We ignored most of the new eBook distribution channels for years since we have our own network and why send a user to Amazon or BN or iTunes to buy our books when we can process the purchase from one of hundreds of sites set up to sell books and music and films.
Then we started to try that garbage at Amazon and due to their BS exclusives deals, we ended up for a while with only books on Amazon and we still haven’t put all of our catalog on the store.
Sure they sell some eBooks at Amazon but we never tested properly BN or iTunes having almost no eBooks on those sites but very few and when we let Amazon have exclusives for some we pulled all books from BN and iTunes.
Not that happy with Amazon over they force you to sell for $9.99 or less or you lose a lot of the sale and we have gotten 29.99 to 99.99 for our titles for almost 20 years due to many being esoteric works that don’t have mass appeal so books in these genres sell minor numbers but you get nice per unit deals and with Amazon all the books had to be a lousy $9.99 or less, so after a few months or Amazon I said screw it and raised my books to $150 and $199 bucks on Amazon so we could net our normal prices and I went back to using my network to sell at $49.99 or so most titles. With only 35% earnings from Amazon on eBooks over $9.99, at $150.00 bucks we still made our 50 bucks profit.
Since we’re in discussions now with the top 5 book publishers in the world to put some of the major titles in print, we couldn’t show books with almost no sales due to being priced at $150 to $199 bucks at Amazon and later we put BN at same price, to force people to our network, the books on these sites would say, “Sorry due to fees from this distributor this book is priced at this level to net our normal retail prices”.
So for a long time sales were almost non-existent at AMZ and BN, then we lowered all eBooks to $9.99 which is still high compared to most of the crap sold on these sites that are not scholarly researched works on ancient religions or civilizations or esoteric genre at all, plus they didn’t come from my divine quill.
LOL
Anyway, we finally got a few titles on iTunes and we are seeing Sales, which compared to all the titles on BN and Amazon means now we have to put all major titles on iTunes since I didn’t think they sold many books, but the past year or so I’ve been reading articles that iTunes actually SELLS eBooks pretty well now and depending on the Genre and type of publisher it is some publishers main distribution channel.
Since we starting pushing books at $9.99 BN is also out performing Amazon if you consider how few titles BN has compared to Amazon of our catalog.
So DO NOT FALL FOR AMAZON’S EXCLUSIVE BULLSHIT.
BN is now sell eBooks very well for their Nook and iTunes has more iPads around the world than Amazon has Kindles.
Oh, if you are an indie author, try our main eBooks site, it sells most of my books. Plus we can plug your books and then send them TO YOUR SITE TO SELL at whatever price you want and we keep none of the sale. You pay only a minor fee per month to be on the site and we are in discussions with the top 5 publishing companies to start to put all their books on our network and send the traffic to them directly so they can bypass the big 3 distribution channels that keep so much of the books sales. The site is
Oh the company with the least distribution costs to us out of the Big 3 channels of Amazon, BN and iTunes is iTunes they take around 22% off the top, BN takes 35% and Amazon takes 30% plus fees per download size which can make the percentage outrageous if the book has lots of images and is large in digital size.
So the bottom line is, iTunes is worth putting your book titles on to sell if you are a publisher or Indie author. But having your own site and keeping the entire sale is the best model and that’s what we have done for years and now 1 eBooks was designed to bypass the usual sites that charge distribution fees that are too high, if you pay a minor fee per book per month, you can send the traffic to your site and do the sale via Paypal or Bitcoin or your own Merchant Account.
If you write books you need to control sales from your own site especially digital sales, so traffic to your site you can monetize with your own books, JK Rowling has maintained eBook rights to her book and she is making a fortune selling from her site.
You do not need old world publishers today as an author, you can make a site and sell, you just need traffic from your fans and if you get media exposure like radio shows, you’re foolish to sell your eBooks through any channel like Amazon where they take so much money and limit you to $9.99 or less.
So give iTunes a shot if you are stuck with Amazon, they have so many authors selling CRAP now you get lost in their spam index of books.
Most of the books at Amazon as far as their eBooks are concerned are not even Books, most of them wouldn’t get published if it were not for Amazon and most of them sell almost no copies due to the books being terrible and having bad digital formatting and even the free samples are done so poorly by Amazon it’s why most eBooks now do not sell.
iBooks by Apple are for iPads and they actually have a quality control aspect to it that they kick back some books over image quality and such.
Plus Amazon has a lot of traffic for old world products, whereas iTunes is Music and eBooks and Apps only.
In my opinion iTunes will eventually out sell Amazon and BN as far as eBooks are concerned due to iPads having such a huge market share.
