Royalties payments for each ebook-selling site

[kcmay]

Originally Posted by Luke King

One reason why I would choose them over dealing directly with Amazon once they start distributing there. The other reason I would choose them is if you are pricing your book under $2.99 - Smashwords will pay you 42% of the retail price on books sold at Amazon, rather than the 30% Amazon would give you for dealing with them directly.

Thank you! I did not realize this. Hmmm!

[MrPLD]

Originally Posted by kcmay

Marketing and exposure are king. I get only 10-15 visitors a week to my web site! When I'm ready for a new book, I don't go browsing authors' web sites to buy;
...
We have enough to do with writing and marketing. Some writers (like me) don't want to complicate our already busy day with sales on top of everything else.

That's fair enough. I guess I'm lucky here in that my wife is the author and I'm the "sales/site/marketing/publishing" side. Maybe I should start charging her royalties

[nomesque]

Originally Posted by MrPLD

Other than marketing and exposure - what is the primary reason people are using other stores to sell their book - considering that you can setup a WWW page + paypal to do it yourself?

Psychology of the ebook buyer is an interesting thing, well worth studying. These are my current theories:

- Some people prefer to buy in bulk, 5-10 ebooks at once. I certainly do. Not sure why, except that it makes payments easier to track. Mind you, I have another reason to do that on Smashwords - I know that authors get slightly larger payments because the paypal fee is spread out over all the books in that transaction.

- Nook and Kindle owners are less likely to be computer-savvy than other ebook-reader-owners, in my experience. This isn't a dig at them - it's because it's possible to use either with very little computer interaction. You can browse the Kindle store from your Kindle, or the B&N ebookstore from your Nook, and buy+download without hooking it up to the computer. These folks are an increasing market right now, and if your ebooks aren't available where they're comfortable shopping, you're not getting sales from them.

One interesting thing that I picked up from the Amazon forums - it's possible to email a kindle-format book to a person's Kindle. You just need the correct email address, something like user0001@free.kindle.com or something. I haven't yet looked into it, but I should.

[MrPLD]

Originally Posted by nomesque

One interesting thing that I picked up from the Amazon forums - it's possible to email a kindle-format book to a person's Kindle. You just need the correct email address, something like user0001@free.kindle.com or something. I haven't yet looked into it, but I should.

[/quote]

Interesting feature, I should look at that. Would it only apply to 3G Kindle users?

[Joseph Mitchell]

MrPLD, I would suggest you could sell your wife's book both ways, as you do normally through your website, and also through amazon's digital text platform and smashwords. They'll keep 30%, but it's 30% of a sale you might never have got from someone who shops for books only at amazon. Amazon availability is a Really Big Deal.

[MrPLD]

Joseph,

Yes, we do have the book at various other locations and we recently uploaded it to Amazon (awaiting them to 'validate' it). It's also up on Goodreads as well. Thanks.

Paul

[Just4kix]

Originally Posted by neilmarr

Don't confuse 'royalties' with retail commissions, James. Much depends on your geographical position. Without an 'official' US presence, the big new online ebook stores won't touch you (unless you jump through hoops). Smashwords is an option, but if you're not US, prepare yourself for 30% retained tax-at-source on each sale, minus Smashwords' own 18% and individual retail commissions. Neil (whose wee publishing house just spent a small fortune in legal fees, etc on US registration so that we can deal direct with the US stores and upload our own, perfectly prepared, ebook versions) Neil

Hi Neil,
Have Amazon explained what they do with the tax they take off for non US residents? We end up earning cents instead of dollars.
And do you know why an e-book priced at $0.99 in the US is $2.99 elsewhere in the world? I believe it is something to do with wireless connectivity, but that's a huge difference, especially when you take the exchange rate into account.

[MrPLD]

Just4Kix, hallo, hoegaan dit?

The $2 does seem to be a surcharge that is afflicting us Southern-Hemisphere types quite a bit. I ended up getting desperate and asked around regarding that only a couple of days ago. It can't be just for the Kindle-3G network because they'll still hit you with it on a normal download or Wifi kindle (or so it seems).

Paul.

[neilmarr]

One thing I can tell you, Just4kix, is that we just signed the Apple contract for iPad's iBookstore (after all the hassle of US registration, buying in Mac hardware, specialist software, etc to get through the door) and they take a 35% cut. That's OK I guess when compared to other retailers (Sony's 40%, for example). But it only applies to sales to US buyers. Sales to 'foreigners' carry a 65% retail commission. Well, that's grubby-fingered shopkeepers for you. And, of course, it's their ball, so there's no room for sinsible negotiation -- you play by their rules or leave the pitch. And folks are still confusing retail commission with royalty. These people are NOT publishers. They're stores. Their input otherwise is zero. Wise up! Neil

[Just4kix]

Howzit Paul, Hello Neil,
I set one of my Kindle books at $2.99, but when I saw it was $4.99 to everyone outside the US I reduced the price to $0.99 (now $2.99 to those outside the US). If anyone has seen a reason given for this disparity will they please let us know.

When I had a book published in the UK they asked for my SA tax details so they could wave the British tax on the royalties. It wasn't a mammoth operation. But just one glance at the hoops you have to go through to avoid paying US tax does not seem worth the trouble (unless you're earning $1000's.)
Have they ever given a reason (sensible or otherwise) for not allowing non US authors to be given the 70%?

[Gwen Morse]

Originally Posted by nomesque

Psychology of the ebook buyer is an interesting thing, well worth studying. These are my current theories:

- Some people prefer to buy in bulk, 5-10 ebooks at once. I certainly do. Not sure why, except that it makes payments easier to track. Mind you, I have another reason to do that on Smashwords - I know that authors get slightly larger payments because the paypal fee is spread out over all the books in that transaction.

I did not know that, that's useful for us buyers to find out!!!

Originally Posted by nomesque

One interesting thing that I picked up from the Amazon forums - it's possible to email a kindle-format book to a person's Kindle. You just need the correct email address, something like user0001@free.kindle.com or something. I haven't yet looked into it, but I should.

I think an email address has to be added to a "whitelist" of acceptable senders via each Kindle owner's account page at Amazon.

[doreenjoy]

About the 30% tax retention someone mentioned upthread. That applies only to non-US citizens. In addition:

1. If the Payee sends a complete form W-8BEN, payers can send 100% of the payee's royalty earnings.

2. If the Payee does NOT have the completed W-8BEN form on file with the payer, the payer must withhold 30% of your royalty payments, to give to the US government.

3. Payees who are citizens of a country that does NOT have a tax treaty with the USA will have 30% withheld because one component of form W-8BEN (the ITIN number) cannot be issued to those citizens.

Now that I've bored you all, I'll go back to my day job. Which, as you can tell from the information above, is scintillating and involves much number crunching.

[MrPLD]

Even more complexity and reasons for me to push harder to sell the eBooks via my own WWW site rather than offshore 3rd parties. :\

Paul.

[M T McGuire]

Originally Posted by MrPLD

Even more complexity and reasons for me to push harder to sell the eBooks via my own WWW site rather than offshore 3rd parties. :\

Paul.

Yeh. You have a point. I'm a little envious! You know, if I had the first clue, the time or the budget to be able to set my e-book up in all the multifarious formats it has to be in without the Smashwords meatgrinder, I'd probably use my own site rather than anyone else. But I'm time and cash poor; there's all the extra marketing and search engine management, too, so for me it's worth using a middle man. I like Smashwords because on the whole, their cuts are realistic and they don't do stupid things like insist on paying me in US dollars and only then, with cheques of more than $100 at at time. Yeh, the meatgrinder's probably not great but it's better than I can do, and Mark Coker still replies, personally, to any support e-mails and that's got to be impressive.

Cheers

MTM

[Gwen Morse]

Originally Posted by M T McGuire

Yeh. You have a point. I'm a little envious! You know, if I had the first clue, the time or the budget to be able to set my e-book up in all the multifarious formats it has to be in without the Smashwords meatgrinder, I'd probably use my own site rather than anyone else. But I'm time and cash poor; there's all the extra marketing and search engine management, too, so for me it's worth using a middle man. I like Smashwords because on the whole, their cuts are realistic and they don't do stupid things like insist on paying me in US dollars and only then, with cheques of more than $100 at at time. Yeh, the meatgrinder's probably not great but it's better than I can do, and Mark Coker still replies, personally, to any support e-mails and that's got to be impressive.

Cheers

MTM

It sounds like international authors ought to consider getting together and setting up an eStore someplace outside the US. Preferably someplace with a strong enough legal system so everyone feels safe, but liberal enough tax law that no author is losing 15%+ on each book for out-of-country residency.

Does such a location exist?

It would obviously be an uphill battle to advertise. Still, it's early enough in the growth of ebooks to be "worth" it.