Ready to publish 1st ebook - Need Advice

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polymath
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Re: Ready to publish 1st ebook - Need Advice

Post by polymath » January 11th, 2015, 6:47 pm

"Aggregators" have popped up in response to "the hassles" of coping with individual distribution outlets' manifold proprietary formats, notably due to DRM concerns: Distribution Rights Management. Many aggregators are "middleman" revenue pirates and also have reputations for poor production values. They claim they are able to produce a product uniformly across multiple platforms and fail at least in one important area on each platform.

My guidance is don't use an aggregator. Tactically target the marketplace strategically. Anyone who wants to read a product will find it where it's situated. Pick one print outlet and one digital outlet and let them be the main homes. Use a house website to promote the product, with links to the markets the product is available through. If brick-and-mortar distribution is wanted, avoid Amazon and Barnes & Noble. They are the enemies of brick-and-mortar booksellers. Amazon and Barnes & Noble eventually, if not soon, list any title included in R.R. Bowker's Books in Print anyway.

A workaound for all of the above is an aggregator who's not an aggagator and is independent of though distributes through online booksellers. Lulu.com and Xlibris are reputable book marketplace non-aggregator aggregators.

The requirement of a personal credit card for sales registration purposes is an identity confirmation process. The law requires identity confirmation for legal mandates: taxes, criminal and civil liability, responsible and accountable digital citizenship. There's no workaround for that. That's the point, identity confirmation that somewhat protects personal privacy information, like Social Security numbers, from public disclosure.

One possible workaround, though, is a registered DBA alias for the business. If a bank account was opened in the business' name, a DBA or other alias registration should have been mandatory. The business' name probably is automatically rejected due to not being a personal-like name. Consider a business alias name that's a personal identity instead of a company, a corporation, an LLC or PC, for example. Say Lawrence Press or the like.
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