The Best Place to Sell Your eBook

According to the Book Business blog and GalleyCat website (and probably a few score of other “hot media sources”), “Amazon is the most lucrative ebook sales channel.” This is news? But…

…notice they didn’t say the “best ebook sales channel” or the “smartest ebook sales channel?” Nope. In today’s marketplace Amazon is the Internet convenience store where everyone shops. It’s a lot like saying that the best place for pizza in Anytown, USA is the local convenience store. They’re on the main street, you can get gas, candy bars, and a soda while you wait. But if you live in New York or Chicago (or anywhere for that matter), you know better than to go to a convenience store for a truly great pie.

Chefs open restaurants. Lawyers, dentists, and doctors open practices. Artists open studios. Sometimes an artist might sell through a gallery or a broker. But they know the best sales are from their own studio, website, or a booth at an artists’ event, directly into their customers’ hands. And so are yours.

Availability… Good. Free conversions… Bad!

As a self-published author it’s desirable to have your book products available through popular retailers. Distribution and availability can mean credibility to your customers. As any art buyer will tell you, you can often cut a better deal when you buy direct. If you could sell your masterpieces directly to your readers why wouldn’t you? Why aren’t you?

Sure, some of those sites will lure you with free ebook conversions, where they do a straight conversion without a care about your book’s presentation. You get what you pay for. Free ebook conversions aren’t worth the risk to your product’s integrity. Here at www.selfpublishing.com, you have the ability to review and revise your ebook’s proof before you move it to the marketplace.

High Traffic Zones

If you’re not marketing your printed book or ebook edition, and counting instead on the stumble factor—the likelihood of someone stumbling over your title on Amazon, BN.com, or some other site—it probably won’t matter where people don’t buy. Sales won’t be a problem, nor will they be on your radar. It’s all about where you want people to buy your book. If you have a website of your own, you should be directing people there to learn more about your title and buy it directly for a lower cost or value-added deal.

Cut out the retailer whenever possible and you’ll make more money. You can also sell it for less than suggested retail or bundle it with value-added items or resources that are not available from Amazon or any retailer. Make sure your website is the high traffic zone and let your smart customers choose to buy direct and everyone else can get less for more at their favorite retailer.

50 Shades of Luck

Yes, lightning strikes. There are extraordinary examples of a word-of-mouth-tsunami of interest and sales that occur for every one-in-a-million titles. But there are, after all, lots of smart authors out there making their own lucky by making serious marketing plans and executing them. If you’ve put out a great product, it doesn’t really matter where your happy customer bought it. What matters is that when they tell people about it, folks can easily find your book and buy it. Again, if you make it worth their while to buy direct, why wouldn’t they?

• Make your own luck.
• Make sure your book is available through several locations.
• Direct people to your website with smart, targeted marketing to create a high traffic zones.
• Sell your ebooks directly whenever possible to pocket the most profit!

Let Amazon and others be the backup plan. Good luck!

Availability… Good. Free conversions… Bad!

As a self-published author it’s desirable to have your book products available through popular retailers. Distribution and availability can mean credibility to your customers. Sure, some of those sites will lure you with free ebook conversions, where they do a straight conversion with a care as to how your book’s presentation. You get what you pay for. Free ebook conversions aren’t worth the risk to your product’s integrity. Here at www.selfpublishing.com, you have the ability to review and revise your ebook’s proof before it’s pushed out into the marketplace.

Ed Matte

Having majored in Graphic Arts at RIT in the late sixties, Ed Matte has been involved in printing for nearly forty years. Working with top ad agencies, his experience as a high end scanner operator and prepress technician has spanned the commercial printing, book printing, packaging, corrugated and large format printing industries. As Director of the Prepress and Professional special interest group for the Boston Computer Society, he has taught a prepress course for designers at Mass Art and held numerous seminars on solving print related issues at both Montserrat College of Art and MIT. Always looking to future technological advances, he is currently involved with Self Publishing and the intricacies of Ebook conversion. With his experience in scanning and color, he also currently specializes in photo restoration and repair. E-mail Ed at edmatte@msn.com.

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