Amazon Edoc Form

Thanks for your interest in the Amazon.com Edoc (Electronic
Document)
program. For more information about the program and the types of
documents sold, please see the Edoc FAQ at:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/feature/-/180386/ref=eb_hp_rs_1_2/002-6571690-0524845

The Edoc program is designed for electronic documents that
customers
download to their computers and read on their screen.
Appropriate
documents range from $2 how-to guides to $1000 industry research
reports.

Edocs are unencrypted PDF (Adobe Acrobat) files, which means
they can
be read using the free Acrobat Reader software.  If you want to
sell
electronic documents on Amazon.com but feel that your content
must be
protected using a digital rights management (DRM) system, you
must
join the ebook program at Lightning Source. For more
information,
please go towww.lightningsource.comand read about their ebook
services.

Because the number of inquiries we receive is very large, please
understand that we are not able to respond personally to all
inquiries.

To help us determine whether your documents qualify for
Amazon.com's
Edoc program, please "Forward" this email to
edoc-form@amazon.com
after entering the following information:

1. Are you the publisher of the documents that you will be
submitting
to the program?

YES     NO   (please delete one)

If no, please explain the relationship between you and the
publisher:

2. What is the name of the publisher?
Publisher name:

If your business name is different than the name of the
publisher,
what is the name of your business?
Your business name:

3. Who will be the contact person for your company?
Full name:
Email:
Phone:

4. How many documents do you plan to submit to the program
initially?
How many during the next year?  
Initial number of edocs:
Number of edocs during the next year:

5. What subject or subjects do the documents cover?
Primary subject:
Keywords:
Sample edoc title:

6. What plans do you have for marketing your electronic
documents?

If you qualify for the program, we will send a standard contract
and
the Edoc Manual, which provides all the procedural details
necessary
to add your documents to Amazon.com's Edoc catalog. Thanks again
for
your interest.

Sincerely,

I'll be sending Amazon my info shortly, so we'll see what happens.  Some people are happy with the program, some aren't. I figure, give it a shot. If I don't like it, or don't get paid in a timely fashion, I can pull out. But, on the other hand, it ccould work out to be great.

In any case, I'll sift through the archives and see if I can come up with more specific info for you.

Nice to see a new face here! What do you write?

There are places, they say, who'll do it for me, but they don't come cheap.

Neenah

How easy did Amazon make it for you to register with them?

Do Amazon keep the 55% discount?

It was very easy to sign up. I made sure on that first form, which I posted, I filled it in as completely as I could. They are interested in how you expect to promote and market your eBooks besides themselves. By the time I was really ready to do this, I had my promo plans in effect. I knew all the keywords I'd would be using. Whatever makes it easy for them, will make it easy for you, too.

Most bookstores take a discount, 35-65%, with 45-55% being the normal range.

A discount to them works the same as any other. If you buy things at discount, you, in effect, keep the difference in your wallet, right? So, yes, they keep that amount. They buy your eBooks from you at a price less that discount.

Also, they have the final say as to what price they'll sell the ebook for. If it's for a price other than what you've suggested,  then, I think, they'll take the discount from that price - the one they've selected.

But say they sell it for what I'm asking in the first place, which is $8.95. 55% of that is $4.9225. Leaves me with $4.03. Which is a better cut than what I'm getting for my print book published by a small press. Way better!

And it's a dollar and three cents more than my sale price when I run one. I get only $1.97 for my recipe eBook when it sells on eBay - less fees to both PayPal and eBay. So, if that sold on Amazon, I'd be making an extra $1.61 even with the discount.

The only hard part for us non programmer geeks is the metadata files you have to fill out in order to upload your books to them. It's an XML thing, which boogles my little mind. I'm thinking of having someone do one for me so I can see how it's supposed to be done, and then after that, doing it myself. Once I figure it out, I should be okay with it.

And then, I'm going to write an article on the whole process!

As I say, they're the ones who have final say in how much the eBook will sell for on their site, but no matter--it's a way of getting exposure for my work, and hopefully some more consistent sales. Plus, it'll be a boost to morale (and ego) to tell people my stuff is on Amazon.com.

This is just one more avenue open to us to sell our stuff. I'm offering them on other sites as well, and for different prices. Think I'm going to go change a few of those to match my web sites' prices, though.

Hope this helps you! Feel free to holler if you have other questions.

Neenah