No, it’s not a bank. It’s primary function is to act as a broker between marketers and publishers and provide order fulfillment on the back end.
For a $3 price tag however, you’re better off giving it away to build some future sale. Seriously, why would you bargain bin price something before it even hits the market?
“Seriously, why would you bargain bin price something before it even hits the market?’
This is what ebooks sell for. A BIG part of the idea is that people buy these things in mass qtys to dnload to their Kindles or ipads to read on the way to work, on the subway, and $3 is a no-brainer purchase. What are you thinking, $17.95? The purpose is to sell 65K copies @ $3 (net $2 each) instead of 3500 copies @ net $3-5 each and to be utterly free of (physical book) publisher involvement.
That’s just how I see it. I am not an expert marketer, but I do not think that a (physical) book publisher puts a book out there are test markets it for $17.95, then $13.95, then $8.95, then $4.95, then to the stacks at Costco or the dollar store. Retail space in a B&N or Borders is not like that; it gets a certain window to move and if no go, it gets dumped. And the chances of a first time author to get such exposure could be close to zero. But I don’t know that from personal experience. The whole idea of the internet phenom is to generate buzz and have masses and masses of people buy something all in a wave while it’s hot. When that wave passes, maybe he sells it for 99 cents and makes $750 a month on it.