Munsey’s Technosnarl

Yeah, I’ve done sales of books my books through Amazon’s Marketplace for 3rd party book sellers.

Mr. Curtis has the right idea, but Amazon makes a little bit more than 3-4% of sale.  It’s more like 6-15%, plus an additional $.99 from the smaller sellers, plus an additional “closing fee” of $1.35.*

Way Marketplace works: most of the sellers have a drop-ship arrangement with Ingram, Baker & Taylor or some other wholesaler. Amazon takes the order from the customer on behalf of, say, InterWebBooks.  That order is automatically processed, with emails going to the customer, and an EDI (Electronic Data Interchange) file, with Book information, Customer Name, Address, Shipping Method (post office or UPS), is uploaded to Ingram.

Ingram quickly sends out the order with an InterWebBooks logo on the box from one of their warehouses.

IWB, for the curious, is paid by Amazon within 2-3 days, and Ingram is paid within 30.  This is a big part of why prices from 3rd party sellers are often lower than you’d think possible (as little as 55% of the cover price, plus shipping of course).

That 6-15% of 3rd-party sales is, per some earlier reports, one of the most lucrative parts of Amazon’s business, and could easily represent a bigger net profit for them than does warehousing and shipping the books themselves.  They’re probably not losing as much from the Macmillan stand-off as you’d think.

It’s $99 a month to get the really good Marketplace store up (and avoid paying $.99 to Amazon per sale).  To integrate automated feeds with Ingram (after credit checks and such), you’d only be out-of-pocket $10k or so from the South Asian programming shop of your choice–they study Ingram feeds and APIs in that part of the world.

/Ironically, prior to a shift by LightningSource in 2005, most print-on-demand books were shown as “available in six days or from these sellers,” so at the moment Macmillan’s living the way us peons used to.

*Edited to add closing fee.

Charles Willeford is well-remembered today for many novels, not least this one.  But his fellow Beacon author, Orrie Hitt, isn’t particularly known, even for strong efforts like Ladies’ Man.

Actually, nobody aside from Michael Hemmingson seems to have heard of him.  There’s a little something to Hitt’s style that’s certainly worth reading… trust me, it was an old Beacon, and so took quite a while to digitize.

Definitely worth a couple hours of your time.

Y’all might remember, they were onstage when Apple did its summer product launch, so ScrollMotion’s new deal to put textbooks on the Ipad is obviously happening with Apple’s blessing… unlike some other firms that Apple doesn’t like as much lately.

ScrollMotion is staffed by publishing industry veterans, and of courses bases their entire product layout on .pdf, something that, to me, never really worked on the Iphone.

We’ll see how committed Apple is to an ebook store.

Four days, no buy buttons for many (not all) Macmillan books on Amazon.

Credit Richard Curtis, legendary agent and publisher of Ereads, with best graphic…

/Via Publisher’s Weekly.

This is getting fun. I have no idea how long the spiel with Macmillan’s gonna last.  It’s of course ridiculous for a Macmillan division like Tor, given its online following, etc., to not be selling most of its ebooks direct — and, no, Cory Doctorow, there’s nothing that says Tor can’t sell Kindle-formatted ebooks DRM-free, using any software out there, or a homebrew solution.

But the bigger concern for Amazon is, while I still don’t think Apple’s iPad is truly intended to sell ebooks (like a lot of men in my neighborhood, I’ll be getting one for my wife to watch her YouTube videos from Taiwan and China on… Korean Soap Operas will sell 50k Ipads in Montgomery County, MD alone) suddenly, ebooks on Ipad will live up to the hype, at least somewhat.

If you remember back to the days when the App Store opened, suddenly, companies like Fictionwise, with its Ereader App, were able to really tap into the growing market.  Instead of 10 million or so PDA devices in use, plus the old Gemstar/Rocket eBooks, Fictionwise was now able to sell to more than 50 million Iphone users–with all the great Apple customer demographics (higher-income, better-educated, etc.)!

This five-fold (at least!) increase in available readers, on enhanced screens allowed Fictionwise to go from (ballpark), selling 50,000 ebooks a month, to (their own words), 90,000, at least the first month!  Before the hype wound down a bit and downloads decreased!  As it has each time, until there was another app update!

Or, in other words, given what Amazon achieves with its Kindle base of hard-core readers, (who pretty much have Amazon’s back in the push to keep ebooks below $10), Fictionwise is selling dick.

The Ereader model–person installs software, then maybe visits Fictionwise, then opens an account via webkit-browser, then buys books, then downloads them, then sorta has them–was a non-starter.  Amazon sold more ebooks last Christmas Day than Peanut Press/PalmReader/Ereader sold in its history.You could repeat the above scenario for any of the other competing ebook apps–Kobo or what have you.  Or, indeed, any of the other “retailers” that have been floating around since Kindle.  They never lived up to the hype, and the sales of epub books with DRM from Overdrive+Adobe, etc. are absolutely pathetic in comparison, statistically no different from the sales of epub books with DRM from DNAML, or the sales of epub books with not-entirely-compatible DRM from Barnes & Noble.

At least with a direct channel, Apple will leverage its existing customer base.  This isn’t the unicorn, but, finally, though Apple isn’t really doing the enhanced editions thing, nor seems to be going full-blast on ebooks the way they are with videos and games, in sales of epub books with Apple DRM, directly through Apple’s channels, to Apple’s customer base, Amazon has something to worry about, at least for best-sellers.

Only two months away.

On new server.  With… lots of newness.  New-wise.

Even better, given the strength of this particular boxen, tell your friends, http://www.munseys.com/mobi is live.  It’s as fast or faster than BlackMask ever was, with sorting and other goodnesses, and oh-so-speedy downloads, if you’re into that.

Also shrunk the cache time, so there’s more reason to bookmark the Pulp Fiction category.  Sorting by new, say, if you want to find out what Disruptive Publishing has been up to on the free side.

There will be a few additional tweaks in the coming weeks,  of course.  And who knows, someday, we may finally get authorized sources for additional library data!

/I went all kinds of mobile this weekend.  Munsey’s finally completed the move.  And, I got both Silk and the Site That Makes Money to interface with Kindle, Mobile Phones, etc. I should travel somewhere.

//But first, need to go to the bank, unshaven, with crazy hair, smelling of beer, to cash foreign-denominated international rights check.

Yes, yes you are right.  Apple is the One to Watch.

Now, I still think Google is the real threat, and Apple ebooks won’t materialize quite as anticipated. But with this new 70% royalty option, announced by Amazon in the wake of publicized Apple negotiations, err–OK, fine.  Mike Cane.  I was wrong; you were right.

I hope you’re happy.  You just–you go on being happy.  That’s all well and good.  Happy, you.

You win, Mike Cane.  You’re right.

But I used to get 35% for my smut!

WHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

HOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!

Amazon’s just updated its terms and conditions for the DTP store.  Short version: it just got a little harder to do some things, and they are set to crack down further on infringement in the DTP zone, having first cleansed the Mobipocket ranks–the issue of individuals having one account for resale of Gutenberg titles, and another for unauthorized Harry Potter or whatever, has been addressed.

But I like this line:

5.3.2 Customer Prices. We or our sub-distributors have sole and complete discretion to set the retail price at which your Digital Books are sold through the Program. We or our sub-distributors are solely responsible for processing payments, payment collection, requests for refunds and related customer service, and will have sole ownership and control of all data obtained from customers and prospective customers in connection with the Program.

What are those sub-distributors? In theory, Amazon could allow ebook storefronts such as BoB, Fictionwise, et al to sell Kindle titles to their customers.  Or, perhaps, Random House could just the Kindle feed for its specific books, much like Mobipocket used to let you do.

But I can’t see Amazon doing that… until three minutes or so after Google Editions finally launches.   If Kindle-everywhere does happen, we’re talking final nail in the retail-selling coffin of that stunning success, Epub/Adobe Mobile.

This gets more interesting if Amazon is somewhat selective in deciding which firms get to license their Kindle books.  For example, Amazon could easily reject all the existing players who’ve perpetuated the myth of Epub “openness” in favor of an exclusive deal with an upstart library ebook vendor.

Hey, it ain’t my fault.  Gentleman by the name of Joe Bandel has published an original translation of the work.  This includes certain portions excised from the 1929 edition by Guy Endore, and the Mahlon Blaine illustrations.

He’s got an ebook version at Lulu, or, if you’re smart, you can pick up one of the limited edition hardcovers from Side Real Press.

For those not in the know, limited edition gothic hardbacks from small presses in the UK are often worth a ton on the resale market.  Just ask Tartarus Press.  I believe Mr. Bandel will also sign a copy for you, not sure how that works.

I know there were a ton of ebook devices “announced” at the CES show.  But, while I’d love to see Pixel Qi succeed, second-tier E-ink licenses are so last-decade.

Kindle DX International is coming Jan. 19th.   For those who have been confused by the BN/Sony/whatever products, “coming” means, Amazon will ship its DX, to anyone in the world, starting Jan. 19th, allowing people to access Amazon’s content… wirelessly.

Don’t get me wrong, this is a dramatic beat-down of all the other players, stunning in its timing and execution.  But it’s kind of boring, really.  Like playing Civilization on Chieftain.

Still, from comments about the show, I get the vibe, the era of “we’ll get that to you six months from now, promise, so don’t buy nothing yet” is over.

Hopefully, we’ll see a new model from Amazon that addresses DX’s many limitations as an academic device. And I’m sure when Kindle Latest is unveiled, I won’t be invited to have cake.