Publishing E-Books For Dummies

Considering Selling Your E-Book Only via Your Website

After you write a sales page, you might wonder whether you even need to sell your e-book from online stores. After all, readers can simply buy it directly from you — and you keep all the profits.

With some types of e-books, this route is a sensible one to take. If you’ve written a specialized e-book with a high price tag, you’re unlikely to pick up impulse browsers in online stores (and you’ll fall outside Amazon’s royalty sweet spot between $2.99 and $9.99). You may also have access to an existing audience of likely buyers, whether it’s via your blog or mailing list or contacts who have their own large online fan bases.

If you’ve written a low-priced book, though, it’s worth putting it into online stores. After all, this is where book lovers naturally go to look for their next “fix.” You’re unlikely to have thousands of readers for your novel within your own audience — but your current audience might have enough members to get your book off to a great start in Amazon and other online stores that sell e-books.

If you decide to sell your e-book only via your own website, take the time to consider which formats you want to provide. Nothing is stopping you from creating MOBI and EPUB files to sell (as covered in Chapter 8) via your own site. Unless you have a good reason not to — such as your e-book involves ...