Google Play Books is the store on all of them. For reaching readers outside the markets where iPhones dominate, nothing else has that footprint.
Google Play Books is pre-installed across the Android ecosystem, which makes it the most geographically broad ebook store there is. Its strength is in markets that the other platforms serve thinly, and titles that travel across languages and borders benefit most from being on it.
It is also the platform with the most idiosyncratic publisher interface, and the one where authors most often give up partway through setup. The technical work is not hard so much as unfamiliar, which is exactly the kind of work worth handing to someone who has done it before.
Take what you need. For a book already published elsewhere, setup and listing are usually the whole job.
- 01
Publication
Partner account setup, title creation, file upload and the tax and payment configuration that has to be complete before anything can go on sale.
- 02
Editing
A professional editorial pass before production, so the file you distribute everywhere is the finished text.
- 03
Cover design
A cover built to Google's image requirements and to how the store presents titles on a phone, which is where nearly all of its readers are.
- 04
Marketing
Metadata, categories and description written for how this store surfaces books, plus territory-by-territory pricing that makes sense in each market.
- 05
Production and formatting
A clean EPUB (and PDF where the design requires it) encoded so the book behaves properly at every text size on every screen.
Four things worth having on the broadest and least intuitive platform.
- 01
Experience of the interface
The publisher tools here are genuinely unlike the other platforms', and most of the difficulty is familiarity rather than complexity. That is a good thing to buy rather than learn.
- 02
Real global settings
The reason to be on Google Play is international reach, and that reach is wasted if pricing and territories are left at their defaults. They are set deliberately, market by market.
- 03
Quality that carries
Editorial, design and production to the same standard as any other channel, a secondary platform does not get a secondary edition.
- 04
Support afterwards
Sales tracked and the reporting explained, so you can see which markets are responding and act on it.
Eight steps from a manuscript to a global listing.
Free consultation
What you want from the platform, and an honest view of whether it suits your book.
Manuscript evaluation
The manuscript assessed for anything that needs addressing before it is encoded and distributed.
Editing
A professional pass for clarity, consistency and error, with your voice preserved.
Cover design
A cover made to the platform's specification and to the screen size most of its readers use.
Book setup
The title created in the partner centre: files uploaded, metadata entered, territories and prices configured.
Marketing plan
The listing built to be findable from the day it is live, rather than optimised after the launch is over.
Publication
The title published and made available across the markets you selected.
Sales tracking
Performance monitored by territory, with the reporting explained and regular updates on what it shows.
A few of the people the house has worked with, in their own words.
I had eleven years of notes and no book. What I got back read like me on a good day, my turns of phrase, my arguments, and none of the padding I would have added myself. The first chapter arrived and I stopped worrying.
Marianne ElleryIndependent author The structural edit was not comfortable reading. It told me the second half started in the wrong place, which I had suspected for a year and nobody had said out loud. Moving three chapters fixed a problem I had been trying to solve with better sentences.
Devon AlukoIndependent author What sold me was being told I did not need half of what I had asked for. I came in wanting the full package and left with a cover, a proofread and an honest explanation of why the rest would not have helped yet.
Priya RaghunathanIndependent author Three cover directions, all of them plausible, none of them the thing I had described. The one I picked worked at the size that actually matters, I could recognise it in a list of forty other books, which is more than I can say for my first attempt.
Tobias HearnIndependent author I own the book outright and that was written down before I paid anything. After two years of being quoted percentages by people who would not put them in writing, that was the whole reason I stayed.
Cecile MarchandIndependent author The audiobook took longer than I expected and they told me why each time rather than going quiet. The narrator they cast got my grandmother's accent right, which I had assumed would be the thing I had to let go of.
Nathan BoakyeIndependent author
How Google Play Books works for independent authors.
Set up a publisher account in Google's partner centre and complete the payment and tax details. Create the book, upload your EPUB (or PDF where the layout requires it) with the cover, enter the metadata, and set pricing and the territories you want to sell in. The title then goes through processing before it appears in the store.
A valid EPUB is the preferred format, with a cover image meeting Google's specification and complete, accurate metadata including an ISBN where you have one. Files with structural errors are held or rejected during processing rather than corrected, so getting the encoding right is the difference between publishing quickly and troubleshooting for a fortnight.
Processing usually takes a few days, and it can be longer for a first title on a new account while the account itself is verified. Availability then rolls out across territories rather than appearing everywhere at once.
Yes, Google Play Books requires no exclusivity, and most independent authors publish here alongside every other platform. The only conflict is Amazon's KDP Select, whose terms require digital exclusivity while you are enrolled.
Metadata and categories first, since discovery inside the store depends on them. Then price sensibly per territory, the platform's strength is international, and a price that makes sense in one market can be absurd in another. Beyond that, the traffic that matters most here tends to come from outside the store: search, your own audience, and links you control.
You do, completely. The author holds 100% of the rights to their work, in every format, for its whole life. The house is paid for the work it does, not with a share of the book. That is the arrangement the house reopened in 2008 to offer, and it does not change with the tier, the price or the point at which you come to us.
Yes. Your name is on the cover and in the record. Everyone who works on the book (writer, editor, designer) works on your book, and none of them is credited on it unless you ask for them to be.
Yes. Your story is yours, and nothing about the project leaves the house. We will sign your NDA before you send anything, or supply ours if you would rather use one.
No. Six disciplines are available and you take the ones you need. Authors arrive here at every stage (with an idea, a half-draft, or a finished manuscript that only needs a cover and a shelf) and the work starts where you actually are.
It depends on the work: length, how much research is involved, how much of the book already exists, and which disciplines you need. There is no list price for a book, and any firm who gives you one before reading your material is quoting something other than your book. Tell us where you are and we will price the actual job.
Move the marker. You do not need to know what to call it: you only need to know where you are.
Tell us where your manuscript is, where you want it to go, and we'll show you what's possible.