Pubit by Barnes & Noble lets Indie Authors Sell Ebooks Directly

Yeah, it’s here, it’s here at last. Pubit by Barnes & Noble is finally coming this summer 2010 which means Indie authors like you and me can upload our ebooks to the bookseller and sell ebooks. Hooray! Except wait… my ebooks are already on Barnes & Noble. They have been for months (see here and here and here). It’s a little thing called Smashwords.com that gets my ebooks formatted into every format (epub, mobi, lrf, pdb, etc) and sells ebooks with 85% royalties to me and they also get my ebooks into Barnes & Noble, Amazon, Apple’s iBookstore, Sony and Kobo. It’s also a free service.
So should I be excited about Barnes & Noble’s Pubit or just kinda ho-hum? I guess it’s sorta exciting but since I’m already there, maybe not so much.
The skinny on Pubit is that it will sell ebooks in epub format (good for Nook, iPad and many readers but not that Kindle thing from a major competitor). Authors will probably get a 70% royalty which seems to be the evolving standard with major retailers as Amazon moves to 70% this July and Apple is already there. Ebooks will be encrypted with DRM (Digital Rights Management) which fights piracy and has plenty of controversy already. Customers will be able to browse ebooks in their entirety in the store (not at home obviously) just as they would be able to browse a paper book.
I went ahead and signed up for notification when Pubit is ready. What the heck, let’s see if authors can get double shelf placement and determine if the sales and royalties are better with B & N directly or with B & N via Smashwords.
Some final thoughts. What took B & N so long to make this decision? Maybe a little something called Apple’s iBookstore or Google Editions or that darned competitor Amazon Kindle just made them feel like they were missing the boat. Even though they weren’t. Hmm…sorta like a paradox.
Oh well, time to sell the ebooks. As usual.

Results after 1 month of Uploading to Ebook Retailers

Okay, it’s been one month since I uploaded How to Make, Market and Sell Ebooks – All for FREE to several different online retailers. Let’s go through a quick summary of how that’s going.

Smashwords.com. There have been 42 sample downloads and 3 sales. One customer has already reviewed the book with 4 out of 5 stars, so that was cool. I wish the sales were higher, but maybe that’ll come in time. Fortunately the ebook was accepted into their Premium Program which means it’s being distributed to Barnes&Noble, Sony, Kobo, Amazon and Apple this week. That’s the best reason to publish with Smashwords! Thank you, Mark Coker. I sure hope someone reads my ebook on an Apple iPad soon.

Scribd.com. The sample 35% of the ebook has been viewed 265 times. Just last week I was notified of 1 sale, which actually was a surprise because I thought scribd readers were die-hard freebie types. I’m also happy with the views since I’ve had samples of my novels on scribd for 6 months and they’ve received only a hundred more views. Perhaps the latest How to book will surpass them next month in less than 30% of the time.

MyEbook.com. Supposedly, the ebook there has been viewed 643 times (the sample 35% anyway). There have yet to be any sales. A part of me is highly skeptical of the views number because it seems to gain around 20 views every single day even though it’s been 4 weeks removed from the top pages of latest released. How could it keep getting so many daily views without ever generating a reader comment or a sale? I have to say, I suspect there may be something going on at myebook.com and so I’ll keep an eye on this.

Amazon.com. It took a while before it went live so this is the only site where it’s probably been closer to 4 weeks than a month. The only stat they provide is for sales (and returns) so I can only report 6 sales so far in 4 weeks. Not horrible but not nearly what I was hoping for. One of the problems might be because there are no reviews yet. I wanted to do this entirely with strangers which means not asking friends, family or associates to leave any reviews anywhere. (That’s actually a great way to jump-start some sales but I thought my customers might appreciate this approach). So perhaps in the following months if good reviews come the sales might rise. We’ll see.

Youpublish.com. This site was actually a second thought, but I’m glad I put it there. It still has no ratings though the sample has been viewed 227 times and 1 sale has resulted. Not bad. Again, perhaps if some good reviews came in it would help with sales.

My Own Websites. (Here and at Webs.com, Wordpress.com and at Viviti.com) I like it when sales happen directly through these because I get 100% of any profit, even though most of the other venues are pretty good at 70% or more (Amazon currently at 35% but going to 70% in July 2010). I don’t know exactly how many visitors have been to the sites since the stat keeping is a bit rough, but I estimate approximately 750 visitors resulting in 6 sales.

Google Rankings. It appears I erroneously reported a page one Google ranking earlier this month. Perhaps my surprise helped me overlook the fact that Google must have keyed in my IP address and sites that I had previously visited. I swear my mentions were true for page one, but after I cleared my browser of cookies, temporary files and visited pages etc, I lost the page one ranking and currently don’t show up until page 8 (yikes) for a search term of “sell ebooks.” It’s the Amazon listing of my ebook, then followed by Myebook’s listing on page 9 and PRLog’s free press release. It’s okay because “sell ebooks” is a highly common search term with massive competition, averaging 12,000 search inputs per month and high advertiser competition. Plus I’m the new kid on the block. As long as I keep doing this program, that page ranking should drop each month slowly and surely. This isn’t a get rich quick thing, more of a pacing with persistence wins the race.

Just in the past few days I uploaded several videos on Youtube (see one of them here), so next month I’ll have some comments on how that’s going.

So what are the final monthly numbers? 17 sales which isn’t what I wanted but an okay start. Only one review so far so perhaps more to report next month.

The best thing that’s happened is that I’ve received 2 thoughtful emails from customers who told me how much insight and helpful information they found in the book. That they were just starting out with marketing their own books and the info really helped. That’s really the best reward of all.

Smashwords will Distribute ebooks for Apple's iPad iBookstore

Mark Coker of Smashwords.com just released this great news; “We’ve signed a distribution agreement that will make qualifying Smashwords books available on the iPad.  We’re notifying you of this exciting development in advance because we want your books in the catalog.  You must take steps now to ensure your books make it in time for inclusion in the Apple iPad’s iBookstore’s big launch April 3.”
This has been in the works since the iPad was announced.  It just makes sense because Smashwords is the only ebook distributor that freely helps authors to converts documents into every e-reading format, including epub which has become an industry standard and is what the iPad uses.
There are a few basics for interested authors to qualify:

• Their ebook must be accepted into the Premium Catalog by March 31.  More on that at http://smashwords.com/distribution.
• Must be available in the EPUB format. Why any author wouldn’t include this as an option is beyond me and could only be attributed to a gross oversight after several Long Island Ice-Teas.
• Cover images must have a minimum height of 600 pixels. You can simply check this with a right click and Properties check. Most images are fine, especially ones that are taller than they are wide, like a common book cover.
• Authors must “opt-in” to the Apple channel by clicking “opt-in” on their Dashboard. (This should be available in the next day or two.)
• Ebooks must have a unique ISBN assigned to it.  Smashwords has recently created an ISBN Manager - http://www.smashwords.com/dashboard/ISBNManager. Authors can either have a free one assigned to them, which makes Smashwords the publisher, or they can go out and purchase their own, or for $9.95 they can buy one from Smashwords which allows the author to be the publisher (that’s the choice I made.)
• All ebooks in the Apple iBookstore have prices that end in .99, like $.99, $1.99, $9.99, etc. So either change the price or Smashwords will for you. Your ebook must also be priced lower than any print counterpart.

Like all Smashwords services, it’s free.  Authors will be paid 60% royalties of the list price for any sales.

Note; Smashwords expects glitches to start and asks for your understanding with any time period for bugs to be discovered. To keep up to date with info visit -http://www.smashwords.com/about/beta