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they replied that the average person on the street has heard of Amazon and Google Books and thats it.
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I think very few people have heard of Google books, and I don't know anyone who's ever downloaded anything through them. Amazon and Barnes & Nobles still have a corner on web book sales. Borders sells quite a bit online too, but most of their business is still brick and mortar I believe. Now that they have their own e-reader though, that will likely change.
POD is a tougher nut to crack. There are places like LuLu that do a pretty good job, but unfortunately, even if you list your own publishing company, when the book comes out, online bookstores will still know (and say) that the book is avaliable as a "print on demand title". That automatically puts a negative spin on it. It would be nice if someone in the POD inductry would wise-up about this and find a way to provide a POD service without anyone knowing your company is a POD publisher, so that the general public would simply think that B&N or Amazon or even a local bookstore would just be out of stock on the title. Having it listed as POD is really the kiss of death in my opinion. Most people will turn their noses up at it.