I recently discovered Reedsy and published my novella on Amazon KDP with it! It’s great and I totally recommend it. No issues with the exported EPUB file, everything went smoothly. I only wish it had a bit more flexibility in terms of design, but for a free tool it does a great job!
This is an excellent summary of Reedsy's features. I'm sure you'll drive many of us writers to it, as we have little time to dedicate to a more complicated platform.
First of all, thanks for reminding me about Reedsy. I've had an account for a long time, but with so many options out there -- and I have them all, mind you -- it's hard sometimes to make a decision and run with it. I have Scrivener, but I've never used it. I have ProWritingAid, which I like and use within Google Docs, where I write. I have Grammarly, which is not a publishing tool, but it's fun to watch Grammarly and PWA battle it out for recommended changes. And I've gone straight to KDP and D2D to publish. Again, so many things that can help you, so seeing how you're working with Reedsy is nice.
And like you, I have this sprawling monstrosity that I'm trying to publish. Not Dorothy: Locked & Loaded, but maybe one day those 150 episodes will be tied up with a bow instead of just sitting in my Substack and on my website. But for the moment, Just Right, my neo-noir murder mystery of around 100k words and 35 episodes (currently on my website in its entirety) needs the book treatment. I want to hold the damn thing in my hands, and that's really all that matters.
Again, cheers for putting this out there. I'm giving it a go right now.
Someone needs to write a story about the first major AI war - between competing grammar checkers, which decide to arm themselves and enforce the em-dash.
Hope Reedsy proves useful - for certain scales of project, I've found it pretty perfect.
Great intro! I started using Reedsy recently & was positively surprised by the quality of ebooks you can generate! (Especially compared to how I manually formatted & typeset the first novel I self-published in German a few years back... even accounting for differences in language & industry standards, it probably could've saved many hours of work.)
And I'm so looking forward to that BookFunnel guide! I know using BookFunnel would help me find new readers but haven't gotten around to it yet so I appreciate you taking the time to write more about how we Substack writers can make the most of it!
Did you copy and paste from Scrivener into Reedsy? And set up the chapters as you went? PDFs have been on my to do list as something to help readers catch up on my serieses (seriesii?) although I’m not sure whether just to hand it off to readers in a welcome email (there have been issues with that for you, yes?) or point them to a post wot has the PDFs in it…
Yeah, I was copying and pasting from one to the other. Slightly annoying was that the formatting got lost along the way (same happens when I paste from Scrivener to Substack). I need to figure out why that happens. I’m wondering if it’s a Chromei issue.
In this case it’s a sample, so wasn’t massive deal, but I wouldn’t want to have to catch and reinstate the formatting for the entire thing.
Thanks for another great post, Simon. I've used Bookfunnel as well, for Advanced Reader Copy submission.
I've also used Reedsy for finding a book cover designer. You may not need that, given that you actually have skills in that area, but I am not gifted in that way. The guy I found is a talented young artist based out of New Zealand. He was very responsive and did a great job with my Cozy Mystery (Book I in a series).
Just for fun, here is the link so you can see his artwork:
I have used Reedsy for almost 2 years...it is fast and easy, but the limitations keep me from using it more. For formating I have been told Atticus is better, but having never published any of my work, I can't say I have much to compare it to.
I recently discovered Reedsy and published my novella on Amazon KDP with it! It’s great and I totally recommend it. No issues with the exported EPUB file, everything went smoothly. I only wish it had a bit more flexibility in terms of design, but for a free tool it does a great job!
This is an excellent summary of Reedsy's features. I'm sure you'll drive many of us writers to it, as we have little time to dedicate to a more complicated platform.
Thank you for this advice- I had meant to start using Reedsy to format better versions of my books.
This, I needed to know. Cheers Simon!
YASSSS! Looking forward to reading that Bookfunnel guide!
Working on it!
First of all, thanks for reminding me about Reedsy. I've had an account for a long time, but with so many options out there -- and I have them all, mind you -- it's hard sometimes to make a decision and run with it. I have Scrivener, but I've never used it. I have ProWritingAid, which I like and use within Google Docs, where I write. I have Grammarly, which is not a publishing tool, but it's fun to watch Grammarly and PWA battle it out for recommended changes. And I've gone straight to KDP and D2D to publish. Again, so many things that can help you, so seeing how you're working with Reedsy is nice.
And like you, I have this sprawling monstrosity that I'm trying to publish. Not Dorothy: Locked & Loaded, but maybe one day those 150 episodes will be tied up with a bow instead of just sitting in my Substack and on my website. But for the moment, Just Right, my neo-noir murder mystery of around 100k words and 35 episodes (currently on my website in its entirety) needs the book treatment. I want to hold the damn thing in my hands, and that's really all that matters.
Again, cheers for putting this out there. I'm giving it a go right now.
Someone needs to write a story about the first major AI war - between competing grammar checkers, which decide to arm themselves and enforce the em-dash.
Hope Reedsy proves useful - for certain scales of project, I've found it pretty perfect.
Thanks Simon, you’re always there for us!
Great intro! I started using Reedsy recently & was positively surprised by the quality of ebooks you can generate! (Especially compared to how I manually formatted & typeset the first novel I self-published in German a few years back... even accounting for differences in language & industry standards, it probably could've saved many hours of work.)
And I'm so looking forward to that BookFunnel guide! I know using BookFunnel would help me find new readers but haven't gotten around to it yet so I appreciate you taking the time to write more about how we Substack writers can make the most of it!
Thanks for sharing. Your articles are always helpful and I learn something.
Did you copy and paste from Scrivener into Reedsy? And set up the chapters as you went? PDFs have been on my to do list as something to help readers catch up on my serieses (seriesii?) although I’m not sure whether just to hand it off to readers in a welcome email (there have been issues with that for you, yes?) or point them to a post wot has the PDFs in it…
Yeah, I was copying and pasting from one to the other. Slightly annoying was that the formatting got lost along the way (same happens when I paste from Scrivener to Substack). I need to figure out why that happens. I’m wondering if it’s a Chromei issue.
In this case it’s a sample, so wasn’t massive deal, but I wouldn’t want to have to catch and reinstate the formatting for the entire thing.
Thanks for another great post, Simon. I've used Bookfunnel as well, for Advanced Reader Copy submission.
I've also used Reedsy for finding a book cover designer. You may not need that, given that you actually have skills in that area, but I am not gifted in that way. The guy I found is a talented young artist based out of New Zealand. He was very responsive and did a great job with my Cozy Mystery (Book I in a series).
Just for fun, here is the link so you can see his artwork:
https://www.amazon.com/Cinching-Third-Floor-Alexandria-Catalina-ebook/dp/B0DHQYGLDB
Thank you for this detailed info!!
I have used Reedsy for almost 2 years...it is fast and easy, but the limitations keep me from using it more. For formating I have been told Atticus is better, but having never published any of my work, I can't say I have much to compare it to.
Wonderful review. Looking forward to the Bookfunnel article too. Thank you!