PS: sponsor poetry
visit Poetry Sponsors
STEPHANIE CHANDLER is a small business expert and author of FROM ENTREPRENEUR TO INFOPRENEUR
(Wiley, Dec. 2006). Visit her website to
access hundreds of resources for entrepreneurs |
STEPHANIE CHANDLER
New Way to Sell eBooks on Amazon.com
Since Amazon.com acquired Mobipocket in April 2005, the online bookseller has
made dramatic changes to its ebook strategy. Publishers and authors used to be
required to set up an account with Lightning Source to list ebooks with Amazon,
but now ebooks are managed by Mobipocket.
To complicate matters, the ebook version of a title is no longer listed with
its print version. In fact, Amazon no longer indexes ebooks on its site at all.
When you browse Amazon’s book categories and click on “ebooks,” you are
directed to a link that takes you out of Amazon.com and onto Mobipocket.com.
The reality is that ebooks are no longer actually sold on Amazon.com at all, but
directly through its subsidiary.
There is a debate brewing on blogs across cyberspace about this controversial
strategy since many consumers prefer the old method of purchasing ebooks
directly from Amazon. But unless Amazon decides to change its strategy again,
publishers and authors must follow the new policy to list their ebooks for sale.
Amazon would like to manage the process of approving ebook publishers and
asks publishers to send an email to digitalrights@amazon.com with the following
information: *What publishing company do you represent? (If you are the author,
please enter “author” and the name of the publishing company you work with)
*Your contact information: Name: Professional title: Business address: Email
address: Phone number: *Please list the ISBNs of the books you are considering
making available as eBooks: *For these titles listed, do you own the digital
rights (rights to sell books in a digital format ) ? Several days after receipt of this
information, Amazon will send you an email with further instructions for
registering a publisher account with Mobipocket. But you can jump ahead in
the process by following these steps:
1. Register your publisher account:
http://www.mobipocket.com/eBookBase/en/Homepage/apply.asp?Type=Publisher
2. Review and sign the publisher agreement:
http://www.mobipocket.com/eBookBase/en/Homepage/pub_agreement.asp
3. Fax the agreement back to Mobipocket in France at 33 148 25 90 07. According
to the digital rights staff at Amazon, this is the only method that is available for
returning signed agreements (they won’t accept agreements via email). After
receipt of your signed agreement, Mobipocket will send you an email with
an account login and password.
4. While you wait for your login information, you can convert your
ebooks to Mobipocket format. Download the free conversion software at:
http://www.mobipocket.com/en/DownloadSoft/ProductDetailsCreator.asp?edition=Publisher.
The program can convert MS Word, text or PDF documents. Be sure to examine your
newly created ebook with Mobipocket’s preview tool since the formatting does not
always convert correctly. You may need to make some adjustments to text spacing
or font sizes.
5. As soon as you receive your login information for your publisher account, you
can manage your publisher account at
http://www.mobipocket.com/ebookbase/en/homepage/Logon.asp
This is where you will upload your ebook and set your desired retail price. Keep
in mind that Mobipocket retains 50% of the retail price as their royalty payment.
You will also give up another 10% of the price if you allow affiliate sales.
6. Once you have verified that the ebook looks good and your price is set,
you must choose to activate the file. This process makes the ebook available
to buyers at Mobipocket.com and through their network of partners. Conversely,
if you want to remove your ebook from Mobipocket’s catalog, you can deselect
the “activate” option.
Though many of us would like the ability to submit ebooks in PDF format, as
well as see ebook titles listed with their print counterparts on Amazon, for now
we can only hope that Amazon modifies its process in the near future. In the
meantime, the Mobipocket publisher account costs nothing to implement and
the listing process, though tedious, is relatively easy to complete. Perhaps with
Mobipocket’s network of partners, the extra effort will be worthwhile when it
comes time to receive royalty payments for our ebook sales.
|
 |
|
|
|
