Quote:
Originally Posted by teh603
Personally, I don't have $99 to blow every time I release a short story or something, so its cheaper to do my own layouts and release a new cover when I get the resources, than it is to bet more money than I can easily afford on a service that might not even help me.
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If I understand how it works (please correct me if I don't), and presuming that you are aiming for price points where most e-book stores will give you 70% of the proceeds (generally $2.99 and up, from what I read), you'll pay about $100 to Smashwords on $1000 in sales ($1000 - $300 for the e-book store's take = $700, with 15% of that being $105).
Of course, if you're selling at $0.99, and losing 50%+ to some e-book stores, then you would need maybe $2000-3000 in sales to hit the $100 level, possibly even more depending on how well it was selling in what e-book stores (and the fact that Smashwords also has to deduct credit card/paypal fees off the top in some cases too).
If I were releasing content for $0.99 or $1.99, or if it was content that I believed was of appeal only to a very small niche, I would almost certainly prefer Smashwords over a service that charges a flat rate. If however the book was of novel-length, and I felt had potential to sell $1000+ in total at $2.99+ per copy, an up-front flate rate like Bookbaby sounds pretty good.
I honestly have no idea if the average indie author is doing anything close to those kind of numbers through Smashwords. It would be interesting to find out, actually. Does anyone know what kind of range of sales numbers are common for indie authors?