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As long as you got help that works, was within your budget, and you’re satisfied with the end result, I don’t see any reason at all to be embarrassed by that sort of thing. If you can afford these folks services, go ahead and use ’em. I don’t see any indication that they’re out to screw anyone. It’s just that the services they offer are available for free or for much cheaper prices.
Hi Rich, and all.
I am one of the team at eBook Partnership.
One of my clients kindly passed on details of your post, and suggested that I clear up a couple of things that may not be clear from our website possibly.
We have been in business since 2010, and since that time we have worked with hundreds of authors and small publishers. We handle conversion and distribution (thousands of titles), and deal with all kinds of projects, including fixed layout and complex formats. We have an outstanding record of customer service.
80% of our business is referral. We do conversion for clients who do not wish to tackle this themselves, and we work personally with clients who appreciate the time we take to help them through the process.
I run workshops for authors and publishers, and in my workshops (and in my calls with potential clients) I will happily inform them about the DIY options. Many of our clients are experienced authors (see our client testimonial pages) and they would certainly avoid us if they thought we did not provide a good service.
My prediction was that our business may be mostly complex projects and publisher contracts by 2014, but we continue to take on new clients every day, who have no interest in converting their own files, or distributing them, and are extremely happy to have a reliable company to look after this side of the business.
We never charge to fix a file that we have converted, we always take care of any issues reported to us, the client would never pay for this service.
We do however, frequently fix ePubs that someone else has converted badly, in order that clients can make their eBooks available online i.e files that have not passed validation and have been refused by the retailers. There is a charge for this, as you would expect.
We do charge a set up fee for distribution. This is a process which involves collection and organisation of eBook files, cover image and metadata. We ensure that eBooks are uploaded correctly to retailers. As you know, not all of the retailers will accept titles from independent authors and publishers, so we help reach these retailer networks. All of our clients have a login to an admin system which enables them to view all of the information about their sales and royalties in one place, and we pay 100% of royalties to clients each month.
Non-US authors can experience difficulties creating accounts with some retailers (Apple and B&N for example), and also tax withholding is a problem for non-US authors, and we can facilitate eBook distribution that allows full royalty payments to be made to the authors.
We do charge for listing changes (although we do make changes to Amazon and Apple for free). This is because, we have to communicate with the author about the changes, then we have to go into all of the different retailer systems to make the changes. Someone has to take the time to do this, and therefore we do charge.
I am fully aware that we have to work hard to be seen as valued service providers, and I speak to authors every week who do feel let down by previous experiences with other companies. We are not complacent. We do work hard for our clients, and we provide ongoing support and advice.
I would be very happy to answer questions from anyone who has queries about the value of our service, and I am sorry to take up a big chunk of space here!
Best wishes,
Diana