The Ebook publishing wonder world (or: Percentages that shouldn't matter, but do)

Okay, so I'm new to the whole self publishing via ebook process, and no, I don't expect it to be the easiest thing in the world otherwise we'd have an incredible amount of junk to wade through on the ebook racks (not that this isn't still the case, but whatever). I can't help thinking that there is, for starters, a serious USA bias to run up against and then there's the individual methods of distribution themselves, and then there's the larger issue of having to just say goodbye to so much of the profit and smile like it's fair. Suffice to say I've had a VERY annoying couple of days.

So let me get some of this off my chest.

One, I live in the UK, much of my marketing is UK based, and I'm imagining that a fair to large proportion of any of the money I make will come from UK sales. So why is it that I have to PAY THE IRS IN AMERICA??? This is the Smashwords issue that had me saying WTF yesterday. Unless I can provide several pieces of written evidence that I live in the UK and pay tax in the UK, 30% of my profits will go to the US Government! and then I'll still have to pay tax here if I ever earn enough. The Smashwords site itself says that it's not worth bothering to try and stop them taking the 30% unless I start making huge sales, enough to make the pennies add up. This is a mind set I have problems with. I may not be in this for the money, anything that does hit my coffers is earmarked for my children (when they start turning up) but I'm certainly not interested in giving anything to the government of another country, one who can't manage the money they do have, no matter how small the amount. Despite having advertised that I'll be available on Smashwords this had made me think twice about publishing with them, its looking doubtful that I will.

On the continuing subject of smashwords, and their MeatGrinder software as they call it. I have no real problem with the software, I actually think it's quite clever. It took me a few goes to get the format to work out okay but its a fast and efficient piece of kit. With one exception. It tries to manage too many conversions from one file. I can get the formatting PERFECT for kindle, but ibooks doesn't like it, I try to fix the ibooks bugs and kindle goes funny. I have to get it right for both in one file but based on the smashwords style guide (which is not a very well written article, but admittedly beats the hell out of Amazons online guidance for Kindle).

Yet another thing that has me thinking, why bother with smashwords? It doesn't even seem to be a particularly effective direct to reader distribution site even if it does send out to so many other groups. Strike 3 for smashwords. I'm going to wait and see what the non automated response is from them but it's not hopeful.

So then there's Amazon. Giant of the internet. Huge selling tool and instantly recognisable house hold name. You also insist on trying to make us sell based on US dollars, although you do offer the option of going our own way with prices for each of the sites (.com .co.uk .de and .fr) Something smashwords does not offer and probably a main reason for the whole IRS issue. You set the option that I can have all prices reflect the US price but there's no option to set the UK price and have other currency options reflect this. Then there is your thresholds. 70 or 35 % profits. You know that by setting the price low we'll make better sales, but you get the lions share of the profits by saying we can't have 70% until we hit the £1.45 mark in the uk or $2.99 in the US (incidentally these two numbers DO NOT tally if you set the price to $2.99 and say 'reflect in other currencies' the UK price becomes £1.93 by current exchange rates, just one of those niggling annoyances with me).

Now since I've written the book, edited the book, formatted the book, done the cover art, paid for advertising, and with the exception of my wonderful proof readers who I love and adore, done ALL the work myself up until the point when it arrived on the Amazon server where you ran it through an automated program and after a quick review it'll appear on a web page which is just as automated in construction and which requires me to input any significant info to improve sales. Do I seriously think that amazon deserves to pocket 65%?

So here I am, standing on the edge of the precipice. A head of me lies the world in which my book is published and out there for all to see and I have two roads to take. On one path I throw my arms in the air and say 'free love to all' give my book to the people in the 99c bracket (for god forbid I should want to charge in sterling) Let the american government use my money to buy staples for the white house typists, let billion dollar profit making power house Amazon absorb 65% of my profits in a process so devoid of human involvement I wonder if organic eyes will ever even see the figures.

Or I go the other way, I step out onto the road and say to all those around me 'Look. It's taken me five years to write this book. I love it like my own child, and I want you to love it too, but I don't see why the powerful should profit so disproportionally over the individual.' I hope when I wander down that road with my prices set at $2.99 and £1.45 people will understand that the extra 50p I've added to the book isn't because I'm greedy, I fully expect to sell less and probably make less because of it. That 50p is me making a very small stand and saying my hard work isn't something for others to exploit. Some of you may well disagree, and that's fine, like I say, I'm new to this. However I think I won't be alone in my view, and I'm happy to market what I think (considering some of the things out there I've read, or tried to read) is a damn decent book, for a very reasonable £1.45.