# For those looking to self-publish



## JCFarnham (Jul 30, 2012)

Now, this is only the testement of one author, a travel writer, and not someone I've ever heard of before finding this post. I'm not sure if this have already been linked to, but I just thought it might be worth having this in a dedicated thread.

Amazon’s markup of digital delivery to indie authors is ~129,000% | Andrew Hyde

The practical upshoot is this: 

Even though one epub delivery service may _seem_ the best, you need to weigh in other factors. Like Apple's non-existent customer service (the contact us page linking to a FAQ is always the alleged thing...), or Amazon's large take from your sales (30% plus a delivery cost), or Nook seemingly non-existent consumer base compared to the others.

There's always something to dislike it seems haha.

I'm not making a comment myself, however as I haven't spent a moment looking into this. All I want is to point this blog post out so you lovely people can delve into it yourselves before you "pick what's best".

... As I will be doing when I finally have something to publish


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## Steerpike (Jul 30, 2012)

Interesting article.

I'm still going with Amazon being the best market for me. I saw that the author noted that Nook had the absolute worst sales (1%) of all of the formats he tried. I found the same thing when I had my book available at multiple outlets. Nothing at all happened on the Nook end of things. Maybe that will change with time.

I like the idea of selling Kindle books direct from an author's web site, but I can't drive nearly as much traffic to my site and I wonder how many people would be put off by not having the convenience of one-click from Amazon, and the book shows up on the device.


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## Telcontar (Jul 30, 2012)

I'm afraid to say that this article is a poor "cautionary" tale.  I read it weeks ago, and basically the author is an idiot.

The author of the article is using a book which weighed in at something like 18mb. Amazon very clearly states their delivery cost per megabyte, which is (I believe) 15 cents for US eBook sales and something comparable for the other regions. 18 * .15 == 2.70, which is right about what he was paying per copy downloaded.

He is only railing about it because he didn't read the part about delivery costs. It was very easy to understand and for the vast number of fiction writers publishing novels, will not be a problem. My novel has two good quality pictures and is 135k words, and I pay 11 cents per sale for delivery costs. No problem.


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## JCFarnham (Jul 30, 2012)

Telcontar said:


> He is only railing about it because he didn't read the part about delivery costs. It was very easy to understand and for the vast number of fiction writers publishing novels, will not be a problem. My novel has two good quality pictures and is 135k words, and I pay 11 cents per sale for delivery costs. No problem.



I was wary of as much. 

Still, my reasons for posting this where to draw Scribe's attention to the proper ins and outs of the e-markets "seedy underbelly". I was of course hoping that some knowledgable people, like yourself, would weigh in and give the real story 

Just like I'd hate to be stiffed, I'd hate for others to fall into that trap to.


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## Telcontar (Jul 30, 2012)

JCFarnham said:


> Just like I'd hate to be stiffed, I'd hate for others to fall into that trap to.



Indeed. The real cautionary tale here is a reminder that that publishing of any kind is a business. If you are thinking of self-publishing, you need to realize that you are actually thinking of _starting a business._ Every time you hit "Accept" on a set of terms & conditions (such as the ones you must accept at Smashwords and Amazon) you had better _read_ them first, because you are actually _entering into a legal contract._

This guy was a fool. Let's not follow his example.


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## danr62 (Jul 30, 2012)

Not only that, but anyone who thinks that Amazon taking 30% is an idiot. Not many other ways to earn 70% royalty on your books. I suppose you could just sell it from your own site but without Amazon's huge customer base and their helpful algos you're losing out big time. So this guy's a double idiot.


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