Here are some problems with selling your digital ebooks on Amazon (dtp.amazon.com):

1. You don’t know who bought your book. You won’t have the slightest idea, they don’t pass that information on to you.

2. You don’t know who sold your books. Amazon works with some partners that, when they sell a book – take a cut off the proceeds too. So, with a $10 ebook you might make $3.xx or $5.xx if Amazon sells it themselves. You’ll never know for sure who sold it though – they don’t pass that information to you.

3. Very high return rate. In the last week I’ve sold 9 ebooks through the DTP Amazon program. 2 books were returned. That’s significantly higher than any other channel I sell my ebooks at. I might get one return out of 70 books, not 1 out of 4.5.

March 2010 – 1/6 refunded.
February 2010 – 1/4 refunded.
January 2010 – 1/4 refunded.

Those are some horrible stats.

What’s wrong? You’ll never know because you get squat for information. Did the customer not know how to read a PDF? Did they order the wrong format and didn’t know how to read it? Or, did they buy it, rename it and are reselling it through other channels?

It seems, upon first glance that selling your book on Amazon is really cool – and you’ll make much more money… it’s also taking the ball out of your court and giving someone control of a lot more than selling. They keep the leads… What are you building with a process like that? Not an email list. Not a customer list at all…

What to do?

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