Quote:
Originally Posted by pwalker8
Two pieces.
First, an ebook store needs to have contracts with various publishers. We use Big 5 as short hand, but this is basically all the publishers and imprints that one normally sees in the major bookstores. That's a fair number of contracts that need to be negotiated.
The second is backlist books, whose rights may belong to the publisher, or to the author. That's a lot different people and a lot of contracts.
You need a pretty big legal department and back office to arrange all that, plus set up the infrastructure to support getting the various ebooks in the right formats.
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Okay. This partly explains why only big players (like Amazon) have a successful store. It doesn't say anything why indie-sales are suffering (if they truly are). I thin the other reason the Amazon store has done so well is the integration with the Kindle platform. But that's fairly clear and not really what interests me.