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Originally Posted by thewitt
I sell eBooks from my online store every day. I get one or two requests for support a month, and generally sending them to the FAQ for instructions on how to side-load their book resolves it. For the one in a hundred it doesn't I'll gift them the book on Amazon and move on rather than try to teach them how to use their computer. That costs me Amazon's percentage plus their delivery fee, which is cheaper than paying someone to support them.
I'm not sure what the crisis was when you tried this, but my users seem to have very little problem with side-loading their books.
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The "crisis" was that the client couldn't download the file, in the first place, from his email. Period. We don't run a "web-store," we run an ebook-conversion business. Our clients get download links in their emails, just like 90+% of most online software stores. Fully 25% of them have issues with downloads, in the first place; another 30+% can't figure out how to sideload their books to ADE, Kindle Previewer, Kindle for PC, etc. Almost NONE of them know how to sideload a book to their devices.
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It's no different than what Smashwords does. All of those books need to be side-loaded unless you buy from a device that's smart enough to take the download and put it into your eReader.
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Yes, of course it's no different than what SW does. I never said it was. I simply said that while you mayn't get requests for tech support, perhaps your readership is the type of readership that tends toward Indy books, buying from websites, and sideloading. For example--I'm quite sure that the vast majority of people who post here at MR would never have an iota of trouble buying a book from a blog, and getting it to their designated reader/device.
But that's not the same thing as the general public.
If the OP is writing books aimed at a somewhat techy crowd, then great. But what if he's writing books geared for older audiences? What if the bulk of his readership have AOL email addresses? (Yes, those still exist--many of my clients have them). I know that Amazon has been continually surprised at the burden of tech support that they bear, vis-à-vis the KDP, and the folks there that can't upload a file.
A good 70+% of my clients actually don't know what "downloading" IS. I'm not being derogatory, I am simply stating facts. They think that double-clicking a Word file, from within an email, and having it launch, in Word, on their computers, is "downloading." They don't know how to download and save a file that doesn't have a program already on their systems to launch it. if it can't be done with a double-click, they can't save it. And those that do save the file, then can't find it, because they don't know where their downloads folder IS, on their Macs and PCs.
I'm happy for you that your experience is better. But I'm not kidding when I say that we had 8 clients that were bound and determined to try it, and one of them went so far as to buy ACS (all $6200 of it)...and as I said, not one of them lasted 6 months, because they had typical readers as clients. Not sci-fi readers, not bloggers, etc., just regular old readers. So, my sampling is simply those 8, plus my own experience after 7 years of having my firm, with 2,000+ clients.
Lastly, I'd note that perhaps you don't have issues because the ones who aren't comfortable already buying from a website just go to Amazon to buy your books? Thus, you only get a few that brave it who don't already know how? And so, if that's the case, it makes perfect sense that you wouldn't get more than a request or two a month for help--those that can, buy from you, those that can't, go to Amazon. Therefore, Amazon is already handling the clients that would be problematic for you, without you even knowing it, because the issue is handled during the buyer's purchase decision. That would be a perfect set-up, for just those reasons, but the OP was talking about NOT having his/her books on Amazon at all, from my understanding.
Offered simply FWIW.
Hitch