About Publishing Books

[nickbaer]

I started publishing my male nude photography photo books in 2007. I've published 414 titles, most in both print and eBook form.

I sell my printed books and eBooks through my website www.NickBaerGallery.com, as well as Amazon, Nook, Kobo and Google books.

Amazon and Nook have Affiliate programs, so you should go for promoting my books. Books are low-cost and, collectible - be it prose, poetry or photo books.

I was reading on another board that someone just published his first book on Kindle, a collection of erotic stories otherwise available for free on his website.

He's going to get a rude awakening one of these days, that it is a clear violation of Kindle TOS to "sell" material otherwise available for free on the net. Not just in a Piracy sense as if he had scraped other's writing and put it in book form as his, but even his own stuff that is free on his site.

There are additional sites on the Internet that sell books and eBooks. I've only had one go ballistic on me about full frontal male nudity. So obviously that site is not on the list above.

While most of you go for affiliate commissions on member sites, and others go for VOD sales commissions, help your viewers and readers out by showing them my male nude photo books. Books are another view of the models they enjoy in my VOD and DVD videos.

[nickbaer]

MaleNudePhotography-ClassicFetalIII.jpg

One of my recent books. More info.

Take a moment to browse the books on Amazon, Nook and Kobo (links in above message).

[rob]

Amazon and Nook have Affiliate programs, so you should go for promoting my books. Books are low-cost

That is why, as an affiliate, I would not promote them - a non-recurring low value item.

[nickbaer]

Not all purchases anywhere are recurring, not all are non-recurring.

A sale isn't a measure of an individual item, but of a total shopping incidence.

[rob]

Not all purchases anywhere are recurring, not all are non-recurring.

A sale isn't a measure of an individual item, but of a total shopping incidence.

A few simple questions then - taking into consideration that you said people should promote your books as affiliates

1) What is the average price? It looks like the maximum you charge is around $13
2) Do you offer $30+PPS?
3) Do you offer 50% revshare?

From memory, Amazon offer about 5% - so how is it as good deal for affiliates? I would have to sell almost 50 books at $13 for the equivalent of one sale at $30PPS.

It is an extremely poor choice for adult affiliates in my opinion.

[nickbaer]

The Internet is a big place. Webmasters can and should do a variety of methods to earn commissions and shares.

Commissions and shares are two distinctly different operations. They cannot be compared in the same sentence as either/or. That's like comparing apples and oranges.

Sending traffic that buys merchandise, like books and DVDs on Amazon.com is guaranteed. A commission is earned on the sale. On the sale of the item promoted, plus the sale of other items in the customer's shopping cart at the time of checkout.

Sending traffic to a membership share site runs the risk that:

1) The customer is already a member. Thus there is no sale.

2) The customer is a "member for life" of another Affiliate. A sale is credited to the other Affiliate.

3) The customer does not buy a membership, only window-shops the free tour. If the customer comes pack sometime later, the webmaster is at the mercy of the expiration date of the cookie saved at the time of the referral.

In either case, the webmaster earns nothing.


Other comparisons of merchandise sites to membership sites entail minimum payout thresholds.

In the case of Amazon.com, Amazon has a $10/?10/10Euro payout threshold, with free ACH/electronic direct deposit in the US, UK and EU.

Sites that do their own internal credit card processing and payout accounting can have thresholds of $50 to $100 or more. Plus cheque cashing fees.

Sites that bill through CCBill have whatever threshold the Affiliate sets for aggregate accumulation amongst all sites. (I set mine at $25 to lessen the impact of the $15 Wire Fee, and $15 to receive Wire when I am traveling on the road. Thus I am not sure if CCBill has a small threshold for check payouts).

As for sites that do their own internal processing and accounting, I made a $29.90 membership sale to a site that has a big name. I won't mention them by name, because they might be someone's boyfriend, Sugar Baby, drinking/party buddy etc.

That was a year ago. Every month, once a month, today this month, I get an e-mail telling me that the $29.90 doesn't meet the $50 minimum, and will be carried over to the next month.

I wrote to them in December 2012, asking that the amount be paid to close out the books on 2012. They refused. So until I get the $29.90 deposited in my bank, the sale is but dust in the wind.

I have a VOD partner with a high payout threshold. Yet, a studio can request payout at any time.

I have a merchandise partner with a high payout threshold, that pays any balance at the end of December, meeting the minimum threshold or not.

Earning a commission or share is one thing, getting paid is another. This board, and others, are ripe with threads about Sponsors by name (who do their own internal accounting) that don't pay, are late in paying, etc.

[dirtyratstudios]

I really like books like this and have bought all sorts, including a few things published by Tashen such as the boxed set of Athletic Model Guild some years ago. But unfortunately I've never found it worthwhile to promote Amazon videos or books. I run a tourist site and had a TV location page with DVDs linked for years and it in the end it wasn't worth the time spent adding the links. And you have to consider that you're sending someone away from your site when maybe there's a more profitable affiliate link or ad they could click on instead.

[nickbaer]

You are always sending viewers away from your site, when you promote products or links.

I always make sure my clicks open new browser windows. The viewer may go off, but they don't go away, because my site is still open.

I earned 2X more revenue last month from products, than I did VOD.

VOD platform scripts are much more dependent on new releases, than product sites.

From reading Forums over the past 8 years, it seems that member sites have a problem with members who eat a lot at first, then have spotty renewal records as the percentage of not-seen-before content becomes less and less.