Posted on 01/30/2009 6:02:51 PM PST by Former Fetus
My husband wants to know how do you go about publishing a book on-line, where people pay a fee to download the book. I'm completely lost here, so once again I come to my trusted Freepers for advice. You have never let me down before!
As far as publishing sites I have no idea. You can use PayPal so people can pay for the download.
Don’t know. I know FReepers with books in print that one can buy, and I know FReepers who will send you their book in a text file or let you read it online for free, but not the intermediate concept of paying to read it online/download.
You can try http://www.lulu.com
Check out Cafe press.
The easiest way is to use a publishing service like Lulu, they provide print on demand service. However, if you want to just have a download and you have the software and skill to work the formatting, etc, there is very little reason you can’t do this yourself going through PayPal. Drop me a FReepmail if you need more info, I do this often with my family’s non-profit.
Ping
You could try Cafe Press. They let you pay for books as they are printed, and they print when the book is ordered by someone.
http://www.cafepress.com/?cmp=knc—g—us—pri—cp_brnd—e—cafe_press&utm_medium=cpc&utm_source=google&utm_campaign=pri—cafepress_brand%20-%20us&utm_content=search-e&utm_term=cafe%20press
You can also start your own website pretty easy by purchasing server space at a good hosting company. Most of them have shopping cart programs in their control panels that let you set up a store on the site. You don’t have to know programming for the most part, although it’s very helpful to at least know some html. As was said, you can also use a paypal link for people to order and pay for the book. Cafe Press is probably easiest if you don’t know anything about website design or starting a website. There are many good tutorials on building a website though, if you google. Depends on how much time you want to put into it. You could also simply get your book listed on Amazon.com. It’s easy enough to do, and you just have to provide them with 50 books for their inventory....actually it might be just 5 books to start until they see if it’s going to sell. At the Amazon.com site there is a section for sellers and a program for getting your book listed. I’ve used it many times and it works great. Hope that helps
I just noticed you wanted to let people download it. Amazon also has a section for e-books that have been put in pdf format. I’ve never used paypal to have people pay for downloading a file, but I”m sure it could be done. You’d probably just want a simple website to advertise it on though. A good hosting company that we’ve used for all of our sites for years is this one:
http://christianwebhost.com/
They are extremely reliable and almost never “go down” for any length of time
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I think Jeff Head and Alamo-Girl might have some suggestions.
They have free software for creating your book and you only pay to have copies printed (hard cover or soft cover). The price per book is very reasonable and the finished product looks as good as anything in a book store.
marking for later review
Former Fetus, I join with mnehrling in recommending Lulu - but if you are not wanting a printed version, then you out to take mnehrling up on his offer and contact him.
imo jmo moo, any business is a business, and the first thing you should do is go talk to a lawyer about copyright issues, business insurance, etc. second, would be to use a dedicated computer that is protected with a ton of anti-virus software so you don’t send out any infected ebooks. Chose your advertising/payment method (ebay/paypal or something similar) and once the buyer’s payment clears, email out the e-book. Check some of the ads on ebay to see what format those sellers use for their ebooks (word, pdf, etc). If you’re not going the ebay way, and setting up your own website/domain name, then check out some web hosting sites, (godaddy is probably one of the biggest) and see what the pricing of their different packages are that would incorporate shoppingcart/paypal type options. Things such as amount of expected traffic to the site, whether the domain name (your website name) is in your name or in the issuing company’s name, and how many web pages you’re allowed, are important considerations.
Good luck with your project!
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