From books2read.com:
The internet is a great place to discover new books to read, but it can sometimes require a little work between hearing about a book you want to buy and actually reading that book. There are a lot of bookstores out there, so even when someone shares a link directly to the book you’re looking for, that link might not take you to the bookstore for your preferred reading app. (Or your local version of the page.)
That can leave you navigating to the proper store site and searching for the book you were already linked to. Sometimes the person sharing the link will try to help you out, sharing half a dozen links at once (one for each store she can track down).
That leaves you wading through a pile of links to find the one that’s right for you. Either way it’s a relatively small hassle, but it’s also an easily solvable one.
Here is where Universal Book Links Shine
When you see a Universal Book Link from Books2Read, you can trust it to get you to the store you want. That’s because a Universal Book Link can keep track of a book’s location at all of the major stores. The first time you click a Universal Book Link, you’ll see a page that looks like this:
Link to the rest at books2read.com
This service appears to be from the folks at Draft2Digital, who, among other things, make it quite easy for indie authors to create ebooks and print books for publishing anywhere because D2D’s formatting system creates non-proprietary files so you can easily publish wide instead of with Amazon.
PG’s impression, looking from the outside in, is that D2D has chosen to use some of their money to improve the publishing process for indie authors. Again, from the outside looking in, Amazon’s process for publishing ebooks seems pretty crude by comparison and has made only baby-step improvements since PG first used it.
I want to suggest an extension to the Chrome browser. Library Extension, which will take you to your listed libraries from the Amazon site. There are some books I only want to read for a short time, and, for those, the Library checkout is sufficient.
If it is a reference book, one for my book club, or a favored author, I will, of course, buy the book. And, for beginning writers (and those $2.99 or less), I will pay – I like to encourage the newbs.
It’s also a way for me to check out a writer, and, later, buy their work, if it appeals to me.
Thanks for the suggestion, L. I hadn’t heard of that extension before.
Looks interesting but I do have one quibble: it seems to be offering only a generic “Kindle” entry and using an algorithm to select an actual Kindle store. I want to make this choice myself. The algorithm will normally get it right but there will be cases where I want to be sent somewhere else.
You can also add your own user-generated links to various stores, including Amazon.
Draft2Digital makes it easier than any other place I’ve used to get your ebook out there and the universal link is sheer genius. I do like that they have some ebook styling options that allow me to make short stories, and other works I don’t want to spend hours formatting look better than plain old flat text.
I still use Amazon but use Draft2Digital to go wide. I used Smashwords but recently moved to Draft2Digital for my wide distro.
Edmund, I too still upload to Amazon myself, and I too used to use Smashwords until D2D came along.
But good news. D2D and Smashwords recently merged. Now what you upload to D2D will also distribute to the Smashwords store and, I assume, the smaller extra venues Smashwords serves.
Draft2Digital also has an author page, where you can highlight a book. You can list all your books with their universal links onto different bookshelves. For example, a shelf for nonfiction and another one for fiction. There’s a follow this author that links to your mailing list and an about the author at the bottom. Plus, you can list your website and social media account. If you want to see what it looks like, here’s mine https://books2read.com/Pamela-Cummins