useful post on ebook royalty comparisons

[julesjones]

Here's a useful comparison someone's put together comparing royalty rates from various places offering ebook self-publishing:

http://elizabethmccoy.dreamwidth.org/2120.html

Handy for me, because one of the projects I want to get on with over the next couple of weeks is to put one or two short stories through the process as a way of distributing the free reads already on my website in the various ebook formats, and I may put out a couple of out-of-print things up for $NOT_MUCH after that to see how the payment systems work (or don't work...).

Comments

[green_knight]

Thanks for the link, it will be useful.

Right now - see my last post - I'm starting to wonder whether the channel - how easy and uncomplicated it is to buy a book - won't be a major deciding factor in ebook sales. Personally, after great experiences with Smashwords (could find what I was looking for, easy to download sample, easy to acquire book) and a pretty dissatisfactory one with kobobooks (difficult to navigate, missed out on discount, downloadlink does not work), I know where I'll look for new content in the future.

Consequently, royalty rate is only one thing to consider - how easy is it for your book to be findable in those stores? How many people go and look there, how many loyal customers regularly browse that store (Amazon probably wins hands down right now), etc.

[julesjones]

My interest in it is primarily as a way to make the out of print stuff that's already on my website available in reader-compatible formats, but one thing I do want to watch is that I'm not handing over actual rights to anyone involved. Hence much careful reading of terms and conditions will be required first. I'd stick some things on Feedbooks if I could work out whether a) there's any way to remove them at a later date if I needed to, b) I'm automatically creating a Creative Commons licence that I don't actually want to grant. (In general I don't have a philosophical problem with CCing my out of print stuff, but there's always the possibility that it might close off some other fee-earning use of it at a later date.)

[stevie-carroll.livejournal.com]

Useful link, thanks. I'll be very interested to see how you and the others on my F'List who are self-publishing their older stuff get along with the various sites.