Selling ebooks directly from my own site?

ladywiththepants · 07-19-2011, 03:52 PM

Can I sell my ebooks directly from my own website? When a person downloads my ebook from my website, how does it get into the right format for their reader? Do I have to have all the various formats like kobo, sony, ibook, etc? Can anyone help?

Toxaris · 07-19-2011, 04:07 PM

Actually, you need one or two formats. ePUB and mobi/Kindle. If you have done the formatting correctly, it wouldn't be a problem if it is either Kobo, Sony or another ePUB reader.

JSWolf · 07-19-2011, 04:09 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Toxaris

Actually, you need one or two formats. ePUB and mobi/Kindle. If you have done the formatting correctly, it wouldn't be a problem if it is either Kobo, Sony or another ePUB reader.

It's possible there might have to be a version specifically for iBooks. But in order to know that, you'd have to test the ePub with iBooks.

DaleDe · 07-19-2011, 04:49 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ladywiththepants

Can I sell my ebooks directly from my own website? When a person downloads my ebook from my website, how does it get into the right format for their reader? Do I have to have all the various formats like kobo, sony, ibook, etc? Can anyone help?

You would need the ability to accept payment and collect taxes. I would suggest you get a company to set up your site. It is not an easy homebrew.

For formats, ePub and Mobi (Kindle) are two formats you may want to support. Many authors have set up sites for their books. Some of them are listed in a special category on the eBook Stores page of our wiki so you can visit them and see how they did it. Generally the user purchases a book and then has a choice as to the format they wish to down. You should have a record of the sales in case they need to redownload them. You pre-build the various formats with different links.

https://wiki.mobileread.com/wiki/E-bo...#Authors_Sites

Dale

DSpider · 07-20-2011, 06:02 AM

From my experience, regular ePub files work ok with iBooks.

You could also go with PDF. AFAIK most reading devices have a resolution of 800x600, and apparently the page size matters... So PDF could be an option.

neilmarr · 07-20-2011, 06:49 AM

Hello there LWTP. The digital formats you need are Mobi (for Kindle), ePub (pretty well industry standard now) and PDF (for those still reading on PCs, laptops, etc.

Sounds to me that you might need technical help in preparing these. There are experts on this very site who offer extremely good rates (I can recommend one member. if you'd like to drop me a PM or email and I'll put you in touch for advice -- we're in no way connected, by the way, other than as fellow members of Mobile Read).

Also you need a secure payment system in place for credit cards and PayPal, which can be complex and expensive to do properly.

Whatever you do, though, and however successful your wee own store is, you can bet your boots that the huge majority of your ebook sales will be made through the big third-party retailers at varying sales commissions.

You don't say where you're located, but that is a major consideration when wishing to deal with these stores. And some have formatting requirements that go beyond the single process of uploading a single file. An alternative is an aggregator (like http://www.smashwords.com)) that will automatically format for you and try to distribute to major stores at an 18% commission on gross.

If you'd like to see how your own finished store might look and sell books, visit the bookstore section of my independent publisher's site (linked below) and click on any cover shown to take you to its buying page, download options, book notes, author bio, reviews and free extracts.

Luck with the project, LWTP, and very best wishes. Neil

jbcohen · 07-20-2011, 08:26 AM

Since you have gotten a lot of advice on the formats, I will not speak to that instead I will expand on some other topics of interest. Homestead currently will do the web site for your for $10 for a basic store, $30 - $60 for a more advanced store. homestead.com.

Next another thing to think about is using Open Office, which is free, and is a free version of MS Office that speaks approximatly 110 different langueges including Spanish, German, Hungarian, Russian, Tagalong, Yiddish and Zulu. Open Office will provide you the ability to offer any of your books in any of 110 different langueges. Your customer can order a particular book in say Bulgarian or Tibetan and you can send it to them in that languege.

DaleDe · 07-20-2011, 10:43 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ladywiththepants

Thank you everyone, this is all very helpful. I have a website already in place - [promotional link deleted - MODERAT0R] and currently sell products from my site using paypal. I paid to have my site set up... if I had to do it myself ...well lets just say I would still be working on it.

So this morning I connected my phone and dragged my epub files for my two books into my iphone library and they successfully loaded into my iphone - I also have Stanza on my phone and they successfully loaded there as well. I already validated them on three press.org successfully.

I am still confused as to the two formats - if I need mobi and epub - I assume that these are two separate files that I need to give my web guy for him to link the files on my website? (I use ID - taught myself that last month) and have created book files - how does the file have to be different - when I provide this to my web manager? Can anyone explain this?

Thanks again.

ePub is the almost universal format used by the vast majority of eBook readers and software is available for most computers to read files in this format. You can read about ePub on our wiki.

Unfortunately one company does not support ePub, that company is Amazon and none of their readers will read ePub. They have their own format they call AZW but it is really MOBI since they purchased Mobipocket. you can read about MOBI on our wiki as well. Since Amazon is a major player, it would be a good idea to also support the MOBI format.

Dale

jbcohen · 07-20-2011, 10:57 AM

Added to dale's comments:

Best way to accomplish this would be to download and install Calibre.

JSWolf · 08-02-2011, 02:31 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by DSpider

From my experience, regular ePub files work ok with iBooks.

You could also go with PDF. AFAIK most reading devices have a resolution of 800x600, and apparently the page size matters... So PDF could be an option.

PDF is not an option. It never was.

Not all ePub works OK with iBooks. You have to test them and see if they work. They mostly work, but not always.

07-19-2011, 03:52 PM	#1
ladywiththepants Junior Member Posts: 8 Karma: 12 Join Date: Jul 2011 Device: none	Selling ebooks directly from my own site? Can I sell my ebooks directly from my own website? When a person downloads my ebook from my website, how does it get into the right format for their reader? Do I have to have all the various formats like kobo, sony, ibook, etc? Can anyone help?

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07-19-2011, 04:07 PM	#2
Toxaris Wizard Posts: 4,520 Karma: 121692313 Join Date: Oct 2009 Location: Heemskerk, NL Device: PRS-T1, Kobo Touch, Kobo Aura	Actually, you need one or two formats. ePUB and mobi/Kindle. If you have done the formatting correctly, it wouldn't be a problem if it is either Kobo, Sony or another ePUB reader.

07-20-2011, 06:02 AM	#5
DSpider Evangelist Posts: 450 Karma: 343115 Join Date: Nov 2009 Location: Romania Device: PW2 2014	From my experience, regular ePub files work ok with iBooks. You could also go with PDF. AFAIK most reading devices have a resolution of 800x600, and apparently the page size matters... So PDF could be an option.

07-20-2011, 06:49 AM	#6
neilmarr neilmarr Posts: 7,215 Karma: 6000059 Join Date: Apr 2009 Location: Monaco-Menton, France Device: sony	Hello there LWTP. The digital formats you need are Mobi (for Kindle), ePub (pretty well industry standard now) and PDF (for those still reading on PCs, laptops, etc. Sounds to me that you might need technical help in preparing these. There are experts on this very site who offer extremely good rates (I can recommend one member. if you'd like to drop me a PM or email and I'll put you in touch for advice -- we're in no way connected, by the way, other than as fellow members of Mobile Read). Also you need a secure payment system in place for credit cards and PayPal, which can be complex and expensive to do properly. Whatever you do, though, and however successful your wee own store is, you can bet your boots that the huge majority of your ebook sales will be made through the big third-party retailers at varying sales commissions. You don't say where you're located, but that is a major consideration when wishing to deal with these stores. And some have formatting requirements that go beyond the single process of uploading a single file. An alternative is an aggregator (like http://www.smashwords.com)) that will automatically format for you and try to distribute to major stores at an 18% commission on gross. If you'd like to see how your own finished store might look and sell books, visit the bookstore section of my independent publisher's site (linked below) and click on any cover shown to take you to its buying page, download options, book notes, author bio, reviews and free extracts. Luck with the project, LWTP, and very best wishes. Neil

07-20-2011, 08:26 AM	#7
jbcohen Wizard Posts: 3,030 Karma: 11196738 Join Date: Oct 2010 Location: Where am I? Device: Kindle Paperwhite Signature edition and a Samsung S24 Ultra	Since you have gotten a lot of advice on the formats, I will not speak to that instead I will expand on some other topics of interest. Homestead currently will do the web site for your for $10 for a basic store, $30 - $60 for a more advanced store. homestead.com. Next another thing to think about is using Open Office, which is free, and is a free version of MS Office that speaks approximatly 110 different langueges including Spanish, German, Hungarian, Russian, Tagalong, Yiddish and Zulu. Open Office will provide you the ability to offer any of your books in any of 110 different langueges. Your customer can order a particular book in say Bulgarian or Tibetan and you can send it to them in that languege.

07-20-2011, 10:57 AM	#9
jbcohen Wizard Posts: 3,030 Karma: 11196738 Join Date: Oct 2010 Location: Where am I? Device: Kindle Paperwhite Signature edition and a Samsung S24 Ultra	Added to dale's comments: Best way to accomplish this would be to download and install Calibre.

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