Posts Tagged ‘Mobipocket’
Amazon’s Digital Text Platform: Where’s Customer Support?
Posted by: Michael R. Hicks in About Publishing on February 5th, 2009
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 and small press publishers to get their books into the Amazon Kindle Store, has become an example of everything that the rest of Amazon isn’t. The only thing that truly amazes me is that it hasn’t gotten a lot more in the way of bad press and a class action lawsuit.
I’ve been using DTP for nearly a year now, having first published my novel In Her Name there early last year (2008). It was – and still is – beta software, meaning that it is full-featured but isn’t entirely stable, and beta users are generally expected to put up with bugs and help the developers refine the software into a stable, fully operational release.
I have no problem with that part – I’m used to dealing with buggy software (I’ll refrain from any comments on Microsoft Windows!). But what I do have a problem with is the near-total lack of technical support from the DTP staff. There are only two ways of – supposedly – contacting the developers and admins: one is on the DTP forums, the other is by email to dtp-feedback@amazon.com. If the staff routinely visited the forums or actually answered their emails, there wouldn’t be an issue. But they don’t. Read the rest of this entry »
Increase Your eBook Sales
Posted by: Michael R. Hicks in About Publishing on January 18th, 2009
My initial focus for publishing In Her Name was on the Amazon Kindle. And while the Kindle – in my opinion – is awesome (my wife and I each have one), and I definitely want In Her Name to be available to that growing market segment, I’ve discovered that an incredibly easy – and free! – way to expand your sales significantly is by publishing through Mobipocket.com.
Mobipocket is actually owned by Amazon (it was bought up a few years ago), and the Amazon Kindle’s file format is based on the Mobipocket eBook format. So, the beauty of it is that if you get your book ready for publication on the Kindle, you’ve done about 99% of the work to get it ready for Mobipocket, and vice versa.
But when you publish your book through Mobipocket, you open it up to a market that includes about two dozen on-line retailers, plus Mobipocket itself. It doesn’t cost you a thing, and you’ve already done almost all of the work. And you can actually do it all in one shot: if you publish on Mobipocket, they’ll also distribute to the Kindle store!
