo do have a few hiccups that are worth mentioning to self-publishers. 

GooglePlay:

GooglePlay LOVES to discount books. Which sucks, especially when Amazon price-matches that sucker quicker than fruit flies flock to rotten tomatoes. All that fine print you signed off on gives them that ability. So if you pub with them, alter your price accordingly, so when and if they DO discount it, your price on other retailers is protected. 

Here's a quick calculation to help you out:

Amazon Price = Set Your Google Price at This
1.99 = 2.40
2.99 = 3.93
3.99 = 4.99
4.99 = 6.48
5.99 = 7.78
6.99 = 8.32

If you don't like this setup, and would rather go down a different path, you can reach out to GooglePlay and request for a contract that will make you a different type of retailer, one where they can't change prices on without prior notice/approval. 

Note: Technically, Amazon can remove your title from the Kindle Store altogether, if they catch a lower price on another retailer. Which is another reason why you don't want any retailer changing a price without your consent.

Kobo:

Kobo isn't JUST Kobo.com. It has a ton of other websites, especially foreign ones, that it distributes to. And some of those foreign sites aren't timely about removing their listings, if and when you pull a title from Kobo. And THAT can bite you in the rear, especially if you're enrolled in Amazon's KDP Select program. By enrolling in KDP Select, you're swearing loyalty to Amazon, and promising to be exclusive. So that random Dutch website that is still carrying your ebook - it just gave you a big black mark on Amazon's gradebook, and might prompt an email telling you that your book is being removed from the KDP Select program and you risk being black-listed from KDP Select FOREVER. It's a scary email to receive. I know. I've gotten about four of them.

I've also had Kobo discount my ebook, and it was a BEAR to get ahold of anyone to have them fix it. This price discount happened days into a new release, and Amazon's price-match cost me almost a thousand dollars, over the four day period it took to fix the discount. After that instance, I've stopped publishing on Kobo. I just can't afford the risk. 

Do you have any tips or tricks from other, non-Amazon retailers? Please comment below with them!