Selling eBooks

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by thewitt

Though I will not make any attempt to characterize your customers, let me assure you, my customers - hundreds of them a month - are just the average eBook reader.

Many have never side-loaded a document before, however they are virtually all able to do so with only a little assistance if any required.

Your experience is clearly different from my own, and that is fine.

As I believe I said, given that those that will take on downloading from a website and sideloading can do so from your site, and those that can't or won't have the happy option of going somewhere else, where that's all done for them, doesn't it seem that your experience is weighted? You've not ONLY sold books from the website, from your discussion thus far. So, to be fair, you don't actually know whether or not your average customers have "no trouble with sideloading," to paraphrase, as those that might have issues, or who are unwilling to undertake it, simply go to Amazon, etc. Right?

Originally Posted by Nabeel

I just love Hitch's story. A lesson to us all.

Well, you're certainly welcome to it. According to my time sheets, I lost nearly half-a-grand on that book, in terms of time. Time I paid out, in actual salary, for my crew to answer him for the first 30 or so emails; time I spent answering the next 50, and 2 hours+ of my time, doing the screenshots and walk-through--just to get a FILE DOWNLOADED, you understand. (There's over 700 timesheet minutes, in our time-tracking system, JUST in reading and answering emails, not counting making the books, and my final resolution with the screenshots, etc.)

The irony being that he was ecstatic with the file when he finally got it. No changes, no revisions, no nothing. But I'm out all that time and money. No recapturing it.

It doesn't matter how much stuff you hand out saying "we don't provide tech support," or that you charge if someone needs help above what's "usual." As Philip Mudd wrote in "The Head Game," the 50% of people who are below-average in something (doesn't have to be across the board; it can be one area of skill or capability) can't imagine that they are. When a client can't download a book, it's not their fault--it's ours. I was recently treated to a bombastic treatise of how stupid I am, how bad our emails are, how egregiously dreadful our PM system is--because a client wouldn't click the CORRECT link in the email we sent him, even though we put that selfsame instruction in 3x ("please click the BLUE FILENAME LINK to download your file, NOT the Project Name link"). Once I sent the email back with an IMAGE, saying "please click HERE, not THERE," well, then, that was okay. The first 3 emails saying "you're clicking the project link, not the download link," well, that sentence was not viable.


So, here's the thing: I don't CARE if someone sells books from their own website or not. I have no horse in that race. I've been asked by several companies to affiliate with them and sell books from our site, and I won't do it. The headache simply isn't worth the pennies, IMHO. Maybe I'm just unlucky, but I talk to my friendly competitors, and we ALL have the same war stories, about the SAME (or may as well be) clients. I don't believe that my clients are unique. I believe that there are differing tiers of eBook buyers; those that will download from Smashwords or websites, and those that don't.

I don't believe that my 8 clients that tried it and gave up in frustration, in under 6 months, are uniquely stupid, or incapable. Nor that their clients and buyers are. I think it's just that those of us that live on the Net, for one reason or another, (as my business is here) forget that there's still an entire world of people out there that don't. That will answer "Google," if you ask them what their browser is. I wish I had 10 bucks for every client that answered me "Internet" for that question. Or who use AOL for email. Who don't know how to SEND a file (I also deal with this daily).

That's my opinion. And like all opinions, it's worth what it's worth.

Hitch

[thewitt]

You certainly have experience to share.

It does not however, match my own.

22 downloads yesterday. No support questions.. Typical day.

The genre is Fantasy. Most of my customers are 35-45 year old females from the US.

I doubt very much many of them "live on the net" as you put it.

I'll not be closing my online eBook store any time soon, and fully expect the volume to only increase over time.

I'm done with this discussion however, as I see no further value in continuing to share these totally divergent experiences.