Are you a self-published author or small publisher?
eBooks.com has relationships with thousands of publishers, representing over a million authors. Additionally we partner with specialist aggregators and distributors who supply ebooks published by smaller publishers and self-published authors. We’re a small company and these relationships with specialist distributors enable us to offer the broadest range of titles, without creating a monstrous workload at our end.
If you’re a small publisher with less that 31 titles to distribute, or a self-published author, you just need to sign up with a platform like Vearsa, Ingram Spark, IPG (The Independent Publishers Group) or iUniverse.
These companies have highly regarded platforms for ebook distribution, and provide help and advice. They distribute titles written by thousands of independent publishers and self-published authors via multiple sales channels, including eBooks.com.
Once your book is published on one of these platforms, it will automatically be available to the customers of eBooks.com.
For larger publishers
If you:
- are in the business of publishing books written by people other than yourself, and
- have 30 or more titles to distribute now,
please contact us, and we’ll get right back to you.
Print on Demand
Here’s a useful article from Bennett R. Coles setting out all you need to know about print-on-demand.
Can I upload my audiobooks?
Sorry, no. eBooks.com only deals in ebooks.
Author Q&A
(Updated 10 September 2020)
eBooks.com is a retailer, not a publisher or wholesaler. As a retailer, our engagement with authors is minimal, as most of what’s relevant to you is dealt with by, or with, your publisher.
eBooks.com doesn’t have an author-direct style self-publishing service. Instead, we rely on firms like Lulu, Ingram Spark and iUniverse. They manage relationships with their authors and, in turn, deliver a steady flow of ebooks to retailers like eBooks.com.
We then offer your ebook(s) to our customers. When we make a sale, we pay the publisher the list price, minus a pre-agreed discount. (That discount makes up the gross profit that we, the retailer, earn from the sale.) The amount of the discount has been negotiated and agreed between us (retailer) and the publisher. The same trade discount applies to all the titles we receive from a given publisher. The publisher will then remit to you from the money we pay them.
Editing, cover design and ISBNs are typically managed by your publisher. Alternatively, you might manage these things yourself and deliver a finished “bundle” to your publisher. But they’re not things we, as a retailer, get involved in.
So, because I am self publishing author I can’t sell my book on your ebook website? I have to use other ebook outlets?
You certainly can sell your ebook on eBooks.com. But to do so you’ll need to sign up with Ingram, Lulu or iUniverse. Then your book will flow into eBooks.com’s database. We offer ebooks from tens of thousands of self-publishers, just like you, through those channels.
We’re a tiny minnow compared with our massive competitors, and we just don’t have the resources to manage tens of thousands of supplier relationships. And anyway, it’s a really, really good idea to sign up with one of those guys because then your work will automatically make its way onto the other major ebook retail sites, without effort on your part. You’ll be in good company.
If an ISBN has been allotted by another company can this ISBN apply, or would it only apply to that company’s sales?
We accept and catalogue ISBNs as they are delivered by publishers. It is possible for the same work to have several ISBNs issued by the same publisher, or by different publishers. When we sell an ebook, we remit to the publisher who supplied it to us, according to its ISBN. So if it happens that we are provided the same work by two different publishers (under two different ISBNs), we pay the publisher whose version we sold.
Our system can’t accept a duplicate ISBN. That means that, if your book is released by a publisher or distributor under a particular ISBN, the system will reject an upload from another publisher that has the same ISBN.
What incentives regarding advertising do you supply and at what costs?
We don’t offer advertising incentives to publishers or authors.
What assurances that all sales will be shown to the author?
For us to under-report sales would be serious breach of the agreement between eBooks.com and the publisher. We’ve been an eBook retailer longer than anyone, and we have never knowingly under-reported sales.
Can a sale from your company be cancelled or deleted and, if so, is the author also penalised by the removal of the royalty paid.
We sometimes need to refund a purchase, but the number is few. They’re mostly people who couldn’t get the ebook to work because of outdated hardware or a faulty ebook file, or they thought they were buying a printed book. In those instances when we refund a consumer, the publisher is not paid for the original sale. When it comes to refunds, no-one benefits.
