Self-pub Nikki 9

20oct11,

I thought about selling the paperback version of Dome Child on Amazon UK, Germany and Japan and researched a bit but to sell the paperback via these channels seems like a logistics, liability and taxation nightmare. The taxes story between Japan and the US is nightmarish enough already. So, unfortunately it'll be Amazon US only. Kindle is another story of course, but the sliced tree version must after all be printed somewhere, packed and shipped, which is a much bigger endeavor than sending some bites through the ether.

28oct11,

I enlisted for the "look inside" feature of Amazon, but I need the PDF of the book for that. I asked CreateSpace about it with the nice answer that this is part of the package that I bought anyway and viola, a few days later the "look inside" feature was in place indeed.

02 and 03nov11

On the 2nd I received a message from CreateSpace that the Kindle conversion is already done. That was faster than announced. I went to check it and some parts of it looked a bit strange, so I wrote a message to my CreateSpace team. They promptly answered a night later (sometimes time zone differences can also be of advantage) and assured me that the problems would go away by adjusting the font size on a Kindle or other electronic reading device.

I checked the Kindle self-pub page and the only thing left to do was to set the prices in dollar, euro and pounds and the book should become available on Kindle. After pressing the safe and publish button, a message popped up saying that it will take some 24 hours until the title will be available in the Kindle store. All right then. I'll check that tomorrow.

04nov11,

It took apparently even less than 24 hours for the Kindle Version of Dome Child to go online. When I checked after work on the 4th its beautiful cover smiled at me from all over Amazon US, Germany, France and UK. Funnily though not with the prices that I put into the system. That had me confused for a moment, but by now I think I figures it out.

I set the US list price of Dome Child's Kindle version at 2.99 $ and allowed the system to automatically calculate the UK, FR and DE prices accordingly. You can set them yourself individually, but for the moment I set them based on the 2.99 $ price. Now what happens is that in the UK, FR and DE Amazon adds 15% VAT. So instead of 1.85 pounds it's 2.13 pounds and instead of 2.60 Euro it's 2.99 Euros. So far so good, but the price in Japan on my iPad for example reads 4.99 $. I verified with a US friend that the price is 2.99 in the US and it seems that outside of the 4 countries US, UK, FR and DE Amazon charges 2 extra dollars for the download on their whispernet.

I haven't verified that, but presumably the price in Hongkong or so will be the 4.99 $ as well, when ordering via Amazon.com. Now the funny thing is if someone from the UK checks on Amazon.com the price is 3.43 $, from Germany it's 4.23 $ – welcome to the world of VAT and whispernet charges.

So, I recommend friends in the UK to order via Amazon UK, and in Germany via Amazon DE to get the best prices.

Now, my next step will be to seek expansion into Amazon's extended sales channels as well as other e-book entities, notably Smashwords = the journey continues…

And here are the links to the Kindle Stores:

Amazon US

Amazon DE

Amazon UK

Amazon FR