Will readers buy a hard copy of a free online book?

Here's a great article from the New York Times on transforming online content into a book that people will actually pay for:

Since an edited form of “Diary of a Wimpy Kid” was published as a traditional book in April by Amulet, an imprint of Harry N. Abrams, it has sold 147,000 copies, according to Nielsen BookScan, which tracks 50 percent to 70 percent of retail sales. The book, written and drawn by Jeff Kinney, has spent 33 weeks on The New York Times best-seller list. This Sunday, it will be No. 1 on the Children’s Chapter Books list.

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Steve Weber is author of Plug Your Book! Online Book Marketing for Authors

Amazon widget lets you collect payments on your Web site

If you sell books directly to readers who visit your Web site, Amazon has developed a "Pay Now" widget for its new Flexible Payment Service (FPS). It's probably good to have an alternative for people who don't want to use PayPal.

You receive an e-mail each time someone pays using FPS, and you can also retrieve your orders by logging into your Amazon Payments account.

Here's more information on the Amazon Web Services blog.

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Steve Weber is author of Plug Your Book! Online Book Marketing for Authors

Q&A: Should I send book buyers to Amazon, or sell to them on my Web site?

QUESTION: Why do author Web sites send all their customers to Amazon? Intelligent authors sell books exclusively from their own sites. Why send your hard-won customer to Amazon, just so they can steal your customer data, take a big cut of your profit, and undermine your marketing effectiveness?

ANSWER: I agree that if the author or publisher wants to obtain contact information for the online book buyer, they won't get it if Amazon sells the book. So if it's essential to know who your buyers are, you've got to sell direct.

Of course, when your books are sold in a brick-and-mortar bookstore, you don't know who the buyers are. Barnes & Noble won't fork over customer data any faster than Amazon will.

However, the author or publisher can sell on Amazon Marketplace, give Amazon a 15 percent commission, and obtain the customer's name, address, and e-mail. Then you can ask the buyer to opt in to your mailing list.

It all boils down to whether you want to outsource fulfillment to Amazon or not. If you do, you won't get the customer information.

As to whether Amazon takes an unreasonably large share of the profit: Amazon does discount books aggressively. But no matter what price Amazon sells the book for, the publisher still gets their wholesale price. If the wholesale price doesn't leave the publisher enough profit, the publisher needs to raise the wholesale price -- either by giving Amazon a shorter wholesale discount, raising the wholesale/retail price, or a combination of these.

You're right, it is smart for authors and publishers to publicize their books on their own Web sites. And if you're willing to handle fulfillment, then you don't need to send customers to Amazon. But many (perhaps most) online book buyers prefer purchasing at Amazon. So if they're going to go there anyway, why not post an affiliate link so you can earn an additional 6 percent from the sale?

I also disagree with many of Amazon's policies and practices, but I appreciate how they provide free exposure for my books. Each sale you make at Amazon strengthens your position in their recommendations system, bringing you more exposure and more sales. And this prompts additional sales outside Amazon.

So as long as they bring in lots of sales, I'll keep trying to use Amazon to my advantage. If a better opportunity comes along, I'll welcome it.
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If you like my articles, click the orange button to subscribe:

Steve Weber is author of Plug Your Book! Online Book Marketing for Authors