I’ve been trying to sell ebooks on Google since they opened their retail store, and it has been bizarre to say the least. While I do have three titles that eventually processed and are in the store, two titles are still “processing” weeks later. One of those has been “processing” for two full months! Unbelievable.
What to do about it? Customer support is entirely non-existent. They simply don’t reply to emails, even pleasant ones, like Amazon Kindle support does.
Also, with the other retailers, if an upload is having trouble processing, you simply try it again or another document and the first version is immediately replaced. What a concept! At Google ebooks, this is not an option as your upload becomes locked and forces the author to watch and wait its progression or non-progression in some cases. Why? Why did those Stanford grads have to re-invent the wheel and get it wrong when everything had already been made properly for them to copy?
So far in my vast self-publishing experience, Google Ebooks is by far the worst venue to sell ebooks. There is only one teenie-weenie bright spot to the whole place, and that’s the fact they have something unique; an ad revenue thing which has earned me about 10 bucks in ads even though they haven’t sold any ebooks yet. Woo-hoo. That brings them up from a D-minus to a solid D grade in my opinion.
If you want to self-publish; definitely do Amazon Kindle, Pubit by Barnes&Noble, Apple (if you have a Mac), and Smashwords with the opt-in for every major retailer. Also you should give free samples and sell from your own website and/or blog. Should you also do Google Ebooks? I dunno, maybe.
Hey Google, process this! (as if they care)
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February 8, 2011 at 11:50 am
At last someone who echoes my thoughts ! Ive given up on them Ebay is best !
February 8, 2011 at 1:52 pm
please tell us more about your successes with eBay, so we’ll know what to do and what not to do.