At this point I don't think I'll bother with Smashwords. Here's the driving reason--you set the price and the book makes its way to various outlets and then they can undercut you. Which I suppose is acceptable except that if you price the book at $2.99 at amazon, you get a 70% royalty. Anything less than that price and you get 35%. They match the lowest price for your book on the net, so if Barnes & Noble charges $1.99, then amazon lowers the price and you lose the good royalty scale.
I haven't made my mind up about this yet. Is the iPad so great and wonderful that I should let them price my book for me? I certainly can't put the book there on my own because you can only do it with a Mac and I use a PC. So again, writers find themselves caught in the middle between the clash of the titans.
1 comment:
I totally agree, Robin. I have yet to hear a good reason to put another middleman (such as smashwords) between me an my work. I published some books (under a different name) that sold horribly, entirely due to bad-listing, bad pricing, bad everything, and now I'm waiting six months to regain control of them. I'm moving a 1000+ books a month and I could never have done that with a void between me and the customer. Every middleman in this biz has turned out to be the guy you loaned your car to and who immediately wrecked it.
-BVLarson.com
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