Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
That's exactly what sites like Mobipocket do. Anyone can sign up with them and upload their books. You may, of course, not consider the 35% of list price that they pay you to be "reasonable", but they do do a lot for you, including offering the book for sale via dozens of resellers. I consider it a pretty fair deal, personally.
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35% isn't a fair deal. Let me explain why.
I publish a small number of paper books (I couldn't persuade the rights holders to go for ebooks).
"Desbarollda, The Waltzing Mouse" is a print-on-demand book, printed by Lightning Source, sold by Amazon. (
UK link and
US Link for those interested)
The list price is £5.99. The split of that price is:
20% (£1.20) to Amazon for ordering from LS, storing and handling, collecting payment, customer services, etc.
30% (£1.78) to Lightning Source for printing.
50% (£3.01) to me, out of which I try to cover my origination costs and pay the rights holders.
If I did get permission to make it into an ebook, and set the SAME list price (a bad idea IMO), the price split would be:
65% (£3.89) to Amazon for the same as for the paperbook, less the physical storage and handling, but plus some server space and bandwidth
35% (£2.10) to me.
How can Amazon possibly justify charging over three times as much for 'handling' an ebook as for a pbook? It just doesn't make sense.
Now, if Amazon only charged the same 20%, I could set a list price of £3.75 for the ebook and still make the same profit per copy.
Amazon's terms for small publishers and ebooks are a complete rip-off.