What
does the Publisher99 service give me and what does it cost?
Publisher99 provides independent
authors and publishers with the means of maximising income from the
sale of online ebooks and other distributable files. It's quick,
easy to administer. You get a fully featured ecommerce facility for
customers to download and buy your ebooks and files. You can monitor
visits to your catalogue and individual download items and monitor
actual sales.
No financial outlay to start selling
your ebooks. Account set-up is FREE and when you sign-up you get a
FREE "online catalogue" with your own
www.publisher99.com/<my catalogue> address. When you login to
your account you can update your catalogue settings
And don't worry, there are no monthly
or annual fees either
We only charge a fee on actual sales
transactions, this is £0.40 + 9% of each transaction. This means
that you will receive 85% of the sales price of a £6.99 ebook or
other download file. This is net to you and covers all transaction
costs. Compare this with Amazon, their best royalty scheme pays it's
authors 70% of price sold less upload charges.
And if you need help you can email us
or give us a call.
How does Publisher99
work?
You upload your password-protected
file (e.g. pdf e-books) into your account’s resource area and
register it with us for downloading and selling via ecommerce. You
need to describe what the file is (e.g. Title & description, the
file type, size, the price you want to charge etc.) and most
importantly specify the password that unlocks the file for reading /
use. When all this vital information is registered your file is
ready for download and the password ready for sale. Each of your
products has it’s own unique selling link in the form of an
ecommerce page. Your customers can download your file and then
purchase the password to read / open it.
As the author / publisher you want to
be able to make your products as easy to obtain as possible but you
want your customers to pay for them! Digital Rights Management (DRM)
is a serious topic in the publishing industry. Some publishers /
online retailers use their own formats which are only readable via a
specific device (e.g. an eReader) or tied to a specific PC via a
software package. The method we have used successfully over a number
of years is to sell eBooks in standard .pdf format but password
protected. We sell the passwords. Other files format often have
built-in password protection (e.g. Excel spreadsheets).
Alternatively, other file can be downloaded as password-protected
.zip files. It is possible to ‘crack’ passwords with specialised
tools which you can obtain relatively easily – but we have found
that this to be a rare occurrence amongst our customer base.
We use PayPal the
secure ecommerce system – which you are probably familiar with.
Customers can pay either through there own PayPal account or via a
credit / debit card if they wish. On successful processing, a PayPal
emails a receipt to the customer and Publisher99 emails them the
password.
There is an online
enquiry screen under the ‘Publishing’ main menu item in your
Publisher99 account. It itemises your sales together with the
customer email addresses.
Yes – and other
services too. All you need to do is add the item's Publisher99
hyperlink in your webpage – perhaps with an image. When a visitor
clicks the link they are taken directly to the download / ecommerce
page for your product.
Publisher99 gives
you a unique web page address to which you attach your products
– with descriptions, ecommerce link, a picture. It takes the address
form of www.publisher99.com/mycatalogue . This is created
automatically for you when you sign up for a publisher99 account.
You can add your address and other link details to your catalogue.
On the end of
each month we will remit your earnings, preferably by transfer into
your own PayPal account. If you prefer we can remit to another
account or by cheque. Any amounts under £20 will be ‘rolled-over’ to
the following month.
We do not operate a
royalties system (i.e. where a publisher pays you a percentage of
your sales - typically 25-50% for ebooks, 5-10% for actual books).
Instead we remit your sales earnings minus the cost of the
transactions plus our commission. We charge just £0.40 + 9% of each
sale. So for example, if you sold an
ebook for £6.99 our commission is £1.03 (that's £5.96 to you). If
you sold an ebook for £9.99 our commission amounts to £1.30 (£8.69 to you) and so on. Therefore, the amount you receive will
depend upon the value of individual sales. With no up-front set-up
or recurrent monthly charges, Publisher99 really does maximise your
ebook returns and with no overheads you can expect to receive 80-88%
net of sales for typical ebook prices.
You can distribute
some of your ebooks and files for free (e.g. sample chapters) but you will need to
actively sell at least one ebook. If you wish to distribute all your
books for free Publisher99 reserves the right to make an annual
subscription charge of £30. for a 15MB limit.
Are there restrictions on
what I can sell?
The service is
designed for bona fide ebooks and other file sales. There are
restrictions on certain types of material and certain file
types (e.g. no .exe files). Our policies are provided in the Terms
and Conditions. Be aware that as sales are potentially worldwide,
you should be sensitive to local laws and customs.
Publisher99
unreservedly will exercise it's right to protect it's reputation and
other users of its service. This may lead us to remove unsuitable
material and even suspend publishers without prior warning.
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