Quote:
Originally Posted by Dusk  I wrote earlier, "As with Mobipocket, Amazon keep 35% of the profit."
Whoops, big correction: Amazon gets 65%, you get 35%. |
Yeah, I thought that looked wrong!
I've been experimenting with the service myself, and have a few of my e-books uploaded there now (an example is
here). The setup isn't bad, you can upload the document, covers, specify descriptions, select genres, keyword tags, name your price, etc. It's fairly open and easy to use.
The system is a bit buggy, though: Occasionally their server will not upload and convert documents. Sometimes, this means that you cannot finish an entry, but once a new item is created, it cannot be deleted, either. So you could end up with items that are unfinished or no good, but cannot be removed. I've had some luck uploading Word docs, but better luck uploading docs in Mobipocket format.
It can also be a slow process: "Publishing" a book can take from 12 up to 72 hours, as different parts of your material come online separately.
Of course, the real catch is this: Against the Big Publishers, who pay top dollar for promotion and make sure their books come up first in most searches, what kind of real exposure will indies like me get from this? I'm approaching this as an experiment, but I'm not planning to quit my day job anytime soon...