As time has gone on I've come to think there's probably only limited
value in having our ebooks in Apple/Amazon. The reason is because
there's an unending deluge of public domain reprints - this is why
Amazon already doesn't accept new free public domain editions, because
they're swamped.
If someone searches for Pride and Prejudice, they're going to get 1,000
results of the same book. Most will pick the first free edition which
will be some PG repack, and SE's edition is going to be somewhere on
page 20 where nobody will ever see it. Not a whole lot of value in that,
for what's starting to look like a considerable amount of work in stores
that are demonstrably hostile to more PD reprints.
The exception is when we can get our books pinned to the top. I believe
Play Books does this right now - if you search for P&P in the Play Books
store, the SE edition is on top.
The value for partnerships would be in smaller distributors who we can
have a closer relationship with, and who have a bigger interest in
having high quality free ebooks in their catalog. Maybe orgs like
libraries, reading apps (social and non), etc.
On the other hand, catalog-based partnerships might be an opportunity to
bring some revenue in for SE - we could do a lot with more than the
handful of donations we get from time to time, and managing the project
has grown from a part-time hobby to nearly a full time job.
On 2/18/22 4:24 AM, Asher Smith wrote:
> Seth sent this to me:
> > I tried to upload a book through the iTunes system, however it didn’t
> seem particularly simple. Hopefully the other distributors are more open
> to this.
>
> It's an interesting point: I don't really know how bad the apple upload
> process is, so I don't even know if it's going to be feasibly to do the
> 50 uploads before we get bulk permissions. I am less and less optimistic
> that working with a distributor would be possible, so it may be the only
> way.
>
> @Alex, are you opposed to setting up an account for SE in a way that I
> can attempt it with one or two and get a better idea if it's even worth
> attempting to go down this path?
>
> On Wednesday, February 16, 2022 at 4:39:42 PM UTC Asher Smith wrote:
>
> Some updates:
>
> * One distributor I spoke to wants to charge us 50 cents per title
> per month to distribute them all
> * One distributor has a blanket policy of not working with
> anything in the public domain
> * One distributor seems to only work on larger commercial things
> * I have emails out to two more distributors, so fingers crossed.
>> <
https://itunespartner.apple.com/books/articles/how-to-publish-an-ebook-with-itunes-producer-2718>.
>> This page notes that you can
>> only submit one book at a time
>> using this service, but that
>> you can "contact an
>> Apple-approved aggregator
>> <
https://itunespartner.apple.com/books/partner-search> to
>> Take /Hamlet/ as an
>>> <
https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/standardebooks/ed16901c-dc2e-4051-abd4-34c47b5b11f5n%40googlegroups.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer>.
>>
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