Only Indie? Heard of this yet?

[BrianKittrell]

Received this email last night. I was going to post it here to see what you guys think (and if anyone has gotten the same thing). I probably won't join because I don't really go for the concept and I fear for the possibility of Amazon detecting this as free and pricematching unwantedly, but here it is:

Hi Brian,


I'll cut to the chase. I'm the co-founder of a startup that's launching a new kind of eBook store for independent publishers on March 12: http://authors.onlyindie.com


What makes us unique: all eBooks start at everybody's favorite price of $0 and rise/fall based on demand. We also give customers the option of sharing their contact info with you so you can build your customer list. This is huge because the other stores keep your data to themselves.


I'd love it if you'd add The Circle of Sorcerers (and the rest of the series!) to our system so it's ready when we launch on March 12: http://authors.onlyindie.com


Please let me know if you have any questions/comments.


Cheers,
Karol Gajda


P.S. Our royalties are higher than Amazon, B&N, or iBook (and paid twice/month!). We're trying to do what's best for independent authors: http://authors.onlyindie.com


--

http://www.OnlyIndie.com - Independent eBooks, priced by demand.

Of course, this isn't a new business model. Podiobooks does something similar, and other places have done something similar before, but I wanted to get some input. It doesn't appear you can set an absolute minimum price (the minimum is set by the distributor at $0.00).

[David Adams]

I haven't heard anything about it.

All my books are in KDP Select anyway, so it doesn't affect me, but yeah... I'd be very worried about Amazon's bots detecting that as free and price matching. Seems inevitable.

[EllenFisher]

Yes, that seems like it would be a violation of Amazon's TOS. I think they'd price match.

[CraigInTwinCities]

Of course it's a violation of Select.

Worse is their business model.

When I'm in consumer mode, I'd be totally peeved at TOS like he describes.

If I say I don't want my data distributed, I DON'T WANT IT DISTRIBUTED! Not even to the authors of books I buy.

No means no.

[Sophrosyne]

It says customers have the option. They don't have to share data. But it's totally a TOS violation if you're in Select. Also price matching seems like it would be a given, if you're not in Select

[CraigInTwinCities]

It says customers have the option. They don't have to share data. But it's totally a TOS violation if you're in Select. Also price matching seems like it would be a given, if you're not in Select

Outside of Select... sometimes Amazon ignores price matching the small-fish markets. Such as this one would turn out to be, at least early on.

[BrianKittrell]

Yeah, this is mostly for consideration outside Select (for me, of course). I don't participate in it.

It does say the customer can choose to share their info with the writers. I think that will work well early on, but it will soon be an "automatically-turn-this-off-on-signup" as time goes along because of the amount of marketing email people will eventually receive as a result of this.

"When did I sign up to 241 mailing lists??? Who are... OMG, all these authors added me to their mailing lists! Should I try unsubscribing to 241 or just make a new email address?"