If you’ve visited the Mobipocket site recently with the intention of setting up a new publisher account, you no doubt encountered this message on the publisher welcome page:
Effective September 2009, we will no longer open new accounts for publishers to sell titles through the Kindle Store or MobiPocket.com. If you have an existing account, there will be no change and you can continue to upload and sell titles using Ebookbase. New publishers with a US address and bank account can sign up to sell ebooks in the Kindle store via our self-service publishing channel at http://dtp.amazon.com.
While I haven’t seen any confirmation, this certainly looks like the first big step in Amazon absorbing Mobipocket into the overall Digital Text Platform (DTP) service, which is the other route – besides Mobipocket – for getting book into the Amazon Kindle store (note: for independent publishers; mainstream publishers have their own distribution channel for Kindle).
So, the upshot is that if you have an existing Mobipocket account, you’re fine for now, but I wouldn’t be surprised if we see some changes in the next year. The big question will be if Amazon will continue to use Mobipocket as a distribution platform for the many independent ebook retailers out there. Stay tuned!
Related Posts
- Holdouts for Kindle and Print Book Discounts on Amazon: Mobipocket and Lightning Source We don’t know why Amazon has stopped discounting books published by independent authors and publishers, but it has. If you look in the Kindle Store or the greater Amazon bookstore, you’ll see that those nice red discount prices have...
- “In Her Name: Empire” is Now Available for Kindle and Mobipocket I hadn’t mentioned it in any of the earlier posts (I don’t think!), but I just wanted to make sure that you knew that In Her Name: Empire is indeed available both for the Amazon Kindle and as a Mobipocket...
- Amazon’s Digital Text Platform: Where’s Customer Support? Let me be up front about something: I like Amazon. I’ve been an Amazon customer for years, and have done my share to help boost their profits. But Amazon’s Digital Text Platform (or DTP), which is the mechanism for independent...
- Ebook Pricing: An Interesting Perspective One of the biggest questions many authors and small press publishers seem to have about ebooks is how much they should sell them for. And, of course, if you’re someone who reads ebooks, this is obviously of interest, as well!...
- Adding a Cover and Table of Contents for a DTP Kindle File A lot of folks seem to run into trouble with adding a cover or – worse – adding a Table of Contents (TOC) to the HTML file they want to upload to Amazon’s Digital Text Platform (DTP) for titles published...
Considering how many readers have found my work on Mobipocket, that’s not great news. To be honest I’ve been bracing myself since last June, waiting for Amazon to more fully integrate Mobipocket.com. The real warning sign for me was the official news that there would be no Mobipocket reader app for the iPhone / iPod Touch.
Here’s hoping that indie authors and small ePresses can find another place to shine before Mobipocket is completely gone. I’m currently hoping Smashwords.com can pick up a lot of Mobipocket’s indie publishers / authors.
One more thing: hello Michael! Looking at purchasing histories, I’m seeing we have many of the same readers. Thought I’d stop in and congratulate you on your success on the Kindle and presence in the Mobipocket Science Fiction top 10.
Randolph -
Great to hear from you! Yes, the lack of an iPod/iPhone app for Mobi was a bit disturbing. Smashwords.com has potential, but I haven’t yet invested enough time there to see how well it might work out.
And thanks for the nice words about being in the Sci-Fi top 10! I keep eyeing those books of yours crammed at the top – I’ll have to check them out when I get a chance (in between writing and a day job – never enough time to read)!
Cheers,
Mike