Here are some interesting articles, noted in Joel Friedlander’s newsletter:
David Vandagriff (Passive Guy) on The Passive Voice
A Leader in Canadian Writing Takes Stock of Self-Publishing
“PG poses a respectful questions to authors using traditional publishers, “Do you realize how much are you paying for the services provided by your publisher?””
By Amy Collins
Hummingbird Digital Media has expanded its audio book and ebook distribution offerings to single-title and self-published authors.
Hummingbird is owned by America West Distributors and provides indie authors and small (read: teeny…. self…. itsy bitsy) publishers with the ability to host their own ebooks on THEIR OWN SITE. They now offer this program for eBooks and audio books to AUTHORS as well!
This program neatly solves a number of piracy concerns for indie authors as well as the growing concern a number of us have about building so much of our business on the Amazon platform where we have no control.
Greg Lee of Hummingbird Digital Media offers these little tidbits for all of us authors:
“HDM handles and distributes audio and ebooks to YOUR clients and readers and handles all of taxes, delivery and customer service. All you have to do is set up the sales portal on your webpage. There are no fees for set up and maintenance, they just take a small cut of the order when it comes in and deliver the rest to you in a monthly payment.”
To Amy Collins and those of you who read her pitch for Hummingbird:
It sounded to good to be true. It is apparently not true.
Amy states that Hummingbird takes “just a small cut of the order” and “delivers the rest to you in a monthly payment.”
In fact, according to its website, Hummingbird sends you, “the merchant,” 12% to 23% of the retail price. But that’s if you sell your titles through you own “storefront.” Just what your cut would be if your title is sold through another Hummingbird client’s storefront, is not made clear.. Presumably it would be less.
Whatever the case, the Hummingbird remuneration to an author/publisher is not nearly so attractive as Collins suggests. In fact, if it is the average of the range they give, it is more or less what we have long seen from publishers (I get 17^ from a publisher who has kept one of my earlier books in print for 25 years. On the paperback version of a book I published under my own imprint about seven years ago via LSI I reap about 33%). The average of 12% and 23% is 17.5%.
Amy Collins, whoever you may be, please check your facts and if you are as far off as you seem to me to be, withdraw your blog post or correct it. It is highly misleading.
Sincerely, David Gerstel.