There is no doubt, Amazon is the big dog when it comes to online book sales and an indie author has no option but to be listed on the giant's site.
There are other sales outlets, most notably Smashwords that sells directly from its website but also offers distribution to Barnes and Noble, Kobo, Apple iBooks, Diesel and others.
When it comes to the royalty-split, Smashwords' deal is often better than Amazon's. But, in my experience, Amazon moves more books.
I hate dealing with Amazon. They are set up, it seems, to make life difficult for non-US authors. Anyone not in the US, purchasing one of my works, gets slapped with a $2.00 surcharge. For no reason, other than Amazon does so. This means a 99c story gets charged at $2.99, effectively pricing it out of the market!
That would gall less if, on the off-chance the work sold at that price, I got 30% (Amazon's royalty on books costing less than $2.99) of the total sales price but that is not so. I get 30% of 99c!
So the decks are stacked against me.
It is possible a reader may chance across my work while searching on Amazon but, the reality is, most of my Amazon sales are the result of my own marketing and promotion efforts.
And after doing all that hard work to get a prospective customer there, what does Amazon do? It suggests the reader may enjoy the work of other authors!
It's little wonder over 90% of authors earn less than $1000 per year!
Better way
I figured, there must be a better way, especially for an author living outside of one of the Seattle giant's favoured countries. I wanted to be able to drive prospective customers to a sales outlet where only my work was visible and where I got the lion's share of the sale value.
Paypal came to mind but was dismissed, as it would mean manually emailing books to customers and, with different global time-zones and constantly having to keep watch, was a non-starter.
After much Internet searching and posing questions on forums, I found the answer. It's a new kid on the block called Gumroad. Based in San Fransisco, Gumroad looks to be the answer to authors, musicians and software developers who wish to sell directly to their customers. It is, in essence, a secure, online, credit-card payment-gateway and takes payments from pretty well anywhere in the world.
The process is simple. Sign up (it's free) load up your book and cover image, set a price, then direct customers to the product page. Downloads are automatic once payment is received and the amount (less Gumroad's charges) is immediately credited to your account, from where it can be transferred to a US bank account or Paypal account.
It works seamlessly!
I wish I could say I've made thousands of Gumroad sales - I haven't - but I've had a few sales from different parts of the world and every one was absolutely hassle-free. Purchasers' email addresses are automatically captured and there are facilities that make it easy to keep in contact with customers. In addition, Gumroad offers comprehensive analytics showing detailed information about traffic sources, returns, views etc.
Lest anyone think I have some sort of connection with Gumroad, I do not! I am merely a happy customer.
Want to see Gumroad in action? Check out this product page for my novel, Hobson's Choice.
You can read my short stories free online at www.hiltonhamann.com
Gumroad is great, but doesn't offer an option to accept Paypal, which I think a lot of customers you are targeting will want. Another quite similar option I've found useful is Sellfy. Just google it.
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