The past few evenings I’ve been adding all my eBooks (9 at this point) to a new online store I’ve created on PlayingWithMedia.com, using WordPress and iThemes Exchange. The reason my total number of eBooks jumped so fast was my decision last month to start offering individual chapters of “Mapping Media” for sale as $2.99 “eBook Singles.” Hopefully that option will be beneficial for professors, instructors, and students using the “Mapping Media to the Curriculum” framework in college courses as well as professional development workshops. I’m still offering my eBooks for sale on other websites, including Amazon.com, but I’m now offering all of them for sale on a single website I maintain for several reasons. These include:
- The ability to earn higher royalties on eBook sales
- The MUCH faster payment speed of Stripe and PayPal compared to Amazon (1-3 days compared to over 30 days)
- The ability to collect contact information (email addresses) from customers when they purchase on my site (Amazon, Apple, Google, and other eBook re-sellers don’t share that info with authors or publishers)
- The option to let people join my mailing list when they make a purchase
- The option to provide customers with THREE different eBook format download options when they buy (ePUB, MOBI / Kindle & PDF)
- The benefit of showing people my online video library annual subscription
To upload MOBI (Amazon Kindle) versions of my eBooks to my WordPress website, I needed to install the free plugin “WP Add Mime Types.” By default, WordPress does not recognize or permit “.mobi” file uploads. By installing and configuring this plugin, however, that limitation was removed.
I still have an account on e-Junkie.com active for eBook purchases, but sales there have been relatively slow and that site is costing me $18 per month for the features I use. (That includes offering customer downloads of larger eBook files from Amazon S3.) In upcoming weeks, once I finish changing the links on all my websites referencing my eBooks, I’m planning to deactivate / cancel that e-Junkie account. e-Junkie does allow authors to collect contact information from customers, and I also need to migrate those emails over to my MailChimp mailing list. The e-Junkie transaction log shows that since 2011, when I first published “Playing with Media: simple ideas for powerful sharing” on the site, I’ve had almost 2200 different transactions.
It’s fantastic to have the email addresses of those people who purchased one of my eBooks in the past. Hopefully by staying in contact, I’ll be able to make them (and you!) aware of new eBooks I write, videos I publish, and other opportunities to learn about effective multimedia communication.