Google follows Apple's iTune Store - I hope it pick up more sales

[wannabee]

Originally Posted by anamardoll

Is there an easy way for indie authors to upload their book for sale? The Google eBooks old interface was labyrinthine to me, and seemed to balk when I tried to upload an ePub directly without giving them a PDF version first.

No. By the sound of it you went down the same road I did. Here's a reply I got from support.

Spoiler:

Thank you for your reply. You can upload ePubs directly in your Google Books Partner Program account. Follow these steps to submit an ePub file:

1. Sign into your account at http://books.google.com/partner/?hl=en.
2. Click the 'Google eBooks' tab.
3. Click the 'Manage eBooks' link.
4. Click the pencil icon next to the book for which you intend to upload an ePub file.
5. Please make sure that the checkbox has been clicked next to 'Enable Google eBooks sales for this title.'
6. At the bottom of the page, refer to the 'File updates' section and click the 'Browse' or 'Choose file' button.
7. Select the ePub for your book and upload.
8. Once you upload your ePub, the file name will appear under the 'File updates' section of the page.

If your ePubs are larger than 20 MB or you are submitting a large number of files, please mail us your ePubs on a CD or DVD to the following address, and we will be happy to pass your files along to our specialists:

You have to follow the naming convention with ISBN file names like:

1234567891013_backcover.jpg
1234567891013_frontcover.jpg
1234567891013.epub

Then log off and come back the next day because that's how long it take for you books to populate the "manage books" area under the "eBooks" tab. Then you can click the pencil and add descriptions, prices etc.

When entering ISBNs they request an eISBN and then go and file it as the print ISBN. Then the eBook ends up with the same ISBN sometimes. I haven't quite worked that bit out.

But BY GOD they make it soooooo difficult. It took me months before I got books on Google in stead of hours for the other stores.

Originally Posted by MoodRing

I am a little confused with how you are generating more sales off amazon and Itunes then?

This site is inciteful for the google vs Itunes debate.

The longer the books have been online the better the sales are doing. They are almost doubling every month. I'm not doing anything different for any of the stores. I guess Amazon and iTunes have many more browsers. I haven't heard from them yet but we're only eight months in.