Quote:
Originally Posted by pittendrigh
Has there been any discussion of cloud storage and a cooperative site for authors, where sellers would pay a monthly fee to list their epubs and (after that) collect 100% of the retail sale instead of what ever it is Amazon and the others offer (is it really only 35% for ebooks?).
This seems like an obvious idea. Is there such a place?
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And why would authors do that? What's the foot traffic? SEO? What's their upside? Compared to paying a relatively nominal fee to Amazon, B&N, Kobo, etc.--with millions and millions of people browsing for books--for hosting their books?
I'm sorry, but I've seen this conversation come up over the years and it never goes anywhere, because publishing is the business of posting books to sell, for
MONEY. Not for fun. You make money through enough people seeing and then buying your book.
You're effectively talking about a "new Amazon." Old Smashwords was the first real eBook store and it's gone by the wayside, effectively. Sure, they have some sales, but nothing like the others.
If you can lure millions of people to your Co-op bookstore, great. Otherwise, you're not doing much for those authors. It's
just another website and there are already thousands--
thousands--of small online bookstores, all trying to do basically what you're talking about.
At how many of them, how many of those small, less-well-known eBook stores, exactly,
do YOU shop for eBooks????? Where the authors earn more? How many of those eBooks, at those stores,
have YOU bought? And if you don't, and you haven't, why would anyone else?
Hitch